Self-Efficacy, Surprise and Coaching
Albert Bandura identifies four factors that affect self-efficacy. These factors are important for a professional coach to keep in mind when coaching about anticipation. The first is Experiencing success in one’s life and work. You can’t fake the achievement of outcomes. Taking an appreciative approach, we assist our clients as a coach to identify moments and times in their past when they have been successful at completing a task.
The second Bandura factor is Modeling, or “vicarious experience.” Bandura is particularly noted for this form of social learning. We acquire knowledge and skills by watching other people doing something successfully. I would suggest that we not only learn from this observation but also increase our own positive anticipation of being successful. As a coach, we might suggest that our client watch someone else complete a task that they must themselves soon engage. We might encourage them to find a mentor (even if they are “senior” members of their organization) or pick up a book providing directions on how to be successful or watch a recording portraying the successful performance of a relevant task.
The third factor is Social persuasion. This factor for Bandura is about how we are “persuaded” that we can be effective. We seek to match the challenges we face with support from other people. When assigned major responsibility, we need comparable authority, as well as encouragement and assistance from other members of our organization. When serving as a coach, we can not only offer our own encouragement and assistance but also help our clients find other sources of support in their work setting. We often need to be persuaded that we can be effective and that our positive anticipations are justified.
Finally, there are Physiological factors. This brings us to the first elements in a polystatic process: our somatic template and our emotions. As Bandura notes, it is hard to feel self-efficacious under conditions of stress. When feeling “lousy” about our body and mind (as manifest in a disturbed somatic and psychosocial template), one is likely to feel “lousy” as well about the prospects of being successful regarding the challenges we face. As often reiterated in our Polystasis model, our anticipations are strongly influenced by our bodily condition, regardless of any “realistic” prospects of being successful.
We are likely to be surprised when our anticipation of another person’s behavior doesn’t fit with our expectations regarding their usually “consistent” behavior. When we are often surprised and must frequently adjust our interpersonal anticipations, then we may be forced to adjust our fundamental psychosocial template.
We begin to acknowledge the way in which events and environments influence other people’s behavior and ways in which attributions must be viewed as complex and variable–much like the VUCA-Plus world in which we now live. We must engage the Triad of Threat when reviewing our process of anticipation. We determine if specific elements in our environment are working against (blocking) our best interest (a negative valence), are strong, and are active. We also identify specific elements that are working on behalf of our best interest (positive valence), are strong and active.
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