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Podcast #4 - CLEAR Coaching Defined · CLEAR Performance Coaching

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Lead in the real world moment by moment, choice by choice.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is where leadership meets performance crowd practical so you can step in and show up on purpose every day.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Sam Bracken.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm Kent Vaughn.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we're here with podcast number four of Clear Performance Coaching, and we're diving into section number three, Clear Coaching Defined.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought I'd tee it up with a question here.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of leaders think they're coaching when they're really correcting or advising or rescuing.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I hear that a lot where they just jump in and fix it.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: If we don't define coaching clearly, we'll likely misuse it.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, Sam, can help us define what we mean by clear coaching.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think the first principle of defining coaching is really found in the concept that people matter.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_04: It is our belief at clear performance coaching that the human resource is the most valuable of all resources.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_04: More valuable than cash, more valuable than plant and equipment, more valuable than anything.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_04: And the reason they're the most valuable is because they have the every human being has the ability to creatively think.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_04: Now, what creative thinking is, is the ability to actively meet new situations in a dynamic, powerful way to produce results regardless of circumstance.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_04: No machine can do this.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_04: Not yet.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_04: Not yet anymore.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_04: No, there's no AI, there's no robot that's going to rescue you out of this.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_04: Machines can't care about you.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_04: They don't about you, right?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_04: They have no soul, right?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_04: But this idea that people matter, there's a great book called The Power of Mattering that I just read recently.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_04: It's a fabulous book.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_04: And maybe you can put it in the notes.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_04: But this is the idea that people really need to feel like they matter.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_04: Because when they don't feel like they matter, we don't tap into their talent and their ability, and we don't get their heart and their head.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_04: Like you said, Kent in the previous podcast, this idea of you can pay for their back and their arms and their back, but to get their head and their heart, you have to earn.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_04: And the way you earn that is by letting them know they matter.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_04: And now, people are different.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_04: And then the way you let one person know they matter is different than the way you let someone know, someone else know that they matter.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_04: I have a boss, his name is Jason Frampton, and he has a really amazing ability to say the right things at the right time to feel to let me know I matter.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_04: And I got to tell you, man, it makes all the difference.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_04: Makes all the difference.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_04: And one of the tools we have, we talked about last time a little bit, was this idea of being caring and curious.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_04: This is the gateway to let people know they matter.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Ken, I'd love to hear from you on that.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I love the words you put together at the beginning, how so many leaders think that coaching is really correcting.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a piece of correcting and coaching, but it's interesting, for the last few days I've been in Charleston, South Carolina with a client, a well-known company you'd know, but I will need to say their name.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, I asked that question many times, many, many times with leaders there.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: What's the difference between correcting and coaching?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: And virtually every person said correcting is you're telling them what they did wrong or telling them what to do.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: And coaching was more like helping them get better, right?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: And helping them improve.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: And that's really what this is.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: And you can't do that.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: You really can't do that if you don't care about people.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't really recognize that they're your most valuable resource.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's so funny because, you know, I started out as a finance guy out of business school decades ago, and they said, man, you talk way too much to be a good accountant.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: On the balance sheet, employees, team members are an expense.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: They're not an asset, which is ludicrous.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: This goes back hundreds of years, the way the system is set up.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: And it's unfortunately the way CEOs, executives, the sense of looking at the balance sheet, you forget, hey, the one who the ones who get you all those outcomes are not just the robots, the machines, but they're the people, and they are this really valuable resource.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: They're the people that say the things and do the things to get things done.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: And that's one of the things we really have to remember that they are by definition valuable.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: Now, sometimes you have people that are in the wrong seat, and sometimes even on the wrong bus.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: And Collins, of course, talked about good to great, came out decades ago.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: Great book that I highly recommend.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: But this idea is sometimes it's just people in the wrong seat.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I found myself in that situation many, many years ago out of business school in a finance job in a Fortune 100 company, and I just hated it.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: And after a couple of years, I finally went to my boss who had earned this with me.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: He was a great boss that wanted to know what I felt and how I was doing, et cetera, et cetera.