SPEAKER_00 0:10

Beat in the real world moment by moment, choice by choice. This is where leadership meets performance crowd practical. So you can step in and show up on purpose every day.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

We're going to talk about only coach the coachable. Only coach the coachable. It's actually one of the card categories, coachability, and the clear performance coaching cards. We love this because so many times we get involved and waste time on things that don't matter and people that want to be here. During COVID, and especially after COVID, there became something known as quiet quitting. So many people that had quit, but they stayed, right? It'd be one thing if they quit and they left. But so many times people were quitting and they really weren't staying. So think about that. How many times have you experienced that in your organization or on your team? Someone who gives kind of public compliance, but really private defiance. They're not really bought in to the mission. They're not bought into what you're trying to accomplish, but they're still here. They're still collecting a paycheck. And that's really a problem. It's why we say to leaders all the time coach the coach, only coach the coach. Well, those people that are open and willing, who want to get better, who want to improve. Here's the interesting thing. Most people when they show up in your organization do want to be good. They want to be successful. Rarely does someone start a job wanting to fail. The problem is the organization can be at them, the work can be dead at them. So how do we help leaders help their team members do a better job of this idea of coaching the coachable? So let's first talk about what do we mean when we say coach the coachable? And then we'll talk about an assessment. Rick will walk us through that. A very cool little 10-question assessment and then a coaching agenda and then really earning the right to coach. Sam, tell us a little initially, and then Rick, you follow up, but about this idea of what does it mean to coach the coachable?

SPEAKER_03 2:33

What does it mean coachable? What I say to people is if you know everything, you can't learn anything. You know, to be a good coach and to coach other people, pride and ego has to take a back seat. It has to take a back seat. When pride and ego are getting in the way of desiring to improve, you can't improve. The way I handle it, the way we handle it here at Clear Performance Coaching, is we only work with people who want to get better. We only work with people who have character to keep their commitments. And we only work with people who treat people appropriately. Right? The thing is, if you don't have a desire to improve, you're not going to improve. I work with people who want to get better, who raise their hand, who have a desire to improve. That's the first gate.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Yeah, and just adding to that, I think coaching has nothing coachability has nothing to do with intelligence or talent. Some of the most talented people in the world are not coachable. Coachability to me is about attitude. It's a willingness to learn, to adjust, to improve. They have a few simple traits, those coachable people. You know, Sam, you said it. They want to get better. They're open to feedback. They're willing to look at problems differently. They take responsibility for results. And most importantly, to us, they're willing to make commitments and follow through. I think without those qualities, coaching conversations rarely produce change.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

I love that. My dad grew up in Missouri. In fact, I was born in Missouri. And my dad used to say when I was growing up, can't remember, I'm from the show me state. Don't tell me, show me, right? I heard that over and over again. I swore I'd never use that with my kids. And sure enough, my youngest son, I did that a lot. But this idea of we don't want people just telling, we want them to actually show us. But we're going to help them figure out how to show, how to, in other words, get performance. Ultimately, this is all about helping improve performance within your organization. And you start by working with those people that are really wanting to get better. If they know everything, they're not going to get better. They already know all the answers. The great thing about being as old as the three of us are is, you know, things are changing all the time. And if you're not getting better, you're going the opposite direction. Quickly, very quickly.

SPEAKER_03 4:52

Yeah, that's a good point, Kent. I mean, we need to be, is we also need to have desire to get better, right? It's funny, years ago, years I learned this principle years ago when I was playing college football. That's when I really learned life wasn't fair. Because I was a really hard-working student athlete, really hardworking, really dedicated, wanted to be great in all the areas. And then I realized that when you lose your starting position to a kid that's a class underneath you from Dothan, Alabama, who's going to be an all-American before he even set foot on the gridiron. And you're like, why? Why did that happen? Well, well, and then you see what he could do naturally. It changes your life. And so I went where I was, where I could play and where I can improve and bless the whole team. And it turned out to be a really good decision for me instead of sitting the bench behind an incredible player. But I think the I think my option.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

You changed positions.

