Coaching a company

Why I want to be like Wendy Rhoades

I have never dreamed of working for a billion-dollar corporation. The field of Human Resources wasn’t ever on my radar. But now I’m suddenly getting excited about both.

Why? Because of Wendy Rhoades. A fictional character in the TV show ‘Billions’. 

She’s a psychologist working as the in-house performance coach for a big hedge fund. Of course, it’s all dramatized and fictional, but the character is partly based on a real person and you can feel that.

I don’t remember what initially attracted me to the show. As I mentioned last week, I don’t follow the finance world, let alone high stakes hedge fund management. And although I do enjoy the show, part of why I keep watching is out of professional interest. As a coach, I’m always interested to see how coaches are portrayed and Wendy is a well-researched, interesting, and dynamic character.

In one episode, Wendy is asked what her exact role in the company is. Her response: ‘Performance coach and head of HR’.

Wait, what? You can apply coaching to HR?

A sudden flash of insight. I had never thought much of HR, but looking at human resources from a (performance) coaching viewpoint, I suddenly realized how valuable (and excitingly interesting) this job could be.

Could this be a whole new field of interest for me?

Putting the Human back in HR

Disclaimer: I’ve never consciously thought about the realm of Human Resources, so this article might be coming from a position of ignorance. But maybe my relative naïveté can be an advantage, helping me to form a fresh opinion from scratch.

The reason why I’ve never taken notice of HR is because in the companies I’ve worked for, the department has always felt like more of a nuisance than anything else. Not human-centered at all.

The interactions I’ve had with HR people have been pretty unimaginative, cold, and disciplinary. 

The name doesn’t help either. ‘Human resources’ sounds like the company is draining the employees from their life force. Oh I’m just a resource am I? Reminds me of the batteries of dormant humans hooked up to a bunch of tubes in the movie The Matrix. More like ‘inhuman resources’ (I know, dad joke).

But maybe I just haven’t come across the right ones.

Closing the loop

The HR departments I have interacted with, before I was self-employed, were never about inspiration, growth, or what employees need. Apparently they didn’t believe that what’s good for the person, is good for the company. While the humans were seen as resources, there weren’t many resources flowing in the other direction.

Closing that loop seems like a better way of growing together (company and humans). Building an HR department built on mutual growth and founded on coaching values makes so much more sense. And I’m imagining that in strong, future-focused, progressive companies, they already know this.

I can see at least two categories of coaching values that are necessary to make this happen:

• True support

  Taking into account people’s autonomy (self-determination) and holding them in unconditional positive regard. Safe and open communication (supportive conversation and nonviolent communication) would be the standard and part of company-wide training. 

• True challenge

  Potential leads. Everybody’s best self is the aim, seeing where they can go vs. where they are now. This creates a culture of honesty, calling out blindspots, constructive criticism, and (self-)assessment.

Drenched in the belief that the best support system produces the best people and their personal performance adds up to the best company (results), this will be a self-reinforcing, upward spiral. 

When the mental health and performance of all of the employees is nurtured, this can only benefit the company as a whole.

Coaching the company

I’m extremely curious and secretly optimistic that this could be the way to approach HR in the future. Working with the whole company as a coach would work with a client. Seeing the company as a living organism, which it is, and making sure that coaching is part and parcel of every aspect of the company and extends into the culture.

HR would be present in every important meeting, not to take note of the content but to be focused on the people having the meeting. How are they doing, what are they saying, how are they (non-verbally) communicating, what are they not saying, how are they responding, are they quiet, are they verbose, are they loud, are they aggressive or shy?

All of these things would be in constant assessment. Not from a disciplinary standpoint, but from a supportive standpoint. How can they be optimal and how can we support them in that? That would be the ever present question. Human growth would be the focus of HR.

Extending coaching values throughout the company and building it into the foundations would cultivate an entirely different (and more human) way of working together. In human-driven companies (aren’t they all?), when human growth is optimized, the company benefits.

In ‘Billions’, Wendy is responsible for everything related to human interaction, performance, and mental health. She helped me imagine what HR could be, when approaching it purely through a coaching lens: a person (or department) responsible for fostering a strong company culture, training, communication, and ultimately the performance and (mental) health of every employee. And in turn the company itself.

I realized that if such a job exists, I want it. And if it doesn’t exist, I’d love to build it with a progressive, forward-thinking company.

And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a billion-dollar one.