Holding Managerial Conversations

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Bobbi

Recently, I was in Wilmington, Delaware working with a team of managers. During one of our sessions, a manager asked what he should do if one of his employees is falling short on regulatory matters (the employee is still fairly new). Specifically, his concern was this: Do I have to (or should I) always be coaching?

As much as I believe in coaching, I also believe that there are times when a manager still needs to have a managerial conversation. By that, I mean that there are times (such as with regulatory or compliance matters) when something has to be addressed immediately. As this manager and I discussed, there is nothing wrong with talking with the employee specifically about the regulatory issues. He asked me how he might approach it with a coaching approach. I suggested something like, “Sally, I know that you are still relatively new and the regulatory matters are also new to you. Can you tell me what your understanding of x is?” In this manner, he can get a gauge of what she does know so that he doesn’t repeat unnecessary information, and he also gets a clearer picture of what she doesn’t know so that he can fill in any knowledge gaps that may exist.

Another approach that managers can use is to say something like, “Okay, I’m taking off my coaching hat for a minute . . .” and then address the situation. This makes it clear that the manager isn’t coaching. This avoids confusion about what is a coaching session and what is not a coaching session.

“Hey Coach, Ask, don’t tell”: Yeah, I know that – how do I make the shift?

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Rick

Earlier this month, I met two fellow disc golfers at Brandywine Creek State Park while Bobbi and I were in Wilmington, Delaware after Bobbi spoke at the Pennsylvania SHRM State Conference. They knew the course, so I tagged along (which helped me avoid losing discs in the weeds, forests, and creek!). Bob was clearly experienced, hitting some deuces, (one under par), and Jason was still getting the feel of it and spent a lot of time searching for his discs. He continually declared that he couldn’t get power on his drives, and he was right. Bob and I both drove about 3 times farther than Jason most of the time.

A Coaching Opportunity?

Toward the end of the round, Jason told us he was going to try a new way to throw – backhand instead of forehand. Inside, I was pleased because I love to hear when a person has the courage to try something new to get better. He drove (threw) his disc with a backhand, and his distance and accuracy were both worse than before. Not surprising for someone trying something new.

Maybe not

And then it happened. In fact, it was one of those moments when I could see myself doing what I knew would not work, and I somehow couldn’t stop myself. I saw how a person experiencing a challenge and frustration could benefit from my wisdom, and I fell into the most common trap: I offered teaching and tips. While I was demonstrating my suggestion for Jason, I noticed he was barely listening or watching. I cut my teaching short, and let it go. The damage was done, and he would not likely try again (at least that day or in front of me).

Why telling doesn’t work (well, one reason) – It’s not about the idea or solution

I see this same dynamic when managers are making the shift to coaching their employees for performance. Many times, managers cannot understand why an employee would not want to adopt a good idea given by a person who has been successful at the same task. It’s like we can see that the employee has a recipe with a flaw in it, and we’re providing a fix for the recipe. “If he would just follow the recipe that worked for me, he would be more successful.”

As logical as that sounds, it rarely works on its own. By teaching Jason, I implicitly put myself above Jason. Even if my knowledge is superior, for Jason to accept my teaching, he would have to accept a position of lower status. In essence, I had not earned the right to teach. His resistance was a defense against this positioning and a protection against being vulnerable in front of others. My unearned teaching threatened his dignity.

Ask, don’t tell. Why is the shift so hard to make?

Articles and blogs on coaching all over the Internet proclaim that coaching is asking questions, not telling or teaching, but they rarely explain how to make the shift. Why is this shift so difficult? I don’t know all the reasons, but here are some thoughts:

Managers are expected to have answers
Reframing: The manager coach does not have to have the answer. In fact, it’s a trap for managers to provide the answers because it allows the employee to avoid doing their own thinking. The employee learns more by coming up with their own answers.
Managers are expected to direct staff on what to do and often how to do it
Reframing: Similar to having to have the answers. We’re not saying managers never direct, but when managers coach, directing is less prevalent because the purpose is to help the employee build their capacity.
Telling is faster (it puts the task back in the employee’s hands)
Reframing: This is the same as short-term-ism that handles the immediate task but fails to get anything off the manager’s desk. If the manager does the thinking, then the employee learns to get the answers from the manager.
Telling conveys confidence, control, competence; some people perceive questions as weakness or lack of knowledge.
Reframing: When coaching, remember your purpose: to facilitate the learning of the employee. Learning comes when we ask questions that provoke thinking, raise awareness, consider actions and consequences, make new distinctions.
Many managers were successful because of knowledge, skill, and performance, and not sharing that wisdom seems wasteful and ridiculous.
Reframing: The point of inquiry instead of telling is not to avoid sharing wisdom; it is to use the kind of conversation that promotes learning, motivation, and commitment.

