Supercoach - Michael Neill [3]
The impact of this kind of coaching is generally project specific. Once the difficult person has been handled, the interview completed, or the race run, people get on with the rest of their lives in much the same way they did before.
Level II: Change in a Specific Life Area
Sometimes we’re less concerned with a specific event than we are with a whole category of events. This is why we find coaches specializing in any number of life areas: relationships, sales, parenting, confidence, presentations . . . the list goes on and on. People hire these experts to help them develop their confidence and increase their skills in whatever area they may be having difficulty. Like performance coaches, these coaches will help with specific situations, but they tend to measure their impact not just by how one situation changes, but by how their whole category of situations changes.
Level III: Global Change
The ultimate level of change is transformation, or what I sometimes call “global change”—a pervasive shift in our way of being in the world. At this level, it’s not enough for us to develop a skill or change a feeling. It’s our intangible “selves” we want to change, and in so doing, we change our experience of everything.
Each of the three levels maps across to a certain kind of intervention. When we want to make a change in the moment or in a specific situation, we apply a technique. When we want to make a change in a broader context, we install new strategies. But when we want to actually change lives, we need more than just strategies or techniques. We need a whole new paradigm or perspective—a new way of seeing.
So which level of change is best?
It depends. While Level III changes will ultimately make the biggest difference in people’s lives, sometimes a smaller difference is all that’s called for. For example, people heavily into personal development sometimes get fixated on finding Level III solutions for Level I problems—they’ve got a headache, but instead of taking an aspirin, they want to analyze the beliefs and lifestyle changes they need to make to become the kind of person who doesn’t get headaches. It’s not a bad idea, but it’s a lot easier to do when your head isn’t hurting!
The Three Levels in Action
Let’s take an example. Bob is a customer service rep for a medium-sized manufacturing firm, and he’s having a really bad day. When I ask him what his biggest sticking point is, he tells me it’s a phone call he needs to make to a supplier in Detroit he’s been having difficulties with.
If I were to intervene on Level I, I would probably work with his frame of mind by getting him into a more confident state. We might role-play a phone call with his supplier, and I would offer him tips and techniques to better handle the call and get the outcome he most wants. We might even choose to script the call, or at least the beginning of it, to help boost his confidence and resolve the situation.
But let’s say I want more for Bob—I don’t just want to assist him in getting through this one situation; I want to help turn him into a more effective employee, one who can handle a wider variety of customer service situations. At that point, I could give him books like How to Talk So People Listen. I could teach him rapport skills like “matching and mirroring” so he could use body language to effectively allow others to feel more comfortable around him.
In time and with practice, Bob might well be able to turn things around and maybe even become the best customer service guy in the whole company. But in another way, nothing will have really changed. Because in order for something to change at a fundamental level, that change has to happen from the inside out.
At Level III, the coaching interventions are no longer about the supplier from Detroit or even about customer service. At Level III, we’re dealing directly with Bob—the way he sees himself, the way he sees his job, and the way he sees other people. And when any one of those things changes, Bob will not only become more effective in his job, he’ll also become more effective