How to Kiss a Girl

Posted on August 31, 2012 by Ed Britton, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

So, I had a girlfriend and I wanted to kiss her. I’d never kissed a girl before. I’d read about it, seen it done on TV and it didn’t look hard. I could have written instructions that I’m sure would have sounded convincing.

Just the same, there were a lot of questions. I mean, obviously, you had to lean into it. But with your eyes closed how did you know when to stop? If you leaned too far and fast you’d end up with a fat lip or broken teeth. Not far enough and you’d miss. With my frail adolescent ego … well, I rather have a broken tooth!

The lips! Do you pucker up, hang loose, open wide? I’d seen all the variations. What was the right way? Did it vary with the circumstances? And what might those circumstances be? Did what she did with her lips affect what I was supposed to do with mine? And who’s in charge of that anyway? I’m sure 100 years ago it was the guy, but these days – who knows?

Not to mention on TV it looked like the ‘first kiss’ involved a whole lot more anatomy that just the lips, so was I committed to all that? The lips questions were complicated enough but throw in all the other stuff? I don’t think so! Were those really first kisses? Where did they learn to do all that? I guess on TV you get to rehearse, but I’d have to go into this cold.

And what to do with my hands – high, medium, low? Not low! High or medium then – but which one … exactly … where? No idea.

What about HER? Did she have the same questions? Different ones? What if she knew all about it and I’m dork-city?

My solution? I kissed her hair when she was looking the other way. I don’t think she noticed.

So, what’s all this doing in a business column? “How to operate a kissing booth for profit” or something?”

No, actually, it’s about real-life learning. And it has a whole lot in common with kissing girls.

Or swimming or riding a bike or maintaining cash flow during a recession. While you may have read about it, watched the video and attended the conference – you simply won’t know how to do it until you’ve done it.

‘Learning by doing’ is an educational revolution that is now arguably in its 4th decade – and was appreciated long before that. (How old are the disdainful references to “book learning” and “ivory towers?”). So-called learning fads like internships, mentoring, reflective practice, professional development plans and executive coaching, are not fads at all. They are, in fact, manifestations of a structural change, a successionary reality that’s left the ‘old school’ in dusty history books.

The new modes of learning are often reserved for elite learners because of cost and the need for more certainty in the outcome. Really, this is nothing new. Post-graduate university programs have always had a significant ‘hands-on’ component and have been reserved for the brighter, more dedicated students. But the real need for life-long learning has caused mature learners – wise to the limitations of traditional schooling – to look for better ways.

The best returns to a corporation on executive suite continuing education occur when the learning project is planned with intention, integrated with business strategy, invested in top performers and managed by professionals. The revolution in ‘on the job learning’ involves a variety of techniques that should be part of an integrated professional development program and even the overall human resource strategy. But my magazine editor isn’t about to let me write a book, so I’ll focus on one exemplary approach – executive coaching – and leave other complementary tools to another time.

Executive coaching is perhaps the newest and fastest growing addition to the corporate professional development arsenal. It first appeared in the 1990’s in North America, and has since spread around the globe. Executive coaches work internally within corporations, and also ply their wares as external consultants. They have their own professional associations (in Asia, it’s the Asia Pacific Alliance of Coaches headquartered in Singapore), and university certification programs, such as Royal Roads University’s Graduate Certificate in Executive Coaching (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada).

An executive coach is somewhat analogous to a sports coach – a person ‘on the side lines’ who observes, dialogues, develops, and provides feedback and accountability for ramping up performance and winning the game. Coaches work one-on-one or with teams of executives for a designated period on focused performance outcomes that affect the bottom-line. Typically, coaching sessions occur for one hour on a weekly basis (sometimes over the phone) and track specific performance metrics. Pre and post program testing and assessments are used to measure results, and ideally the coachee’s supervisor, peers and subordinates help to guide the process and measure progress.

But the sports coach analogy isn’t perfect. While a sports coach is expert in the specific game and in fact ‘teaches’ the athlete how to play it better, an executive coach insists that the coachee be the expert. The coachee also takes responsibility for his or her development and in fact sets goals, selects techniques for improvement and often measures personal progress. And the coach’s job is to work herself out of a job. In 6 to 18 months, the executive graduates and moves on without the intense coaching relationship.

Does this coaching stuff really work? It isn’t easy to measure the return on investment (ROI) for executive development – not because development doesn’t occur but because executive performance doesn’t lead itself to metric analysis. However, the few studies that have been done suggest an executive coaching ROI in the range of 400-500%1, leaving the dubious results of isolated ‘training courses’ far in the dust. However, coaching generally occurs in concert with other development techniques and it can certainly be argued that these uncommonly high results occur not simply because of this particular approach, but because it is usually applied in the context of a well thought out human resource development program.

Winning in the corporate world is more like carrying off an NBA title than like learning how to run a meeting. Isolated approaches such as training courses fall far short of the necessary investment to get meaningful results. Learning has to be focused on capabilities that matter to the particular business environment, that generate profit and are applied in a world infinitely more diverse and complex than a basketball game. Learning must occur in context and transferred to the business floor to ensure results in the real world.

At the end of the day, you want tangible benefits, even if they fall short of an entirely quantifiable result.

Kinda like kissing a girl!

1. Underhill, B.O, K. McAnally and J. J. Kriath. 2007. Executive coaching for result: The definitive guide to developing organizational leaders. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco.