Publications & Resources

June/July 2007
Focus: Leadership

How to Make Coaching Cool at Your Community Bank

By Dale Biron

Let’s face it. Coaching in many community banks is simply not cool. In fact, in some banks it’s downright unhip, much more about rehabilitation than development. Now, as a person keenly interested in how people inside community banks change, grow and learn, I’m perplexed at why the best tool ever invented to help people perform well and make lasting change, quite frankly doesn’t get the attention it deserves. And when coaching does get attention, it’s often the wrong kind, making it . . . well, very uncool. Now the critical question is does this matter? I suppose not if your fee income, loans, deposits, employee retention and customer growth is where you want it and change is not an issue. Otherwise, I think it matters dearly.

So what’s conspired to make coaching such an under-utilized leadership tool for community banks? In short, everyone’s at fault, and no one is to blame. You see it’s the very water we swim in that gives coaching its bad rap. It’s the way most of us were puppy trained that has us hold coaching in a negative context. And while it is our fault because we pass along this negative attitude, we are not to blame as it’s largely done below our conscious awareness. In fact our prejudice against coaching is often built right into our bank cultures. Want to test this hypothesis? Take a look at who gets coached and why. If coaching is rarely offered or if it’s only provided to those with big challenges, then I can easily predict how your culture holds coaching. And it isn’t a pretty picture. OK, so what can we do about this?

First we need to understand that if coaching is to truly fulfill its potential, it must be done skillfully. After all coaching is not simply a gussied-up way of telling others what to do. In fact coaching is not telling at all. It’s asking powerful questions for the purpose of helping people learn, grow and find their own solutions. It’s helping people see both their strengths and blind-spots with fresh eyes. Coaching assumes people are adaptable, creative, responsible and capable of amazing performance. And of course, your bank gets to be the happy benefactor of all this newly realized potential.

Again, so what? The so what is we can change. We can shift our bank cultures one step at a time to make coaching cool, to turn it into something that people actually want, ask for, and gain tremendous benefit from. As bank leaders we can model the way by coaching and being coached ourselves. We can stop prescribing coaching for others, while ignoring it’s benefits for ourselves. In fact, we can update and hone our own coaching skills for those situations where internal coaching makes sense and bring in outside coaches where more appropriate. (Often internal and external coaches teaming up can be particularly effective.) We can give people the support they need, rewarding top performers and the recently promoted by providing good coaching. And yes, of course, coaching can also be used to assist those facing performance challenges and break-downs.

I know attitudes about coaching can change and that coaching can truly deliver its promised results. I’ve been part of such efforts myself. I’ve worked with bank leaders, lenders and managers as they positively shifted both their performance and their views about the value of coaching.

And finally, fully embracing coaching doesn’t mean we will relinquish our other leadership responsibilities of setting critical standards, performance goals and benchmarks. No, what we must do, however, is add the power of coaching to our existing leadership skills in order to fully support and grow all our people. We must make coaching cool and by doing so make learning, development and high performance cool.

Dale Biron, is co-founder of Core Action Assoc., Inc., in Mill Valley , Calif. He is dedicated to helping community bank clients succeed at their most difficult and complex changes and transitions. Biron recently received rave reviews for a coaching workshop and his general session presentation at the WIB HR Forum in April. He will be speaking at the WIB Business Development, Sales & Growth Forums scheduled for October in Sacramento & Newport Beach, Calif. He can be reached at 415-381-2858 or dale@core-action.com.

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