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: I finally said, Yeah, I just can't do this anymore.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: I just can't stand this.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: I want to move into operations role.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: I want to be involved with plants and making things happen.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: And he was so helpful in helping me understand what to do.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: But it's because we'd had a relationship and I knew that he cared about me that I could go have that conversation.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: I knew I may be walking out without a job.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: It begins with the sense that they know that you're really interested in their success.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: And success may be that they can't do this role well and we have to help them go somewhere else, right?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: But that isn't the way you begin.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: If you can't ever get there if they don't know that you really care about it, you're really interested in them being successful.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think coaching absolutely starts with how you see people.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you see people as a problem to manage, you're never going to coach well.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: If people are about a value that you can unlock, your whole posture changes.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't tell you how many times, you know, we've helped leaders just recognize that mindset shift of, as you said, Kent, they're on the asset side of your balance sheet, not the liability side.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: And when you can unlock that mind frame, you start to be able to unlock their potential.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: As we said in the last episode, they feel that you care about them.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: You demonstrate curiosity, and that builds that connection.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now we've got something to start with, right?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_04: And one of the great things to understand here when we define coaching is what coaching is and what coaching is not, right?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_04: Coaching is seeing people as an unlimited valuable resource.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_04: What it's not is seeing people like they're turds, right?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_04: To see, to not see value in people.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_04: What coaching is, is pulling out the best in them.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_04: What coaching is not is counseling or therapy, right?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_04: What coaching is is not telling coaching is not telling people what to do.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_04: What coaching is is pulling the right answer out of them, right?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_04: So there's things that coaches do and that coaches don't do.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_04: You we need to understand the separation between those two things, right?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_04: It's really critical because as a coach, you're not your job as a coach is not to tell people what to do.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_04: Your job as a coach, your job is to say, what are you going to do?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_04: And then to help them do that with excellence.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_04: You can be a micromanager, right?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_04: That's not coaching, right?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_04: What coaching is is unlocking potential, right?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_04: What not what's not coaching is being a micromanager.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_04: What coaching is, is having your conversations be held in confidence, right?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_04: What's not coaching is spying on people and saying, hey, did you know such and such, did such and such, and they don't like so and so?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_04: That's bull crap.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_04: That's not coaching, right?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_04: So it's really important that we understand the distinction between the two.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_04: Because in a good, valuable, intense coaching conversation, people are going to tell you, if you have connection with them, they're going to tell you very private, very personal things that don't need to be shared with other people.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_04: Matter of fact, it's one of the things that we talk about, right?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_04: When you're in a coaching space, you're really in a sacred space and you're really to hold that stuff in confidence.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_04: So otherwise you can't get to the root of the problem.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_04: You can't get to the real roots if people aren't being really honest with you, right?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_04: So they need to understand that when you're talking to them, you're coaching them, that the sessions are held in confidence, right?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_04: And when you wanna, when you wanna share what they say with you in that session, you need to ask permission to see if it's okay to share with others.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_04: If it's not, don't share it with others, right?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_04: So this distinction, what it is, what it's not, really important to understand.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love that.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: Just yesterday, I was in a coaching session with the leader, and she asked me about halfway through the session, now, now you this is confidential, right?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: This is like client privilege or whatever.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, matter of fact, it is.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: So, because you just want to make sure that this is only our second session together.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, absolutely it is.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'll report back to the CEO that we've had a conversation, but I won't go into the details about what you're sharing, et cetera.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: And they'll be able to see what's happening based on what you're doing.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: That is so important because if people share something with us and then they hear it at the water fountain the next day, you're done.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: Done.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: You lose your power.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: You've got power, you've lost credibility.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: You you'll never you'll never be able to coach them again.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: You're not you forget about it.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: Find something.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_04: Because you lose trust, you lose trust.