Introduction

Over the last 25 years or so coaching has become an activity that once was purely associated with sports, but which now has become a mainstay process for developing people in business and in their personal lives. Indeed, coaching and coaches have become ubiquitous; and to use the jargon of our times: coaching is a major growth industry. But reflecting back on its origins in sports is useful. Why do football teams, golfers, athletes, and every other type of physical competitor want – nay, need – a coach and often a series of specialist coaches? Because, put simply, it is quite clear that coaches can make a massive difference to the performance of their clients, and in making such a difference they can turn competitors into winners. When we enter the world of business, of organisations, of life itself, we find that there is increasing pressure for businesses and organisations to perform: to perform as an organisation, for each of its teams to perform, and at the granular level for each individual to perform. When they do, productivity increases, and when that increases, and the strategy for the business (and for non-profit organisations too) is right, then profits increase (or in the case of non-profit organisations, value is enhanced). We all want to enjoy success. Hence the increasingly central role of coaching. One interesting research statistic on this found that training alone increased productivity in organisations by 22.4 per cent, but that when coaching augmented the process the productivity increased to 88 per cent, nearly four times “the level achieved by training alone”.¹ No wonder, then, that it has become so critical to organisational success.

So, coaching helps individuals (and so teams and organisations) perform at a higher level. For this reason, vast sums of money are spent on coaches and coaching programmes by organisations throughout the world.²

Two questions, however, emerge from this. The first is: but what is coaching? And the second is: what is performance, properly understood?

If we understood more clearly what constituted performance, then maybe that would help us when we discuss how coaching can drive and increase it. But there is more, and it is worth mentioning this now, as it is so critical to what an appreciation of coaching is. We will analyse performance more thoroughly in this book, but it is important to realise that every one of us starts off performing poorly!

We learn to ride a bike, and we fall off; we try to swim, and we sink; we want to spell a word or write a coherent sentence and when we start we appear dyslexic and confused. Gradually, through teaching and instruction, we ‘get’ some of these things and some of us can become excellent cyclists, swimmers, spellers, writers and … anything else: strategists, marketers, leaders, sales people, computer programmers and so on.³ But the point is, performance, which will define anon, is always, always, always preceded by development. Another word for this would be learning.

Interestingly, how many people do you often meet with a truly healthy appetite for failure? Not many, yet some of the most successful people on the planet openly exclaim they are where they are as a result of failing more frequently than anyone else!⁴ The key therefore is to take the learnings and move forward from failure; and, in fact, not to perceive it as failure but instead as a necessary, indeed essential process: we have to fail in order to learn, at least initially and maybe for quite some time. Many, however, through conditioning, hold onto negative emotion associated with poor performance, which leads to the only thing stopping the achievement of goals, namely, giving up!

Young children don’t give up on walking; and if you are persistent with your own goals you will achieve them (maybe not in the timescale you prescribed, but you will get there), just as children learn all of the incredible complexity of information that they do in the first few years of life. Goal achievement is just as inevitable; in fact, humans are designed to achieve their goals as long as:

• A) they have a goal …
• B) they constructively think or reflect upon it often …
• C) they are persistent ....

This sounds simple; however, think about it for a minute. First, you might like to reflect on whether you have goals, whether you consistently think about them and whether or not you have been persistent in the pursuit of them? Also, what is it that causes us not to achieve our aspirations (ultimately us giving up, however we may try to blame others)? What is it that causes us to give up? Negative emotion! What is the source of negative emotion – negative thought! And whose thoughts are they? Mm, yes, our own. Indeed, thinking ‘constructively’ about our own goals is precisely what we often do not do.

Herein lies the hope for one of the more recent developments in coaching: the ability to provide clients with sufficient knowledge of their own thought processes so that they take 100 per cent responsibility for the outcome and accept the challenges, blocks, barriers and ‘adversities’ that arise.

It is important to stress at the outset that we can coach for performance, and we can also coach for development too. In one sense coaching for performance is easier. Why? Because it has an end point: if you are coached on how to improve your golf stroke or how to improve your butterfly motion in the water, then once it is done, it is done. But to coach for development can be more open-ended and actually more profound, for we are helping the individual learn how to learn and go on learning indefinitely, to become more self-sufficient and so live a more fulfilled life – one more capable of being independent and unintimidated by the circumstances around that beset all of us from time to time.

