“Speak softly and carry a big stick – you will go far.”
Winston Churchill
The essence of Big Stick Coaching is that you are the big stick – it is the focus on the ‘can if’ and not on the ‘can’t because’ to develop you and your goals that is powerful not the coach, my role as coach is to be your critical friend and to help you to craft your ‘big stick’.
Roosevelt led a move into a particular brand of diplomacy which he described as ‘the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis’.
You the coachee set the agenda and take responsibility for the achievement of your goals, but against the background of a strong balance between support and challenge – you will be provided with both high support and high challenge, by responding to being challenged to do more and better you will produce higher performance.
Big Stick Coaching seeks to develop your capacity to exercise intelligent forethought and to be able to act decisively in the pursuit of your goals.
Big Stick Coaching sets the foundations of coaching with the traditional elements of empathy, trust, mutual respect, active listening, and powerful questions but applies the more robust techniques championed by John Blakey and Ian Day who challenge the non directive approach of much coaching and use direct feedback, strong accountability, courageous goals, tension, and systems thinking to drive the coaching process.
Blakey and Day also questioned the idea that coaching success comes wholly from the resources of the coachee without any need for the coach to share or to have shared the coachee’s world; this may be so in much of coaching but less so in the arena of leadership coaching where a common lexicon and shared experience bring much to the process for which reason where appropriate I will bring my own experience into the conversation born of 25 years in the boardroom and over 9 as a CEO.
The more robust challenge will frequently take us into Blakey and Day’s ‘Zone of Uncomfortable Debate’ or ‘ZOUD’ where the real issue becomes clearer and can be addressed more effectively. It is easy to sidestep the ZOUD and stay in the zone of comfortable debate which may be comfortable but perhaps fails to meet the real needs of the coachee.
All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third it is accepted as being self-evident
Schopenhauer – German philosopher
The focus on ‘can if’ not ‘can’t because’ gives a powerful solutions based approach looking at answers not problems.
The focus on ‘can if’ not ‘can’t because’ gives a powerful solutions based approach looking at answers not problems. A solutions focus also helps to ensure that we look to the future not to the past; we can change the future but not the past.
Big Stick Coaching also adopts a systems based approach which recognises the importance and impact of and on the wider organisation, and the impact of and on the coachee’s family and private life acknowledging that ‘being’ is just as important as ‘doing’; all must be built into the coachee’s thinking, as must purpose and values – that which makes you tick.
The Big Stick directive approach is not only appropriate but necessary for the effective coaching of many leaders who by their nature and experience actively want a robust approach; whether this is suitable to you and your needs, and whether or not I’m the coach for you will become apparent at the complimentary ‘chemistry’ or ‘discovery’ session – essentially a chat in which we work out whether or not we can work together and whether or not my style is for you.
Get in touch
Send me an email and let me know when you’d like to chat, I’m free at some point most afternoons and would be delighted to speak with you and discuss how we could work together.