Why Coaching is the #1 Strategy to Get Through This Crisis (14 Minute Lesson)

This podcast teaches specific reasons and case studies that illustrate the value of coaching and why it will allow you to do one of three things coming out of this current crisis:

1.  You will either walk out of this crisis and slowly get back to normal
2.  You will either jog out of this crisis and get back to normal in a decent amount of time
3.  You will either sprint but at this crisis and get back to normal in the fastest time possible

The Choice Is Yours!

Great Companies Doing Great work During This Time:

Titus Talent: https://www.linkedin.com/company/titus-talent-strategies/

Consero: https://www.linkedin.com/company/consero-group/

Forbes Coaching Council: https://forbescoachescouncil.com/

Welcome to Coaching Conversations

We have created a NEW service called Coach 2 YOU where leaders can assist short targeted 7 to 21 day programs to coach their employees without ANY of their own time to truly partner and assist in the coaching process. Get more info here: https://form.jotform.com/233504052497051

Check out my profile and under "Featured" we are now providing a Free Coaching course "6 Steps to Build a High Performing Coaching Culture" and asking for people who register to help share through our new system!

Check it out: https://lnkd.in/d6-3u382

Free Course Access: https://lnkd.in/dHAStBEM

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:36

Coaching is the number one strategy that will get us through these times. Now I'm on my soapbox because I teach coaching. I do coaching, I preach about coach, and I speak about coaching. So it's self-serving, right? Let me give you an illustration of why coaching is the number one talent development strategy. So let's take two managers, the first managers, what we go through as chief learning officers, as training managers, as coaching practitioners, people that work with managers who need to coach. So when we think about that, I want you to think about the first manager. The first manager gives us the typical reason why he or she doesn't have time to coach. They're too busy. Let's take a second manager, somebody who leverages industry principles. The Gallup organization reports. When we leverage people's strengths, people engage eight times more. Then when we lead with constructive feedback, that's a huge transition for some people because typically when we ask people, when you get called into the boss's office, what's your first impression? It never fails. It's typically, Oh, what did I do wrong? So here's the funny thing. We have to teach people how to leverage strengths at its most fundamental level. That's why I know coaching is the number one strategy because the first manager who does not have time because of this pandemic crisis now has to look at his or her people and say, trust me, follow me. I'm going to lead you. I'm going to now converse with you. I'm going to set up some video conference interactions with you and we're going to have a discussion. Really, you know what the employee's first impression is? Where the heck have you been? So look, I'm going to be very blunt in this podcast every single day and I share it all the time at my public speaking engagement managers are coaching employees and often I get these inquisitive looks like what's he talking about? You're coaching people to stay or you're coaching people to leave and if you don't think silence is in a message, you are greatly, greatly mistaken. Coaching is a conversation. Coaching conversation should be scheduled. They should be strength-based. The number one thing according to the book, the progress principle by Teresa Amabel reports, the most motivated state somebody is in is when they're progressing and improving in their job. It's not when they get money recognition or reward. So how often do you or your managers call people in just solely to recognize their progress? So let's talk about coaching conversations, but let's talk about a conversation. At its most fundamental level, a conversation at its most fundamental level is when two people are talking and both are absolutely committed to listening. Now, simple, right? How often do you think about what you want to say while someone's talking? I know I make that mistake. It's something I'm working on. I don't know if we ever perfect it yet. What we have better conversations if we were focused on listening and demonstrating active listening by looking at someone insane. Susie, here's what I've heard Jews say and I, I think this is what you mean. Did I forget anything? See, when we show somebody we're listening, guess what happens to the relationship? It improves. Guess what happens to trust? It accelerates. How often do you demonstrate active listening? How often does your organization train people on practicing active listening? How often do we train and educate and mentor and coach people and really good questions so we can deepen our relationship with our teammates or employees, our fellow managers. So let me provide you some perspective. Let's go back to our simple scenario. The first manager right now has to lead his or her team during these times. How does that person really authentically know if his or her employees are really listening or really following or begrudgingly doing what they're told to do? There's a huge difference. So here's the funny thing. In the last 48 hours, I have attended two events. One was an online event by a great company called[inaudible] out of Bethesda, Maryland. And we met with chief learning officers, incredible people doing incredible work. And we all run this call, we're chatting, and we all kind of had this consensus in one way or another. Now paraphrase what I think everybody felt. Finally, people are getting, it's about the people see that the pandemic crisis has forced conversations. It has forced us to engage. We've been preaching engagement and conversations and feedback and relationship building for decades and sadly the pandemic has finally drawn attention to what we've always known in our industry. But I think everybody's known deep down yet work gets in the way. I don't have time to coach you. I'm really busy. Think of that message. You may not have that intent, but that's a perception we as leaders create. When you don't spend time with people, people are not at the water cooler. Wherever that water cooler is saying to themselves, I haven't talked to my boss in weeks, but I know he's proud of me and I'm being a little sarcastic. I get that. So when we think about coaching, we have to think about the people. Finally, the people are at the forefront. Doesn't mean we had bad intentions. I don't want to mislead you or come off crass or negative. The other event outside of the Conserva event is a bunch of Forbes coaching council members got together and we conducted some sessions and we shared and we were just talking about how much we enjoyed it because we don't get