It’s common that changing a habit from telling to coaching would be difficult with these forces working against it. The commitment to try often solidifies when a manager sees a competent coach and an employee achieve breakthroughs using skilled questioning in a way they haven’t seen before.

Steps to shift from telling to questioning

Here is a 3-step process for shifting your coaching from telling to skilled questioning. When you see what you believe is coaching opportunity, and you have the urge to tell your solution, remember

Be curious
Create an invitation
Explore to find the real opening

Be Curious

First, interrupt your habit of telling (providing a solution) before it’s ready to be received. Use a mental trigger. When you see someone struggling, and you’ve already solved it, and you want to share it:

Say to yourself, “Curiosity first.”

No matter how many times you’ve seen it before, this person in this situation at this time with whatever is going on in their world might be different. You lose credibility now and for the future if you tell something they already know or tried. You may not know all the circumstances. They may not see what you see, and curiosity gives you the chance to find what’s really going on. (But wait to ask your questions until the next step!)

Create an Invitation

Remember the base of the coaching pyramid is to enhance the relationship.You may see

Coaching Pyramid: Enhance Relationship, Raise Awareness, Advance Action

something that an employee needs to or could improve, but the opportunity to coach is not there until you earn the right. Being the manager entitles you to an authoritative management conversation, but not a coaching conversation.

Even though I saw Jason’s potential to increase his disc golf driving power, I needed to create a non-threatening invitation to a conversation. Instead of jumping into teaching as I did, here are some questions I could have asked to invite him into a conversation:

“I’ve noticed today that you’re frustrated with the amount of power you have on your drive. Would you be interested in exploring with me how you might increase your power?”
“I can see the potential you have to build the power you want on your drives. Would you like to explore your opportunities?”
“It seems like it bothers you that your driving power is not want you want. Would you like to explore how you might build it?”

If he’s not interested, then I should stop. The door is closed for now. You could coax a bit, but just be sure that the employee accepts because they really want to and not because of your pressure. If the issue is truly serious, that’s a management conversation about expectations, not a coaching conversation.

Explore to find the real opening

The next step in setting up the coaching and entering the conversations skillfully is to find the opening. In the coaching pyramid, we are talking about Raising Awareness. But be careful. If you jump in right away with what you think the needed awareness is, you still risk blowing up the conversation – causing the employee to close up. Exploring will get the conversation where it needs to be. Trust it.

Assuming that Jason agreed to have a coaching conversation, some questions I could have asked to find an opening he cares about are

“What kind of power do you want on your drive?”
“When you have the kind of power you want, what will you be able to do with it?
When and where will you use your powerful drive?”
“What have you tried so far?”
“When (what situations) have you driven with more power than other times?”
“What was different about those times?”
“Where does the power on your drive come from?”
“What have you noticed about the mechanics (steps, arm motion, body position, etc.) of disc golfers who have more power?”
“What have you seen in others’ drives that you haven’t tried before?”

There are many questions for exploring goals, intent, consequences, and many of those lead to still more questions to clarify the openings for learning. As the manager coach, you are trying to learn how the employee makes sense of their work and how they believe they produce results. Exploring their thinking and actions to see how their current path contributes (or not) toward their goals raises awareness about the need for a change to the thinking and the approach.

Summary

Using this 3-step process will help you reduce the amount of telling in situations you intend to coach instead, and you and your employees will get more power out of the coaching sessions because you started them well.

The attraction of a good manager

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Bobbi

Today I was doing Field Sales Coaching with a District Manager, “Tom”, and his sales consultant. During a break, the consultant shared with me the following: He told me that while he had gone through rough times in learning the business and that the company had gone through a lot of changes, which, of course, breeds a certain amount of anxiety, he had never thought about leaving the company. He then told me that the reason he never considered leaving was because of his manager. When I asked him what Tom did that was so meaningful, he shared the following items:

He knew his manager cared about him as a person.
His manager was available to help him think through issues.
He felt like his manager was his partner in success.