SPEAKER_03 5:43

I did.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

So you made the change. You changed positions so you can help.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

Right. So I changed positions. But I guess through the years, what I've been really sensitive to are these people with natural ability, naturally analytical. They have and they just they go with their strengths, but they never learn. They never get past their talent. And I've seen people like this completely implode eventually. They go with what they're good at and they never get better. And eventually they're passed by. So this is an important issue to discuss that it's great to have talent, but you also need to expand and improve yourself, even with talent. So if people think they're good enough and they don't need to improve, that's a red flag for coaching. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

You know, and I've seen it similar in all the clients that I've consulted with is, you know, the leaders believe if they just try harder, they can help anyone improve. You know, those leaders that are passionate about coaching, they just want to invest in everybody. But coaching isn't something you can force on people. They have to choose it, right? And this is really what you're talking about is that choice, Sam. I think when someone's defensive, when they're closed off, when they don't want to take responsibility, the coach is the one that ends up doing all the work. And that's just counterproductive.

SPEAKER_03 7:01

I learned that the hard way. I was working with a large department store. You remember this, Kent? We were working with Parisian's department store, and I worked with them for three and a half, four months, and we went from like we closed a 10% gap in the hardest time on the planet. We reported out to the CEO of this large retailer, right? And we were so proud of what we'd accomplished, right? And then, and in the end, the aftermath of this, they fired the GM because he didn't do the job that we did. And we learned a valuable lesson, like, oh crap, we did all this work, we produced the results, and they fired the GM because it was his job to do it. And the CEO of this large retailer saw his weaknesses and fired him. And we we didn't get the business. So we didn't get the teaching business. I'm like, okay, we learned that the hard way. That was like 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 7:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

And that's the beauty, I think, of our process of bringing coaches up to a decent level is we embed that so that when we leave, they're functional. And that's so foundational.

SPEAKER_03 8:03

Yeah. We're not like a consulting company that's trying to get our claws into you and get $100,000 a month retainer for years and years and years. Like we want to teach you these principles, transfer the knowledge, and let you just pay it forward, right? This is part of our money-making model is different that way.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Absolutely. So, as a part of this, to help you figure this out, we've created this coachability assessment. It's 10 questions right in the cards as a tool that you can have. In fact, frankly, we'll give you a copy of it even without the cards, just to show you that we're trying to make a difference out there. Rick, you want to talk us through that assessment and why that's important?

SPEAKER_02 8:40

Yeah. Yeah. It helps leaders identify who's ready for coaching. Yeah, I think a few questions can really reveal a lot. And we don't. We have 10 questions here. But it tells us again, does this person consistently want to improve? Are they open to feedback? Do they take initiative? You know, I'm looking at the card now. Are they willing to look at problems from different perspectives? Do they take responsibility for results? When the answer to most of these questions is yes, coaching can be incredibly powerful. When it's no, coaching is going to turn into frustration.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Absolutely. Absolutely. So, with that in mind, let's talk about establishing an effective coaching agenda because it's going to be different for every individual you coach with, every team, every part. So, how do you recommend that leaders establish an effective coaching agenda, Sam? Which we actually have as a card in here, but let's talk through that.

