Interview with Marta Williams, CEO and founder of Williams and Associates
I would like to share with you on this occasion an interview with Marta Williams, considered the “mother” of executive coaching in our country back in the 80s. It is a real pleasure to talk and learn with this master of organizational coaching and talk about the origins of executive coaching in our country and its relationship with leadership development.
A second interview after the one conducted in the previous post with Manuel Seijo.
Marta Williams is a native of Washington, D.C. Executive Coach, Professor of Leadership, Journalist. He was part of the founding team of El País. Foreign correspondent for years for AbcNews, radio and television. Coach of managers and executives of important international companies (Microsoft, American Express, Telefónica, Siemens, Hewlett Packard, Coca Cola, Ericsson, Disney, among others). Founder of The Washington Quality Group, The Institute of Coaching, Williams and Associates. CDR Certified. Senior Coach at CoachSource, Proud Member of Alexcel Group and Accredited Master Coach of Marshall Goldsmith.
In turn. Marta Williams is an adjunct professor at Instituto de Empresa and other business schools in Spain, the USA and Latin America. She has taught as a teacher to many coaches in Spain, from the Instituto de Empresa, European Center for Executive Coaching, Aecop (Spanish Association of Executive and Organizational Coaching).
I hope you find it as inspiring as I did, enjoy it!
Interview with Marta Williams
Q: What is executive coaching for you?
A: For me it is the attempt to help an executive expand their self-knowledge in order to understand themselves better and based on that to be able to lead better. In English we talk about “self awareness”, which will lead you to lead better and also to be able to help others to know themselves better. One of the things I’ve always loved about coaching is that everything we do with our clients is that it helps them do the same with other people. We teach leaders to lead better so that they teach other leaders. I don’t know if it’s a circle or an endless ladder, but I believe that no executive can lead others if they don’t know themselves. It is a cascading quest towards self-knowledge.
Q: What do we need to do as coaches to help someone else get to know themselves better?
A: We will have to make the same effort with ourselves or we will not be able to help anyone else. In addition to getting to know each other, we have to do what, in the words of Marshall Goldsmith, is the most important thing in coaching, which is “measure, measure, measure”. He’s been saying that for years and I think he’s right, it’s the secret that has made him the number one executive coach in America.
Q: Marta Williams, you are considered the “mother” of executive coaching in Spain, how did you experience those beginnings, (back in the 80s) of executive coaching in Spain?
A: At first it was not easy. There were people who were dedicated to executive coaching who did not have any specific training or preparation for it. In the first years of coaching in Spain there were many people who practiced a version of psychoanalysis, but without documentation or specific studies in medicine or psychiatry. Around the same time, a completely different school started in California. The reasons why it was created were totally different and I was in contact with them because it had more to do with my background. At that time, in the early 80s, “360º feedback” began to be used in companies there. I met several of the people who worked on 360º feedback versions and worked on how to distribute it in companies with that effort to help people get to know each other better. That meant asking people who knew them well and were also willing to say what they perceived so that it could improve. That is “self-awareness”: “you who know me well, who work with me, how do you perceive me?” At first they were discussions and then 360º feedback instruments. The first one I saw was 15 questions, the same even if you worked for Coca-Cola or Iberia. They were not different questionnaires even though they worked in different companies, with different corporate cultures. At first they were also not anonymous and they asked “face to face”, so it did not work, the truth was not told.
Q: Why do you think it is important in a coaching process to complement the client’s opinion with the perception of the environment?
A: If the goal is self-knowledge, if you ask the opinion only of the customer you only get a vision. But the human being is not capable of being objective about himself. One, because he doesn’t know. Two, because our own perception is so important that it is an unfair and somewhat silly pursuit. Very few people can be objective about themselves. We have to look for people who know us well, who know what we are like and are so generous that they are willing to answer us anonymously.
Q: For this process to work well, what should the expectations of the coach and the client look like?
