Personality traits future-proofing executive coaching

We understand that executive coaching is a balance between art and science. In this article, we review our assessment data to showcase how personality, combined with the executive coaching practitioner training from the Academy of Executive Coaching (AoEC)^[1], empowers our coaches to be adaptive in an AI-driven future.

Career Connections has been partnered with Hogan Assessments^[2] for 20 years. And as part of the AoEC Practitioner Diploma programme, participants complete the Hogan Development Survey, which assesses personality traits when they feel under pressure – brought by the expectation of having to prove themselves as newly graduated coaches. We analyzed the average scores from more than 330 recently graduated executive coaches for this research.

Our coaches highest average score was Excitable – at 69%. This highlights their passion and intensity, engaging with new projects and people with great enthusiasm. They feel emotions deeply. On the other hand, AI can recognise emotions, but not feel them^[3]. AI can deduce emotions better than humans can from analysis of written or spoken words, but cannot use the core skill of intuition, which our coaches are empowered to tap into. AI can project empathy (even though it does not feel it) but not compassion (Clutterbuck); it cannot connect somatically, using heart and gut, as our coaches are challenged to.

Another high score on average from our coaches was Skeptical – scored at 66%. This shows our coaches do not take the issues presented to them at face value. Through the AoEC Practitioner Diploma, they are trained to balance supporting with challenging their clients; to zoom out of the issue and invite clients to get to the balcony to see issues from different perspectives whilst holding the mirror to them, providing feedback for consideration. The importance of this skill was highlighted by Ian Day and John Blakey in their work ‘Challenging Coaching’ and ‘Where were all the coaches when the banks went down?’^[4] The coaches’ role is not to just support – but also give a ‘loving boot’ when needed.

To future-proof themselves, coaches will require higher levels of judgement or the need to draw on relevant personal experience to challenge constructively. Being skeptical includes your ability to reflect on and challenge yourself – ‘if you are not questioning your assumptions about your role and practice, as a human capital professional and coach, you are probably not growing’ (Clutterbuck). It is an ethical obligation to ensure the time spent coaching is benefiting your client’s full future potential – and that sometimes means taking your client, in a safe and trusting environment, to areas that are uncomfortable but important to explore.

A further high score from our coaches is being Imaginative – at average 66%. This indicates the ability to be creative, have new ideas, and encourages innovation from their clients. In the AoEC Practitioner Diploma, we demonstrate and practice multiple creative techniques that enriches the coaches’ toolbox, whilst asking them to come up with their own unique coaching philosophy and model. We appreciate that each individual is ‘creative, resourceful and whole’ (a key principle in Co-Active Coaching)^[5] so a one-size-fits-all coaching approach is inappropriate. In addition, creative breakthroughs come from breaking rules and are unpredictable. AI cannot replicate that – ‘computers are designed to follow rules and make things predictable; AI can seem endlessly innovative’ (for example creating poetry at the touch of a screen), ‘but only by experimenting with previous data and combinations. AI has no capability of imagination’ (Clutterbuck).

To coach systemically in a complex and adaptive world; our coaches are philosophy-based; asked to search for their own guiding principles and assessed on their capacity to answer the question ‘who are YOU?’ Their key role is to facilitate – to ask: ‘what can I do to help the client do this for themselves? How do I contextualise the client’s issue within the perspective of my philosophy or discipline?’ (Clutterbuck). The AoEC stretches coaches towards: what level of complexity do you want to work at?

The lowest average score from the coaches was Dutiful at 42%. This showed them to be independent thinkers who are not bendingly deferential to others but are sure of themselves. As coaches develop, their skills move from focusing on narrow performance-based coaching for individuals; to coaching individuals for transformation. The evolution then moves from the individual to seeing their clients within their systems, cultures and teams; to coaching clients to influence those systems; being confident to coach within not just organisational but from wider economic, macro viewpoints (Clutterbuck). This evolution is imperative if the coach is not to be overtaken by AI. The coaches most in danger of being overtaken by new age technology are those whose skills are rooted in mechanistic, basic performance coaching models, looking at issues in a transactional way and coaching with predictable patterns or questions.

From being intuitive and tapping into personal experiences to challenge constructively, to evolving beyond their coaching models, coaches have an advantage over AI. Coaches who are rigid in their processes lack independence of thought and are stuck on: How do I take the client to where I think they need to go? What should the client do?

We train coaches to consider the systemic; to be enablers; confident enough in their coaching to trust the unbound process, allowing transformation. ‘Believing that the core issues and solutions will emerge in whatever way they will’ (Clutterbuck). Coaching with a light touch, selecting from the wide choices available to them as they hold responsibility purely for facilitating the client’s awareness and possible actions. Allowing, in other words, both themselves and their clients to purely be. Something AI cannot conceptualise.

If you want to find out more about our next intake of the Academy of Executive Coaching please contact: Simran Shah on simran@careerconnectionsltd.com.

If you want to find out more on using Hogan Assessments as part of your leadership development please contact: Tess Ojiambo on tess@careerconnectionsltd.com or Daniel Gathoni on Daniel@careerconnectionsltd.com.

Footnotes:

[1] Over the last 15 years, Career Connections has trained and accredited hundreds of senior executives through their partner the Academy of Executive Coaches, UK across more than 20 countries in Africa, on the Practitioner Diploma. The Academy has partners in 10 global regions and was the first coach training organization in the world to hold triple accreditation: from the International Coaching Federation; the European Mentoring & Coaching Council and the Association for Coaching.

[2] Over the last 20 years, Career Connections has assessed around 6,000 people a year, mostly using the Hogan Personality Inventory, Hogan Development Survey and Motives, Values and Preference Inventory. The coaches scores are compared to the Hogan global norm group which includes data from all of Hogan’s 60 market geographies, sectors, cultures, genders and age groups. No one country can represent more than 5% of the global norm group.

[3] This article borrows heavily from the work presented at Professor David Clutterbuck’s Career Connections AoEC alumni event held in Nairobi at the end of May 2024 on ‘Coaching Through Complexity’. Professor Clutterbuck has written more than 75 books on Leadership, Coaching and Mentoring and was co-founder of the European Mentoring & Coaching Council. His entity, Coaching & Mentoring International, is a partner of Career Connections. He is a visiting professor at various Universities including Henley Business School, Oxford Brookes and York St John, UK.

[4] Challenging Coaching: Going Beyond Traditional Coaching to Face the FACTS – Ian Day and John Blakey (Nicholas Brealey, 2012).

[5] Co-Active Coaching – Henry Kimsey-House, Karen Kimsey-House, Phillip Sandhal, Laura Whitworth (Nicholas Brealey, 2018).