The King’s Speech: The first executive coach?
By Vivian Vella
The film The King’s Speech has attracted a lot of attention. I was particularly
interested in the work of Lionel Logue, the speech therapist, who could be
considered the first executive coach to King George V1th. From my experience
of executive coaching, I can see many parallels.
The first parallel that really shows up is that the quality of the relationship is
key between the coach and the coachee: the coach creates a safe
environment in which leaders – and in the film’s case, the King, can experience
a trusting relationship where the only agenda is to support the learning of the
Leader. Leaders can feel isolation and loneliness at the top, so to be able to
have a confidential conversation where they are truly listened to, supported
and challenged with positive intent, is rare.
Within this relationship, the coaching process demonstrated two different types
of coaching; developmental and transformational:
•
Developmental coaching addresses the skills and techniques that are
appropriate in which to learn and to develop strengths and to do things
differently, to exercise the metaphorical muscle that isn’t used as much.
And of course, in the film it was very literally using muscles that weren’t
used enough.
•
Transformational coaching is about getting to the heart of people's
behaviour, altering their frames of reference and ways of being. This
took place with the King, at the point in the coaching relationship
where there was a bit of rupture and the King got connected to
something very different – a very different place in him. When he got
connected to his anger and passion he was absolutely ready to do
some real fundamental work to change for the better. It transformed
their relationship, which then enabled the real work to be done which
lead to success.
Why has coaching become so popular?
We live in a frenetic world and leaders and managers go from one place to
the next with increasing demands made on them. In these situations, a
coaching process supports a leader/manager’s learning and gives them an
opportunity to have some reflective space and make changes.
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Research suggests that 70% of effective learning is on the job learning and
the coaching process meets the need to learn the most from live and relevant
work situations. When you set up an initial contract with someone you define
certain goals and objectives that you want to achieve. Respected executive
coaching expert Peter Hawkins refers to the coaching conversation as ‘a
robust dialogue born out of fearless compassion’, which accurately sums up
coaching conversations. Realistically, most people simply don’t often get that
sort of quality in a conversation helping them to learn.
Don’t you become dependent on the coach?
Normal practice would be to contract at the beginning with the coachee, and
agree what it is that you will address in terms of their learning, how many
sessions you would want to initially contract, this gives a checkpoint that
could be re- contracted at any point and sets out some boundaries. A focus
too, of supporting the coachee in their learning, is that they become
independent learners and not to foster a co-dependency. Part of the role of a
coach’s supervisor is to check this is not happening.
There is much that coaching as a learning and development process can
achieve and The King’s Speech gives some very useful pointers. At its best,
coaching is effective in helping individuals to, amongst many things:
•
Develop a more effective and impactful communication style
•
Manage challenging relationships more successfully
•
Challenge existing beliefs to increase self-confidence and self-esteem
•
Lead and manage transitions
We may not be a king with a speech impediment, but coaching can help us
find our voice.
Vivian Vella
Visiting Programme Tutor, the Praxis Centre Cranfield School of
Management
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