A: On the part of the client, it means understanding what self-knowledge is. It means increasing your knowledge of others’ perception of you and also helping you in your response to receiving that feedback. That’s feedback, it’s other people’s opinion of you according to their point of view. Feedback should be positive and negative. Unfortunately it sometimes has a negative connotation, but it really is any information about the perception of others about you, and you should be based on your strengths (what you do well) and your areas for improvement, (where you can continue to grow). In those beginnings that I mentioned we had to start building a “feedback culture”. I remember in the United States we used to say that feedback was the “Breakfast of Champions”. You can’t get better without getting feedback every day: receiving it, listening to it, and responding to it. The second stage was how to do it so that people received that information and managed it in an optimal way. At that time, the figure of the coach emerged, to help the client assimilate that feedback from the 360º evaluations in an appropriate way and to know what to do with that feedback later.
Follow the interview with Marta Williams
Q: What role did the coach play in those beginnings?
A: At that time I remember that I was working with a world-famous company, a financial institution present in more than 130 countries, based in New York. I was given a 360º feedback report from one of their managers and later he admitted to me that he had been thinking about that report for many nights and that there had even come a time when it crossed his mind to commit suicide. And I, along with many other people who were already in the early days in the United States analyzing the best way to give feedback, saw that it was essential that this feedback be well prepared, well structured. We never left that report in their hands for more than two or three hours to be watched alone. That is why first what we did was to see those 360º reports and we prepared the session well to discuss it the next day with them. We gave them the report to read with them and began to do “coaching” with them. That is how “executive coaching” began.
Q: What steps did you have to take into account to accompany this feedback process?
A: First, we had to explain to the client the difference between the perception of others and reality. The people you have chosen to give you feedback show you their perception, it is their “truth”, but it does not have to be the “truth”. For them it is like that, they perceive you that way. But it’s not you. Everything is a game of perception, it is nothing more than that. It’s nothing more than their “truth”, those people have the right to think that about you. That’s where we started. Today, forty years later, this explanation is not so necessary. The client understands that they are perceptions and that now they must understand what the people around them are based on to have that “perception” about them. It’s how they have understood what he does and says. I always say that this is like a Newtonian pendulum: what I do and say in front of you is the departure of the pendulum. The swing of the pendulum, (in the opposite direction and at the same speed) is the perception that is formed of me based on what I have said and done. Therefore, perception is a double game, it is what I do/say (pendulum’s departure) and what you perceive about me, (the pendulum’s turn).
Q: Marta Williams, you have explained then the first step of accompanying the customer to become aware and understand that feedback about how others perceive them. And after this reflection, what is the next step?
A: Once the customer has understood the importance of receiving feedback, asks for it, assimilates it, takes it as a “breakfast of champions”, then needs to decide what to change. And that step cannot be done alone, he needs a coach in that process of change. The coach makes you understand why your life, your development and your leadership will be better if you change some things you didn’t know about yourself. The coach helps you see why it’s worth changing some things you’ve noticed on your path of self-knowledge.
Q: How do you see the situation of executive coaching in our country now?
A: At the time of the beginnings of coaching in Spain there were many consultants who were dedicated to coaching but they were not qualified coaches. Later, it was understood that if this was going to be a profession, there should be training schools for coaches. More and more importance has been given to the professionalization of executive coaching.
There are still some big misconceptions about executive coaching. For me, the formula should be sought to increase self-knowledge through 360º feedback by asking questions about behaviors from a corporate point of view. I believe that the same type of 360º evaluation should not be done for different companies, I believe that they should be tailored and by the same employees. To make the 360º feedback questions model, I believe that different levels of the organization must intervene, it must be simple and adapted to the organizational culture. I also believe that the group of coaches who are working on coaching in an organization to enhance the leadership of managers should use a unified methodology. In each organization, when coaching processes begin, the company has to define where it wants to go, what the objectives of the organization are. Coaches have to be aligned with the organization they work with and know that culture and those objectives.
Q: What would you like to add to finish?
A: For me, the goal in executive coaching is to help a professional ask for and thank for feedback, to know how to listen to it and ask for help from someone who is objective to grow, improve, develop through the feedback they get. Based on this feedback, the person decides what they want to improve and carries out action plans to achieve measurable results. In this way, the professional evolves as a leader and also through example inspires the people who are on their team.
And you, what do you think about this topic?
What reflections do these ideas inspire you that you want to share after reading the interview with Marta Williams?