None of this is too difficult; unfortunately, it isn’t common practice. This consultant it turns out has had offers from other firms; offers which are financially more advantageous. However, he has never considered them. As he put it, “I don’t want to take a chance that I might not have another Tom as a manager. A mediocre – let alone a bad manager – would make me hate my job.”

By the way, last year this consultant won a company-wide award for the most sales over goal. Would you want to lose this performer to a competitor? This isn’t an isolated anecdote. Research in organizational psychology supports it. It has been clearly established that the relationship an employee has with their manager determines the level of loyalty, engagement and job satisfaction that an employee experiences. You’ve probably heard it before, but employees don’t leave their jobs; they leave their managers. In this case above, the employee stays with the job because of his manager. As a manager, what do you do to secure the loyalty of your employees? What about your best employees? Are any at risk to a competitor?

“Just tell me what to do . . .”

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Bobbi

Last week, I worked with a Fortune 500 company’s management team. They are in the position of facing declining sales — a first for them. Because of this challenge, they’ve decided to invest in training their managers on a coaching approach to developing performance.

During the training program, one manager asked the following: “What do you do when you have a team member who simply wants you to tell them what to do and how to do it?” (She was referring to employees who had been there for some time; not to new employees, which is also the focus of this article.)

First, let’s look at why that might happen and what approach you might take:
1. It may be generational. The college grads today are used to a lot of parental involvement. They are accustomed to being told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. This doesn’t make them shiftless. It has just been their experience.
Approach: Paint the picture for why learning how to do things on their own will benefit them and their career. Tie it to their personal goals within the company.

2. Are they simply following a pattern established by the manager? Very often, managers get caught in the trap of telling their employees what and how to do everything — down to the tiniest detail. It is not uncommon in these cases to hear the employees push back with, ”Why don’t you just tell me what you want?”
Approach: If this is the case, you’ve got to break the habit. I worked with one manager facing this and he communicated the following to his team: “I know that in the past, I’ve sort of micro-managed the details. I’ve done too much telling and not enough leading. Going forward, I will be taking a new approach so that you won’t have to be so dependent on me.” This set the stage for the next step (see 3 below).

3. They are waiting for the manager to slide back into old habits.
Approach: Stay alert to this and be disciplined. Here’s an example of this from a few months ago: A manager was trying to work with an employee to develop an action plan. At this point, the manager had worked with the employee and the employee had identified an area that they wanted to work on. The employee was not new. When it came down to the action plan, however, the employee kept trying to put it back onto the manager. She kept saying, “I don’t know what to do. Why don’t you just tell me.” The manager firmly believed that the employee actually did know what to do (or would at least have a good idea). So the manager said, “I know it can be tough to come up with something in the moment, so how about if you take a couple of days, think about it, and think about how you’d like to proceed. Let’s make an appointment right now for Friday afternoon and we will re-group then.” The employee came to the session on Friday with a very viable plan.

4. They may truly be stumped as to what to do next.
Approach: The approach used by the manager above will generally work very well in this situation. The key is that you’ve got to set the appointment and make sure that they follow-through.

The bottom-line is that you want to transfer ownership of their development to them. If it is your plan, it is just that: your plan. They will be more engaged, take more ownership and make more progress, if it is their plan.

Most managers have been sent up the coaching creek – Give them a paddle!

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Rick

Coaching is hot right now. Why? Because it works. Errrr, well, it can work. Because the word is out on the power of coaching in organizations, it’s more and more common that managers are expected to provide coaching for development and performance.

A recent article in Workforce Management, “Companies Draw Up Coaching Play for Managers, but Many Can’t Coach,” reported that 70% of a surveyed group of firms (selection criteria not specified), are moving away from competitive evaluation and toward a coaching and development approach to performance management.

http://www.workforce.com/archive/feature/recruiting-staffing/companies-draw-up-coaching-play-managers-many-cant/index.php

According to the article, the number one challenge is that managers don’t have the skills to coach. This doesn’t stop coaching from happening, but the coaching that gets done is often ineffective or even counterproductive. In our experience managers have the best intentions of motivating, developing, and drawing out performance of their staff, but they often don’t know the differences between coaching conversations and managerial conversations.

A fundamental difference between managerial and coaching conversations is the source of the agenda. Managerial conversations are more likely to set direction, clarify objectives, measures, tasks, and determine timing and accountability. The source of all these things is usually the manager. A coaching conversation doesn’t address all these things, but it creates a place for the employee to recognize their strengths, explore ways to grow and opportunities to improve, and to create a motivating action plan for learning. By using skilled questioning, the manager can help the employee explore how their strengths and motivation connect to the goals of the organization. The energy and effort of the employee will be much greater for areas that rely on their strengths and intrinsic motivations.