To return, then, to the central question: what is coaching? There are many models of coaching: for example, traditionally the GROW⁵ model has been very popular and over recent times other models have found their place and begun to have an impact. Also, Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) works to remove subconscious blockages to performance. Its principles operate at a more developmental level, aiming to assist each individual to be more consciously aware of their own thought processes. Alongside these, we should not underestimate the impact of some of the more holistic therapeutic practices that may not, initially, seem overtly to be linked to coaching. All good coaches at some point experience a client who has a block impeding performance, and those coaches who either broaden their training or experience, or who work in conjunction with other specialists, can and do have the largest positive impact with their clients.

Professor Nigel MacLennan, however, defines it this way:

Wow – this is very all-encompassing and powerful. But notice some central issues here: coaching is one-on-one, somebody is being helped (so it’s not training); it’s about raising one’s game by unlocking potential through learning and so performing in order to achieve more (so it’s teleological and has the end in mind) and it has a strong personal flavour (one needs to take responsibility at all times for one’s learning and one’s results). In a way it’s like ‘growing up’ all over again. We take it for granted that children have to grow up and they do that by learning; we can so easily become adults and think we know all we need to know.

Many people switch off from learning after their initial education. Indeed, the ‘know-it-all’ mentality is possibly the most fatal condition to have within an organisation in terms of its success and longevity.

This book, then, is about helping you become a better coach by helping others, by unlocking performance through learning and development processes and by at all times stressing the need for personal commitment. Be the change, in fact, you want to see in others. If you are not developing as a person, as a human being, how really will you coach others? You may have all the techniques and tools in the coaching world, but people are quick to spot inauthenticity and the ‘going through the motions’ type of coaching that is indicative of those who have lost their own passion to self-improve. This book therefore is written in order to help your personal development as you advance through the book; in other words, to self-coach.

But, you may say, there are loads of books on the market about coaching, why should I buy and read this one? What is different about Mapping Motivation for Coaching? The answer to this question is profound and it touches upon a limitation in MacLennan’s definition, as fine as that definition is. For the limitation in the definition is not confined to MacLennan alone; no. It is the invisible factor, the thing assumed but which comes after we have dealt with the other stuff, and it’s not just about its invisibility with coaching: it’s invisible in all the major people disciplines: management, leadership, performance, HR, engagement, recruitment and we could go on. What are we talking about?

First, let’s be clear, MacLennan does a fine job subsequently in his book of talking about this issue and has many good ideas about it. But as his definition shows this particular point is invisible – it’s not core to the process – it’s not at the heart of the process; we may bring it in later, talk about it later, but later, in our view, is too late. What is this issue, this point, this invisible aspect of coaching that is so important and so profound? Of course, if you have read the title of this book you will soon realise the word is motivation. Motivation is the key.

It is true: only you can motivate you. And it is also true that most of the motivation that stems from ‘Ra-Ra’ activities, artificially engineered by HR, O&D, and managers generally – activities such as listening to a motivational speaker, fire-walking, engaging in team physical activities – usually lasts about a fortnight. There’s a short-term feel-good factor, and then back at work the excitement and adrenalin rush seem a distant dream, and the old boredoms kick in!

However, the creation of the Motivational Maps has changed this situation, we hope, forever. For the Motivational Maps have now provided a language and metrics in which motivation can be described, measured, monitored and maximised, and the invisible feelings and desires and aversions of the individual (and team and organisation) can be brought to the surface quickly, accurately, and usefully in, basically, 10 minutes!

In short, the invisible energy of motivation can now be made visible and clear. The implications of this for coaching, then, are very deep indeed. MacLennan did not have this technology when he wrote his magisterial book; but we have it now and so it’s time to explore how this changes everything and leads to a new model of coaching that builds on and yet supersedes the models that went before.

One anecdotal point to make here would be this: we ourselves as coaches can emphatically state that what before in a coaching session might take the whole (often 90 minutes) of the first coaching session to establish, namely, what is the real issue being presented, can now – with the Motivational Map being completed in advance – be discovered within 20 minutes. And discovered too more accurately, more precisely, and with a greater commitment to the revelations on the part of the client, since often the Map validates what the client is reluctant to admit, but such is its power that it almost becomes a confession. And, lest this be thought: ‘well, we would say that wouldn’t we?’ we can also report that in our system of ‘Mappers’ (over 400 in 14 countries) and clients (an even great number), we have been told time and time again just how direct and effective the Maps make the coaching process.