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_04: When you do that, you lose trust.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_04: And trust we know from our friend Stephen and Marcovey is a currency, baby.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_04: It is really powerful.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's so hard to get that trust back.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's really hard to do that.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: What I hear from you both is that coaching isn't about soft or hard behaviors.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like they both could be done in the right, but it really is about developing people, building accountability, and actually generating results in organizations, right?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it seems like we're really trying to hone in on what are the skills of great coaches.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Sam, what do you think?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_04: Ah, the first best skill to be a great coach is to ask questions and shut your mouth.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_04: Like you're gonna want to talk.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_04: You're gonna want to fill space with talking.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_04: Do not talk.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_04: Listen.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_04: Listen to understand.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_04: Dr.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_04: Covey used to tell us, you know, listen to understand and only to understand.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_04: I like to say you have to earn the right to respond because you understand, right?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_04: And listen with all your senses to understand.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_04: That's the first skill you need as a coach.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_04: The second skill you need as a coach is just to be curious and to be curious in a way that draws things out of people, right?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_04: That gets them to make a commitment, right?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_04: The third skill is you need to have your own set of experiences, your own successes and failures that you can draw from.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_04: The fourth skill is you need to have critical and creative thinking.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_04: You need to be able to walk people through prototypes and countertypes and best idea wins kind of thing.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_04: And the fifth skill is that you need to care about them enough to see good in them.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_04: But there's a lot of great skills you need to be a great coach, but they're not, they're not out of reach.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_04: All of the skills to be a great coach are within your ability, right?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_04: You just need focus and they need effort around them.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love what you said, Sam, and it reminds me about why we created these cars, right?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: One of the cards in this category, color coaching defined, is you know, skills of great coaching.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: And it's got listed these skills that Sam just talked about.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: But here's how it helps you.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: On the back are some watchouts.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like it requires focus and work to be a great coach.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: Remember, it's a process, not an event.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: You're not trying to give them everything today, it's an event.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: And then it gives you three powerful questions and a video to watch, a QR code with a little 90-second video to watch.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there are questions.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Sam has says power quote for questions.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: We're giving you the questions.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: We're giving you the questions at a start anyway.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to have asked all of these, and you'll come up with your own, right?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: But I love this.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: Just the other day, I was talking to a new leader in an organization, and we were talking about listening and understanding, and she said, I have to be really careful that I'm listening to understand, not listening to respond.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: And that's brilliant.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: That's been said by many people, but you know, this young leader, only been a leader five weeks.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: I thought, how brilliant.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: No wonder you're a new leader in this organization, because you already know that first of all, you have a tendency to listen to respond.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, me too, Kent Bond for sure.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, I have to listen to understand.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: Now she has five direct reports and then 60 people under that.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: So she's got a pretty big expanse of things because you got to talk to and work with.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, all day long, I have to focus on I'm listening to understand, I'm listening to understand, not to respond.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that's really the very beginning, listening to understand, right?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: So this idea of what are the skills.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: Now, why is that so important to know?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: Because you don't have to have a PhD to do this, you don't even have to have a degree to do this.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: You just have to be a human being that's lived a little life, and a little life could be, you're just gonna, you know, you're 30 years, you're 30 years old.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's okay.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: You can coach, you can coach, but you have to be willing to listen, be willing to understand, and know that you don't have all the answers.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: And even if you did, well, here's what we know.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: And we said this in the last podcast.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: People don't take advice.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: I just asked a group of leaders yesterday.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: If someone gives you advice, how willing are you to do it?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: And they all cheer to each other, and no one would say anything and said, never, right?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: And they said, Yeah, not usually.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then you look at the data.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: Virtually never do people take advice.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: Or if they do, they're taking advice just to prove to you it's wrong, right?