If you are a coach, talent or human resources professional, or leadership expert, this odd question is likely ringing a bell. It relates to an often-used exercise to help people remember not to forget (hmmmm) or rather to always consider the “obvious” when looking at possible solutions to a problem, opportunity, or situation.
Some background.
There’s an exercise used to help people realize that sometimes they (as do all people) miss the obvious — at work and elsewhere. Two people are brought to the front of the room and asked to sit in chairs placed back-to-back. The facilitator calmly places a sheet over the heads of the participants while explaining there is going to be a brief experiment.
The two people, now covered by a sheet, are asked by the facilitator to remove something on themselves that they do not need. Watches, scarves, and various other external items are typically removed. Rarely but occasionally a phone is given.
After a few rounds the facilitator asks:
Why didn’t you remove the sheet?
That’s when the lights comes on!
Most people just think the sheet is a necessary part of the experiment and though the facilitator says they can remove anything not essential, the obvious is missed.
This is not an exercise to embarrass people or make them feel inadequate. Rather it’s used as a simple but important way to make the case that often many of us, at work or at home, miss the obvious – to a problem, opportunity, or situation.
What We’ve Discovered
As workplace coaches we kept asking ourselves for decades how we could help more people get the coaching help they need when they need it. How could all the coaching insights and know-how we’ve helped others discover by asking questions and providing insights, resources, and practice ideas be provided in a just-in-time format to make a practical difference. We knew live coaching was and remains the gold standard when it comes to coaching and helping people excel — but there had to be a way to make the benefits of coaching more widely available – there just aren’t enough live coaches to help everyone in need. Obvious? Right?
Efforts to support learning — and more specifically training — have leveraged technology for decades. These efforts continue to expand and provide a wide array of useful approaches to learning skills, expanding knowledge, or becoming more capable and competent. Robust learning platforms continue to help people learn at their own time and pace using content and techniques for just about any subject under the sun.
It hasn’t always been this way. We, for example, can recall a time about 25 years ago when we were asked to co-create an e-learning solution for a major international technology company. We did and it was a truly fabulous solution. But the proposal was rejected because we were told e-learning could never work. Training had to be done in the classroom. Maybe it was time to remove the sheet? It happened soon after.
Coaching has remained for the most part a one to one endeavor based on the ability of skilled coaches to help people become their best — at tennis, being a leader, innovating and collaborating, or with just about any human endeavor.
Based on human development science, psychology, counseling, and newer techniques, coaching seems to make people think of something that requires — well, a coach – a live person!! On the other hand, the self-learning that is now obviously part of any learning endeavor is accepted. People are expected to get involved in their own learning and leverage online tools to improve. This hasn’t eliminated traditional ways of learning. Rather it’s expanded ways to learn and made learning opportunities even more widely available.
Self-coaching – using an on demand virtual coaching approach — would seem obvious. But is it? It certainly hasn’t caught fire the way self-learning has. What’s interesting is that while learning encapsulates training and coaching, today e-learning has focused on training opportunities but not coaching. Maybe this will change as the opportunity becomes more obvious. Maybe it’s time to remove the sheet?
Here are a few key reasons we see why there may be on-going resistance to on demand virtual coaching – until the obvious becomes more widely recognized.
1. Coaching is done by people.
First and foremost, the steadfast belief that coaching as a profession is done by people — a large established and growing group of people who define themselves as coaches, get certifications, professional degrees, and provide coaching services across industries.
Many of these professional coaches dismissed the value (or fear the competition?) of an on demand virtual coach despite the fact that we believe that no amount of virtual coaching will ever replace the need for human coaches to provide a personal relationship that can lead to unusual results. As with training, where the work of human teachers is augmented and extended by technology enabled solutions, there is also room for coaching support provided by other means – as for example by a virtual coach.
2. Coaching content is harder to create than training content.
We know because we have created large amounts of both. Training content is what we like to call “how to” content. It’s often procedural in nature and is all about knowledge transfer – from someone who knows to someone who doesn’t (know that is). Coaching content is different. It has to have a context, it has to be to the point, it has to get at the heart of challenges without having to wait for an actual coach to show up. In addition, the software that gives life to content has to be flexible and easy to use. Most of all it has to keep the user engaged, motivated, and energized. Old rule – you can’t coach someone who doesn’t want to be coached. Still true!
3. Maybe AI will reinvent coaching.
The lure/appeal/dream of coaching AI is tempting and a reason not to spend years writing coaching content for little reward. Most of us figure at some point robots of some type will be able to deliver coaching support.
Maybe search engines or tools like Siri or Alexa are coaches of sorts. After all, if you want to know the best way to deal with conflict or hone your speaking skills it is all “out there” on the internet so why use a dedicated on-demand virtual coaching tool?
Looking forward.
We want to share in our next few blogs what we think are reasons to reconsider self-coaching and on-demand virtual coaching solutions.
We strongly believe on-demand virtual support is a highly effective way to coach self and others and expand opportunities for large numbers of people to enjoy the excitement and benefits of getting coaching support through technology in low cost and in easy to access ways.
We welcome your thoughts and observations about coaching – live or done virtually.
Time to remove the sheet?
Let us know.