SPEAKER_03 9:37

Yeah, every great meeting, every great productive kind of exchange really starts with a clear agenda, right? So, how many of us have been in these meetings that go on forever with no clear agenda? It's a complete disaster. In group meeting, it's a disaster. Well, in a personal meeting, it's a disaster as well. So when I start coaching with someone, when I take on a new coaching client or a new team, um, a team of people I'm coaching, I always set the agenda first, right? And I always meet with the leaders prior to the meeting and we create an agenda. You know, what's the goal? What are we trying to accomplish? What are we trying to teach? What are we going to challenge everybody with? You know, three or four clear points that we want to talk about and we just roll it, roll down the agenda, and then we have some kind of conclusion with a strong call to action. If you don't, what happens is you go off on all sorts of boondoggles, man. You go into rabbit holes. And coaching is not therapy. Right? So we're not teaching therapists. If you want a therapeutic intervention, go to your good, go to a good psychologist, go to a good therapist. They're going to give you process. Now, much of our coaching principles, like how to get people unstuck, has roots in psychotherapy. I mean, it's good that way, but we're not going to teach people how to be therapists. We're going to teach them how to be coaches. So we set a clear agenda around that. We set a clear agenda about what should be the objectives, what are the best ways to achieve the objectives. And we do this on a personal level, personal objective. We set an agenda item to understand someone's skill set. What do they want to do in their life? What do they eventually want to achieve in their career or what are their hopes and dreams at home? Like when you're doing one-on-one coaching, maybe the agenda is different than when you're doing a team coach at work. So when you're team coaching, your agenda might be relevant to the job to be done at work. When you're doing a personal coaching session, your agenda is maybe around what they want out of their life and their career. But you set the agenda accordingly to the meeting.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Awesome. When there's an agenda, we get a lot more done and we accomplish the things we were wanting to accomplish, right? Right. I love that. The fourth card in this category is earn the right to coach. Now, here's the interesting thing about coaching. So many times people think coaching is telling. That in coaching. In fact, I had a leader, a CEO for a large company, you'd know the other day. So what's the difference between mentoring and coaching? I said, well, mentoring is when I tell them how great I am and what it took to get where I am, and you just follow what I did. Coaching is the opposite. Coach is where you're trying to pull it out of people. The first two C's of the seven C's of coaching are am I curious and am I caring? Right. Really it starts with caring first. Do I care about them? Am I interested in them? And then am I curious? There's an old saying that says, are you listening to understand or are you listening to respond? And that's really what we're talking about here. Listening to understand where they are, what's going on with them, et cetera. That's an important part of earning the right to coach. Sam talked about that a bit. On the back of the coach, coaching card, it has some really interesting watchouts. Try to avoid rabbit holes, Sam talked about. Remember, you are not a counselor, you're a coach. Be patient and hold off the need to interrupt people. Here's the thing I'd want to add to that. Advice is not coaching. That is so true. Advice. By the way, none of us take advice. The best intended people. Somebody gives you advice. Hey, what about that? And automatically kind of like the hackles on our neck go, no, I'm not doing that. Nobody takes advice. So it's not giving advice. Now, here are three powerful questions that are a part of this. Let me share these with you because every single card has questions like this. And this is what's going to help you. This is what's going to help make you a great coach. Because you're going to have these three powerful questions every time. What would motivate you to change? A question you ask the individual. What would motivate you to change? Number one. Two, what would you like to happen in the future? Number two. Question number three: what is keeping you from fulfilling your dreams? I'm not telling them what their dreams are. I'm not going to tell them what's stopping them. They're going to tell me. I'll tell you what's really interesting. And I'd love for Rick and Sam's thoughts on this. When you ask someone to tell you what's going on, isn't it interesting how different it is than if you tell them? Which one experience with that, Rick and then Sam?

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Yeah, I mean, first off, what I love about the questions, they are absolutely powerfully framed, but we can customize it. So it might be instead of what's keeping you from filling your dreams, what's keeping you from meeting your goals this year? What's keeping you from accomplishing whatever it is? But it's the question itself, it's the asking of that question. Here's what I find is when we can use a couple of good, well-timed, well-thought-out questions, people can actually spend a lot of time reflecting and coming to good answers. And then we as coaches just keep helping them come back to that. Hey, you said this. Tell me about that. Like I want to know more what it means for you. I've got a number of clients that we coach now very regularly, and we cover a variety of issues in the context of organization. You know, it's a fast-growing, high-paced company, and yet invariably most of the coaching conversations circle around how do I communicate with my team better? How do I hold better expectations and accountability? How do I lead up in the organization? Because I struggle with, you know, my boss or my boss's boss. And they're not complicated questions, as Sam says, but they are really deep. And we have to, as I think good coaches, keep helping people just start with the first step. What does that question mean for you? What's the impact to you? What are you feeling? What are you noticing? What I love about great coaches, and I've had great coaches too, is they're entirely present with me. From how they're sitting to looking to listening to responding, that presence piece allows me to get grounded and be present. And then I can share fully and more deeply in my world that allows me to get better conclusions, better thought, and better analysis, better direction.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

