Abstract
Being unable to identify and manage “intangibles” is a major reason that forward movement in a project, a career, or an organization can be delayed or even stopped completely. Intangibles – things like inability to change or to motivate a team, lack of influence, lack of confidence, inability to build effective relationships, an overly arrogant approach, or a willingness to take too much risk –can be significant challenges to individuals in some situations. More complex, and constantly morphing, are the intangibles that can exist within teams and organizations. Intangibles are difficult to identify because of their invisible nature, and they are frequently key blind spots for individuals and teams. Intangibles come from many sources, such as strong emotions like fear or anger, negative experiences from the past such as injustices or personal values violations, or even simply from a lack of information or skills. Because intangibles are not physical, and can be difficult to measure, they are open to multiple interpretations. The coaching industry primarily deals in intangibles, and project management is the art and science of managing projects. Together, they can offer a powerful and effective synergy. This paper will show how to adapt and use a project management framework and tools in order to measure and manage the intangibles encountered in coaching. Making an intangible “visible” is the first and most important step in managing it for a successful outcome.
Introduction
The mantra of getting projects done is “on-time, on-budget, and on-scope.” The tools used by project managers reflect and support the need to control a project. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) is a reference set of tools, methods, and processes used and adapted to control many types of projects across numerous industries (2012). Projects that get too far removed from the familiar tools of project management will sometimes require a new and separate standard or set of guidelines to better address their particular needs. Agile is an example of an adaptive project lifecycle used most often in software development, which also mostly deals in “intangibles.” Agile has a “manifesto,” a set of principles and guidelines that help us better understand what the goal of a project should be and what factors are really worth tracking. True Agile experts see them themselves as separate from project management. Virginia A. Greiman, author of the book Megaproject Management, says that “multiple management frameworks are employed for megaprojects, including standard project management and Agile approaches. Megaprojects have been characterized by size, duration, uncertainty, ambiguity, complex interfaces and integration, and significant political and external influences” (Greiman, 2013, p. 9). She goes on to say that “project managers should be skilled at adapting their management methods for the unique qualities of each project” (Greiman, 2013, p. 8).
Working with individuals and intangibles is a unique aspect of professional coaching. According to the 2012 Global Coaching Study of the International Coach Federation (ICF), coaching is a $2 billion dollar industry and it does not, as an industry, have an alignment with standard project management or Agile. Professional coaching focuses on setting goals, creating outcomes and managing personal change (ICF, 2012, p. 12). The average duration of a coaching engagement is four to six months and should be considered a project. The coaching engagement can benefit when it is managed like a project. The challenge is how to adapt the project management framework and tools to the unique qualities of coaching. When coaching is managed like a project, the following benefits have been reported:
Exhibit 1 – List of benefits when managing coaching like a project
Similarities of Project Management and Coaching
Coaching and project management share many similarities. The most basic is that both involve change and result in an outcome. Coaching typically focuses only on an individual changing, yet those changes may impact many more people depending on the individual's span of influence. This table highlights some of the similarities between project management and coaching:
Exhibit 2 – Comparison of similarities between project management and coaching
Right Brain and Left Brain
Individuals who have worked, studied, and taught in both the project management and coaching fields make the generalization that coaching is a right-brain activity – creative, intuitive, spontaneous, intangible, more related to the softer skills, and to the emotions. Project management is considered to be more of a left-brain activity – logical, structured, fact based, and analytical. Neither is right or wrong and each requires finding the appropriate balance for the situation and the desired outcome. Adapting a project management framework and tools to the coaching process is one way to provide coaching with some structure. Making intangibles more visible is a way to bring more right brain focus to project management.
Coaches are hired by individuals, or by corporations on an individual's behalf, who are motivated to make a change in behavior or skills. “As we advance in our careers behavioral changes [intangibles] are often the only significant changes we can make” (Goldsmith, 2007, p. 44). Typically, intangible changes can encompass skills or qualities such as delegating, motivating, influencing, communicating, relationship building, improving personal presence, and building confidence. Individuals also hire coaches because they have a specific tangible goal to achieve, such as getting a promotion or finding a new job. Even when their goal is tangible, the work that needs to be done is largely intangible. Mark hired his coach to help him get a promotion. During the analysis phase, it was discovered that before he would even be considered for a promotion, he needed to change a tendency towards passive behavior in how he handled customers, and to build stronger relationships with senior management.
