AS COACHES WE don’t have the option of ignoring, avoiding or quarrelling with the “difficult” person who comes to us for help. In fact, it is at times like these that our skills as a coach are some of the only tools that can change behaviours which stand in the way of the coachee’s success in the workplace.
While difficult coachees come in many forms, we can use common approaches to keep coaching on the right track:
- Remember, it’s not a “difficult person”, but difficult behaviours that are in the way. And behaviours can be changed.
- Use the behaviour as data. Try to make sense of it as part of the person’s way of coping and conveying assumptions about some of the bigger issues, such as success, or what it means to be a respected leader.
- Bring the difficult behaviour into the spotlight. Reflect it back to the coachee as soon as it becomes an obstacle to progress. You will likely need to do this again and again, since it is probably a habit and undoing it will take time.
- Tie in the behaviour and its consequences to what matters to the coachee. You will need to help the coachee convince themselves about the need to change the behaviour.
- Discuss and think through alternatives for the behaviour in question. Work towards what the person can do, not just what they need to stop doing.
- Reinforce positive change.
The disengaged
The disengaged coachee is the one who ultimately makes you, the coach, feel as if you are more invested in the success of their coaching than they are. He or she is silent when a reaction is expected, appears generally uninterested and provides non-committal and laconic responses. The session is flat. If the disengaged coachee does indeed continue to show up for sessions, he or she will likely not have done their homework and will report back on events with little animation.
It is easy for the coach to feel frustrated by the lack of engagement and as a result to doubt their own effectiveness: ultimately, the failure to get much reaction is understood to be because I, the coach, have not succeeded in saying anything new, interesting or helpful to the coachee. In fact, the entire approach may be completely wrong.
Disengagement is usually the result of open questions in the coachee’s mind concerning trust in the process or its success. Reframing the disengagement as an active choice of behaviour is critical in order to reinvigorate the dialogue. Is the coachee actually working very hard not to engage because he or she is apprehensive? Embarrassed? Pessimistic about getting help?
Exploring and revisiting the coachee’s expectations and experience of the coaching engagement may raise some deep-seated doubts about the process, but if these are handled genuinely and positively the coachee will feel safer and more empowered (eg, feeling “I can open up at my own pace”) to engage. The coach can further the momentum by raising the intensity of the dialogue with introducing language that is personally and emotionally evocative.
Make it work: Reflect back to the coachee how they appear disengaged or uninterested; probe about their expectations from the process; ask open questions; pay close attention to the coachee’s non-verbal expressions; rephrase the coachee’s responses, whenever possible intensifying the emotional and personal vocabulary (eg, “How did you cope with such disappointment?”).
Fatal flaws: Doing more and more of the talking, trying to engage the coachee with own stories, solutions, random questions or over-empathic comments; missing the more subtle signs when the coachee is actually engaging; discounting cultural differences in self-expression; jumping to conclusions about the reasons behind the disengaged behaviour; ignoring signs of major distress or suspected depression that require other professional help.
The over-talkative
The coachee who sits down and starts talking with animation can easily be mistaken for a “perfect” coachee who is motivated and engaged – until we realise that their enthusiasm and energy are focused solely on themselves. Effectively, over-talkativeness works to keep the coachee operating as a closed system – constantly reinforcing their own perceptions and not allowing any new information in. The challenge is to disrupt this pattern and move the session into dialogue mode. The coach will need to be especially proactive, creative and persistent in the face of over-talkativeness. Effective techniques include reflecting behaviour back to the participant, linking it to what matters to them, surprising them and imposing structure.
Make it work: Point out the over-talkative behaviour upfront and reframe it from the point of view of the coachee’s motivations and interests (eg, “You have been talking continuously for the past
seven minutes, and that has made it impossible for me to say anything that can help to address the things that you are concerned about”); disrupt their story by reacting to something they said in an unexpected way; keep your questions focused and repeat them until they are answered; occasionally ask the coachee to paraphrase your comments (eg, “From what I’ve said, what is the most important point for you?”); provide a structured agenda to keep the session on track; encourage note-taking during the session; highlight improving listening skills as a development objective in its own right.
Fatal flaws: Hope: passively waiting for the coachee to make space for you to speak; trying to respond to the many issues raised, one after another.
The defensive
There are many ways to be defensive. The concept, borrowed from psychotherapy to define some of the ways that the human mind finds to avoid or deflect uncomfortable truths, is widely used to
describe behaviour that is argumentative, negative, blaming or even aggressive. In most cases, these behaviours will manifest themselves quite subtly in the context of coaching —after all, it is a voluntary engagement and the coachee will try to ally with his or her coach.
Still, even in their mild form, such as deflecting blame on others and finding rationalisations and excuses for their own behaviour or for feedback that they have received, defensive behaviours can pose a real challenge to the coach. The coachee appears reluctant to take on personal responsibility for their actions and is even out of touch with the reality of the situation, thus seriously limiting any real possibility for insight.
Faced with defensive behaviors, it is very easy for the coach to become engaged in a futile battle for the truth, attempting to bring in more evidence to make a point. However, working successfully with defensive behaviours is not about insisting on the right answer, but rather on asking the right questions. These questions should create doubts in the coachee’s mind about the certainty of their perceptions and move them away from an either/or mentality into uncertainty. From here they can begin to entertain things from another point of view – and this is where insights can emerge. It is important to remain supportive of the coachee and to respect their subjective experience, even when you don’t take their interpretation at face value.
Make it work: Ask challenging questions to elicit points of view (“What do you think your colleague’s reaction was when you…?”); reduce need for defensiveness by putting things in perspective (“What would happen if you didn’t reach all of your targets this quarter?”); and demonstrate that you understand and empathise with their concerns.
Fatal flaws: Getting into arguments about facts; getting caught up in an emotional reaction to defensive behaviours; losing trust in the coachee.