HEY BOSS!: POWERFUL PARTNERING

November 22nd, 2008 by Bev Benwick

Kevin an executive who struggled with his boss relationships approached me feeling that executive coaching might be in service of him successfully addressing this concern. His values were clearly in opposition to those of his previous Senior Vice President. He characterized their relationship as “frosty” at its best. He said in our initial meeting, “I’ve spent a lot of time looking for ways to minimize my contact with my boss as a way to reduce my stress. What I’ve found is that my doing this has actually increased it to levels that I think are unhealthy for me.” It was clear from our discussion that his distancing of their relationship had increased his internal chatter to all time high and his assumptions had run rampant.

Fortunately, it was fortuitous for Kevin that a new Senior Vice President was hired while he and I were in the early stages of our executive coaching. He now had a great opportunity to build a strong new working relationship. Yet Kevin’s anxiety still remained and appeared to be in control of his thinking. He was engaged in making more assumptions about what this new working relationship might look like. His feelings were starting to take on a familiar pattern. In fact, Kevin shared, “My ability to ‘manage up’ is quite frankly being held back by my low feelings of confidence.” At the time, I asked him a number of intuitively driven questions, “Who do you give your power away to? What are some of the triggers for you? What has been the cost of this to you, your career?; and What is your contribution to your perceived lack of quality of the relationship with your bosses?”

Kevin’s reflection on these questions uncovered a number of candid comments. “It’s clear that I’ve wrestled with authority figures in my life, and quite honestly I’ve come to the blinding glimpse of the obvious that I’ve got to change this perception before it creates more damage to my life and my career! I now truly realize just how much this has held me back, not only at work but in other parts of my life. I’ve made choices that have created major obstacles to my being able to rise to more senior leadership levels.” This took enormous courage to put out there, but had to be done before Kevin could powerfully move forward. Kevin’s dissatisfaction level with his current state of affairs was what was absolutely needed for change to take place ‘within’, and eventually ‘outside’. He was now ready to make powerful movement. I asked him “What’s would your ideal-preferred-relationship with your new boss look like?” Working with this question, he got very clear on what that would be. We coached around this at great depth, and the result was his setting up a series of meetings with the new Senior Vice President where they would discuss the current business situation, expectations, resource requirements, leadership styles, and Kevin’s professional development. This established a solid foundation for how they needed to work effectively together.

Anxiety, a powerful and future oriented emotion that is always there to one degree or another, still remained with Kevin as the first meeting approached. As he said in one of our calls, “I’m still sweating bullets and would like to be coached around managing my anxiety so that it serves me positively and does not get in my way.” We coached around that with the objective of ensuring that he had ‘just enough anxiety’ to bring out the best in him, but not so much as to interfere. With this, Kevin created his own “game plan” for the first meeting, a practical approach that he could take to assure meeting success, learn from the experience, and leverage this and future meetings into a deep and enduring working relationship.

To this end I asked Kevin, “try to think about what it would be like to ‘partner’ with your new boss?’ Languaging here was critical for him to begin thinking very differently about this new relationship. In our following executive coaching sessions Kevin and I co-created a number of talking points to pursue. He recapped, “I want to:

“ Explore the current business situation and gain an understanding of my boss’s diagnosis of what is in front of us; ensure that our conversation completes with a shared understanding where the business is really at today;
Agree to those expectations that are critical to our success as partners in the business we face, and ensure clarity and understanding of expectations in our relationship, our respective roles, and negotiate where needed; “ Candidly discuss our individual and collective working styles; What we need to do to overcome any differences that will no doubt arise, and frankly discuss how we prefer to communicate with each other;
Agree on what resources I’ll need to successfully deliver on the deliverables we agree on; what changes in this regard, if any, that need to be initiated; and how my new boss will support the resources need; and
Share and agree on the focus of my personal/professional development required to deliver on the foregoing and gain his full support.”

Once this was achieved, Kevin bottom lined it, “I’ve now got a real plan and for the first time feel I’m on top of things.” He was supported in our coaching with sincere acknowledgment of what he had achieved thus far and was championed-I knew he could do it, do it well and told him so in no uncertain terms.. AND IT WAS! Kevin was amazed at the results of the conversations with his boss. In one of our later coaching meetings he stated, “This really served to set a firm foundation for a great relationship with my boss. We are now very open in our conversations and make huge progress every time we get together, which is always a challenge given our hectic schedules. I feel like I have the power and influence I need to achieve what I’ve committed to. I continued to work on strengthening this relationship at every opportunity. WE’RE PARTNERS!”

Always the coach, I asked Kevin, “Given this experience with your boss, how does this translate to those reporting to you and your leadership?” Talk about silence-it was deafening. I could hear the wheels grinding. Oh the places he was going with this new insight on Partnering. It was now a key part of his vocabulary. He simply and very confidently said, “I’m going to invite my direct reports to have a similar series of discussions with me, and they with their direct reports! I want to have this completed by the end of the second quarter. As a matter of fact I’ll send you a summary email when its all been done.”

So here are some questions for you: Have you had similar experiences? With your boss? Subordinates? Peers? Significant others? What conversations do you need to engage in? What will continue to get in the way if I don’t ? Have you asked your subordinates for ‘feedforward’ information to better position you to help them help themselves be more successful? What are you doing to build strong partnerships? I’m excited to hear your thoughts and feelings!