“Milton Erickson Principles and Leadership Success”
by Talyaa S. Vardar
Studies have shown that coaching in the workplace is an effective strategy for enhancing productivity, job fulfillment, motivation, culture, and ROI. Coaching in organizations is no longer just the role of human resource professionals, organizational development experts, internal/external coaches or trainers, but it is a fresh perspective and approach to leadership success. Increasingly, executives and managers in multiple corporations of many kinds have been engaging with employees and colleagues through coaching competencies. Our expectation is that this is likely to continue to grow in years ahead.
In their book, The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome: How Good Managers Cause Great People to Fail (HBS Press, 2002), management experts Jean-François Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux explain a special case of a self-fulfilling prophecy: the Pygmalion effect suggests that the expectations of a powerful “other” (boss, parent or teacher), even if they are inaccurate, can influence the behavior of the weaker individual (subordinate, child or student). The process starts with the development of expectations about a target person. These expectations are communicated, more or less consciously, to the target person. The target person notices and internalizes these expectations and starts to behave as expected. They explain how the blame culture can sink an employee’s performance.
This book describes how, as corporate managers and executives, we all know that we have direct impact on employee motivation, eagerness to contribute, workplace engagement, thus total success and fulfillment level.
Where does coaching stand in this process?
How can Ericksonian coaching specifically contribute to the success of today’s organizational leaders?
Originated from Milton Erickson approach, top Erickson coaching principles include “people are okay” and “people have the best resources available to themselves.” When a leader starts to see his/her employee as okay and resourceful rather than as a low achiever or someone who needs to be fixed, then they start cultivating a “learning culture” versus a “judging culture” within their organization. A learning culture is driven by creativity, well-considered strategies, future solutions and betterment of an existing situation whereas a judging culture is fed by blame, guilt, fear based status-quo and past as evidence of keeping the mediocre. We call this a “social context” within an organization which helps us understand the soft factors behind organizational productivity.
Which culture do you think has higher chances of success and fulfillment? A learning culture promotes inquiry approach through powerful questions. Instead of making judgments, learners get curious about deeper reasons of others’ behaviors and actions. Curiosity and desire for learning at a deeper level ignites authentic communication between people, openness and constant development. Thus coaching becomes a strong skill for driving toward becoming a learning organization (the term was suggested by Peter Senge in his book The Fifth Element). Peter Senge describes how learning organizations can become a sustainable source of learning, growing, cultivating and innovating. A learning organization is always a step ahead of the competition. Employees find meaning in their work that results in motivation from within.
When organizations adopt these principles, leaders become natural motivators for their employees. Through inviting powerful inquiry into the workplace they naturally tap into employees’ true potential and creativity. As explained by the Gallup Study more than a decade ago with more than 1 million employee and manager interviews to identify the most important elements in sustaining workplace excellence, now we all know that such engagement has direct impact on creating strong workforce and success culture.
A leader as Ericksonian coach does not have to act like a professional coach. Rather the leader as coach acts as a catalyst for creating and maintaining a learning organization culture-an organic organizational approach for talent management and leadership development.