Jennifer Gerves Keen Mentorship for Executive Coaching

Hi, Jennifer, how are you today?

I'm good, thanks. How are you?

Good. This is actually part 2 of our earlier conversation in which we talked about your organization and some of the incredibly brilliant things you're doing for the executive coaching community and for stakeholders around coaching communities. So as part of the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches, as a master-level coach, I know that one of your specialties is that you are a mentor coach. And so I wanted to talk to you a little bit about that because you're actually from Canada.

Yes. Yeah.

And so just, you know what, just so that people know, give us your name, give us the name of your organization again.

Okay, so Jennifer Jarvis Keene of JGDK Consulting based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Great, great. So there is a lot of discussion about mentor coach and supervision coach.

Mm-hmm, yeah.

They are getting so confused by everybody. I have just gotten very straight on it myself. I think if it doesn't shift, And the fact that there are so many people, basically master-level coaches in the United States, who don't see a need, don't see a value, and say, oh, it's a European thing. It's fine if you're going to be a psychologist. We don't need it. So let's start with what is the difference from your perspective between a mentor coach and a Supervisor coach or supervision coach?

Yeah, so interestingly enough, so to your point, I am a certified mentor coach. Interestingly enough, I also have currently a supervisory relationship. I'm working with a supervisory coach. So I think where the confusion comes from is that the mentor coaches actually do what I would call supervision.

Okay.

Supervisory coaches actually do what I would call mentoring, and I think that's where it gets a little, like, a little nuts because we didn't— like, the supervisory coach for me in the profession, it may have been around for a while, but it's, it's a relatively new thing for a lot of people, whereas the mentor coach piece has always been part of, you know, certification process and all that sort of stuff. So Basically, a mentor coach. So as a certified mentor coach, I am qualified and designated to listen to coaches' conversations with their clients, give them feedback on the coaching, ask them you know to work on certain aspects of their coaching. I can observe their conversations with their clients, etc., etc., etc. So and some of that might be mentoring them also in their in their business. That sort of stuff. So that for me is the mentor coach role, and I think it's been that way for some time.

I'm sorry, you said some of it may be, and I think the voice came off.

So some of it may be when you mentor them, like if they're starting their business, that can also be part of it. But the real role of the mentor coach, as far as I've understood, is that you are the person who is helping them become a better coach because you're giving them direct feedback on their coaching conversations that they're either recording or that you're, you know, listening in when they're on the phone or whatever it is. The supervisory coach, and I'm working with one right now because she's going through her training to be a supervisory coach and asked me to be one of her people that she supervises. Is more of a— how do I explain it? It's more of a space where, as an advanced and experienced coach, I can bring up challenges or things that I wanna talk to you that I might be experiencing with my clients or with myself.

It's not—

And this is where it gets confusing, I think, because I'm not being supervised and it's not about increasing my skill set. It's about giving me a space where I can walk through challenges or, hey, this went down with a client the other day and I'm kind of feeling certain things because I obviously, I've been doing this for a while. I know my business really well. The supervisory coach that I'm working with, she explained to me pretty clearly that her job is to create this space for me that I can just— It's like a— it's like having a colleague, really, that you can just, you know, bounce stuff off of. And, you know, she comes in and she's like, what do you want to talk about today? And I can just, you know, bring up whatever. But there's no— like, there's no, let's look at this competency set. And there's no, you know, you're not asking enough questions, or you completely missed this. Like, she doesn't listen to anything. She doesn't— it's all my— Like, it's all my story and where I sit. So it's interesting because that's new for me. I got introduced to supervisory coaching earlier this year, and it's interesting. But yeah, I totally get how people get so mixed up in it because the names don't match the tasks. So it's— and really, if they could go back, they should switch them. I think the mentor coach should be a supervisory coach because that's really what we do. And I think the supervisory coach should be a mentor coach because that's— and there isn't even that much mentorship. It's more, like I said, it's more of sitting down with a colleague and them saying, how are things going? And, you know, you share whatever you're struggling with. And that can be about your clients, but it could also be about my business or where I want to go or how I'm feeling about certain things or my own, you know, like self-care, like that kind of stuff can come up in the supervisory coaching. So So yeah, it's, um, it's a murky area for sure. Definitely.

So would you say in this supervisory coach situation, they're holding up a mirror for you, or is it more like a peer-to-peer discussion?

