Episode 25 - How to effectively coach your team to grow your business faster and have more success.
Lou Quinto:
Hi, welcome to Q and A on Breakthrough Leadership. I'm Lou Quinto, and I'm Craig P. Anderson of Clear Path Coaching and Consulting. Our topic today is going to be effective coaching, and we're going to look at effective coaching from the angle of performance management. What Greg and I have talked about in previous videos about being able to be a good coach, not just the manager of your people. So what we're going to do in this area is we're going to cover three topics. The first topic we're going to cover is what a coach is not. The second topic that we're going to cover is the coaching conversation. And then the last topic that we're going to talk about is going to be how to control the flow and not the outcome. So those are three topics today. So Craig, why don't you kick us off and talk to us, and what is not coaching? I think it's, you know,
Craig P. Anderson:
People get confused sometimes with what coaching is, and it helps to define it, what it isn't. So coaching is not the mentoring relationship where you're kind of putting the arm around the person and telling them, you know, here's how I did it. Here are the lessons I learned. That's, that's much more of a mentoring conversation. It's not the consulting conversation, which is here's how to do it. Here's, here's where I've discerned or problem, here's the solution. Go forth and take care of it. And it's not. Therapy. Therapy is dealing with kind of the past issues that maybe got you to where you are, but we don't dive into those deep issues. When we're coaching. What we're doing is coaching is talking about where you are today, where are your challenges are, what your goals are, and building a plan to get there. And coaching, inheriting coaching is the idea that you have the answers for coaching.
Craig P. Anderson:
We're just helping you as a coach, get to those answers and come to, you know, help you get through the thought process and build in things like accountability and working with you to build the plan. Right? But the coaching is the coachee or the, you know, those staff members that you're working with is, is helping them to succeed by finding the answers in themselves. So coaching is not the mentoring consulting role or the therapy role. It is much more about taking you where you are, getting where you, where you want to be, and helping you get those answers inside yourself.
Lou Quinto:
It is asking that is not questioned is important. We talked about problem-solving, where you not only ask what the problem is, but what the problem is not reminded. You know, my father used to tell me when I was growing up, curfew was at 11 o'clock. It's not 11, Oh one, not 11, Oh two, it's 11 o'clock. So you've defined that parameter, and I think you've done an excellent job in saying it's, it's not providing them the answers and then telling them to go, do it. It's letting them find it for themselves. I hate to be a sexist in, in a way using a sports analogy, but it's almost like a coach on a football or basketball or baseball team or something where you've got an individual who's got the talent, and you just need to help them to realize that talent. And a lot of times realizing that talent is not giving them the answers, it's taking them and asking them to assess a situation and providing them guidance along the way so that they don't incur any obstacles.
Craig P. Anderson:
Yeah, and I don't want to get to be 100% purist about it. Aspects of consulting in, in mentoring, come into that conversation from time to time. But it's essential to understand when you're shifting into it, almost sometimes even naming it, Hey, all right here, I'm going to give you some advice. I'm giving you more consulting here. Then we can pull back to coaching. So aspects of that can flow in, but it's imperative to kind of keep in mind you're trying to help the employee find answers in themselves on how to be successful so that they can be, you know, it's like kind of what is you know, teach them how to fish thing. Right. Right. So you don't have to continue coaching over time because they'll have to start to build those thought processes to solve problems for themselves.
Lou Quinto:
Sure. Okay, good. The second topic that we're going to cover in this area of effective coaching is going to be how to work with the coaching conversation and the coaching conversation. You know, in my perspective, it varies. It changes from person to person. You can take a very high performer and make a very mediocre performer. Those conversations are going to be towed. Two different interviews, right? But I think each conversation needs to be focused and centered on a goal. And that's where the conversation takes on its personality with a different person that you're going to be talking to. So if you've got that high performer that's been doing well, that's been meeting all their numbers and everything that conversation with their goals is going to be a lot different than the mediocre performer, the C performer that you want to get up to the B because those goals aren't going to be as high.
Lou Quinto:
And so part of that coaching conversation truly comes down to the goals of where that individual is. It's almost like situational leadership. You need to know when you're going to be or how you're going to be coaching different individuals, and that becomes tough for a leader because a lot of times, we're caught up in our day to day activity, and we just want to apply. We like shortcuts. And so I'll use the same recipe or the same prescription for every single person that I'm working with. That's not going to help that conversation changes differently amongst each employee.
Craig P. Anderson:
Yeah. So bees are mediocre. I thought that was, I thought CC low performer anyway. It doesn't matter. Differences in terms of our approach. At any rate. I think the coaching conversation, too, the big thing is everything you said, but I also think it's about how you approach the conversation. The coaching conversation is, is not, let me tell you how to do it. The coaching conversation is active listening, listening to what they're saying, asking questions to probe deeper, hoping to get into more what, what the hold-ups are, and to get real clarity around it. So instead of kind of just sitting back, you know, the wise old one on the Hill, who's going to dispense information on how to get through your problem. It's really about listening to what they're saying, looking for those cues, asking questions to kind of get to the root of the issue, and then bringing them back.
Craig P. Anderson:
All right, so what are we going to do? What are we going to do when we run into that block? What are we going to do when we get to victory? You know, how are we going to celebrate when we do achieve the goal? But it's, it's the coaching conversation is so much more about active listening and probing, not about, you know, just, you know, tolerating them talking until you get to jump in and tell them what to do. There are a time and place for that in, you know, executive leadership, but not when you're having a coaching conversation to help somebody grow.
