Remember “light bulb” jokes? My favorite was, “How many shrinks
does it take to change a light bulb? One, but the light bulb must want
to change.” It’s true: Unless or until a person decides to commit to
change wholeheartedly, no coach can help move him or her one-millimeter
off the dime.
Worse yet is the fact that, unlike light bulbs that lack the capacity
for self-deception, humans bamboozle themselves all the time. Whether
it’s a smoking cessation program or working with a coach to improve
management skills, people claim they want to change or drop
dysfunctional behaviors from their lives, but then fight like Ninja
warriors to defend them. Worst of all, irrespective of how intelligent
or professionally powerful a person is, it is a virtual certainty that
after embarking on a change process, they will be partially or fully
derailed by the feeling, “Better the devil I know than the devil I don’t
know.”
The reason why backsliding on our ostensible commitments to change is
so common is because most change is the result of compliance to a
demand, incentive, or threat. “Lose weight or you’ll suffer a heart
attack” coming from an M.D. is a directive most folks won’t ignore.
Unfortunately, when incentivized to change in this manner falling off
the wagon is common because our motivation wasn’t to change, it was to
avoid a premature death.
Psychologists who have studied intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
since the 1970s — most notably, Professor Edward L. Deci — demonstrate
that when a person acts in response to extrinsic motivators — the
promise of money; the threat of punishment — commitment to a behavior
is short-lived. This is why when the cat’s away, mice will play. Mice don’t want to change
their behavior, i.e. playing games, but they do when cats are present.
However, since change (the cessation of play) was instigated by an
extrinsic force — Tabby — if Tabby isn’t monitoring the mice, thse
rodents instantly revert to form.
What, then, should you do if you think you want to change
and, like so many of your peers, put your faith (and a huge financial
commitment) in a coach? Is it possible to develop an authentic
commitment to executive coaching through sheer willpower alone? No. But
what you can do is develop a mindset — i.e. new “automatic” cognitive
messages — that will help you counter your own resistance to change.
What follows are the exercises I use most often to help new clients
initiate coaching with the best mindset possible. If, prior to the
onset of coaching you experience the attitude adjustments they are
designed to foster, the change process should be profoundly less
anxiety- and resistance-provoking for you than it is for those who dive
in unprepared.
1. Ask yourself, “Cui bono?”
Recall a golf lesson or the clumsiness you suffered during an
introductory yoga class. Now recall how you responded when the club pro
or yogacharya gave you critical feedback. No big deal, right?
Well if you’ve never been to an executive coach, I guarantee that the
first critique you receive will not be a NBD experience. Why? Golf or
yoga are peripheral to an executive’s definition of self. Being a
stellar manager is central, so when someone pokes that realm of your
self-concept the usual reaction is “ouch!”
The best way to reduce the possibility of being stung by an executive
coach’s constructive critical feedback is to remind yourself that it is
(a) not ad hominem and as such, (b) comparable to the club pro’s
efforts to correct your slice. To do this with ease, learn to employ the
Latin phrase “Cui bono?” — literally, “as a benefit to whom?” —
after each critique you receive. The rational portion of your brain
knows that no competent coach would gratuitously put you down. Now you
need to train the more primitive, more reactionary parts of your brain
to think that way too. By making “Cui bono?” the mantra you
bring to assessment sessions with your coach, you can learn to accept
that any and all feedback from him or her is intended to be helpful, not
hurtful.
2. Be sure you wouldn’t rather hire a cheerleader than a coach.
Many consultants and coaches know that they can build lucrative
client bases by treating protégés the way Little League coaches deal
with their pre-teen charges: Everything the kid does evokes a “good job”
or “atta boy!”
The problem with an automatic “good job” reaction is that it is
useless and often — even by pre-teens — seen for what it is: Balm for
under-developed egos. An 11-year-old with burgeoning self-esteem would
much rather hear “keep your eye on the ball” after striking out than
“good job,” but if you want to hear cheering regardless of how you
perform, caveat emptor. An ethical coach doesn’t bring pom-poms to meetings with clients, so hire to your needs.
3. Learn the difference between participation and commitment.
Having spent 30 years as a psychotherapist and coach, I can assure
you that acting the role of a “participant in a change process” is not
nearly the same as being committed to actually changing yourself. Many
people claim to be involved in a change process when, in fact, they are
holding their true selves in abeyance. Years ago, many gay men married
women because they held the deluded belief that the process of being
part of an intimate heterosexual dyad would change who they were. In
time, virtually all discovered that suppression doesn’t work and that
role-playing without conviction has no chance of effecting change.
Coaching cannot change you one iota unless or until you’re really
committed — until you have skin in the game. Before I work with a client
who needs to make major changes, I share the aphorism my baseball coach
once told me to drive home the distinction between authentic commitment
vs. going through the motions: “There’s a huge difference between
participating in baseball and being committed to it; it’s like a bacon
and egg breakfast. The chicken participates in the breakfast. The pig,
on the other hand, was fully committed.”
Since you won’t change unless you really want to, and
nothing — not the highest-priced coach or public declarations about your
intention to change (which, presumably, will humiliate you if you fail)
— will help you to succeed, it behooves you to learn how to thwart your
worst tendencies in advance of tackling change. This is what
cartoonist/philosopher Walt Kelly, in his possum persona, Pogo,
was referring to when he said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” If
you accept this fact of life, coaching — and every other change process
you initiate — will become surprisingly simple.