a lot of that cause we're always giving, right? But we need to also receive, because sometimes you learn from your peers and we all had the same conversation that I had at the console event with chief learning officers. It's finally about the people. And we have to reinvent ourselves. We have to think of different ways to help people. Cause there's a lot of fear out there. There's a lot of uncertainty, but you cannot mandate certainty. You cannot mandate get over your fear because you're going to lose your people. So ultimately when you think about coaching, it's a conversation. And I'm going to teach you something called dovetailing. And it's one of the easiest things that you can do. So think about a sheet of paper and there's three columns. The first column are strengths. Write down every one of your employees strengths are the people that you coach. Write down two or three strengths for each person. The middle column is the word and that's it. It's just the word and the third column. So an goes in the second column of third column is the area of opportunity to coach too. So let's think about somebody by the name of Chris and I sit down with Chris and I said, Chris, you've been with the company a long time, you're a valued member, you know our products inside and out, you know our systems inside and out and I've absolutely loved working with you. And I want to add to that list, you really being proactive in facilitating and sharing your knowledge during this tumultuous time. Hearing that, what do you think we need to do together to facilitate that? Now let's say I'm coaching Chris cause I want him to step forward. He's kind of a quiet guy. He's a humble guy. But now more than ever, I need his leadership. Now the flip side of that coin, I could say, Chris, you know, you gotta be more of a leader. You're too pulled back. I'm leading with the negative. Is he gonna feel good about doing it, that my friends is coaching at its most fundamental level. So the dovetailing is, I don't say, but Chris, here are the three things I love about working with you, but you don't insert yourself enough butts. The great verbal eraser for everything before it. And I often make the joke if you're gonna bring your butts to work, leave them at home the next day but does nothing but is the eraser the word and is inclusive. So Chris, here are the three things I love about working with you and I think about combining more pure based leadership, inserting yourself and really leveraging those strengths of expertise. Hearing that, what goes through your mind or what do you think we could do to facilitate that? It's very momentum building. It's very forward thinking, but rest assure everybody coaching is the number one strategy. I love training managers, I love trainers, but I think they will share the same thing with you. I wish our managers were more training reinforcement partners. I wish they would coach and become partners in our training endeavors. So things are changing. It's finally about the people for whatever reason, whether right, wrong, indifferent, unfair, taken out of context, whatever we want to call it, it's finally about the people. So often work gets in the way. So I want to share with you a conversation I had with someone in the West coast and she reached out to me and had been following our blog and said, I would love to pick your brain. Would that be okay? And I said, Oh, of course. And they were talking about their culture and how they are very set in their ways. They hate change, which is not unusual. And I said, you know, it's really funny. I said, could I share something with you? And she said, sure. I said, I'm about to do a blog, which is the one you're listening to right now. So I said there's a before and after effect and it's a very simple thing to describe. Ask your people, had you been coaching, had you been scheduling time? Had you been taking the time? Had you been investing in people's strengths? Had you been acknowledging people's strengths going into this crisis in coming out of it? Would you be better off than where you're at right now? It's a rhetorical question because the answer's obviously yes, so here's the funny thing about the people work often gets in the way of us engaging with people. Now guess what? We're not even allowed to engage within physical proximity of one another. So guess what we got to do? We've got to now have conversations by the way, that some of us weren't having. Now we've got to do it on the sin called video conferencing. I think about a company in my backyard that I absolutely love by the name of Titus talent strategies. If you're ever looking for a recruiting firm, Natalie, are these people brilliant, dedicated. It is the greatest workplace culture, and I remember sitting down with two of its owners, Jonathon and Scott and Scott specifically. I kept saying, how do you guys do this? He said, what are you talking about? Said your culture so energetic. It's so engaging. It's, it's so transparent. It's so thoughtful in the way we engage with each other, including me as an outsider. Now, why do I share that with you? They're almost a hundred percent remote and have been for 10 years. They operate with great efficiency. Their clients love them. So we've been partnering with them for years and they're a client of ours and I just am amazed at what they do and I think about them and I think about the question we all need to ask ourselves. See, often we tend to deal with things in its present moment. I got to get over this problem. I've got to get through the situation. So how we behave, how we interact, how we communicate, how we converse, how we coach, how we ask questions, how we demonstrate active listening. We'll dictate one of three things coming out of this crisis. You will either walk out and slowly, slowly get back to normal, whatever that might be, or you'll jog and you'll have a decent pace of getting there or you'll sprinting get there quicker. So the question is yours and I promise you I can prove it. I'll go up against anybody. Coaching is the number one strategy and the reason I brought up Titus as they coached and they conversed every single day with their people. By the way, they're almost a hundred percent remote. This is possible. The new normal might be video conferencing. Who knows?

Speaker 2: 14:03

Hmm.

Speaker 1: 14:04

Yet, if you're not having these conversations, people do not arbitrarily improve. If you're not having these conversations, please don't tell me. Trust is arbitrarily going through the roof. If you are not having these conversations, don't tell me you think you have a great relationship. Cause how would you know if you're not conversing with the people you need to have the relationships with? The time is now. You're either going to walk, jog, or sprint out of this, and I promise you the number one thing you can do is coach and have conversations with your people. Good luck.

Speaker 2: 14:36

[inaudible].