For me, at least with this in my relationship, and maybe it's different, right? Because everybody's different. For me, what I've experienced so far is It's more of a peer-to-peer. Every once in a while she will make an observation or point something out like, hey, you know, you said that at the beginning of the conversation and now you're saying this. Like, she'll definitely do that, but it's not, you know, it's not like it's not being challenged to the point of really making you kind of think. It's more of an exploratory tone to it. But like I said, that could be the specific person that I'm working with. Somebody else might be a little bit more along those lines. Like I said, she does make observations and pull things out and, you know, calls me on stuff to say, well, you just said the exact opposite like 20 minutes ago. Like, she does do that, but not in a— I would say not in a challenging way.

Not in a contentious way.

No, in a very supportive, exploratory, hey, that's interesting, let's look at that kind of way.

You know, it's difficult for us, I think, in the United States. I don't know if it's the same in Canada. Of course, you know, I have a problem. I am geographically challenged because I think of Canada as part of the United States.

Don't be doing that, especially not right now. We are separate. There is a border. We're gonna build a wall.

We won't go there. But here, a supervisor is thought of as somebody who had a— has a blue-collar job. And I don't mean that disparagingly, but with— but it's somebody who comes in and says, you're assigned this, you do this, you do that, and this is what will happen. And that's the way we think of A supervisor as being—

Yeah, I always like the word supervisor for me is like middle management, kind of.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

So yeah, and so it's a weird— like, I honestly don't know why they, they picked that term because I am not at all in that relationship being supervised in any way, shape, or form. Yeah, I would almost call it supportive as opposed to supervising. Like, it's, it's not at all directive or telling me what to do or any of that. So I, like, I get why people are having a hard time with it.

Yes. And in Europe, it seems to be more accepted. Here, it seems as though, you know, don't touch that because, you know, first of all, the master-level coaches are like, I don't think so. And it's, it's an imply that you don't know your craft, that you need somebody to sort of lead you by the hand.

Yeah, so you see, and so see, I would argue that because you're— it's like when I see people on LinkedIn and they say, you know, best coach in the world.

Oh my God, yes.

Right? No, never gonna happen. So you are coaching, as we all know, there's got to be a fit. I could be the best coach in the world for some of my clients. I could be the worst coach in the world, or maybe not, but like not the best, for others, right? So it's not about ever getting to the box and going, boom, done, I'm the best, I'm the master, right? And so, and that's why I was interested to explore this supervisory thing when it was offered to me, because I thought, oh, this is different, this is cool, let's see what it does. It's You cannot, in my opinion, you cannot be a master coach if you are not continually learning and evolving and working with others. You just, you can't get to that level and stay stagnant and think that you can continue to work in mastery, if that's what you wanna call it, right?

Yes.

There's always gonna be stuff that shows up that you don't know. And for me, one of the biggest signs of being a master coach is being someone who embraces that and dives into it and figures it out and learns all about it and then adds it to their toolbox and keeps going.

Right.

You can't be closed off at this stuff. I get the fact that it doesn't sound, it sounds a little bit out there and it doesn't sound all that useful. It's something that you need to know about because it's becoming part of the profession, and people are going to ask you about it. And I feel so much better when I've actually experienced something that I can actually say, hey, this is what it is, this is what I got out of it or didn't, you know, and here's what I would recommend for you or not based on my experience. You can't do that if you don't actually experience it. So closing the door on anything, unless obviously unethical or illegal, Um, just for me, it's short-sighted, and, and it's not— it's— you got to be doing— if you're so much about your client's growth, then you've got to be one step ahead of them in your own. That's, that's always how I've looked at it.

And then let's go back to mentor coach for a while. Did that require a special training?

Yeah.

Is that training different than being a supervisor coach, or being part of coaching supervision?

Yeah, so as far as I know, I haven't done the coaching supervision training, but I'm assuming, just because the person that I'm working with is in it, that it's very different to the mentor coach training. So the mentor coach training, you are given very specific guidelines and competencies that you need to be looking for in coaching conversations. They walk you through how you're supposed to be giving that feedback. feedback, because a lot of it— there's a lot of certification programs that require, you know, 10 hours with a mentor coach. You don't have to be, as far as I know, a certified mentor coach to do those 10 hours, but I found it really helpful to have like templates and systems and things that you can use with people to be able to help them become better coaches. So it's— for me, it's a much more Structured training than the supervision piece. Supervision piece seems to be much more, like I said, of a free-flowing exploratory, create a safe space, which if you're a Master Coach, you already know how to do. So I, you know, I'm not sure what that training looks like, but the Mentor Coach certification training is quite structured and based on, you know, a certain number of hours and You need to understand competencies and what makes a good coach and what's considered, you know, all that sort of stuff, right? So there's, there's a bit more theory behind it, I would say.

