"That's Not Coaching!" - A 32-Year Veteran Sets the Record Straight

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:37):
So what is coaching?
You know, with everything goingon with artificial intelligence
, you know coaching and trainingand instructional design,
learning and development, lmsplatforms everybody is going
through really fast-paced, rapid, transformational change.
Yet I go back to onefundamental we're going to have
to talk to each other, so how isthis affecting coaching?

(00:59):
What is coaching?
You know what's really amazingto me After 32 years, we do
something very unique as humanbeings I do it, you do it,
everybody does it and that is,we tend to put our own spin, our
own definition on things.
I want to just share with youjust a quick reference point.
This is not in reference toeverybody, it's just in

(01:21):
reference to this situation.
I was talking to somebody whowas telling me what they were
doing and they kept putting thephrase coaching in there.
They said, well, I was coachinghim, I was trying to provide
coaching, and I said, well, walkme through what happened.
And the person started to tellme how they felt and their
frustration and their anger, andthen they shared some comments

(01:44):
they made to their coworkers andeven management above them.
This was not coaching everybody.
This was frustration andfeedback and then even more
anger that the people didn'treceive it.
Well.
So think about what I just said.
Fundamentally, if I come to youand I say, oh, I'm angry, you

(02:05):
know you're really frustratingme.
I need you to be a betterteammate, does anyone in their
right mind hearing that, say,yeah, you know what?
I could be a better teammate?
It does not happen that way.
So what's so interesting to meis how we put the title of
coaching or leadership ormentoring on things when we're

(02:27):
actually not doing that.
So let me give you my threedefinitions of coaching.
Number one we have somethingcalled situational coaching.
We have to coach to a situation, and this is where we make a
mistake in the workplace.
We've got two employees notworking together.
We bring them in.
We say John, you got to getalong with Susie, susie, you got
to get along with John, and wewalk away from that meeting

(02:49):
thinking, oh, I providedwonderful coaching.
No, you didn't.
You had a command and demand.
That will not behaviorally haveany type of long-lasting change
.
The next day might be better,but it does not facilitate
change.
Now, in the moment, do we needto situationally coach?
Absolutely.
The second type of coachingwhich is very popular and that

(03:12):
is called observational coaching.
We call it spot coaching.
We tend to spot something, wesee something.
We want to coach to it.
So we have to be really honestAre we triggered?
Do we spot things that arepositive or are we triggered by
things that are negative?
Typically, when I ask thatquestion, most people will say

(03:33):
well, yeah, you know, negativethings we want to fix and
correct.
So now we got to think aboutthe psychology of that.
If, out of every 10 times, weprovide spot or observational
coaching and it's correcting andfixing, even though we might be
right, what is the impact onthe people that receive that?
Is it inspiring, is itmotivating?

(03:54):
Do we even know how they'retaking that insight, that spot
coaching, that observationalfeedback?
Then the third, which issomething we subscribe to at
Progress Coaching, and that iscontinuous coaching Scheduling
time every week, every two weeks, focusing on a specific area
and driving improvement andusing what we call a coaching

(04:14):
framework.
Now we have something calledqualms.
There's grow coaching, there'sother frameworks out there, and
the reason I think a frameworkis so important to mention is if
you don't have a framework,it's a lot like getting up in
front of 500 people and doing aspeech with no outline and no
clue what you're about to say,coaching is just a different
stage, but it still deservespeople's attention.

(04:35):
So why do I share this At yourcompanies?
If you're coaching, create adefinition.
Coaching is fill in the blankby doing what and then list the
attributes and actions.
That's a methodology we teachcalled defining coach.
I promise you, if you do nothave a definition at your
company, you will have vastlydifferent interpretations of

(04:59):
what coaching is.
So I was traveling out to aclient site about six months ago
and I was riding along and wewent to a couple locations and
one of the gentlemen that wasdriving me was telling me of his
coaching and his visits.
And by the time we got done, Ithought to myself wait a minute,
none of that was coaching, itwas all feedback.

(05:20):
Now, intentions were good,there was a lot of
strength-based feedback, yetthere wasn't a lot of coaching.
See if we go back to somefundamental statistics.
Number one the Galluporganization reports people
engage eight times more.
Eight times more when we leadwith their strengths.

(05:42):
Come on, let's be honest.
When we call someone into ouroffice and say, bob, I need to
see my office right away, what'sthe employee's first response
Every time I ask that question?
For 32 years I've never had apositive feedback, never had a
positive response.
Typically people say, uh-oh, Imust be in trouble.
Why?
Because we've conditioned that.
In addition, tasha Urichreports 85% of people

(06:04):
significantly lackself-awareness.
So if we're giving feedback,8.5 out of every 10 people are
discounting it, they'redismissing it, they're rolling
their eyes, even if they're notphysically rolling their eyes.
So what happens is we have toask questions.
So what's going on?
What are you going to do topositively engage?
What are two things that you'redoing well and what's that one

(06:27):
thing that you have anopportunity to raise your game.
Notice, I did not say the wordconstructive feedback.
Coaching is by doing what.
Make sure you define whatcoaching is.
Don't leave it open forinterpretation or you're going
to have extremely inconsistentapplication and inconsistent

(06:51):
results across the organization.