FIGURE 7-1 Process for creating a new dyad.

Contracting: Aligning Organizational Expectations

To succeed with Dyad coaching, expectations need to be aligned between the leader to whom the Dyad reports, the Dyad partners, and the coach. I initiate a meeting with whoever has initiated the coaching to discuss expectations and clarify issues of confidentiality—that is, what will be shared, with whom, and by whom. Often the HR business partner acts as an involved stakeholder in alignment meetings. HR may initiate a discussion when a new Dyad is to be launched, sometimes in advance of one or both partners assuming their roles in the organization. When the coach, HR business partner and the Dyad’s leader meet to establish expectations and create alignment, the work agenda is as follows:

1.  Clarify how success will be measured (i.e., the organizational measures of results as well as how the Dyad would be working and leading the organization). This includes specific discussion of behaviors—what the Dyad would be doing, what they wouldn’t be doing as well as any organizational assessments commonly used of leaders, like CHIs Leadership Effectiveness Review, a yearly assessment based on CHIs values, and leadership competencies.

2.  Identify a list of stakeholders critical to the Dyad’s success, metrics to measure success at quarterly intervals, and other organizational realities at play. Surface any major opposition to the Dyad’s work (i.e., local facilities may be resistant to a national service line leadership approach) that should be addressed early, as well as any “low hanging fruit,” potential early wins.

3.  Identify any “broken glass” that the coach or the Dyad might step on. “Broken glass” might include a culture’s unspoken assumption that any person working with a coach has failed or is lacking in some way. In other cases, broken glass may include residue from a reputation that lingers from other roles or other systems. Healthcare is a close-knit industry and reputations, whether current or not, follow individuals throughout careers.

4.  Prepare the HR business partner and leader to discuss the Dyad coaching engagement with the two leaders. In most cases, Dyads willingly engage in coaching to expedite onboarding. I suggest some talking points and clarify when I can take the next step to contact the partners.

5.  Agree on how the HR business partner and the leader will support the Dyad during the coaching engagement. Common agreements include providing feedback, holding crucial conversations, avoiding triangulation, etc.⁵ For example, I recommend that the Dyad meet with the coach and their leader (and perhaps the HR business partner) at specific intervals, commonly every 6 weeks, to discuss progress, share learning, gather feedback, and/or identify needed support. The meeting’s agenda is set by the Dyad, with the help of the coach. Face-to-face meetings are preferred, and the coach should be present at the first meetings, to help facilitate dialogue among the three individuals. More important, the coach observes first-hand how the leader works with the Dyad. In essence, the three make a Fourth Party, which will have its own experiences and ways of engaging that can impact the Dyad. For example, if the leader tends to make eye contact with one partner more than the other, that behavior will have the impact of a “micro-inequity,” unbalancing the Dyad’s dynamics through the power of inattention to one partner.

6.  I send a written communication to the two leaders that describes the Dyad coaching process: the initial self-awareness building phase, the frequency of sessions, the role of the Dyad as cocreators of the coaching, etc. A short meeting of the coach and Dyad partners follows to launch the coaching engagement through a preliminary discussion of their goals and desired outcomes for the coaching. This provides an opportunity for the coach to illustrate his/her ability to maintain focus on the two together (vs. on the individuals) and to create, without sugarcoating anything, an upbeat and positive context for the work to come. The coach also affirms that the real client is the Dyad, though some individual time will be spent with each of the partners. At the close of the meeting, we discuss the prework for Step II Self Awareness Building.

Self-Awareness Building

In this phase, the leaders complete prework activities, and after which they meet individually with the coach for debriefing.

