Why the book?

As I sat back and reflected on why I was writing a book, I was particularly struck by my inner thoughts on how much work it was to complete a project of this magnitude, which forced me to reexamine what the driving motivation really was. To say the least, the motivation to do it has evolved over time.

For the last 5 or 6 years, whenever I make presentations on both learning and the ARTT of Learning™ or when I would talk about adpatability, many times I was approached by multiple people afterwards suggesting that I should write a book on the topic or they would like to hear more on the subject. The possibility of a book always sat in the back of my mind, but I never got to the critical mass where I was ready to sit down and start pounding the keyboard. However, in 2004 my son James told me that although I keep talking about a book, since I always get too busy and get involved in so many other things, he didn’t believe I would really ever do it. Then he told me that between his work and travels in Africa with Bulembu (www.bulembu.org) and moving on to starting his masters in International Law, he would be willing to work with me and help in the writing process. That was the final motivation, because he knows me well enough to know that I work better by talking, than by typing at a computer. Also, the two of us are on the same page about many of the issues from leadership, interpersonal relationships, the importance of networks to the relevance of adaptability. The evolution over time and the motivation provided by James really are what caused me to get started.

Lastly, I want to share and leave something behind; I want to contribute to the HR world, coaching profession, and the next generation of leaders.

Why it’s needed
Through my consulting experiences over the years, I have come to the following conclusions as to why this book is needed and will add to the coaching profession.

People aren't changing
In my consulting experiences, including hundreds of coaching sessions over the years, I have found that people really weren’t changing that much. I might have good sessions with them while they would get hold of things and would in turn notice a spurt in the first few months in their individual effectiveness or their ability to get more from their experiences. However, over time, particularly after the coach left or the dialogue was over, when I would go back and visit a few years later, things were pretty much the same. This led me to question the current coaching techniques and why they weren’t effective to the point of creating lasting changes.

The coaching dilemma
the coaching dilemma is that coaching can be good and is helpful; however, you can’t go through life with a coach all the time. The real issue then is, how can the coach, coach you to coach yourself so that you can have meaningful discussions with yourself after the coach leaves.

Reality-based self talk
Given the coaching dilemma, the main thrust of coaching should be to help people to have productive inner dialogue in order to help themselves. However, the conversations we have with ourselves need to be focused on the right stuff and have to be reality based. The issue quickly becomes to coach people to coach themselves and have their self talk not be emotionally based, but rather be open dialogue that asks questions that causes them to think things through afresh and to be able to make adjustments to our behavior based on our own questions and answers.

Motivated participants
There is in fact a significant body of research that shows the value of self coaching. As I started helping people to coach themselves and formalizing the ARTT of Living™ model of self coaching, I found that what people were able to do was become more motivated as they talked to themselves. People are more motivated when they are able to screen and test for reality and talk to themselves.

Overuse of the 360º feedback process
Over the years, when I was introducing 360 degree feedback processes, many of my clients starting pushing me saying they had used 360 degree feedback too much. Therefore, in addition to doing self coaching, I began to do self assessments. When I looked at the research I knew that they needed to be focused and needed to have external cues that would help in the self coaching process. An example of that would be I would have them think of 3-5 situations where they were at their best and 3-5 when they were at their worst. Soon I began using this technique rather than a 360º. From talking with others in the organization, it turned out that they were particularly accurate, which stared in the face of much common wisdom and a significant amount of research in the HR body of knowledge. In fact, it goes against many HR practices, research and beliefs.

The bottom line
The bottom line is that I have found from my experiences that self assessment and self coaching works. The key is to have it be reality and enquiry based. Therefore my motivation is to bring additional insights to move the coaching and human resource profession forward.