St.Louis Business Journal
GOOD COASHING REQUIRES A FULL UNDERSTANDING OF PROBLEMS

By Anna Navarro

February 2004  

Author's note: Client stories in this column are based on actual situations fictionalized to protect privacy and told with permission.

Coaching is the art of helping a person see possibilities where only problems existed before.

Seven years ago Tony opened a very successful graphics design firm. His growth had come through close relationships with a small base of clients. But Tony felt the future was very risky. There were rumors that the company which was his major client was going to be sold. He also found the work stressful and sometimes lost sleep over whether he could deliver what he thought his clients expected of him. In addition, the work left him feeling on the fringe of a team but not belonging to one.

He came to see me because he kept ping-ponging between thinking he should close up shop and go work for someone else, and believing that he should stay and learn to do things differently, though he wasn't clear what that meant.

It was soon apparent he was having trouble figuring out what to do because he was too close to the situation. He needed to back up and get some perspective on himself and what he valued before tackling a decision about his future.

To develop that necessary perspective we engaged in an intensive analysis, covering his personal and work history, his preferred skills, the working conditions he wanted, his passions, his financial needs, the other things in his life that were important to him besides work, and numerous other issues.

Almost immediately, important insights started to surface. As a kid he had watched his father build then lose a restaurant when the only factory in town closed. It was a very traumatic event for him and for his family. He began to realize that the sense of risk he felt so keenly might be more rooted in his history than in his current reality.

His family moved several times because of the restaurant closing. He felt forever the outsider in his adolescence. Tony began to see that teenage experience as the driving force behind his strong need to belong.

After we completed his analysis, we boiled it down to the central issues that were important to him in a work situation, then compared it to what his company offered.

What emerged was that there were many ways his current situation aligned perfectly with what he wanted. The working conditions provided the freedom, flexibility, fast pace and variety he enjoyed. Graphic design complemented his natural skills of creativity and strategic thinking. To his surprise, he realized that his company gave him about 80% of what he wanted.

Just as important, he began to understand that the things that were most troubling him might be a remnant of his difficult youth. As a kid, there wasn't much he could do about his father's restaurant, or being an outsider. His fears of losing business and not belonging came linked with feelings of helplessness. This is what made them so powerful. But over the course of our work he came to see that there were things he could do about these issues.

Tony decided to stick with his company, but with coaching to help him make changes. First, he developed and implemented a plan that broadened his client base so that no one piece of business made up more than 15 percent of his company's income. If a client went away, it might be tight for a few months, but it wasn't an event that would sink his company.

What Tony needed in terms of belonging was a team of peers with whom he could openly discuss issues like staffing patterns and compensation. The strategy we developed to cope with this was to create a strong network of colleagues who owned similar companies in other cities. It took a while to evolve, but eventually it provided the support system Tony was seeking.

Intuitively, it seemed to me from the start that the company Tony created was a good fit for him. But if I had simply asserted that opinion, it would not have helped him much.

However, helping Tony come to grips with what he ideally wanted, and comparing it to what he already had allowed him to grasp for himself the pluses of the business he had created. And finding the connection between his history and his current concerns opened the way for genuine problem solving.

Coaching often works best when you have filled in the background for the immediate problem. That often provides the best platform for good solutions.

Anna Navarro is the founder of Work Transitions, a nationwide career consulting firm that trains independent career strategists and consults with individual clients.

This column was originally published by the St. Louis Business Journal. The actual title of the column and date in which it appeared in the Business Journal may be slightly different from what appears on WorkTransitions.com.