Coaching for Flow

Few interventions produce a more lasting and positive impact on leaders and teams than accessing flow. It’s like hiring excellent leadership coaches, personal trainers and business consultants for everyone on your team. Yet, after decades of research, flow remains a fringe idea.

A 10-year study at McKinsey found that flow makes executives five times more effective, so in flow, a time-starved CEO could finish a week’s worth of work on Monday. Additionally, research at  Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency shows that accessing flow cuts learning time in half, clearly optimizing Learning and Development departments. Flow can cut years off a star performer’s road to the C-suite, keeping vital talent in house.

What’s more, scientists say we no longer need to compromise between work and play. Flow is an “optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best.” So, why isn’t this mainstream already?

For one, flow is shrouded by outlier groups like extreme athletes, making it feel unapproachable. Accessing flow is complex and requires taking risks and feeling discomfort that people naturally shy away from. Finally, the conditions that inhibit flow—email, meetings, distractions, unclear guidance—are norms in the business world. To gain the benefits above, we are asking leaders to fundamentally change business as we know it.

So how can coaches move this super solution forward for our leaders and coaching clients?

Here are four strategies that I use to help clients tap into flow.

1) Meaningful Goals

Flow requires a clear end state. When building a piece of furniture, the meaning is clear: a new table. For executives, the meaning is more abstruse. Good coaches always work with clients to pinpoint meaning while setting agreements and asking questions like, “What is important about this?” If meaning is not part of the conversation, your client will not find flow.

We recognize asking powerful questions and creating awareness as fundamental components of great coaching, just as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found clarity around the task imperative for triggering flow. Coaches all have a version of SMART goals. In order to help clients reliably access flow, attach quality goals to lofty ideas and newfound awareness.

2) Get Risky

In my business, we use strategies to push the boundaries of coaching with risk. We take our leaders and teams on outdoor adventures like backpacking while we coach. Why? Steven Kotler explains the neurochemistry behind triggering flow with risk, and simply put, risk demands the right amount of attention. Find ways to insert risk and edginess into your coaching and leadership development so leaders can practice flow skills in a safe place. We often use physical risk like rock climbing, but emotional, social and creative risks all work, too. Simultaneously address organizational and personal beliefs around failure with your client. Often a client’s or company’s fear of failure implicitly stifles risk-taking, thereby blocking access to flow.

3) Constant Feedback

We have all experienced coaching where we noticed somatic and emotional shifts. Giving immediate feedback on these observations usually leads to the coaching breakthroughs that keep us inspired. If you coach your client once or twice a month, they simply can’t get that feedback often enough to access flow. In flow, say while snowboarding, feedback comes in millisecond bursts. Without the ability to notice and correct for immediate feedback, the extreme snowboarder could perish. In business, however, feedback comes in a slow drip and often only annually.

Partner with your client to find support systems that will offer feedback on a daily or, at the very least, weekly basis. Consider shorter more frequent coaching sessions and find ways to get your client small unexpected wins at work. A “good job” sticky note on your client’s desk from the boss is often all the feedback needed to drop into the zone.

4) Eliminate Distractions

A study found employees can expect 87 interruptions per day at work! No wonder we have trouble accessing a 100% focused super-state! Flow requires complete concentration. Of course, as a good coach, you show up centered and present. Keep modeling this for your client. Also, work with your client to identify and eliminate distractions, or none of your flow efforts will succeed. This could look like minimizing open concept office designs, crafting understandings with the boss on email blackout times, and accessing mindfulness resources to increase capacity for attention holding.

Coaching for flow is actually not that hard. You are probably using ICF Core Competencies and doing most of this already. Put some focus and distinctions around flow in your coaching agreement. Then, co-create flow situations with clients by getting crystal clear on meaning and goals, introducing some risk as a flow trigger, honing immediate feedback, and helping to eliminate distractions. Tweak your process to offer a new benefit to clients that could help make them five times more effective!