Coaching
Welcome to Dauer and Orvet, the practical design leadership podcast. A recent survey of a 100 executives by the Manchester Consulting Group found that investing in coaching resulted in an average ROI of near 6 times the initial investment. As design leaders, coaching is one of the foundational aspects of the dynamics we share with our clients and individuals on our team. But the time we can allocate to those relationships amongst the varied energy of a given day, leading work, internal politics, inspiring, put outting out fires, etcetera, can be a nontrivial jewel to protect. Margaret, I had the tremendous honor and, fantastic energy of co presenting with you at, Leading Design New York last year.
Justin Dauer:One of the awesome things I took away from that event was the story that you told when you wrap things up of your time within big tech and leading design teams, you know, for years. They're over to that transition into coaching. Can you tell us a little bit about that transition?
Margaret Lee:Sure. And thanks for having me. Before I started coaching, I was at Google for over 14 years, and before that at various other usual suspects in Silicon Valley. And like you said, I was leading design teams, and I loved it. I mean, I really loved being involved in product development.
Margaret Lee:I loved building design teams, helping them scale. So I had been doing that for not just years, but decades by that point. The role that I had just before I left Google was actually a role that I had crafted leading a program that I had founded called UX Community and Culture. So user experience community and culture. How to enable the global and decentralized community at Google to to thrive in a in a very ambiguous and complex environment.
Margaret Lee:Through that work, I I met a lot of the different leaders at Google, both in user experience and outside of that. And one thing that I realized was leaders don't get a lot of support. They're really expected to figure it out and actually provide support. But getting support was a little bit more mercurial. You know, yes, we had, we had learning and development opportunities, we could get coaches, and I did.
Margaret Lee:And actually having a coach, probably one of the the reasons that I ended up in coaching coaching how I ended up deciding to to basically sign up for coaching training. It was literally like session 1 that I said, no. I am going to do this. I'm going to take the leap.
Justin Dauer:Once you decided this is it, you know, how how quick did the change happen then?
Margaret Lee:There was a process associated with it, which was a process of learning. There's a belief that, you know, you really it's really hard to go with clients where you haven't yet gone yourself. And that's something I really, really believe in. And I I really felt like I had to do some work for myself and having time away from a a job actually was pretty critical on that too.
Jaan Orvet:Yeah. One kinda needs the mind space to to reset and and to refocus? This is a question I've I've wanted to ask someone who knows for a long time, and I think, finally, I have that opportunity. Coaching versus mentoring, what's is there a difference? What is the difference?
Margaret Lee:That's a great question, and a lot of folks conflate the 2. When I was in coaching training, there was a big emphasis on differentiating between coaching and mentoring or coaching and counseling, you you know, coaching and therapy, because it's really important to to distinguish between these these modalities for your clients. Right? Because perhaps they're thinking it's more one than the other, and it's an investment, so you really wanna make sure that that's clear. So coaching really tends to look forward, whereas something, like, say therapy tends to to look backwards.
Margaret Lee:Right? And in in terms of mentoring, mentoring tends to be more, direct advice, you know, based on your experience as a mentor. And coaching really, you should be able to coach others through believing that they have the inner resources to to figure these things out. You know, it's not up to you to solve their problems. It's up to you to help them, you know, offer possible, you know, pads because we don't necessarily know all the context that they reside within.
Margaret Lee:You know, so it's less about giving advice and really more about how can we expand the possibilities. It's less about narrowing and more about expanding.
Jaan Orvet:Is it fair to say that coaching is more tactical and mentoring more strategic?
Margaret Lee:That's that's an interesting way to frame it. I I don't think that I necessarily see it that way. It can be tactical, you know, depending on what agenda that a client might bring in. Even though I I just gave this explanation of, you know, coaching is really forward looking and and really, you know, believing in in the client having the resources and mentoring is really maybe more about advice giving. I will say that in in practice, it can get blurred during a session, you know, because sometimes a client might really just want some advice, you know.
Margaret Lee:That's more the exception than the rule, but it does sort of blur at times. So sometimes a session can involve some tactical, you know, conversation. But I wouldn't actually say it's tactical. I think I would say that it's it's really about making space for someone to to be able to think deeply through an issue, you know, origins of of why something, you know, a pattern might be reoccurring, getting to the source of of of that and trying to address that.
Jaan Orvet:It makes sense within the domain itself as well to not pull it down to that one single word or one single phrase, but rather set the scene.
Margaret Lee:Coaching just feels like such a different space to be in when we're in a session. It really is about going deeper. You know, it's about making that space. It's, you know, a safe space where someone can come and really talk to somebody who has no agenda beyond partnering with them. Whereas I think in the corporate world, pretty much everybody has an agenda, you know, if I were to to be a bit reductive, you know, because you're there to do a job.
Margaret Lee:Right? So, you know, especially when you get into to large companies, it gets, you know, you it gets magnified. Just the constant kind of negotiations.
Justin Dauer:Now that you've removed yourself from, let's say, the bigger political world of technology and bigger organizations, and you're able to focus your energy exclusively on coaching, do you feel like that's given you more you're able to provide more value to those you are engaging with, or do you feel like it's kind of the same same dynamics as before?
Margaret Lee:There are different types of engagements. So, a company might sponsor coaching for the client. And sometimes there there can be an initial 3 60 review, you know, speaking with whoever it is that's sponsoring the coaching. So in that way, there there might be some shared goals that we discuss upfront, and we might have a midpoint check-in and then a final check-in. You know, generally, the engagements last about 6:6 months minimum.
Margaret Lee:Sometimes, there there is no involvement from the sponsor or sometimes the the client is self paying, so it really is just, you know, up to them. In terms of metrics, I think that's a really good question. So we do talk about what are your objectives, like the first you know, even before the first session when I just have a consultation. So, you know, why now? What brings you to coaching?
Margaret Lee:You know, what what are the the changes that you're seeking to make? Because generally, people come to coaching to support some type of change. Right? Maybe they're looking to get promoted or maybe they're thinking about a career switch or there usually is an objective that we figure out upfront, like, what would success look like at the end of 6 months. And we check-in, you know, every session with what's your objective for today.
Margaret Lee:Like, what would you like to get out of each each session just right up top? Because I think it's really important for people to feel that they have some takeaways every session that's moving them towards their ultimate goal. That said, I've seen quite often where one's goals actually evolve over the course of our coaching engagement, you know, as they go deeper and figure out either what they really want or maybe what's been holding them back. You know, once they have some space to really examine what's going on, it's not uncommon for that initial goal to to to evolve some.
Jaan Orvet:How do you find the way to connect with each and every client?
Margaret Lee:That's a really great question. For for me, it really comes down to making sure that I'm present for each and every client. And that is something that coaching has taught me a lot about. That is the least I could do as a coach is to come fully present. You know?
Margaret Lee:And from there, then then we can do the work. But if I'm not if I if I come and I'm not fully present, I'm not doing a service to my client. That that's how I remain relevant with each client. I can't have my mind, you know, thinking ahead of where they're at. I have to be really with them, working with what they're saying.
Margaret Lee:You you really need to be not only empathetic, but also be willing to, share how you're experiencing the person with them. Right? Because, you know, going back to what I what I just mentioned, like, all I have is what a client is bringing into the session. And, you know, part part of part of coaching is also helping the client to see what is currently invisible to them. Often when we're inside ourselves, we don't know how we're being perceived.
Margaret Lee:So part of part of what I can do as a coach is to actually reflect that back to the client.
Jaan Orvet:I can see many instances where it would be very, very useful to have a coach on sort of in your team, on your side. There's certain certain instances, certain projects where you can't prepare because they're so unique. What happens if, let's say, I would come to you as my coach and say, Margaret, this is literally, you know, doing something that no one has ever done before. I have no idea what to do. Help.
Margaret Lee:I love that question because I think we're in those situations of varying scales more often than we're not. But we try to think that it's a solvable problem rather than something that's like really ambiguous and complex and, you know, when you pull one string, one side of the string, you have no idea what's gonna happen on the other side. That that is the definition, excuse me, of complexity. That is the definition of complexity where it it's not a a problem that can be easily solved. Right?
Margaret Lee:It's not 2 plus 2 plus 4, nor is it, you know, how do we get somebody to the moon, which is really, really hard, but it's actually solvable. Right? So often what we're dealing with are multiple systems at play that don't necessarily play well together, but you as a leader have to navigate all those systems and somehow make them come into a coherent whole for whatever objective that you're trying to achieve. So some of the systems that we all live in like at work are there's the organizational system that you live in and often those have nested systems and, you know, sister systems, you know, so org dynamics can be incredibly complex to navigate. And then there's systems that affect what you're doing that are outside of the company, you know, maybe it's competitor pressures or, you know, your user base or regulatory issues.
Margaret Lee:So it can get really really complex, what we have to navigate. And the most important thing that we have to recognize is number 1, what's in your control and what's outside of your control because oftentimes we try to control everything to get to the outcome that we want and that's a a fool's errand quite frankly. So if you can't control everything, how do you navigate this? So that's number 2 is recognizing when you're in complexity and you have a different set of tools that you draw from when you recognize that you're in complexity versus you're on a very very, complicated, maybe it's a technically complicated project, but it's actually one you can solve. It's really important to distinguish between the two because you might have different approaches.
Margaret Lee:One of the things that, I talk to my clients about a lot is this process of sense making. Right? So rather than trying to solve, you make sense of what's going on and you move directionally towards the things that seem to be getting you closer to the end goal.
Justin Dauer:Thanks for your time Margaret.