Step One: Coaching is a Project
The first simple but necessary step is to consider a coaching engagement as a project. A coaching engagement has a start, an end, and something unique is delivered. According to data from the Global Coaching Study, an ICF-commissioned report carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the average coaching engagement lasts 4-6 months at a cost of $240 USD per hour for coaching a manager. The top business-focused coaching deliverable is that of improving staff and team effectiveness. The following shows the average triple constraint for coaching projects – time, cost, and scope. These constraints should be addressed and clearly stated in a coaching contract.
Exhibit 3 – Average coaching triple constraint (from ICF Global Coaching Study – Final Report, 2012)
Working with the Coaching Triple Constraint
It is important that the coach consider the triple constraint and not over-promise on a deliverable. Coaches are sometimes called miracle workers and given lots of credit because they work on intangibles, yet coaches can also sometimes be blamed if an individual does not achieve the desired results. The reality is that both the coach and the individual are responsible for setting realistic expectations up front. The triple constraint is a tool to make tradeoffs and set realistic expectations for the desired coaching outcome. An individual may wish to get a promotion. The budget for coaching may only be $4000. The work required for behavioral changes, skill building, and relationship building may be estimated by the coach and client to take one year, which is not within the $4000 budget. The coach and individual will have to create a realistic and workable balance based on priorities. Using the triple constraint to guide them, a possible project could be created with 4 months of coaching (schedule), for $4000 (cost), focusing on one personal behavioral change and support for building one key skill (scope).
Using the triple constraint to create the basic project boundaries up front helps to set expectations. Here are some guideline questions used to establish the boundaries and the tradeoffs. It comes down to the questions of “What is most important, given the reality of the situation?” and “Is the individual motivated and willing to change?”
Exhibit 4 – Key coaching questions to determine balance within the triple constraint
Corporate sponsors of the coaching engagement are satisfied because there is a familiar and agreed-upon set of outcomes tied to a schedule and a cost. When something can be measured, managed, and a value applied, it fits into the traditional way most businesses work. Achieving clarity about the project scope and measuring the intangibles help to keep the individual and coach focused on the desired outcomes and aware of the progress being made along the way toward that end.
Coaching Lifecycle
‘Projects and project management take place in an environment that is broader than that of any particular project itself” (PMI, 2008, p.15). Similarly, effective coaching is holistic and engages the individual as well as the environment they are in. “The lifecycle provides the basic framework for managing the project, regardless of the specific work involved” (PMI, 2008, p.15). The information below maps a typical coaching engagement into a project lifecycle.
Exhibit 5 – Image and description of a sample coaching lifecycle
Coaching Phase 1 and Phase 2 - Assessment and Goal Setting
Coaching starts with an idea or need or desired goal being expressed by or for an individual. Managing the coaching to a known lifecycle, like those of a project, is one approach to keep individual, stakeholder, and sponsor expectations clear, as well as to effectively manage the process in general. The first two phases of Assessment and Goal setting appear like the linear waterfall lifecycle. In order to properly set complete and holistic goals in Phase 2, the data gathering and analysis must be completed in Phase 1. However, in reality, a good coach starts coaching the individual toward their desired outcomes during the interview process. After the work of Phase 1 and 2 is complete there are regularly scheduled coaching sessions. These on-going coaching sessions are essentially mini-projects, resembling an adaptive lifecycle, like Agile. Each coaching session starts with a reminder of the overall goals, and focuses on the current successes, challenges, and tasks completed since the last coaching session. Stories are told, roleplaying may occur, and diagnosis and analysis of situations and problem solving are all possible components of a single coaching session. It is important to note that some coaching sessions are not like a project at all. Coaching emotions and the body may appear serendipitous and random and, unlike a project, there is not a start, an end, and nothing tangible or relevant to the end goal may result. An example of a coaching session like this could be an unexpected or difficult situation at work or home that has a strong emotional component.
