Sometimes, an organizational coach must be ready to assist in the identification or definition of results. The client can benefit greatly from articulate statements from the coach regarding what successful results look like in a specific organizational context. Results are congruent with the culture of the organization and with the tactical or strategic plans of the organization. At other times, the organizational coach asks the provocative questions that challenges the client to be more thoughtful about the results she wishes to achieve or is already achieving: “How will you know that you have been successful?” “How will other members of this organization interpret the outcomes of your work?” “What are the short-term and the long-term implications of your successful performance in this organization?” These provocative questions often lead the client and coach into the domain of information: “What exactly are the expectations of this organization regarding your performance?” For the high potential client, the more specific question might be: “Why do you think you have been identified as a high potential employee?” A similar question can be asked of the high performance client: “Why do you think you have been identified as a high performing employee?” In both cases, the answer to this question may say something about the values of the organization and about the alignment between these organizational values and those held by the client.
Alignment
While a high potential or high performance client may dwell and want to work extensively in the domains of intentions and ideas, they are not necessarily skillful or successful in addressing all of the issues that reside in these domains. The challenges of work/life balance and workaholism are often wrapped up in these clients’ inability or unwillingness to identify all of the intentions (vision, values, and purposes) that are operating in their life. To what extent are the intentions embedded in their work life aligned with the intentions embedded in their personal life? When they spend that extra four hours at the office or bring two hours of work home with them every night, are they damaging their family life? What about devoting time to their own restoration? As Roger Rosenblatt has noted, the appointment we are most likely to cancel is the appointment we have made with ourselves (healthy exercise, an unhurried lunch, an evening spent with a novel).
There are also the alignment issues associated with ethics and organizational values. Are there times during the coaching session when the coach and client should explore the extent to which the client’s exceptional or potentially exceptional performance is misaligned with specific organizational values or with fundamental ethics? Do the ends always justify the means? Are the client’s personal values aligned with formal organizational values or with the unacknowledged values that “really” operate in the organization? While being very busy and very successful (or potentially very successful), has the client spent sufficient time reflecting on these deeper levels of the intentional domain? Is it appropriate for the organizational coach to challenge the client regarding these alignment issues? While employees who are “in trouble” may try to deflect the challenges they face by focusing on the misalignment between their own values and aspirations and those of the organization, the high potential and high performance clients are more likely to ignore this misalignment, having focused their attention and energy on getting the work done rather than on the reasons why their work is of value to themselves and their organization.
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