Externalising blame
The series
This is the second in a series of case studies unpacking some of the most common patterns that I’ve observed in my executive clients. It shares some of the most useful insights, tools and practices. Read other case studies in the series: Striving and People pleasing.
Each case study in this series is fictitious. They are culminations of various clients to maintain anonymity. ‘The work’ offers insight into some of the most impactful reflections and interventions from many diverse clients.
Why patterns?
According to applied behavioural science, humans follow ingrained, habitual patterns of behaving, feeling, and thinking. In my experience, identifying and working with patterns substantially improves the sustainability and impact of coaching.
Patterns are our unconscious safety net. They protect us from our deepest fears and keep us safe long term. Knowing your patterns is the key to meaningful transformation. Leaders aren’t immune to patterns. After all, they’re human.
Recognising these patterns has been a crucial aspect of my coaching practice. It helps me understand what might be influencing blockers to their progress.
Patterns aren’t immediately recognisable. Sometimes, it takes a little while - and that’s ok. In the back of my mind, I know that if I’m not actively working with patterns, I just might be missing something deeply important.
When a pattern presents itself to me during one of my coaching sessions, it’s an opportunity to go deeper.
The case: externalising blame
Kelly came to coaching one year after she started as Chief Operating Officer (COO) in a global organisation. She was offered coaching by the company’s CEO and accepted.
The discovery call
Kelly showed up to the discovery call visibly annoyed. She began by telling me how incredibly busy she is, inheriting such a mess from her predecessor that she is still cleaning up now.
She tells me that her team is not up to the task. They require a lot of direction, and she is constantly being pulled into the details. She shared that she doesn’t feel like she can do any of the strategic work she was hired to do.
She wants to know more about my credentials, and my experience in leadership. I find myself going through my career history and explaining/defending why I don’t need to have walked in her shoes to be able to coach her.
I explain that I haven’t been in a C-suite role. I know it’s not important but under her gaze, I feel like an imposter. I feel judged.
From the get-go I feel quite intimidated by her. I notice a desire in me to prove to her that coaching is valuable. My instinct tells me she doesn’t see the point. Suddenly, I have an agenda in the coaching space! Any coach will tell you that’s not good.
The beginning of our journey
For the first few sessions, I listen a lot and let her vent. It seems that she needs it - and enjoys it.
We coach around the problem. I ask her about her priorities:
What’s important to her in her role?
What does she expect of herself and others?
What does she need from her team and others to be successful in her role?
What’s going well?
Where are there potential strengths in her team?
We do decent work and she leaves the sessions saying that it was useful. She keeps coming back so I take that as a good sign.
So, what’s the problem?
I am feeling inadequate as a coach. I feel the need to do more, go deeper, but I don’t know where to start. I recognise that I’m coaching the problem and not the person.
I notice that I hold back from challenging her because I’m afraid she won’t like it. I assume she will disagree and get defensive – externalise blame on me. As a result, she won’t like me'; and I will have severed the rapport we have built up thus far.
I spend a lot of time thinking about Kelly and talking about my feelings in supervision.
That’s where I uncover what’s really going on for me. Kelly represents everything I fear about a leader. Her manner unconsciously reminds me of former bosses and I get stuck in a racket in transactional analysis terms – where I am living and behaving as I once did in relation to characters like her.
She had been stuck in her parent ego state and unconsciously invited me into my child ego state – where I make myself small. I don’t rock the boat. I get stuck in coaching the problem, not the person. In a way, because I am not challenging her and naming the issue, I am unintentionally colluding with her view of the world.
Radical Responsibility
On the back of supervision, everything changed.
I stepped into my adult ego state. I decided to bring more of myself into the space. I knew it was the only way to help her get unstuck in a more transformational way. But I was also terrified of her reaction.
So in the next session, I said:
“Kelly, I’m going to be honest with you. I don’t think I have served you very well so far. Something happens to me in your presence that I’d like to explore with you with your permission. Are you open to that?
“What I have to say might be hard to hear. When you criticise all your team members and blame everyone around you for all that’s going wrong, I feel intimidated and that makes me afraid of being honest with you. I’m wondering where else that might show up in your leadership.”
And breathe….
Of course, she wasn’t used to anyone speaking to her this way – with honesty and love. She did exactly what I had feared she might – she got defensive. She made it a me-problem. She was adamant that the way she shows up in coaching is different to how she shows up in her leadership.
Kelly felt that with her team she comes across as supportive and empathetic. I left it there, for the time being. I knew I had done the right thing; and I couldn’t control the outcome.
I took radical responsibility for my part in our relationship and invited her to do the same in her leadership.
From there, we went from strength to strength. Though she never said so, I think I gained her respect by being honest with her. I grew self-respect for being truly authentic.
I offered more and more invitational challenge, more observations, more curiosities, more of myself and she became more able to access her adult self. We didn’t always agree and that was fine.
We now joke and she pre-empts some of the questions that come up regularly, like:
- What is your role in creating the conditions you say you do not want? (Jerry Colonna)
- What is your responsibility here?
- How did you show up that might have contributed to their reaction?
Power dynamics with leaders
For me, one of the biggest dangers for coaches working with leaders is falling into power dynamics – a time when one of the parties feels somehow inferior or superior to the other.
In the case above, at first, the client felt superior to the coach and the coach felt inferior to the client. Our first job is to work on ensuring that the relationship is one of equals – and it is truly experienced that way. Easier said than done!
This is critical because the moment there is a perceived power imbalance, one of the two parties is likely to fall into protective, survival behaviours and invites the other to play a game (in transactional analysis terms).
If we don’t do our own work, we bring the sticky parts of ourselves into the room. It becomes about us, not about our client (often unconsciously). When we are connected, we see what’s ours, we see what’s theirs. We don’t let our stuff play out in the room.