Coaching Requirements: Measuring the Intangibles
The intangible nature of coaching is the biggest challenge. Getting clear about the scope and requirements of the intangibles in the early stages is critical. When early stages involve more than just the coach and the individual, a greater chance of success is predicted. More inclusive involvement upfront allows the full context and data of the stakeholders, the organization, and the industry to be considered before establishing specific goals. Key challenges, risks, and realistic goals can be established when a detailed gathering of the requirements is done. Here are some examples of discoveries that arose in the assessment phase that had an impact on the goals and helped the project to ultimately run more smoothly:
Exhibit 6 – Phase 1: Scope and assessment discovery examples
Coaching Scope
Being able to articulate the intangible as a tangible takes time. Like a project, it is best done at the start of a coaching engagement. It can be the most difficult part of the coaching project because everyone starts with a different interpretation and set of beliefs. It typically involves the individual and his or her sponsors, who can be managers, human resource professionals, or other stakeholders invested in the outcomes such as customers, direct reports, and peers. The coach's role is to gather the data and guide the conversation to a common understanding of the described goal, and then to an agreed-upon written statement of where the individual is currently as well as the desired outcome.
Frequently, a sponsor will describe the individual's need for an improvement/coaching goal using these words related to specific qualities or skill categories: leadership, collaboration, empowerment, or engagement. This becomes part of the “scope statement.” While the dictionary definition for these words is clear, the actual meaning, when applied to that individual in their circumstance and in their organization, can be significantly different.
The scope statement is broad and is a boundary. A key purpose for having a scope statement is to ensure that the overall coaching engagement is focused and aligned with the desired outcomes. A certified coach adheres to a standard of ethics that states that conversations between the individual and the coach are confidential. The scope statement is what the coaching is based on and what the coach is being paid for. Because of that, the scope statement typically is not confidential and is generic enough so that it is useful for business operations, such as for creating a statement of work and for accounting purposes. Some of the specific goals may be confidential between the individual and the coach. The sponsor, however, is primarily concerned with the scope being achieved.
Coaching Goal Setting
Once the scope is agreed upon and all the project constraints are set in place (cost, schedule, scope), then the specifics are collected. A coach typically administers an initial assessment, such as a 360-degree feedback process, a leadership or management assessment tool, a personality/behavior assessment (emotional intelligence, DiSC, Myers-Briggs, or similar instrument), a review of past job performance reports, and other analysis tools. Working with the individual and the sponsor, the coach must then make any intangibles into tangible requirements. Tangible requirements are easier to measure and are verifiable. Many of the tools used in project management can be adapted for use in a coaching project. It is important in gathering the requirements to focus on what needs to be different not, necessarily, how to make it different. For example a requirement may be to “improve delegation skills.” How exactly the delegation skills are to be improved is left to the planning or on-going coaching efforts, driven by the individual, with consideration from the sponsors and organization, and guided by the coach. In discovering the specific goals it is important to keep alignment to the scope in focus.
Requirements Goal Setting
The next section describes four requirement-gathering techniques that have been used in projects, and how they have been adapted to coaching.
- Ask Why Five Times
- Contextual Inquiry
- Future State
- Stakeholder Interviews
Requirements-Gathering Example 1 – Ask Why Five Times
The concept behind this technique is to keep asking “Why” until a specific and measurable and workable skill or behavior emerges.
Initial Scope: Empowerment
Q1 - Why is it important to empower your team?
A1 - Because that is the company buzzword and I‘ve been told I don't empower my team.
Q2 - Why do they say you don't empower your team?
A2 - I spend way too much time explaining things to them.
Q3 - Why?
A3 - I‘m responsible and need to make sure it gets done correctly.
Q4 - Why, what happens when they don't do it correctly?
A4 - It's my job.
Q5 - Why is explaining things to them relevant to your team and job?
A5 – It is part of my job to make sure my team learns and grows in their jobs.
At this point the conversation took a turn into the best ways team members could learn and grow in their jobs. It continued with the individual realizing that his desired behavior was to learn to let go, to delegate and, when appropriate, to allow team members to make mistakes. The scope remained empowerment. The goal shared between the manager and the individual being coached included learning to delegate. The individual worked confidentially with the coach on the following goals related to changing behaviors: learning tips and techniques to allow him to let go, to listen more, and to take risks.
In this case, the requirements gathering revealed the following plan, which offered different levels of information about a commonly understood goal:
Scope: Empowerment
Goal shared with manager: Delegation
Private Goals: Learning to let go; talk less, listen more; allow team members to make mistakes in the interests of their own growth and learning
Requirements-Gathering Example 2 – Contextual Inquiry
When an objective outsider can observe an individual in his or her own environment, interacting with others, things may come to light that will affect the coaching goals.
Initial Scope: Improve influencing skills
Observations: A barren office with nothing personal in it. The individual shares nothing personal with anyone over the course of four hours.
