Research Paper Assessment Name: Raju Bhatnagar Date: 17th October 2012 Email: bhatnagar_101@yahoo.co.

in

Complete your 2000 word research paper and insert it in the space below. Then email this document as an attachment to assessment@icoachacademy.com

Case Study: Regaining Work Life Balance

The following is a Case Study of a Coaching engagement I completed recently. It gave me a sense of satisfaction of having played the role of a Coach effectively and being able to observe the outcomes and the satisfaction that my client got. The reason I am structuring this Coaching engagement as a Case Study is that it provided me with one of my first opportunities to address both professional and personal issues for my Client simultaneously. I found it immensely enriching and educative and felt it would be appropriate to share it with my fellow Coaches. Situation My client, Hari1, is a 35 year old person. He is a successful professional and has consistently been a high performer in his organisation. He has built an image of himself as a go-getter, a person who can be depended upon for meeting targets and

Name of the client has been changed to protect his identity. However, my client has given me permission to share the highlights of our engagement. He has seen this document and accorded his approval for it as well. Research Paper submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements for CPCP to ICA Page 1 of 5

deadlines and also a person who is readily willing to step in and help his colleagues whenever they seek his assistance. Hari has been married for 8 years and his wife used to work as well. Both had successful careers and put in long working hours at their respective work-places. As a matter of routine, both Hari and his wife would identify the long week-ends in the beginning of the year and plan short vacation trips around those dates. This would enable them to take about 6 to 7 short vacation trips together annually. Apart from these short vacation trips, they did not take much time off or take long vacation breaks. About 2 years ago, Hari and his wife decided to start a family and last year (December 2011) they were blessed with a baby boy. However, since then Haris work and marital life has been going steadily downhill. In fact for the first time in his working career, he was rated as Fair in his annual appraisal for 2011-12, a stark difference from his usual ratings of Very Good or Outstanding. Hari was at a complete loss on how to reverse this downhill slide. One of Haris friends suggested that Hari try working with a Coach. His friend had had a positive intervention by a Coach and had benefitted considerably. Hari had never worked with a Coach before and was sceptical of the whole process. However, having tried out a few options on his own, and not succeeded to any significant degree, he agreed to work with a Coach despite his scepticism. Desired Outcome Hari articulated his goal as: How to cope with the work pressure and balance personal life? His desire was to regain his professional credibility, standing and competence and also recapture the halcyon days of matrimonial bliss. Approach Hari reached out to me in early April, 2012 to understand what Coaching entailed and what could be the likely outcomes. I spent the first two sessions (pro bono) explaining what Coaching was all about, its boundaries and the Coaching Process. Thereafter, while Haris scepticism did not diminish, his overriding need to have the issues resolved took precedence and he agreed to 6 Coaching sessions, which were later extended by another 6 sessions.

Research Paper submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements for CPCP to ICA

Page 2 of 5

I started by asking Hari to recollect when things started to go downhill. He narrated that his wife had a difficult pregnancy and during the third trimester, she needed to be taken for frequent check-ups. Despite the support of the extended family his wife felt, and he concurred, that he needed to be accompany her for all her visits to her doctor. Often this needed to be done during working hours and it resulted in Hari having to be away from work for nearly half a day at a time. As a result of these absences, the backlog of work started piling up and he began missing deadlines and slipping on commitments. On several occasions, having missed a deadline or slipped up on a commitment, in his anxiety to catch up, Hari felt compelled to set unrealistic time lines for his team and himself. In his own words Hari said he was programming himself to fail again and again. In order to catch up with pending work, he started working late in office and also during week-ends. Since it was a stressful time for his wife, she neither appreciated nor encouraged his working late or working from home. Keeping late hours and sleep deprivation resulted in his efficiency being reduced and needing more time to perform the tasks at hand. Given his earlier track record, his bosses (three of them, since this is a matrixed organisation) initially overlooked his slip-ups, but two consecutive delays resulted in the loss of one remunerative project and a levy of penalty on another. This did not go down well at all with Haris bosses. At around this time Hari needed to take time off to be with his wife for the delivery of his son, which aggravated an already precarious situation, specially since it was the end of the quarter in which the maximum business was normally booked. Upon his return to his home with his new born son, things did not improve at all and both work and marital fronts continued to head south. Things reached a nadir when he worked through a week-end and his wife, in frustration, moved to her parents home with their little son. I worked with Hari using the following approaches and tools: Patient listening allowing a catharsis of pent up emotions. Probing questions enabling Hari to reflect of half formed thoughts and statements he made. Delayering by allowing Hari to think back into his recent past to try and identify the commencement of his problems and also triggers that started the downslide. Wheel of Life to help Hari clarify for himself his priorities for goal-setting and to allow him to plan so that his life would be closer to his definition of balance.