And as a supervisor coach, do you feel that if a coach has a peer-to-peer group that they still need a supervisor coach?

Not necessarily. It depends. what that peer-to-peer group brings them, and is it an equal sharing, right? Because in some peer groups you can have one person that talks all the time and nobody else has anything, right?

Yes.

So, because I think one of the purposes of that supervisory coaching is that, you know, I can come to that session knowing that I have an hour and it's all about me and my clients and my business, and I can just put anything I want out there. So the peer group would have to satisfy that, you know, safe space, equal time, everybody gets a chance to share whatever they need to share. But I think that a peer group would be, you know, a fairly similar purpose as long as it was well set up and you had the right mix of people in it.

Great. Well, Jennifer, this has been terrific. You know what, let me just check my questions. Is there anything that I didn't ask you that you'd like to share with our audience?

Um, I honestly can't, I can't remember what I said. Um, no, I don't think so.

Oh, here's, here's a good one we didn't talk to, is what should an organization look for when hiring an executive coach?

Right. So, um, and I, and one of the reasons that I wanted to talk about this is because There's a lot of times when I go into a client and they've had a coaching experience and it wasn't a good one. And so the first thing that I need to do is like deconstruct to reconstruct, and it takes time because now you have to get them to buy into the fact that coaching could actually be good and effective, whereas they're looking at it as a waste of time and a waste of money because nothing actually changed with whoever they worked with before. So I think that when an organization is looking for an executive coach, you want to be making sure you have someone that's going to understand your business, your culture, who's going to be able to create relationships quickly, who's going to be able to build trust quickly, who's going to say what they think and not what they think you want to hear. I'm very fortunate in my business. I can turn clients down that I don't want to work with, and so I have the Liberty to be very honest with people. And if that's not what they want to hear, then I don't work with them because there's no point. So I think that as an organization, you know, whether you put out an RFP or whether you're, you know, just going by referrals, you want to meet at least 3 or 4. You want to find a style that works with your people. The executive coach that you hire to work for, you know, an international bank may not be the same person that you hire to work with a construction company.

Hmm.

You gotta have a style and an understanding and an approach that's going to work with the population that you're going to work with. So I think organizations should spend more time potentially seeking out different people. I also think that if you get a coach who's 100% married to their own method, those for me are red flags. If they're only going to do it their way and they only do like, it's got to be this assessment and this is and this is the process and da da da da da, and they're not even asking what the client actually wants to get out of it, for me that's a warning sign because they're going to do it their way and that's not necessarily what the person sitting in front of them needs.

Well, do you think that that's the fault of the coach or is it the fault of organizations who continually say in an RFP, what is your methodology?

I think, I think it's fair to ask what your methodology is. I mean, it shows where people were trained and what they use. Um, I think it's, yeah, I think it's, I think organizations need to be flexible in looking at the whole picture of what the coach is bringing and the background and, you know, what they're interested in. And like I said, and how they show up, you know, does the energy match? the people that they're going to work with. I also think coaches need to be more flexible. I get it, if you like something, you want to use it over and over and over again, but there will be a day when you'll be sitting in front of someone and what you do is not working for them. And that's, for me, that's up to you as a coach to go back and try something else and see what else works. And you got to try and fit yourself to your client, and if you don't want to do that, then they shouldn't be your client. You should, you should go find someone else, right? But it's about giving the best service to the person that you're coaching at the end of the day.

Is there a good way to find out really quickly that what you're doing is not working? What blinders do we need to remove as coaches to be able to see that?

To get out? Yeah, I think, you know, I always do Like, I always do pretty regular check-ins. Like, if I start with a new client and I've been working with them for a month or two, I spend 15 minutes and I'm like, so what have you, what have you liked so far? What have you not liked so far? And, and it's just, and we do that little mini evaluation thing so I can know what's working. What's really interesting when they say, you know, things like, oh, I don't really like that. I always like, okay, you don't like it because it makes you uncomfortable or you don't like it because it's not working?

Oh, you know what?

So because they will, because they, you know, there's that mirror, right? So, but, but it is important to know. And I think a lot of the times, if you're paying attention to your client, you will know when they're not responsive. You know, they'll start, you know, they'll start not showing up or they're going to be late or they haven't done the stuff they said they were going to do, or, right? Like you just gotta be paying attention to the relationship.

That is such a terrific way to end this. Well, Jennifer, I hope that we can have an appointment to come back and talk to you some more.

Absolutely, always.

Great, thank you so much. I look forward to seeing you at the MECO Leadership Conference and to hearing your presentation so we can hear more tips.

Yeah, it's gonna be good.

Thank you, bye.

Bye.