Goal shared with manager: Build relationships with 2-4 key stakeholders in order to improve influencing skills
Private goals: Working with feelings of vulnerability; learning to trust more; not judging others too quickly
Here is another example of contextual inquiry:
Initial Scope: Improve leadership presence
Observations: Eye rolling, eyes lowered, shuffling papers, invading personal space, shrinking in chair, speaking over someone else
Goals shared with manager: Appearing confident in senior status meetings
Private Goals: Stop eye rolling; learn how to have one's voice and body language reflect confidence; work on a negative belief about self-worth
Requirements-Gathering Example 3 – Envision the Future and the Outcome
There are many coaching tools that can help an individual create, imagine, and describe their desired outcomes. The Co-Active Coaching book uses various versions of visualizing your future self, and has many quick and interesting questions to help the individual envision the future more clearly (Whitworth, Kimsey-House, & Sandahl, 1998). The simplest application of this is to envision the future with the sense that the outcome has been achieved. The individual is jointly designing the future state with the coach facilitating the process. Sometimes sponsors are part of this process, too. JAD (joint application development), combined with coaching tools, is used to guide these conversations. Here are some examples of the types of questions that may evoke a descriptive and specific outcome:
How will you know that you have (or the individual has) achieved the stated results?
What will (a specific person) say or do differently when you have (or the individual has) achieved the stated results?
These questions may also generate anecdotal responses such as these:
Jerry from Customer Service will seek me out first if he has any product questions. Ann will stay calm and not back down when confronted with a conflict raised by Steve. Brittany will have one idea accepted by the senior staff within the next six months.
These are stories that are descriptive and with “visible,” measurable outcomes. At the end of the coaching engagement they are verifiable.
Requirements Gathering Example 4 – Stakeholder Feedback Interviews
We need honest, helpful feedback, and that feedback is very useful for telling us where we are (Goldsmith, 2007). A coach may interview identified stakeholders on the individual's behalf. The interviews are confidential and the coach's job is to extract as much helpful information as possible to assist the individual and clarify the scope and discovery of unknowns, which can act like blind spots. By including a numerical rating of a skill in the interview, a baseline can be set. By asking a stakeholder to rate an individual's delegation skills on a numerical scale, a baseline is set and progress can be measured against it. There are some online stakeholder interview assessment tools that provide extensive ratings and baselines. The feedback interviews are best done in person to discover unknowns, those areas that can blind us to our habits, beliefs, and behaviors. The analysis and pattern detection is best done by the coach, sponsor, and the individual, who are better able to take the context into consideration.
Requirements Gathering Summary
There are multiple ways to gather requirements. There can be three levels of goals – the initial scope, those communicated between sponsor and individual, and those only communicated between the coach and the individual. There will be requirements gathered that are outside of the scope and ones the individual may not want to take on. It is important to note that, as one author has suggested, “Every stakeholder has a point of view that is identified with their position and an accompanying wish list for the [individual] to achieve. The [individual] needs to ask, listen, watch, wait, and then…think for themselves” (Nicholson, 2013, p. 95). In all requirements examples, the goals are made as specific as possible. Goals are able to be made specific by naming with whom the individual will build relationships, what tasks they will delegate, or what specific people or areas they will influence. Adding numeric ratings make these things measurable. Delineating time or schedule boundaries makes a goal measurable, such as establishing that the person will listen 50% more of the time, or that they will delegate three major tasks in six months. The process must allow time for achieving tangible, measurable and verifiable goals. It is also important to ensure that all the goals are in alignment with the scope. A successful coaching engagement project ends with the delivery of the goals as described.
Phase 3 - Measuring progress
During the execution phase, the project manager's job is to ensure delivery on-time, on-budget, and on-scope. A project manager does this through status meetings, status reports, verification, EVM (earned value management), and more. The project manager works any issues, risks, conflicts, and changes. No matter how perfect or diligent the concept and planning phases may have been, there will always be unexpected circumstances that crop up. The project manager is in a constant state of balancing the available time in addressing issues, gathering status updates, managing risks, and assessing the most important issues that could have an impact on the outcome. The coach is involved in similar activities with the individual. The difference in a coaching project is that the main focus is on the individual and the intangibles, not the tasks.
In the on-going coaching phase the bulk of the effort is made by the individual. The coach's role is to provide guidance, support, and resources for the individual towards the desired outcome. The coach is constantly assessing and balancing the direction to take with an individual. A new situation that arises requires a balancing act of either guiding the process to the desired outcome or determining if this new data adds or requires a potentially new outcome. If a change occurs that warrants a scope change, there must be a process for it as well as communication with the sponsor. If the client is not making progress towards the goal, that must be addressed. The coach and the project manager both perform a similar role during the execution phase of balancing. Examples of circumstances that will cause a scope change are: the individual being assigned new responsibilities, being laid off, achieving wild success faster than expected, revealing an undiscovered strong belief or other information that causes resistance, or having to deal with a personal crisis.
Phase 3 - Ongoing Coaching
Each coaching session is similar to an Agile daily monitoring meeting. The desired end result is known but not the specifics, which must be discovered in real time. The job of the scrum master and coach is to elicit solutions as an expert guiding facilitator. Here are examples, from each approach, of the kinds of questions asked in a typical session:
Exhibit 7 – Ongoing assessment questions for project management, Agile, and coaching sessions
Coaching Wrap-Up, Phase 4
In the Wrap-up phase, the key question to answer and communicate is “Were the scope and goals achieved?” A final assessment and measurement may occur at this point. Activities can include redoing an assessment, or checking in with initial stakeholders in an interview. Anecdotes can be part of determining if the goals were achieved. In one instance, an individual and her sponsor reported laughing that the individual had recently accidently dropped the CEO off a conference call, fixed it, quickly made a joke, and continued on confidently. If that had happened previously, the individual would have apologized excessively and the rest of the meeting would have been uncomfortable. Other project tools used in this phase are lessons learned, what went well, what could have gone better, and what shouldn't have been done. Because the nature of the coaching project is intangible, it is important to also discuss and plan with the individual what is needed to sustain the change. A wrap-up meeting with the individual and the sponsor to review achievements and lessons learned, and to determine “next steps,” is also recommended.
At the end of the coaching engagement, the individual sometimes does not achieve the intangible goal as it was initially envisioned. During the process of learning and practicing, two scenarios frequently occur – too much or good enough. If the goal was to delegate effectively, the person may realize they didn't need to achieve 100% perfect delegation, yet they improved 75% and that is good enough. The other outcome is that they learned how important and how much easier their work is when they delegate, so now they over-delegate. The awareness has been generated about what delegation means to that person, how important it is for them, and that they have the skills to do it. Their delegation skills over the years will cycle, improve, and find the right balance needed for the individual and the situations as they come up.
There are also very satisfying changes in an individual that can occur that may not be identified and accounted for up front. Positive behavioral changes can spill over to areas outside the work environment, and the overall satisfaction and fulfillment in an individual's life can improve. One specific example that came as a side effect of having worked successfully on clear business goals is that one individual now no longer takes work calls after dinner. Another example of positive life “spillover” is that an individual has allowed himself to become more vulnerable with his spouse, which has created a more fulfilling relationship for them.
Summary
Coaching engagements are projects with unique attributes of being focused on an individual and dealing with intangibles. Managing intangibles creates many challenges. The focus of this paper is on making the intangibles tangible in a coaching engagement by adapting a project management framework and tools. When a coaching engagement is treated like a project – with a start, an end, and producing something unique – there are many benefits. Using a project lifecycle model to describe a coaching project creates a common language and allows for management. Using the scope and the triple constraint helps to create boundaries and focus. Requirements-gathering tools and processes are applied to create measurable and verifiable goals. With respect to the ethics of coaching, it is noted there may also be goals aligned with the scope that are kept between the coach and the individual.
This paper gave examples of four requirements-gathering tools with the emphasis on measurement to make the intangibles tangible. There are many more project management tools that can be adapted to coaching. Key ones that the author has used are stakeholder analysis, responsibility matrix, communication plans, and risk registers. Project management tools are adaptable and can be effective for coaching intangibles. The adaptation of the right project management tools for the right job has many benefits. Coaching as an industry would be well served by adapting more formal structures and tools. Equally beneficial, project management would be well served by using the skills and tools they have now to improve the management of intangibles. “The truth is that all our visible qualities were once no more than suggestions” (Nicholson, 2013, p. 134). Making the intangibles visible is the first step.
Note: The examples used are based on composites of real clients. All efforts have been made to not make any one client identifiable. Please be aware that many of the examples apply to multiple clients.