This content is locked. Please login or become a member.
Executive coaching is an interesting topic because in the twentieth century coaching was seen as a remedial activity. Something’s broken – I need to call Stephen or somebody else because I need to be fixed. I’ll tell you that I would say 100 percent of my coaching today is actually not that. It’s about working with high performing people and helping them get better. And I think one of the misnomers around coaching – and I often see it when I go into a boardroom because the first question a board member will ask me is, you know, “when they stopped playing with GI Joe or Barbie, everything is set in stone. Why are you here?”
And I’ll say, “I’m not good enough to change anybody. Nobody’s good enough to change anybody. But what I know I can do if I have a motivated party on the other side of me is I can add range to their style.”
Tool 1: The Diagnostic
What we want to do together is understand what their base case fundamental leadership style is. Are they more command and control? Are they more facilitative? Do they want to close everything off and make a decision? Do they want to keep everything open and just keep talking about it? We all have tendencies that are base case leadership style so what we want to do together is a diagnostic of you and understand, okay, what is it? So when I’m under stress or when I’m in a situation I’m going to revert to my base case and this is what it is. And we want to understand that fundamentally. And then we want to understand, “Okay, when is your base case the best leadership style? What situations is the application of that leadership style going to give you the best outcome.” And then what we want to understand is, “Okay, what are the gaps in between that where I can add some range to my style in order to be effective across more situations?”
So if I’m highly directive command and control, right, and I want to close things, I want to make decisions. There are other instances where it’s really helpful to be teacher/coach/mentor/facilitator. I’m opening it up. I’m not speaking first. I’m drawing people into the conversation. I’m white boarding the content. I’m creating a safe environment for people to interact with me. So it’s really about creating awareness of your leadership style. Creating awareness around what’s possible. What are some other leadership styles and then when would you apply them.
Tool 2: Advance preparation
Like everything, change is hard or adding range to your style is hard. So coaching is really simple. It’s before you break, you know, the door into your meeting room, who’s my audience, what’s my desired outcome, what’s the best leadership style to achieve that outcome. So are we closed and we’re just talking about execution? Are we totally white boarding today and I need to be teacher/coach/mentor/facilitator and pull everybody in or something in between?
And I think what’s really important is we don’t do the one millisecond hijack of what’s our base case style when we go into a room. So it’s one size fits all. It works sometimes, it doesn’t work other times. But if you draw a line through it you regress to the mean, right. Over the long term you’re mediocre because sometimes you’re good, sometimes you’re not so good. It’s pretty mediocre if you draw a line through it. And what we want to do coaching people is help them, you know, optimize themselves at a much, much higher level. We want to see their performance, you know, not regress to the mean but stay at an optimal level because they understand where they need to use these different approaches.
Tool 3: Listen for content
A common trait in many executives at every level inside companies and, you know, in the population is just talking too much. And, you know, we get excited about whatever the content is that we have to deliver to whoever’s in front of us and we just start talking about it. And it becomes a monologue. And if it’s not a monologue then what it becomes is, I want to win the interaction with you. I want to prove that I’m right and anything you say to me I’m just going to pick on that and you’re wrong.
So the way the tool to overcome this, if you want to overcome this as, an executive, is that I call it listening for content, right. Most people listen to win the interaction. Where’s that one word in their response where I can pounce on it and I can crush you like a bug because I know you don’t know. But when you have a dialogue with somebody who listens for content, you know, they’re nonverbal is fully engaged. They’re asking you clarifying questions. They’re interested in your content. They’re asking you the second, third and fourth question as it relates to your content and they’re digging into the content. And you feel really good because the person across from you is deeply immersed in what you have to say. And you’re still able to deliver but you’re delivering through a dialogue because the person across from you is listening for content, not listening to try and win the interaction.
And I think for all of us, we can take a lesson from people who ask clarifying questions, who engage in the material a different way. You feel really good as a person because by asking clarifying questions and engaging in the content that way there’s affirmation that’s coming across to you as the giver of that material. And now you want to hear what I have to say because you know I’m not out to try and crush you, right. You know I’m out to try and understand, to learn from you, to understand your point of view. It takes a little bit longer. It takes a little bit more on your side because you want to really pull out what the person has to say in their content and it’s not just about your content. And I think companies would be a lot better, people would be a lot better if we could train people to listen for content and do a lot less of trying to win the interaction.
Tool 4: Facilitate the opposition
One of the areas where I coach a lot of executives on is really the defensiveness reaction, right. We often personalize our points of view or our ideas and there are people around us that, you know, want to aggressively poke at us. And when they aggressively poke at our ideas, they’re poking at us. And our response to that is usually a visceral response. You feel it up your back and then you have a defensive reaction. And whenever I’m assessing somebody I always poke around them to see if I can elicit a defensive reaction because if I can get you in a defensive place, you’ve actually lost your leadership position, right. I’ve got you defending something so you must have something to defend.
There’s a simple out to this – a really simple tool. So when you feel that visceral reaction and somebody’s provoking you, facilitate them. So, number one, people need affirmation more than anything. Affirm their point of view. That’s an interesting point of view. It’s different than mine, right. You just acknowledge that they exist and you acknowledge that they have a point of view so there’s affirmation in that. So you’ve taken some of the heat out. Now stay on the front foot and start asking questions, right. Socratic leadership is one of the most powerful tools in everybody’s toolbox.
You know, help me understand that. Where’s that coming from? What are the facts and data that back that up? Now you hold your leadership position. You haven’t given anything up to them and you’re really facilitating them to be able to defend their position. And I would bet eight, nine, ten times out of ten they’re going to get defensive because that’s never happened to them before. Because a lot of people who are aggressive at work around topics actually are very anecdotal. When you ask the second or third question there is no facts or data there, right. They’re just pushing you away. What bullies do in little b form or the big B form is just aggressively try and pursue something with anecdotes. And if you can hold your ground, not be defensive, facilitate them using affirmation to start and then facilitate them, you’ll end up in the higher place and the higher ground and you can end that conversation any way you want but you haven’t lost your ability to lead that point of view.