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: Or if it doesn't work, it is your fault because you gave the advice.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: Much better to get it out of them and to have buy-in.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: So much better to get it out of them where they buy into it and say, Yeah, that was a really cool day.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: Cool idea.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: And you know what?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: Who came up with that?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: Them.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_04: They came up.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_04: You know, here's a cheat code for you on the when you're being curious.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_04: Here's a cheat code.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_04: Ask questions like, help me understand.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_04: Tell me more.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_04: And then is there anything else?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_04: And then you listen.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_04: You listen in between those three things.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_04: And then what you can learn is amazing, you know, if you just ask those three questions.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_04: You just shut your mouth and learn and take note.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_04: And then an important element to this is that you demonstrate that you understand.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_04: Now, this is not necessarily agreeing with someone.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_04: It's just to demonstrate you understand that you can see from their perspective.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_04: This opens the door for empathy again, right?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_04: But being curious without judgment, right?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_04: To be a light, not a judge, just to be curious, using specific questions to get to know more information, listening with all your senses.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like you what I hear is great coaches aren't great because they talk well.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: They're great because they listen well, they see clearly, they ask great questions, right?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And what we posit is that really anyone can be a great coach with intentionality.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a casual, maybe I can step into it kind of thing.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone can do it, but they got to be intentional about it.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Is it true, really, that anyone can be a great coach?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely, it's true.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_04: Anyone can be a coach.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_04: My six-year-old grandson, McRae, was coaching me around the bounce house because we were I was in Savannah, Georgia this last weekend, and we were celebrating one of my granddaughters, Ren, her first birthday, and we got a big bounce house, and McCray was coaching me on how I could enjoy the bounce house.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_04: And he was telling me what to do and how to do forward flips and bounce.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_04: And I said, McCray, if I do that to the bounce house, the bounce house will be it'll be popped and it'll be a disaster.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_04: And but he was coaching me all day long on how to have fun.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_04: And we went to the beach and we were in we were in Hilton Head in this beautiful beach, and McCray wanted to go out in the ocean, and it was really cold.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_04: And he coached me around how the best way to go out in the ocean and deal with the cold water was to do it all at once, super fast, and then it got warm.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_04: And so I followed his lead, and I did what his prototype was to just go out there and just get drenched in the water, and and I did, and sure enough, I got warmed right up and it was all good.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_04: When your six-year-old grandson can coach, anybody can coach, right?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's what's what scares people about coaching.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: They think I need to know all the answers.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: That is fundamentally false.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you have all the answers, you can't coach.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: At least if you're telling them, right?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you will fundamentally flip on its ear, and it's interesting in this assumption, and anyone can be a great coach, that card, which is such a great card.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: The third coaching assumption is answers are inside the client, especially your coaching, and coaching brings them out.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: If you can think of it's in them somewhere, not it's gotta come from you.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: Now, say at the end, you're not gonna wrap it up and share the prototypes and maybe even share an idea, right?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: But you've been spent the whole time getting out of them, and then you wrap up with what they've said they're gonna do, and you reinforce that and ask how can I help you?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then the next time you with them in a week, probably what's going on, how what's working, tell me about that.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: But if you can really think of it's in them, they got it.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Very different than thinking I've been prepared with all the answers.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you have to come prepared with all the answers, they're gonna be problems.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the one thing I'm conscious of is coaching is a two-way relationship.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so we do have some assumptions though that we make.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: The first assumption is the person you're coaching is fairly healthy and mentally capable of being, you know, introspective.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: We make the assumption that those conversations are going to be confidential, just like you talked about.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: We assume that the answers are inside the client.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're just trying to mine the gold.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: We are not the ones that are trying to come up with the wisdom.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we also assume that the client has specific goals or the person we're coaching has goals that they want to achieve.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: They want to accelerate at, they want to do great at.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think finally, you know, on my side is I want to make sure that I'm on their agenda, that it's not something I'm forcing or pushing down, right?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, again, it's just something that we're doing and checking the box.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: But when I'm on their agenda, then they're engaged in the process.