For many managers, it’s a big shift from setting goals and driving action to facilitating the employee’s learning and action planning. But that’s a major reason why coaching works: the employee taps intrinsic motivation and takes action that connects to the bigger picture. Effective coaching happens when the manager guides the process but allows the employee to drive the content of the agenda. Many managers fear losing control, having to let the employee ramble down a rat hole, and worst of all, that the employee will set an irrelevant action plan.

In our experience, none of these things happens much with good coaching. The skilled coach is still responsible for keeping the process on track. It just takes practice to let the conversation happen and know when and how to redirect, challenge, or go with the flow. Often the best learning for the employee and the manager comes in surprising places.

Common Trap: I just need to tell them what or how to do it and they will!

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Bobbi

Last week, a situation arose during a manager coaching session that was extremely common. A manager was sharing with me his assessment of a sales rep’s call. The issue the manager identified was that the rep was weak on the close: she didn’t ask for the sale. The manager went on to tell me that we probably just needed to explain to her how to effectively ask for the business.

I was the one doing the coaching in this session and the manager was observing. As I started talking with the rep about the call, she — without prompting from me — identified that she didn’t attempt to close the customer. She also went on — again without prompting from me — to tell me exactly what she should have done. (Out of the corner of my eye, I could see how stunned the manager was; this was not a knowledge issue.) After she told me all of this, I said, “So, it sounds like you have a good handle on what to do and how to do it. Are there times when you do it effectively?” She replied that she did. About 55% of the time, she asked for the business and felt comfortable doing it and got good results. I then asked, “So what happens the other 45% of the time?” Without hesitating she said, “I’m not motivated to. Sometimes, I’m frustrated by something, sometimes I’ve just had too many rough calls in the day, and there are times when I know I cannot possibly make goal, so I just give up.”

This is a great example of the common trap that managers face in coaching — that everything is a knowledge gap. This was not a knowledge gap; it’s a gap in motivation and self-management on the part of the rep. Ironically, before the coaching session, the manager told me that this particular rep was “super motivated.”

As a manager, you have expertise that your team doesn’t. And, there will be times when something is a knowledge gap. Therefore, there are times when teaching is completely appropriate. The trick is to know when to teach and when your teaching is being met with resistance. Resistance sounds like the following: “Yeah, yeah, I know that (or I usually do that);” “Yeah, but . . .;” “Yeah, I can see that’s a great idea” (but this is never followed by change).

To avoid this type of resistance, it is helpful to check the employee’s understanding of the issue before imparting more information. In this way, you aren’t telling them something that they already know. (A variation of this is to ask them what they’ve tried to resolve the problem or issue. This helps you avoid wasting your time — and theirs — by telling them something that they’ve already tried and likely discarded as an option.)

One of the reasons that coaching is effective is that you can draw out the employee’s assessment of their performance. By doing this, you get insight into what they know and what they understand about the expectations of them. This one step will almost always reveal whether it is a knowledge issue (in which case teaching is appropriate) or if it is an issue of motivation or if there is some other barrier in the way.

Silence Reveals the Answer

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Bobbi

I was on a call recently with a peer coach (we meet ever so often and coach each other). I had brought an issue to our session that I wanted to think through and get his insights into. As we discussed this, he asked me a brilliant, thought-provoking question. As soon as he asked the question, I had about a dozen things flash through my mind. I was so excited! As I was preparing to answer, he hurried on with, “Well, let me tell you why I’m asking that . . .” And, with that, the magic was gone – along with all of the great ideas I had!

This reminded me of one of the common traps a coach can fall into: not allowing for silence.

No doubt, this is one of the hardest skills to acquire. When I first began coaching, I would ask a question and then – if there wasn’t an immediate answer – I would rush to fill the silence by explaining why I was asking the question. Maybe I was trying to wow them with the brilliance of my question (if they only knew the depth of what was behind it they’d be stunned by my genius!). Maybe I was worried that it didn’t make sense.

Over time, I’ve let go of that worry and instead I let my questions stand. What I’ve learned by doing this is that even a less-than-perfect question when it is followed by silence gives the coachee the space to think through her own thoughts and process the situation for herself. That space is where learning happens.

