The Dumbbell Coaching Model

A Coaching Model By Lenord Melvix, Career and Leadership Coach, UNITED STATES

The Dumbbell Model: A Support to Early and Mid-Level Management Professionals

We present a coaching model, the Dumbbell Model, designed to support early and mid-level management professionals looking to work on their Leadership skills and challenges. Our model aims to tackle a broader goal that the client wants to address by funneling them into focused multi-session goals that the coach will explore with the client. And use the lessons and takeaways from the sessions to feed back into the larger engagement goals. 

Target Audience

Early and Mid-Career Management Professionals are considered to be one of the most stressed-out working groups. They are challenged to execute the senior executive decisions, break them into realistic milestones, build teams, delegate tasks, and oversee the operations. As individual contributors move up the corporate ladder into the management track, they are challenged to quickly ramp up into leadership roles and make critical decisions along the way _[3]. This typically comes with a lot of stress as they navigate the challenges and shape up the leadership style that best suits them.

Dumbbell Coaching Model

Our coaching model has been adapted from well-established models such as GROW _[1] and STEPPA _[2] and modified to coach Early/Mid-level leaders. We call it The Dumbbell Model as it resembles the dumbbell shape of coaching scope that starts with a larger goal that the client wants to address, narrows it down to a set of coachable targets that the client considers as a top priority for them, explores them and then tie them back to the larger goals that the client originally set out to pursue as shown in Figure 1 below

This coaching model comprises 7 key stages that may be packed into a single coaching session or a series of coaching sessions depending on the scope that the client wishes to explore.

     I.Desire

This stage involves understanding the larger scope that the client wishes to explore and the goals they aim to achieve from the coaching engagement. In the context of Early/Mid-level leaders, this may typically involve (but is not limited to) challenges they want to tackle or skills they want to gain to succeed in their role. Post the procedural sessions of explaining what coaching is and setting expectations with the client – this step is the first stage where the coach understands the desired outcomes of the client in the grand scheme of things. Some effective coaching questions to uncover this could be:

1. What would you like to accomplish from our coaching engagement?
2. What are you looking to get from this coaching series?
3. Why is this important to you?
4. How will accomplishing this <desire> serve you?

Note that at this stage, the goals may still be abstract, longer-term, and aspirational. The idea is to understand the higher-level direction that the client wants to explore over the series of coaching conversations. We will further drill this down in subsequent stages.

   II. Dissect

Once the coach and client have a fair idea of the larger outcomes that the client desires to get from the coaching session, the coach partners with the client to dissect the desire into more concrete coachable blocks that need to be addressed in order to support the client to accomplish their desired outcome. Some effective coaching questions to dissect include:

1. What are the blocks/pieces that need to be addressed to move you closer to the desired outcome?

III. Sharpen

For each session, we then work towards sharpening the goal that can be scoped out and targeted in a prioritized manner to tackle pieces that were identified as areas to be addressed in the previous section. Some effective coaching questions to sharpen the focus of each session would include:

1. What would you like to walk away with from today’s session?
2. What does that look like?
3. Why do you think is the most important goal to work on in today’s session
4. How does this tie back to the Uber goal we set out for the coaching journey?

IV. Explore

Work with the client to understand how they would like to work on the sharpened session goal. What would be some areas of this situation that they need to explore and discuss to move forward?

In cases where the client feels stuck, the coach could also partner with the client and take on explorative strategies like

1. Taking a First, Second Third person view of the situation
2. Articulating the feelings/emotions using the Feeling wheel
3. Using the FlipIt tool to see what metaphorically resonates with the situation

  V. Learn

As the client explores the situation and processes their thoughts, the coach can support the client by watching out for limiting beliefs and challenging the client to bring about alternative perspectives.

In this process, as the client learns more about themselves and the situation – the coach can help solidify the learning and work with the client on how they can use these new learnings/awareness to help them in this situation and possibly move towards their Uber goal

VI. Act

As the coach and client enter into the penultimate session – if there are clear areas of improvement and strategies to tackle identified from the session so far; then work with the client to come up with action steps that will help them move forward toward their goal in a quantifiable manner

VII. Check-in

Finally conclude the session by checking in with the client on how they are feeling about the progress made during this session toward their session goal, their uber goal, and their desired growth direction. How will they prioritize among these gap areas? 

References

[1] Alexander, Graham (2010) [2006]. “Behavioral coaching—the GROW model“. In Passmore, Jonathan (ed.). Excellence in coaching: the industry guide (2nd ed.). London; Philadelphia: Kogan Page. pp. 83–93.
[2] Angus McLeod, ‘Performance Coaching: The Handbook for Managers, HR Professionals & Coaches’. ISBN: 1904 424 058
[3] Koortzen, Pieter & Oosthuizen, Rudolf M. (2010). A competence executive coaching model. South African Journal of Industrial Psychology. 36. 10.4102/sajip.v36i1.837.