Hey, Kent, you know, 25 years ago, I decided to have the courage to write my Orange Duffel Bag of Journey to Radical Change. This is my book. It was a best-selling book that I wrote. Took me 10 years to write it. And I tell my story in this book. And one of the great byproducts of doing that is when people want to know about me, I'm just like, read my book. And over the last 15 years, I've become fanatical at trying to understand everybody else's story. My story is already published. It's an open book. They're going to make a movie about it. It is what it is, right? But what I want to know more is I want to know more about you and your story. And I can't do this if I don't understand you, right? And take interest in you and care about you. So when we talk about gaining understanding, one of the most difficult things to do is when you ask the question, is to shut your mouth. Like Rick said, shut your mouth, be present, be mindful, and truly try to put yourself in their perspective. See from their eyes, their point of view. I like to say, I, it's an affirmation I tell myself, I understand before I act. Think about all the problems. Think about all the problems in this world that happen because people act before they understand. We need to understand before we act. And we do that by listening with all of our senses, not just our ears, off their eyes, with we listen with everything, right? And this is the most difficult job of a coach. The two most difficult jobs of a great coach is to listen and understand, right? And then hold people accountable to do what they promise to do. Those are the two hardest things. But to listen and understand requires really immense focus. Immense focus with all your senses. Now, when you do that, you need to be able to demonstrate that you understand them from their perspective. This is called empathy. Empathy always makes things better. And when you have empathy, that invites connection. Renee Brown wrote a great book about connection, right? But this idea of being connected is critical. You cannot coach without curiosity and without connection. You can't lead without connection. You'll get public, you'll get public compliance and private defiance. So you would be surprised. And I'll give you some evidence here. I'm gonna give you some evidence. Have you ever talked to your significant other? And for whatever reason, you just listened to them and they just complained, bitched and bitched and bitched. I call let them bitch it out. Like they just blah blah blah blah blah. And you just were honestly, you're with them. You're just listening. You're your all heart and soul is with them, and you didn't say a damn thing. And then afterward, they say to you, I feel so much better. I feel so much better. Right. I've had this is the best conversation I think we've ever had. And you didn't even contribute and work. Like some of my best coaching sessions are like, I know they start off with, I don't know what to do, I'm overwhelmed, I hate my life, my life sucks. And an hour later, they're like, I feel so much better now. I'm so glad we talked. And I'm like, I'm in my mind, I'm like, what in the hell did I just do? And what the thing, what I'm thinking is, like, well, I just listened and understood them so I could have connection, and then I could challenge them. Challenge them to get clear, challenge them to get clear on their direction, challenge them to get clear on how to get unstuck, challenge them to get clear on what the next steps they need to take when whatever their circumstance in their life is. But this is the hardest thing. To be a true, great listener is the challenge, you guys. It's the challenge. And my challenge for all of us is to always understand before we act. Understand before we act. And this is a hard, it's says easy, does hard. It's a hard thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

You know, this reminds me, I was on site with one of the large German auto manufacturers, and the CEO had asked me to talk, coach one of the directors. The CEO had met with this individual, the CHRO had met with this individual, and I'm there every month for a few days, and said, we want to meet with this person, and they kind of laid out the problems they were having. And so I met with the individual, and they immediately went into kind of a diatribe about everyone else, everyone else. It wasn't them, it was everybody else, and their team loved them, but all the other people didn't understand them. And this person's from another country, and we see that a lot in the multinational organizations that we work with, just people trying to understand each other. And then she described a situation where one of her peers in another huge department went to their boss, who went to their boss, who went to her, the CEO, came down to her boss and came to her. And she said, That's just ridiculous. And I said, So why do you suppose they didn't come to you? All these 10 minutes of going on and off about it was everybody else. And then she said, Well, I guess it's because he was afraid to come talk to me because the last few times we've talked, I haven't been very open to listening. And I've been always telling them what they were doing wrong, and so on and so forth. And once that little break in the dam happened, it all came out. Then she went on and on. I know it's me, and I'm doing this, and I'm not doing that, and so on and so forth. Wow. And ultimately, it's because I thought, what this individual tell me tell me is 180 degrees from what the CEO and the CHRO told me about this person. And I thought, how do I get to this? Well, I just ask a side question. Well, why didn't they come to you? And then they had to really, as an individual had to really admit, yeah, it's really, I'm the one that's creating the problem here. But they weren't admitting that. And then the next 45 minutes was all about, okay, now what are you going to do about it? And laying out a plan, things to do. It wasn't my agenda. And they finally had to what they did in essence is become coachable in the conversation. Because before that they weren't. The CEO had met with them a few times, the CHR weren't met with them, and I said, Well, what can I do that you can't do? And they said, Well, you're from the outside, maybe they'll try to do it. I don't know. But it's getting them there to that place where they'll say, Yeah, you know what, I realize there's some things I need to do differently. And once you can get them talking, it's exactly what you and Rick and Sam talked about. When we're listening and they're telling, completely different than if I was giving that individual advice.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