I’m not advocating using poor questions or not putting in the effort to make your questions better. However, the important thing that we are creating as a coach is the time and the space to self-discover and learn. During grad school at Case Western, I had a professor, Harlow, who once said that one of the most valuable deliverables we – as consultants – bring our clients is the time to think and reflect. I believe this is true for coaches as well.

Here are a few tips for allowing for silence:
1) If in person (or using a webcam), pay attention to their facial expression and body language. Many times you can see that they are processing and thinking; that’s your immediate response from them. That’s a good thing – let it happen while remaining silent.

2) If on the phone, invest in a really good headset so that you can hear minor things like an intake of breath or the very quiet “oh’s” that a person says basically to themselves as they begin to digest the question.

3) Get a watch or a clock. It’s amazing how long 3 seconds feels when there is silence. When I first started coaching by phone, I bought a clock for my office that had a second hand. It was positioned directly in front of me. I made a deal with myself that when I would ask a question, I would wait 10 seconds before checking to see if I should re-state the question. I think the longest I ever had to wait was 4 seconds, but had I not had the clock, I probably would have sworn that a good 20 seconds had gone by!

4) If time passes and there’s no response, there is nothing wrong with asking, “Would you like for me to re-state that?” or “I’m not sure that was helpful . . . what do you think?”

I think that becoming okay with this last one is critical to the whole skill of questioning. There is nothing that says I have to be perfect and always come up with the ideal question. I may, on occasion, ask a question that doesn’t have the value that I thought it would. And, that’s okay. I see managers put so much pressure on themselves to find just the right question that it gets in their way of being an effective coach for their employee.

Recently, I was observing a manager, Janet, and she asked a question of her employee. The employee instantly had a blank look on her face, which Janet picked up on. Instead of feeling defensive, Janet said, “You know, I think that question sounded a lot better in my head. I’m not sure it really added anything, what do you think?” They laughed together and the employee said she agreed and they moved on. In the debrief with Janet afterward, I asked her about it. I also asked her what she had just role-modeled for her team. As she thought about it, she said, “I just role-modeled that I can make a mistake, own it, and recover from it instead of being defensive.” What an amazing thing for a leader to role model!

[Part 2] Coaching works…except when it doesn’t: Shifting from Post-It Note coaching to effective reinforcement

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Rick

In this part of the Coaching Works series, we will discuss how to avoid the fatal flaws commonly made with reinforcement coaching. Part 1 of the Coaching Works series introduces reinforcement coaching, knowledge transfer coaching, and helping hand coaching as three common approaches to helping employees improve performance. The intent behind these is noble, but each has a fatal flaw.

Reinforcement coaching has a simple purpose: We sent an employee to training to learn something useful, knowledge, skills, approaches, strategies, etc. that can be applied in their work to get better results, and reinforcement is meant to cement the learning so they’ll put it to use. Reinforcement coaching can fail when, for a variety of reasons, the employee is not using their new knowledge and skills. A manager’s frustration goes through the roof when the opportunity to use new skills is there, and the employee repeatedly doesn’t take advantage. Training is costly, and we want the payoff!

When this happens, we often see managers remind the employee about the missed opportunity. Or if the issue is to stop doing something that doesn’t work (e.g., makes customers confused or angry, etc.), the manager may say, “You did X again. Remember, we talked about this before. You need to do Y instead, ok?” We’ve worked with managers who have held the same conversation every week with an employee for months or even years. Yikes!

Our rule of thumb is if you have reminded someone more than once, ok, maybe twice for the benefit of the doubt, then it’s not a memory issue. It’s something else. So let’s talk about ways to make reinforcement coaching more effective when an employee has not put their new knowledge and skill to use.

Relationship and Safety First

First, we need to make sure our own frustration is out of the way. Yes, it’s valid, and yes, there is time pressure, but a coaching approach requires we keep our own stuff out of the way of a productive conversation. For you to learn what’s in the way, the employee has to feel safe discussing with you.

Second, we assume positive intent of the employee. Before we begin a coaching conversation, we start with the belief that the employee means to do the best they can. Something is keeping the employee from doing even better, and our aim is to help them find a positive way forward.

Raising Awareness

As obvious as the situation, goal and approach may be to you, don’t assume the employee sees the situation the same way. They may see it differently, or they may not notice the same things you do. Raising awareness with questions is directing attention toward the things that may be important. By directing attention instead of telling, the employee builds their own ability to look for what’s important and why so they add to their own decision ability for the future. You might use questions like

When you said X, what did you notice about the customer’s reaction?
What was your intention when you said X?
What was your goal for this meeting with the prospect?