This book, then, is your handbook to enable you to become a more effective coach, and you will find, once you master its contents, that it is a resource for life and for all situations. For although our primary concern in writing the book is for professional coaches, organisational managers and leaders to develop their knowledge and skill sets further, the truth is that coaching as a process can be useful in virtually all the important areas of our life. Essentially, coaching is an advanced interpersonal skill and its deployment by you is going to make you a lot more popular and effective whether with your own family and friends, or simply casual acquaintances.

Why? Because a primary requirement of human beings is to be loved. The most effective way to love somebody is to listen to them – not just to hear what they are saying, but to listen with your whole being. As the Egyptian Ptahhotep⁷ said 4000 years ago: “To listen is better than anything, thus is born perfect love”. And strangely, paradoxically, although effective listening involves silence and spaces, it also involves speaking: asking really good questions. Yes, the kind of thing that coaching perfects in us!

Our intention therefore is to help inform and lead you with coaching practices and principles that invariably deliver results for clients, but also that generate in you a thirst for continuing your own personal development journey. Moreover, perhaps more importantly than anything else, we intend to take you on a journey that allows you to experience the benefit of these principles; principles that help lead people out of doubt, confusion, apathy and fear (the great enemies of achievement and success in life) towards greater clarity, confidence, personal power, and peace of mind. And for the record, incidentally, peace of mind is the ultimate benefit that all human beings want, for it is the goal of all our strivings; as one great religious leader put it, what does it profit to gain the whole world and lose one’s soul? Peace of mind is that state in which we are truly content because we have – at last – found our real selves (our soul if you will) and we can rest finally in that bliss of authenticity. As the psychotherapist James Hollis expressed this: “The gods want us to grow up, to step up to that high calling that each soul carries as its destiny”.⁸

Prepare yourselves for a journey, then, that is going to take you through a smorgasbord of great ideas, deep knowledge, key skills, powerful principles, practical tips, real case studies, useful references and further resources for you to tap into.

The focus of this book is about the individual, not the team⁹ or the whole organisation, because as we have said, coaching is a one-to-one process. Naturally, it should come as no surprise that the effect of coaching on one person only can have an inordinate impact on a team and even on a whole organisation. If we keep in mind that profound observation of Peter Drucker,¹⁰ the twentieth century’s greatest management consultant, that “Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission” then the power of the one should be evident. And if the importance of resolving to develop yourself were in doubt, then let’s remember the words of Abraham Lincoln: “Always bear in mind that your own determination to succeed is more important than any other one thing”.¹¹ Notice that phrase ‘any other one thing’: determination alone is not always sufficient to guarantee success, but of all the factors that lead to it, it is certainly the most important. So please, commit to the process.

This book is topographical and so it can be dipped into, especially after it has first been read in its entirety; thus, it may become an easy reference volume. However, just as through practice – your practice – coaching develops, so too is the understanding of motivation and the human psyche cumulative. It was Socrates, amongst others, who insisted that the beginning of wisdom was to know oneself. All personal development must start at that point, including the personal development of the coach. The greatest people who have ever lived have all been people who relentlessly pursued self-knowledge as a primary focus: most people when they start their quest begin with a self-knowledge that may be compared with a reality the size of an anthill. The anthill is busy but does not reflect in any way the true scope of the self. But, as one really begins to understand one’s self, a vista opens up and the truly great realise that they are standing somewhere in the Himalayan Mountains! That is a tremendous vision; but even if we don’t quite get that far, it would still be significant to at least reach the peaks of the Lake District in Cumbria, for that would be a massive increase on the anthill!

Finally, as part of our commitment to you to make this book your personal journey of discovery we have provided you with a unique opportunity to complete your own Motivational Map. Follow the instructions at the end of this Introduction in the endnote.¹²

Once completed, you will receive a full 15-page client report showing your Motivational Map, what motivates you in your work, in what order and intensity. Shortly afterwards you will also receive a 1-page summary of your report. This is the coaching report, not generally made available, but which explains not only what drives you in your career but also how you are currently feeling about your work and whether it is meeting your needs and your drivers. This can open up a whole new vista for you as to what the issues in your life are. Plus, in conjunction with a qualified Licensed Practitioner (Coach) of motivational mapping, we can see at a glance:

• A) Where your career is not fulfilling your needs currently and be able to probe appropriately;
• B) How your motivational drivers are likely to evolve naturally over time and compare those with your goal and career plans;
• C) Where you may struggle to relate to other drivers either as a manager, leader or colleague.

So without further ado we recommend that you go and complete your Motivational Map before continuing further. You can read this book academically and it will provide useful and insightful information, but the full impact comes if you treat it as a workbook for your own development and absorb the material.