Yeah. I want to give the leaders a little bit of credibility here. They're promoted because they were good problem solvers. You know, they built their career in knowing the answer. When someone brings them a problem, you know, they're ready. The instinct is immediate. Solve it, fix it, tell them what to do. Coaching really does flip that model. You know, and I think it's important to recognize that it's not that they're deficient. It's an and that we're trying to help them develop, right? The coach's job is not to solve the problem, it's not, it's to help the person think through the problem so that they can solve it themselves. And that requires patience, it requires curiosity. Curiosity is one of our foundational C's.

SPEAKER_03 22:58

Yeah, you can't hold people accountable if you don't understand them. So the second big job of a coach is to hold people accountable to the actions they decide they're going to take, right? And unless you if you don't understand them, how are you gonna hold them accountable? Yeah. Understanding is magical. Like if there's nothing else that the people listening to this, if there's nothing else that are if there's nothing else that you take away from this podcast, then I need to be a better listener. Then we've done our job.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

Yes. Because listening creates a connection. And connection is what gives someone the right to coach or the right to influence somebody.

SPEAKER_03 23:39

Right. They don't care how much you know until you show them how much you care. And you do that by what? Listening. Understanding. Right? Because in the end, people matter. They really, really matter. And understanding is the fastest way. Matter of fact, the data that I've researched, the data that I've been exposed to here tells us that most people can't distinguish between being loved and being understood. They can't distinguish the two. Amazing. Right? So if you're understanding someone, you're loving them, which is automatically opening them up and you up to connection. And if you want to get the most out of your people, you can't do that without connection, man. It's not happening. Right? If you're asking them to do hard things over and over and over again to accomplish a really hard objective, they're not going to do it if they don't care about you and if they're not connected to you. We call a leadership capital in the learning and development world, right? It's you got to have leadership capital. The fastest way to build that capital, to build your emotional bank account, is by listening, understanding.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

Maybe here's a challenge for our listeners. Next time somebody comes to you with a problem this week, try something different. Don't give the advice that you want to give right away. Don't jump to solutions. You know, just ask questions. Listen deeply and see what happens.

SPEAKER_03 24:59

One of my favorite questions when people come to problems with me, Rick, are what would you do? Like, what do you think you should do? And why? What do you think you should do and why? It's probably important to talk about this. One of the most important things you've got to understand as a coach is you can't tell people what to do. It's not your job. Because if you tell someone what to do and they go do it and they fail, they're going to come back and they're going to blame you for their failure. You own it. I did what you told me to do, right? And it failed. So you suck. And I'm like, so that's why we can't do that as coaches. We got to pull it out of them. That's much harder. Can't you're chopping at the bit. What's going on? Tell me what's up.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