So far the coaching has only gotten to understanding the situation from the employee’s perspective while potentially getting them to think about what happened. Sometimes raising awareness at this level is enough. But we’re trying to motivate the use of new knowledge and skills. One way is to expand the employee’s awareness of options available – but still with questions.

When the customer said X, what were your options for where to take the conversation?
When X happened in the meeting, what options did you have for getting a follow-up appointment?
What else? What else? [Keep them looking for more!]

If they’ve run out of ideas, that’s ok. You can offer your ideas. If relevant knowledge and skills to be reinforced are not yet on the table, you can ask something like,

What did your recent training say about situations like this?
What options were taught in the training last week?
Which ideas from your negotiation training could apply to a situation like this?

Advancing Action

Getting the ideas and options on the table is really just the beginning. Continue the coaching conversation by facilitating their selection of the option(s) they might use next time. The reactions of the employee may tell you what makes them shy away from some options, including the new knowledge and skills they have not put into use yet. For example,

Which option would you use next time in a situation like this?
Which options would not work well?
When would X option work best?
What concerns you about using X option?

and many times, some productive follow up questions are

and what leads you to say that?
and what do you expect would happen when you did X?
and what other things might happen when you did X?

Now, a question for you. Is it important for the employee to adopt the new knowledge and skills they learned in training, or is it important for them to find an approach that will work? This affects how much you use the coaching to drive more deeply on awareness, options, and consequences to help them make choices. The strongest commitment and follow through from the employee will come when they make the choice themselves, they believe they can do it, and they believe they have the support they need while trying something new.

To facilitate this level of commitment, help the employee paint the picture of themselves using the new skill. Get them to talk about the recent or upcoming situation. Some possible questions are

How would you use this technique in the Jones meeting next week?
When would you use it?
What part of the meeting would be the time to use it?
What would tell you it’s time to bring it up?
What would tell you it’s time to wait?
What preparation do you need to do?
What do you need from others to make this work?

To avoid or recover from Post-It Note coaching, we have to recognize that knowing knowledge is different from doing knowledge. Instead of reminding employees over and over, we can explore the employee’s intention, raise their awareness of important factors and decision criteria, expand the range of options they see, select the right options for the situation, and think through the support they need and conditions that would be in place for trying something new.

Are Yeah, buts born or made?

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Bobbi

Every manager that I’ve ever worked with has dealt with the “yeah, but . . . “ employee. It’s frustrating and it can become a huge time sink. What if, however, this employee is not the trouble-making, shiftless, unmotivated person that we make him out to be? What if the approach we are taking is creating the “yeah, but” response?

I was recently working with a company in Cincinnati and I was observing a sales coach, “Jack,” coaching a young sales guy, “Cole.” Jack is a seasoned sales professional, motivated and truly wants to help his team do well. We were all in a small room listening to Cole make a series of prospecting calls. This is a sampling of the coaching dialog:

Jack: “So, Cole, I know that you are trying to engage the prospect. You know, you might try asking a few more operational questions so that you can formulate some challenge and consequence questions.”

Cole: “Yeah. I know. I’ve done that with other prospects. But, I could tell that with this prospect, I wasn’t going to get any information.”

Jack: “Well, it sounded like you may have given up too soon with this prospect.”

Cole: “Well, in theory I can see what you are saying but what you don’t understand is that I’ve talked to this guy once before so I know how he is.”

Jack: “Okay, well I’m just saying that a big part of your success in sales is going to come from being persistent and breaking through these barriers.”

Cole: “Yeah, yeah, I know that. I almost always do that. It’s just that these calls have been to some really bad prospects.”

And, on it went. Nothing productive came from the conversation. Here’s the thing: Cole has been through an 8-week sales training program. What are the odds that he hasn’t heard this advice before? Of course, he has heard this all! The real question is why isn’t he doing what he knows to do?

It’s not that Jack’s ideas or advice were bad or off the mark. He was right. The problem is that he was giving advice. This is one of the most common traps when someone is new to coaching. Giving advice has some pretty nasty side effects. To be very clear: advice giving is NOT coaching. (By the way, if advice giving worked, would a doctor ever have to tell a patient twice that they should stop smoking, lose weight, or start exercising?)