Research Paper submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements for CPCP to ICA

Page 3 of 5

Perceptual Positioning to help Hari understand his and his wifes perspectives of his marital life and thereafter determine an appropriate approach. Visualisation to enable Hari to look forward into the future and visualise for himself what his future looks like. Commitment to action encouraging Hari to outline and document, with a time line, steps that he had decided to take to restore his professional and marital relationships.

Verbatim comments made by Hari during and after the Coaching Sessions It gives me a sense of satisfaction that I have created a structure for dealing with issues that I faced. I can feel the difference between feeling that things will always remain the same and knowing that I am in control of improving my own situation The successful path that I feel I am currently on is largely due to two things that you helped me with (i) learning to plan my work in a structured and repeatable way, and (ii) taking all of my commitments seriously. When I spend time with my family now, specially during week-ends, I am mentally present as well. I am not worried about work, because I know precisely what has been done so far and how the plans for the coming two quarters look. My wife, and even my little son, notices the difference.

Results Hari approached his bosses and sought an appointment from them. During his meeting with his bosses, he did not proffer any excuses for the drop in his performance, but in a matter of fact manner stated areas where his performance was not up to the mark. His bosses were totally disarmed by his honesty and candour even though Hari was stating what they already knew. Thereafter, Hari apologised for his inadequate performance and outlined his plan to get his work back on rails and also shared with his bosses a time line for his action plans. Not only did his bosses appreciate the effort that Hari had made, but also offered to support him during his journey back. Happily, for Hari, most of this journey has been completed and his work is appreciated by his bosses. Recently, he was awarded with the Best Employee for the Quarter in his business division which gave Hari immense satisfaction. Hari had a frank discussion with his wife and reassured her that he cared deeply for her and her happiness mattered a lot to him. He explained to her that there
Page 4 of 5

Research Paper submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements for CPCP to ICA

was need for him to put in extra hours of work to clear the accumulated backlog. He committed to her that he would clear the backlog in a period of three months. However, during this period he would ensure that he did not bring work home at all and devote the week-ends to his family. He did add a caveat, that there might be occasions when emergencies might require him to work on week-ends but promised to keep these to a minimum. For good measure, he quantified it as well, that he would not work more than 10% of the week-ends. Here too, Hari has managed to clear the backlog of work, thereby reducing pressure of work and he has started coming home at a decent hour, much to the relief and happiness of his wife. Thirdly, Hari had an open, but informal, discussion with his peers within the organisation. He shared that in his effort to help his peers; he had been accepting all requests for assistance. This took up considerable time and was impacting his own deliverables. Hari, placed his cards on the table and said that he would love to continue to help, but there would be occasions when he would not be able to do so. He wanted his peers to appreciate his constraints and that his refusal should not be taken amiss. Hari was keen to ensure that he continued to maintain cordial relationships with his peer group. Most of his peer group were appreciative of the honesty exhibited by Hari and a couple of them admitted that they often palmed off their own work to Hari under the guise of seeking help. Finally, he made a clean breast to his team and thanked them for their support over the past year and a half, specially when things were going against him and on many occasions he berated his team for no fault of their own. While he apologised for his behaviour he sought their continued support and shared with them his plans to restore the pride and glory their unit had as a top performing unit. Haris biggest win was when two of his subordinates, who had put in a request for a transfer out of his unit, withdrew their requests.

Apart from seeing a smile of satisfaction and peace on Haris face, I felt very happy when Haris wife met me recently, hugged me and thanked me for saving her marriage.

Research Paper submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements for CPCP to ICA

Page 5 of 5