In Chapter 1 of this book, Kathy Sanford wrote

The prework activities focus on building awareness of their own mindset and perception of doing the right things, managing together, and doing things right. The first work with self-awareness is explored and debriefed at an individual 2-hour face-to-face meeting with the coach, preferably at a quiet space away from the leader’s regular office. The preparation includes the following:

The Leadership and Partnership Timeline

This activity requires about 1 hour of preparation time. The leader is provided with a one-page timeline. The horizontal line representing “time” is drawn through the center of a large piece of paper; at the left edge of the paper is labeled “birth”; at the far end of the line and right edge is labeled “current.” A vertical line extends at the left edge of the paper above and below the “time” line: above the line represents positive events, below the line negative events. The goal of the exercise is to identify the key events, both positive and negative, that have shaped the person’s beliefs, experience, and behavior as a leader and as a partner. The instructions ask the leader to brainstorm 15 to 20 or more events in his/her life that s/he would label as positive and that have shaped his/her leadership (beliefs, practices, what I do, and what I don’t do). Then, s/he brainstorms events that were not positive and which also have shaped his/her leadership. Next, s/he does the same for partnership, identifying 10 to 15 positive events that have shaped behavior and beliefs about partnership and 10 to 15 negative events that have impacted the view of partnership. The Timeline goes back to birth because we know that leaders who look backward and reflect become more capable of looking forward, as they must in strategic planning and intentional development. The Timeline becomes an anchor to the value of reflection.

Using the brainstormed list of positive and negative experiences, the leader labels and maps these on a timeline, using black or blue ink to connect the highs and lows on leadership, and red and green to connect the high and low events on partnership, adding dates and an event identifier. The end result is a unique graph with two lines running above and below the horizontal listing of years. This timeline will be reviewed first with the coach. The leader walks the coach through the timeline, sharing the stories of the events that have impacted him/her. The coach’s role is simply to listen with empathy, to probe gently to heighten the leader’s self-understanding of the significance and current impact of the events. The leader heightens his self-awareness through recounting the stories that have shaped him; when the current time is reached, the coach and leader work to identify what has been learned from this life review (both in creating the lifeline, telling his story to the coach). For example, one leader discovered that in the face of personal adversity, he tended to redouble his efforts toward professional success; this pattern resulted in extraordinary professional success but also created increasing isolation for him. He resolved to change this pattern as he entered into this Dyad. Another leader recognized that his deepest lows preceded his most profound highs, which increasingly involved happiness and satisfaction with children and family instead of work achievements. A theme in his individual coaching became how to maintain a healthy family focus despite a demanding role.

For the coach, this experience creates rapport with the leader and also illuminates the degree of comfort the leader has in personal disclosure, in exploring emotions and the impact of events. The coach can gauge the leader’s challenges with authenticity or displaying vulnerability through this storytelling activity.

Preparing for Dialogue with the Dyad Partner

Each leader privately notes their responses to a set of prepared questions tailored by the coach for the particular Dyad. The leader will choose the responses to share first in the debriefing conversation with the coach and later with the coach and Dyad partner. In each conversation, the leader chooses to share what is comfortable from what s/he has written. The coach selects questions designed to prompt reflection, discovery, and a deep exploration. Sample questions might include the following:

• Who is a leader who is a role model for you? What makes them a role model for you?
  
• What partnerships have you seen that provide role models for a Dyadic partnership? What makes that pair a role model?⁶
  
• What is the best and most satisfying relationship you have had with a partnership, preferably in your work life or outside your family life? What key elements made that working relationship rewarding and satisfying to you?
  
• What is least satisfying relationship you have had of this kind? What elements made that relationship unrewarding and unsatisfying for you?
  
• What will be the behavioral “cues” that let you know the Dyad relationship has grown?
  
• What do you want others to say about your Dyad relationship? What do you NOT want others to say about your Dyad relationship?
  
• What is most important to you about succeeding in this Dyad? How will you measure the success of this Dyad?
  
• What hopes and fears do you have for your Dyad?
  
• What are the behaviors that give you a sense of being personally valued by a peer colleague? What are the behaviors that give you a sense of being personally devalued?
  
• If you could ask for just one thing from your partner, knowing that your request wouldn’t be misunderstood, what would you ask for to help you in this partnership?
  
• Describe a specific leadership moment when you were at your best. When you are at your best, what are you doing, saying, etc.? What enables your best to emerge?
  
• How do you sometimes get in your own way?

Leadership Self-Assessments

Gallup Strengths Finder

While it is not essential to use standardized assessments with a Dyad, many healthcare leaders, particularly new physician leaders, have not had much opportunity for developing self-awareness through leadership self-assessments. I often use the Gallup Strengths Finder comprehensive assessment, which for $89 gives a rank ordering and discussion of all 34 of the leader’s strengths.⁷ The advantages of this version over the less expensive top five strengths’ report is that when comparing strengths reports, the Dyad partners may discover that they have some top strengths in common but that neither of them has other critical strengths, or they may have strengths that are the exact reverse of each other. In the early 1:1 with the coach, the review of the Strengths Finder is designed to help the leader acknowledge these strengths, to identify current examples of their use, and also to consider how these strengths might be positively used in the Dyadic relationship.

The Strengths Finder also educates the pair on one way to understand how to maximize effectiveness, identify strengths in others, and achieve success. The 34 Hogan Strengths are arranged in four categories critical to but not limited to leadership: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking, each of which is important to leadership Dyads. At an early coaching session, the coach will array the partners’ strengths (with their permission) under each of the categories to discover where they contrast and complement each other, and where the top strengths can be used effectively for the work to come. The Strengths Finder research distinguishes between talents and strengths, a distinction important to Dyad coaching. Talents are innate abilities that emerge early and that can be cultivated. Strengths, on the other hand, are talents that have been used and developed to quite a level of mastery, and which when used provide motivation, fulfillment, and a sense of flow. This distinction is important to the Dyad because a leader may need to use a talent but not find it fulfilling to use. At its best, the Dyad partners use their strengths frequently, which inspires ongoing energy and motivation.

Hogan Leadership Assessment⁸

At CHI, we use Hogan Leadership assessments in our Transformational Leadership Development Program (TLDP) for clinical leaders, as well as for prehire and other top-talent work. While other style and communication preference assessments also lend themselves to coaching, we recommend the coach choose assessments that will stretch the pair, help them experience a model or a mindset for looking at leadership, and also that are psychometrically valid. The Hogan assessment series are self-reports, psychometrically valid, and help leaders see their leadership styles as normed against other leaders. It includes three self-assessments: (i) the Hogan Potential Inventory (HPI) illustrates the ways the leader will act under “normal” conditions; (ii) the Hogan Development Survey (HDS) shows how the leader is likely to react under stress; and (iii) the Values Inventory is particularly helpful to support the Dyad’s discussion of motivating values. Interrelationships between the three reports are summarized in the Coaching Report.

Harrison Assessment

Another preferred self-report instrument for coaching Dyads is the Harrison Assessment, a tool which is useful in identifying challenges where the leader’s behavior is not an ideal fit with their Dyad leadership role. The Harrison is taken on line, as are the other instruments discussed here. The coach works with the Harrison distributor to identify the “best fit” job description against which to report out the results. Harrison has developed a battery of role profiles for healthcare leaders and others, so that the individual leaders receive feedback on where they may find the Dyad role challenging, where it will be an idea fit for their strengths, etc. One of Harrison’s great gifts to the coach is in its series of “Paradox Graphs,” part of the individual profile. In 12 paradoxes related to leadership, the individual’s scores are displayed in terms of whether they provide “balanced versatility” or are imbalanced. For example, one paradox related to how the leader communicates is “Frank versus Diplomatic.” A tendency toward the more assertive pole (which Harrison describes as “dynamic”) of “frankness” and at the same time a low score on the “gentle trait” of diplomacy could lead to a leader seeming very blunt; in the opposite vein, a leader tending toward high diplomacy and lower frankness could be seen as vague. In the Harrison paradox view, the best leaders have high capability in both traits; they show high versatility, able to be both frank and diplomatic at the same time and to choose the best approach for the situation.⁹ Using Harrison’s paradox graphs provides a rich environment for the discussion of how some traits we see as either-or, are really “both and” in the behaviors of mature and skillful leaders.

