David Clutterbuck led an excellent session on some upcoming research on the relationship between coaching, talent management and succession planning.

At the heart of the issue is what the talent is being developed for? And what do we mean by talent?

Interestingly the evidence would suggest that line managers are very poor at identifying talent and that direct reports are more effective at identifying talent. Even more useful is an approach that encourages people to put themselves forward and that perhaps coaching is best focussed around supporting this decision process for the individual.

Another observation was that traditional succession planning and talent management tended to perpetuate models of behaviour and performance relationships – and that there was a generational gap issue with baby boomers imprinting their own experience and expectations on new-millennials.

There was a discussion about organisational capture and imprinting – there is a train of thought that excuses the failure of talent management and succession planning on the basis that individuals naturally tend to evolve to a set of expected managerial behaviours as they mature. However the alternate view is that poor succession planning will perpetuate poor succession planning – if you truly want to break the mould then the succession planning and talent management has to be done in the style which you wish to espouse for the future.

So there is a future in coaching succession planners!

Sometimes as coaches we get stuck with our client. Our client is stuck and we get stuck. At that stage the temptation is for the client to ask for a solution 'what do you think?' or for the coach to offer a solution.

But pause..resist temptation, what is being brought into the room at that place and time? How can we use the 'stuckness' as an opportunity? How far is the 'stuckness' representative of the sort of issues and dilemmas faced by the client? There is nothing wrong with the coach bringing the fact into the room that both of you are stuck. Indeed it can be powerful. What is the pattern that has created the impasse?

The next stage is to interrupt the pattern. Try going 'second' order - but at the same time do something symbolically different that interrupts the pattern of the coaching but might also interrupt the pattern of being and doing that the client has been inhabited to get them to the point of stuckness.

Consider changing the physical environment and activity levels - go for a walk, shift into a different environment that provides very different cues and context. Moving from an office to a hotel might not cut it. Use exercises such as drawing how being stuck really feels; imaging how someone else they respect and whose opinion they value was in the room and observing the stuckness. Or just choose someone else - Obama, Beckham, Mandela.

The aim is to interrupt the pattern and use the disruption not just to help unstick and move on but also to reflect on what the process and outcome has to say about the nature of the old pattern and the potential for the new pattern.

This train of thought was prompted by an excellent presentation by Lindsay Wittenberg at the EMCC Uk annual conference. It made me realise that I was not unsticking difficult moments as well as I should or could. Thanks Lindsay