I just think about all of it. This reminds me, I remember 35 years ago, I was a young manager in the largest diaper plant in the world, at Kimberly Clark. They made diapers on a million diapers an hour and all these. It was crazy, right? And I was new in my role and I was a little concerned because I'd moved from another plant to this role. And so I went to the, and this story had such an impact that I actually put in my first book, Everyone Can Lead, right? And so it's lasted with me for years. A guy's name is Charles Moriarty. And Charles said to me, What you got, Kent? And I said, I got a couple problems. Let me lay them out for you. And I've been in the role maybe a month or two. And he said, I said, What would you do? And he said, Well, I would do this and this. I said, Great, I love it. I'm getting ready to walk out. And he said, stop me on my tracks. He said, Ken, you can bring me any problem you want. I'm happy to talk about it. But what I want from you is at least two possible solutions before I give you my ideas. And it set me up for so much success. And wait a minute, I'm the new kid on the block. I'm the young guy. Everyone on my team had been there 10 years longer than I'd been in for the whole organization. Everyone is older than I was. But he set me up for success by saying, hey, give me at least two possible solutions. It totally changed my mindset with just that simple approach. And so then every time I went to him, I had a couple solutions. And I've quickly learned that there were a lot of things I didn't even need to go to him about because he trusted in me. He believed in me. And he said, You can do this. As a young leader, this had such a huge impact on me. And we've all had people like that. What we're proposing is that we all be more of those kinds of people for people that work with us.

SPEAKER_03 27:10

Yeah, that's really good. Really good.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

So let me tell you about a couple things here. Everybody, and then we'll get Rick and Sam's idea. So in these coaching cars, there are eight categories. I just want you to know because we're going to be talking about these in future podcasts. First of all, introduction to clear coaching. We've done a little bit about that. Second, what coaches do, some seven essential coaching actions. Three, we'll talk about clear coaching defined. We'll talk about five key principles. We might talk about that in our next podcast of great coaching. Coachability, what we've been talking about today. And then we'll talk about six practices of how to be an effective coach. And then my two favorite categories are improved performance, some specific strategies about achieving extraordinary goals, achieving extraordinary results on any goal, right? It's something we've been doing for decades with all kinds of organizations. And the one that may be the most popular of all, once you get in performing, is how to get people unstuck. Number seven, break free. You know, Sam in his new book talks about, you know, falling forward after a success, not falling backwards, right? Springing forward.

SPEAKER_03 28:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

How do we spring forward? Have failure, how to, you know, how to bounce back from failure, how to bounce back from lets downs. You know, Sam, how to bounce forward, right? And then finally, there's some quick start guides with just six exceptional ideas, and we have a little quick start guide we send. So those are topics we'll be covering in the future in future podcasts. Hopefully you'll participate with us because we're excited about this. Hey, you certainly can buy the cards and the AI Supercoach on our website. We hope that you will watch one of those videos. We'll have a link to one of the videos. We'll probably do a video on uh coachability. We'll share one of those coachability videos today. You've got six of them in that in that section. So, well, five. There's not one for the coachability assessment. So we'll share one of those videos. Hope you'll also share this podcast with other people that you know. Rick, Sam, what would you guys add as we wrap up?

SPEAKER_02 29:08

Yeah, I think I'd really dive into. We talked about that coachability piece. And you know, here's what I've found out. Sometimes leaders think they have a coaching problem, but what they really have is an accountability problem. If someone's refusing feedback, if they're ignoring commitments, if they keep repeating the same behavior, that's not a coaching conversation anymore. It's likely a leadership decision. So when we say coach the coachable, it's really investing your energy and your time into helping things get better with those that want to get better.

SPEAKER_03 29:41

Yeah, that's really well stated, Rick. If we were to, if we were to give you a free offer for this session, I would say if I was to make a recommendation for you to consider, is download the coachability assessment, take the test, discover if you're coachable or not, maybe share with some people on your team. So that's the first thing I want to invite you to do. Second thing is we're gonna send you a video link that helps you understand more about the coachability. That's free. And then and finally, we want to set up a phone call to see how we can help you and your organization create a culture of coaching. And finally, we want to help you. And finally, we want to offer up a phone call to be able to talk to you about how we can create a culture of challenge through coaching. And it really begins with selecting a cadre of people who are coachable or coachable. So we hope this has we hope this has helped you on your leadership journey or coaching journey, and we look forward to connecting with you next time. Bye everybody.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Thanks, everybody. Have a great day.