When selecting assessments, we recommend you choose either the Hogan battery or the Harrison Assessment, not both. Either can be complemented by the Strengths Finder, which is an easy tool to use in early Dyad meetings.

Debriefing Session

Once the leaders have completed the prework the coach schedules a 2-hour meeting with leader individually to debrief the prework. The coach treats the prework and assessments not as “truth” but as a worldview, a set of perspectives that have developed from the leader’s experiences. The debriefing gives the coach an initial sense of how the leader prefers to work, what they do, how they do it, and who they are. This session helps “break up the soil” in preparation for the fertile work to come with the Dyad. We suggest that you not rush the debrief. The coach may need to hold several debriefing sessions in order to complete the work. Not everything must be completely debriefed before the pair begins the coaching, however. Debrief the Timeline exercise and the Strengths Finder, examine the answers to the prepared questions, and that creates sufficient context to move into the Dyad meetings with the coach. Sometime during the session, the leader can ask the coach any questions that have arisen about the coaching approach, etc. I describe how I will be working with them at joint sessions: The coach’s role is not to serve as a facilitator/trainer. Instead, the coach’s role is to stand for the “third party”—the Dyadic system—and to focus on observations and insights about how this relationship system emerges in that moment.

From all the information exchanged, the leader needs to identify anything that she or he does not want to share with the Dyad partner at a session with the coach and the partners. I do not advise the coach to ask the Dyad partners to share the Hogan assessment reports directly with the partner. Instead, the expectation is that the coach will design the meetings so that they will share their perspective with sufficient depth (and safety) in order to ensure understanding of what is most critical, so that the Dyad can cocreate together.

The First Dyad Coaching Sessions

Within a week of the individual debriefing (or the first of the debriefing sessions), begin the regularly scheduled Dyad coaching sessions. Monthly meetings of the coach and Dyad, put on the calendar in advance, keep the momentum going (and the pressure on) to focus on the Dyad. Schedule the first two meetings to be slightly longer than subsequent sessions. I request that a first meeting begins with a meal, to set the value of hospitality that Catholic Healthcare embraces, and that we schedule 2½ to 3 hours, to allow time for sufficient energy and intensity to build. For each session, I distribute a short agenda in advance; sometimes there is specific pre- and postwork or a prereading. First meeting outcomes commonly include the following:

• To establish the Dyad manager’s support for the coaching engagement
  
• To establish a safe and comfortable relationship with the coach and the Dyad
  
• To initiate a conversation about what energizes the Dyad about partnership and what challenges them about partnership
  
• To cocreate a draft vision for the partnership and some “rules of the road” or joint expectations that the Dyad can experiment with over the next period of time

Prework for the coach is to select an appropriate space to support the work to be done—simple, spacious both literally and emotionally, encouraging reflection, allowing for silence. Ideally the leaders will not be interrupted. I look for a room with a view that can call up a “larger than us” perspective just by looking out the window: a view of mountains, a wooded area, a place where birds might fly, etc. Do not hold sessions in rooms that feel confined or that lack windows, as we want a sense of the spaciousness of the designed alliance that the Dyad will create. I prefer comfortable armchairs, on wheels, that can be moved into a circle, with very small tables to hold coffee and materials. I want the Dyad to be able to face each other as they work. At times I will move out of their field of vision so as better to observe how the “third party” connects and uses its energy.

I invite the Dyad’s leader to join us for the first 10 minutes of Session #1 to discuss his/her hopes for the work, expectations for success, and a celebration of the Dyad’s energy and willingness to do this work. Frequently, I prepare the leader with a few talking points to enable a successful first session. At CHI, we begin meetings by having someone read a reflection that set a tone for the session. For a first session, I might choose a reflection on partnership, based on writing by Charles R. Swindoll (23):

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