Authoritarian vs. Feminist

The business model

Consultants and coaches work with different models and methodologies, and I think most of them are valid, and provide useful perspectives. Most of the executive coaches I know are committed to helping the people and organizations they work with thrive.

But there’s a particular model that seems to be gaining traction, and I can’t stand it. I call it the authoritarian. Male and female coaches do this, but there is usually a top dog who is a white male, and he has a Process. He has Experience Working with the CEOs of Fortune 500 Companies, and he’ll tell you that all the time.

His Process is Proprietary. It involves lots of assessments, interviews, maybe a 360 or two, and costs lots of money. You can’t start working with him unless you participate fully in the Proprietary Process. Because he is In Demand and Selective About Working with Motivated Clients.

Once he’s decided what exactly you’re doing wrong, he’ll fix you. Trainings, Models, Goals, Checklists, Check-ins and Accountability Tools abound, all set up in advance for you, regardless of how you learn or stay motivated. Because he is An Expert and Knows Things.

If you fail, or don’t progress, or people on your team are unmoved by the Man or the Model, then it’s obviously a failure of you or your team and not the Man or the Model. He Wrote a Best-Selling Book, he Speaks on Stages, he has a Podcast. Of course he has authority.

Who the fuck are you?

Shortly after I started doing executive coaching in 2016, I was told I had a nickname as the Feminist Coach. I’ll take it. I know men and women who are working from a model of shared power, encouragement, deep listening. Here’s the Feminist Coaching Model, built on these beliefs:

Each person knows what they need. They are the expert on themselves. The goal is to unlock each person’s innate potential. Which means listening to them, since they are the expert.

Many of us have spent our whole lives being told we’re not right, too much, don’t fit, can’t know, it’s our fault, we’re no good. What if we went to work and heard, or told one another, your specific skill is needed here. You do this really well. Let me help you do it better. What if the behavior you were told was being a bitch was actually setting boundaries well? What if you’re right?

There is rarely one right way to do things. I try to understand different modalities and find one that works with an individual’s learning style and experience, but there isn’t one way to grow or change or develop skills. I’m also suspect of self-proclaimed experts. Yes, I have a degree and certification, and those are important, as is experience. But it doesn’t make me an expert on you, or your business.

Any work is best done together. Many assessment models, like MBTI or DiSC can be helpful, especially for people who like assessments, and many of us do. They can start us on the journey of understanding that we each bring our own style to work. But that’s just a start. If I know that the three people that work for me are a Bulldog, a Tiger, and a Newt, that doesn’t mean that I can then understand their full complexity.

I may find it useful to tailor feedback to an insecure Newt with lots of positives, and to make sure the choleric Tiger has the specifics she wants, but people are not pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. And if I haven’t worked through my own conflict avoidance as a Hedgehog, then how prepared will I be when the Tiger roars at me? Interpersonal and team dynamics are never going to be simple or easy. Shared frameworks and terminology can be helpful, but it’s a start, not the end.

Money matters. Expensive assessments are not usually necessary. We’re not dentists, we don’t need an x-ray to see the rot. Anyone who walks in and says it’s a ten-figure fee to get started has a lucrative business model that might not be what you need.

We wish the world was simpler. And we wish work was easier. I can see the seduction of a Process that says if you enter these inputs and pull these levers then you will get the outcomes you want. It’s back to the old Newtonian model of cogs and wheels, where leaders are sharpening gears, removing any impediments and swapping people about as if they were interchangeable. If that model was true, then the authoritarian model might be valid.

But that’s not the world we live or work in. Margaret Wheatley’s model of an organization as an organism, influenced for good or ill by everyone in it is where we work now.

I can see why it would be tempting to buy the Proprietary Process to Navigate this Swiftly Changing World. But that’s not how it works. We can’t skip the part where we need to listen to the people that work with and for us, get their feedback, stay alert and open, trust that we, that all of us, have some genius that can be unlocked, often by simply looking for it, seeing it, and nurturing it where we find it.