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, coaching doesn't work if you're on your own agenda.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_04: You need to be on their agenda.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_04: And I this is probably worth stating, and I might offend some people out there when I say this, but if you know everything, you can't learn anything.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_04: So one of the key, one of the key elements of being a good coach is to check your pride and ego at the door.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_04: If you're if you intellectually feel like you're superior to everybody and that you know better, that's not a good mindset to be a coach.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_04: And that will ensure your failure as a coach.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_04: But to be always learning, always searching, always learning, always trying to expand, right?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_04: Is one of the key elements of a great coach.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_04: My mother-in-law recently passed away.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_04: She was 83 years old.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_04: She read four or five books a month her whole life.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_04: She was always learning and growing and expanding.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_04: And even though we were far different, you know, her uh being from Canada and a little community called Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada, and me growing up on the streets of Las Vegas, we never ran out of things to visit around and to have good mutual exchanges around.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_04: And she challenged the crap out of me.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_04: And she taught me things that I'll forever be grateful for.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_04: And she did not have an advanced degree or, you know, she was a grandma.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_04: And I loved her and we miss her dearly, but she was a great coach, right?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_04: So I got my six-year-old grandson McCray coaching me.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_04: I had my 83-year-old mother-in-law coaching me.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_04: And it really, to get in a good mindset of coaching, we need to put pride and ego on the side, and we need to just be curious and opened to learning from anyone in every situation.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_04: It can help a great deal.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think we all affirm that anyone can be a great coach.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean everybody's coaching well today, but that they can become great coaches.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: It requires intention and understanding and effort.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: But it might be helpful to say what coaching's not.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure we've got a few ideas around that.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we have a card about that.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: And we have a card about that.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so again, funny enough.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: You didn't know.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's a card, we have a card about that.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: Sam says this all the time.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's not counseling or therapy.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: So don't, you're not getting into that.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: You're not counseling or therapy.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_04: Don't go down the rabbit hole.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_04: Do not go down that rabbit hole.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_04: As tempting as it may be, I've been in enough, I've been in years of therapy, trauma therapy, man.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_04: Like it's not where you want to be.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_04: Like you do not want to play there.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's not micromanaging.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, so many times leaders say, Well, I don't want to be a micromanager.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, this isn't about because if you were enforcing your will on them and your goals on them, that'd be one thing.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: But this isn't that.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's not consulting, it's not advisory work, it's not telling people.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: What to do.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: Telling them what to do doesn't work.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: And it's certainly not spying on people, right?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's not those things that we're here to be a sounding board.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: We're here to listen to them.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: Let's figure out what their goals are.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: Now we're not saying you don't have organizational goals they need to go after.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: You can have goals from the mountain from the C-suite that you have to work on, fine.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: But helping them figure out how they're going to achieve those, not we, us telling them what they're going to do.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: This is a complete different kind of thing, fundamentally different.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: Being open to there are lots of ways to do something, as we said earlier, lots of ways to be right.
• 22:38
  unknown: Yeah.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_04: So the word alignment comes to mind, right?
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_04: Are we getting everybody aligned to get the results that the required key performance indicators are the results that are really important in our business unit?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_04: Like, are we aligned to get that result through the collective behavior of our people?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_04: And coaches help misalignment to get alignment so that we can achieve the objective.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_04: And the failure of a coach is to have people scattered and not aligned and failure to achieve the objective.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_04: So coaching allows you to get that proper alignment, get that proper behavior, because in the end, we all behave ourselves into success or failure.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_04: And if we're failing, then we need to make some adjustment or change.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_04: So it's probably worth a moment to talk about change because coaches help people change.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_04: And change starts with desire.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_04: If you don't have a desire to change, you're not going to change.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_04: And then you can't just have a desire to change and change.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_04: You need to have a bold vision or some kind of goal to go after to change.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_04: But it doesn't even stop there because then you need to have new behavior, right?
