Case Study Presentation: Penny
Coached by Sally Gritten
Penny holds a senior position in a large global company. She came to see me and asked for coaching.
In our first meeting I explained to Penny what I did as a coach. I asked her what she expects from a coach. We discussed the coaching contract and I told Penny that as I was being paid by her organisation, I expected her to tell her manager that she was engaging me as her coach. I also explained to Penny that although I am employed by the company the content of our sessions would be strictly confidential. We then discussed the frequency and duration of our meetings and agreed once a month for 1.5 hours. We started with six meetings and agreed to review this as we went along.
To begin with, I asked Penny to tell me her story.
Over the next sessions Penny told me more about herself and the issues she was struggling with in her job. At this stage coaching was predominantly about listening to Penny. My involvement was primarily restating to Penny what I was hearing to make sure I understood her correctly and noting patterns that seemed to be evident in her story.
In Penny's story I heard what and how she thought about things. Penny frequently touched on her fear of disapproval as a key problem.
At the end of the second session I asked Penny to think about what success from coaching would look like to her. She did this between session two and session three and emailed her vision to me.
In our third session we focused on Penny's view of success and discussed what was keeping her from reaching her goal and what she felt would happen if she did get what she wanted in her work.
In our next session Penny wanted to talk about the dynamic between herself and her boss. Penny's biggest fear of disapproval came from Dexter and yet, Penny was confounded as to how she could do her job and not seek out Dexter's advice and leadership. Penny acknowledged in the session that she thought her style might actually provoke Dexter's disapproval. I asked Penny if she would like to have a 3-way conversation with Dexter and me to see if I could detect any of the provocation Penny thought she engendered. Penny liked the idea and she set up the meeting. Prior to the meeting I sent a coaching prep form which asked each of them to name their particular challenges and what they each would like to focus on in the meeting. Penny and Dexter filled in the questionnaire and discussed their responses with each other before the meeting.
Looking at this mini-system was helpful for me to help Penny. I began to notice when Dexter became impatient and what happened between them.
Following the 3-way meeting, Penny and I met again and she told me what she noticed about the session and I was able to share with her my observations. It was at this phase of the coaching process that I started changing our focus from exploration of being to one of doing.
One of the things Penny demonstrated was a general assumption about the power of having knowledge. I asked Penny to consider her assumption in a number of ways. From this session, Penny began to challenge her own assumptions that more knowledge would solve all problems. She thought that everyone at her level and above was safe and secure in their day-to-day roles because they had knowledge that she didn't yet have. Penny now began to notice that her peers had doubts and even her boss and her boss's boss had doubts, anxieties and felt unsure in aspects of their work. When Penny was able to see this, she began to form a new construction about herself. She told me that all the time she was spending scrambling about to get knowledge to do her job she was missing the fact that she was indeed doing a good job now. This was a 'light bulb moment' for Penny.
This led us to our penultimate session. Penny reported a shift away from staying so focused on gaining new knowledge. Among the benefits of doing things a bit differently she cited that she enjoys the day to day of her job much more, she feels free to say to her peers that she is feeling hopeless and asks for support from them. She has begun to figure out how to approach Dexter - not asking for knowledge, which Dexter expects her to have - but telling Dexter what she was planning to do and asking if there was anything she had missed. This shift meant that Penny displayed knowledge and also left room for Dexter to help her see if she had any gaps.
Prior to our last session I asked Penny to write a short sketch of how things had changed for her (or not) through coaching. In her writing Penny said: "Coaching has helped me to change and to recognise how much I was able to do to approach my vision for success. It has been both thought provoking and practical. My coach has encouraged me to find answers for myself, while being so adept at teasing out the real issues I've needed to confront."
