Robert Hargrove

About a year ago, Masterful Coaching, in cooperation with Defense Acquisition University (DAU), began a 9-month executive coaching certification program with ten people, including university Deans and highly-accomplished faculty members who have military backgrounds.

The idea for the program originally came from John Young, Undersecretary of Defense for AT&L, who at the time was in charge of a budget of close to $300 billion dollars. Mr. Young saw Masterful Coaching’s involvement as a way to significantly improve the performance of the Pentagon PEO’s and program managers. “Get Defense Acquisition programs delivered on time and on schedule” was the mandate.

Mr. Anderson, President of DAU, a former flag officer in the Air Force, made the Executive Coaching Certification Program a top priority, seeing it as a way to establish a coaching culture at the Pentagon. He not only engaged me in an executive coaching relationship, but saw to it that both Deans and top faculty members were enrolled as Masterful Coaching Certification candidates and ready to participate 100%.

The requirements were rigorous, starting with each of the 10 candidates enrolling two high-level Pentagon program managers, many of whom were former Generals, Admirals, as well as SES’s or Senior Executive Officers. It also involved each executive coaching certification candidate agreeing to spend up to 400 hours on their coaching commitments over the next year.

Each coach and coachee then joined together in going for an Impossible Future that represented playing a bigger game, as well as the need to bring about transformational change in their area. The commitments usually involved dramatically improving the performance (cost and schedule) of key Pentagon programs, like the Joint Strike Fighter.

We met for four days in a classroom setting at DAU, in Fort Belvoir in Virginia, simulating a flight school atmosphere based on study and practice. The participants would study one of the12 Masterful Coaching Catalytic Conversations and then practice it with their clients in real situations, in real time, with real goals.

They were supervised in this process by their flight school instructor, either myself or Master Level Coach, Carl Kaestner, through a series of coaching calls. We would start these coaching calls with comments like: “Tell me about your coachee’s Impossible Future,” or ask something like, “How are you going to make the 360 process a transformational experience?”

One of the interesting aspects of this group is that all the executive coaching candidates had leadership backgrounds, and well-developed coaching and counseling skills to begin with. Yet as many of the participants told me, “I love the Masterful Coaching Method, because it gave me a flight plan and allowed me to take my coaching skills to a whole new dynamic level.”

Said one Dean, “What’s different about the Masterful Coaching approach than most coaching programs is that it provides a methodology to instill a higher vision, while impacting urgent and important bottom-line results. Shifts in thinking and attitude are brought in through the back door.”

I was thrilled when after about 6 to 7 months into the program, one of the Deans told me that the program had been transformational particularly around realizing that you don’t have to be at the top to be a change insurgent. You can mount a change insurgency from wherever you are.

Said another participant, “I used to work in the Pentagon, and though I had a fairly high level job, the way I was thinking about things made me feel fairly disempowered. I also was like the gold fish in the water of the Pentagon bureaucracy, that couldn’t see the water. Now as a Masterful Coach, working with a top PEO, I am able to stand outside the system, yet at the same time impact it. I feel like I am finally empowered to make the difference I have always wanted to make.”

To find out more about the Masterful Coaching certification for your Corporate University, HR group, or internal consultants, contact Susan Youngquist at Susan.Youngquist@rhargrove.com.