Lou Quinto:
Yeah. And I think [inaudible] conversation, usually when people hear that word conversation, they feel just one way. It's, I'm conversing with you. Yeah. The interview's a two-way street communication. And I think you're, what you brought up about the probing, asking open-ended questions. You may know the answers to those questions. By requesting a probing question, you're getting that person that you're coaching to take a look at the situation and start to identify some of those answers on their own. So that goes back to asking people why they're doing certain things, or why do you think this happened? How do you think you would approach this in the future? To get them to put themselves in a perspective where they're looking at the situation that you're talking about to help them get to their goal. So questioning becomes a huge part. And if you're asking questions, you said, obviously listening, right? All right. The third topic that we're going to cover is to control the flow in the coaching conversation, but not the outcome. And I think we kind of touched a little bit on this in the second topic there, but why don't you expand on controlling the flow, right? So controlling the flow is okay
Craig P. Anderson:
About having that conversation and not getting so wrapped up into here's where I'm going to get you to. It's kind of co-creating what the outcome's going to be by asking them questions to help clarify it. So it's something that they own, right? Cause you're trying to build them up. So when I'm saying control the flow, not the outcome, you're, you're keeping the conversation moving, you're, you're helping it through the rough spots. You're helping them think through the issues, but you're not designating the ultimate place where you're going to end up. So it's, it's let's get them there, let's control how the conversation goes, but the person needs to set the goals. As the leader and the manager, you always kind of involved in global growth. I can't talk, you're not in the, in the goal process, but it's beneficial to not kind of drive them to where you want them to be.
Lou Quinto:
Yeah, and I think that goes back to the goal setting, the goal setting. If I'm dealing with a C or a B employee, my goals aren't going to be as big as they would be. For someone who is a is a performer. And controlling that flow is also getting them not to overestimate their potential. And mainly if you know that they don't have the skill level currently or the ability to get to a top, top goal, that in their mind they want to be the best is spoon-feeding them those goals. And so you're controlling that flow as you're going through. And again, the only thing that you're [inaudible] as we say, don't control the outcome. The only issue is the goal. And that's what you're trying to drive them for. And so you've got to be able to truly take an F and get that conversation, that flow of information, of, of training of self-awareness identity to be able to get that person to be able to accomplish the goals that he or she or end you have set for that person.
Craig P. Anderson:
I mean, I, I had a client recently who, you know, they had, we were kind of going through, and I wasn't setting the goals, but I was asking a lot of questions about, alright if that's the goal, you have to do this many of how much to get to what outcome. And through that kind of persistent questioning and digging into the issue, they came to realize that the goal was completely unrealistic. And so that's an example of, I didn't tell them what the goal was, but I knew when I heard it, I was like, wow, that's pretty much a stretch. So, you know, the consulting conversation is, that's a terrible goal. It's completely unrealistic. Don't do that. That's kind of consulting. But when you're shifting into the coaching role, it's all right, let's peel back the layers of how you're going to get to that goal and control that so you can gain clarity around what it's going to take to achieve that goal. And that I think is a great way to illustrate the difference between the kind of a consulting and coaching is I'm not telling him what the outcome's going to be, but I'm going to help them make sure they know how to get there because they've thought it right.
Lou Quinto:
And you bring up a good point there because if you want to visualize the flow, the flow is a goal at the top of the sheet of the paper. And then the flow is the plan of action with the deadlines, the milestones that the person is going to accomplish to be able to get to that goal that's controlling the flow is to help them create that strategic plan and to be there to remove obstacles that may be standing in their way of accomplishing a particular goal to provide them opportunities where they get additional training on the job training, shadowing, whatever it may be to be able to achieve it. So I see on a visual aspect, it's the goal and then strategic plan. And you've got to focus on that strategic plan and those milestones to be able to control that flow. Absolutely. Okay. So we're at that point. Key takeaways. Well, I think
Craig P. Anderson:
Key takeaways to me are, especially if you're doing this as kind of a manager or leader to an employee, is to sort of make that mental shift to all right, I'm a coach here. I'm coaching them towards where they want to be. And kind of approaching that meeting with your employee that I'm coming at this with a coaching mindset and be very intentional about how you're asking questions and not driving the conversation. Right. And so that's kind of my takeaway today. Yeah.
Lou Quinto:
Yeah. And my key takeaway is coaching is part of performance management. If you want a well-functioning team what you need to do is you need to take each individual and look at them as individuals, not as an entire group so that this way you can take those people who are not your peak performers and get them up to that peak performance level by, by being there for them. Coaching. As I tell people when performance man, it's not the annual review. That's not where that's the beginning of your coaching career if you want to call it. With that, with that particular employee. Coaching needs to happen regularly. It needs to be monthly wherefrom that annual review you're going to schedule monthly or maybe biweekly, weekly, initially reviews with them. And again, going back to our controlling the flow and not the potential outcome. So it's, it's creating that strategic plan with the employee and then maintaining that plan by contacting them, meeting with them, catching them doing things right, which I think we've said enough in enough videos. That's part of coaching as well. Don't find them doing something wrong all the time. Try to get them doing things right.
Craig P. Anderson:
Yup. Absolutely. All right. All right. That's it for this episode. If you enjoyed the video today, please hit like and subscribe to our channel and share it with your friends. You can find all of our past content on QA leadership.com or now, all of our episodes are on your favorite podcasting platforms like iTunes, Spotify, and others. So please check it out there. And for now, that's it for Q and A on Breakthrough Leadership. I'm Craig P. Anderson, and I'm Lou Quinto.