In addition to the potential of creating the “Yeah, but” situation, advice giving can also lead to the following:

Dependency: Let’s say the coachee actually accepts your advice. What will they do the next time they need an answer? They’ll come to you! What this means for the manager/coach who does this is that there will always be someone at her door, waiting for answers. At some point, this manager is going to say: “Why can’t this person do anything on their own?”

Abdication of responsibility: If the coachee accepts the advice, then they have a built in excuse for failure. “Hey, it wasn’t my idea, so it’s not my fault if it doesn’t work!”

About a month ago, I was in Dallas, coaching a sales rep, “George,” who was described by his managers as a “classic yeah, yeah employee, who will never change.” I will admit, at first, I thought they might be right! In our third session together, George said to me, “You know I enjoyed the sales training program that your company did a few months ago.” I then asked him what he enjoyed about it. (I’m ashamed to admit this, but, I really didn’t think he was being sincere in his statement. I thought he was once again brushing off the coaching opportunity. Shame on me!) He replied, “It was a good reminder about a couple of things that I know that I should do, but I don’t do.” My ears picked up at that! I asked him what those things were. He said, “You know, I know that I should be looking for advocates inside the prospect organizations, but I don’t really do that.” I asked him if there were instances where having an advocate would have gotten a better result for him. He said, “I’ve lost some big deals because I didn’t have really good inside information.” I then said, “Well, is this something that you’d like to go about tackling now? Would it be helpful for us to explore it?” He said, “Yes. I’m ready to do this.”

Of course, only time will tell how things will work out for him. However, when he left the room, his manager turned to me – stunned. She said, “In a million years, I didn’t think that sort of conversation would ever be possible with him! Maybe there is hope.”

In the book, Coaching Skills: A Handbook, Jenny Rogers writes that “If You Insist, I Resist.” If your employees are resisting, it is certainly worth checking your style. If you are insisting or giving advice, try switching to a coaching approach of asking thought-provoking questions that gets them to discover their own need/challenge/opportunity.

Rogers also writes that to accept advice, a person has to admit to themselves that someone else has more knowledge or is somehow better. No adult likes to do this – even if it is true!

Typically adults like to learn; what they don’t like is to be taught. Your role as a manager/coach is to facilitate their learning. Not only will there be less resistance, but what a person learns and experiences for herself, sticks.

Self-awareness leads to self-correction

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Bobbi

When I was in high school, I took debate, and I had a great debate coach, Mr. Jordan. He taught me a lot about speaking and perhaps even more about coaching. I remember one tournament when I got a very low score from a judge (which was kind of unusual). Even more unusual were the comments this judge wrote about me on the evaluation form. It was obvious that she seriously disliked me! I was stunned.

When Mr. Jordan and I reviewed the evaluations, he asked me, “What do you make of this one?” I said, “Well, clearly she didn’t like me.” He replied, “Okay. But what else might this tell you?” I thought for a minute and I said, “I must have done something in my delivery to really put her off.” He then suggested that we talk about it.

During that discussion, Mr. Jordan led me through a series of questions, including the following: “What did you notice about her demeanor at the beginning of the round?” “Was she a college judge or was she more likely someone’s mother who was pressed into service?” “When you began speaking, tell me about her posture and body language.” “As you were speaking, did anything about her posture or body language change?” “What about her level of eye contact? Did that change during your presentation?” As he asked me these questions, I began to see all the telltale signs that I – with my rapid fire delivery – had lost her. Looking back, I’d say she was definitely someone’s mother who had been pressed into service. Since I didn’t pay attention to that – and at the time didn’t know that I should! – I continued as though I was debating in front of a college debate judge. The signs were there all along that I was going down the wrong path, but I didn’t know the signs, nor did I know what they meant – until the coaching session with Mr. Jordan. In that conversation, he raised my awareness so that I could learn how to give myself feedback in the moment (the debate round) and self-adjust in the moment based upon that feedback. This was a critical skill as Mr. Jordan couldn’t be in every debate round, nor could he coach us during the round.

As a manager, you cannot be on every sales call or be present for every customer interaction that your employee will have. By raising their awareness and helping them learn how to give themselves feedback, you are increasing their ability to read the interaction and adjust accordingly.

Notice that Mr. Jordan didn’t tell me that I had lost her nor did he deliver that great pearl of wisdom: “You’ve got to know your audience.” Instead he helped me discover what that actually means and how I could do it in the future.