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_04: New leveraged behavior to be able to add to that to change.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_04: But still you still need more.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_04: You need quick wins on those behaviors and you need accountability around that behavior.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_04: So you get the outcome that you desire.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_04: But it all begins and ends with it, it all begins with this desire and it ends with focus and effort and adjustments and learning when you fail.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_04: So, but what we're talking about is when we're talking about improving human performance or becoming a better person or a better coach, we're talking about change, personal change, team change, organizational change.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_04: And the three of us are experts on this topic of change.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_04: We know how to do it personally and individually, personally, individually, and in teams and in departments and organizations.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, when you were saying that, it reminded me of Coach John Wooden.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I love a lot of you know the wooden isms.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: And one of them was, you know, Coach saw that his role was to take boys and turn them into men.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, we just happen to do that through basketball.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a wonderful analogy of you know, that that character first focus.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: And he was very clear like, this is my mission, this is my purpose.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna play games, but if I can help them really fundamentally focus on the character of a human being and as a team, the games that will take care of themselves.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so I always remember that from Coach Wooden.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, he was famous for he was famous for not scouting anybody.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_04: He never scout anybody.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: He just he just played to their standard.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: I saw an interview with him.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: We've all seen these interviews, right?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: This interview of him where he talked about we didn't scout very much.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: We focused on the practice.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: And if you did the practice well, the game would turn out fine.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, I've seen interviews of players that play with him.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: He said the practices were way harder than any game.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: Structured, very organized, very planned, right?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: So they had a plan.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to practice well, we're going to be, we're creating men here who are going to achieve it this and then achieve it live, right?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: You know, one of the things I love about these coaching cards that I personally find so helpful is that on every card in the back, we have watch outs and powerful questions.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: And a little short video with Sam for 90 seconds teaching you about in this case what coaching is not, right?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a really step-by-step process.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody will just say to me, these are so tactile, I can touch them, feel them, and use them.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: And they're tactical because I can actually use them.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: So you could literally watch a video with someone that you're coaching and say, hey, listen, we're gonna work on this together.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to do this better.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: And but it gives you questions like, what's going on right now?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: Trying to get another, what tell them what's going on?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: And what's keeping you from fulfilling your goals, your dreams?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: And you're asking them now, if they're stuck in a downward spiral and they're not getting where they need to be, then you just say, okay, so tell me more about that.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: Because there's a tendency for people to say, well, it's them, it's them, it's them, it's not me, right?
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: But that's what part of coaching is, is helping bring them back to, yeah, but you what can you control here, right?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: What can you do here?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: They're just such simple questions that make it easier for us if we will remember that I got to care about people and I don't have, I don't have to have all the answers.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have all the answers, but what we do have is some answers about just life in general, right?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so you bring that to bear.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: This reminds me of a story you talked about your mother-in-law, Sam.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: I have a great friend who I think very much of is a mentor.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: Now, if you asked him, he wouldn't say he's my mentor at all.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: His name is Leon Everett, though.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: Leon Everett is 82 years old.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: He owns, still owns the CPA accounting firm in Knoxville, Tennessee.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: He's been a CPA for decades.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: And Sam, and in the United States, if you're a CPA, you have to do 30 hours of continued education every year to keep your license alive.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: And you'd think, at 82 years old, own his own firm for decades, he'd know every answer.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, so how does that go?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, Hey, every time I go to one of those classes, I just think, let me just learn one new idea.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: Or let me be reminded of a new idea.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: Or an old idea that I forgot that I'm not using anymore.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: And he doesn't walk in going, dude, I have I've had my own firm for 40 years.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: I don't need to listen to you.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: What a mindset.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's such a great mindset, and that's one of the reasons he's such a great mentor to me.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: He's constantly reminding me, just hey, and he'll say often, say, man, that's a great idea.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_02: I love that, Ken.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm thinking, I haven't told you anything you haven't thought of 20 times, right?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: But if we as coaches can think of ourselves as, we're looking for their great ideas because they've got some.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: They've got some great ways of seeing it that maybe I've never even thought of, or I've tried before, but that's what these prototypes are all about.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's all about getting it from them.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it's funny, it's funny you say that, Kent.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_04: Over the last 20 years, you would not believe what I've learned from the people that I've coached.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_04: Like they've taught me things that I would have never learned on my own, ever.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_04: They had a skill set and expertise set that that I needed to learn from.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_04: And it's been an honor to learn at their feet.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_04: I will never stop coaching.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_04: Like I just I love it so much because there's always something to learn from somebody.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_04: Everybody has a story.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_04: Everyone has a story that's worth telling.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_04: And as good coaches, we can get lost in their world and understand their story, man.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_04: There's not much, not there's not much greater joy in life than to really understand a human being and the struggles and the way they've overcome their struggles and what gives them meaning and purpose in their life.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_04: It's a great thing.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_04: It's a great thing.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Sam, there's a challenge we've identified, we've put in the cards, and you almost just touched on it, which is coaching is not therapy.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: And yet it's a rabbit hole, even myself, I've got sucked into.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: How do we know when we're there?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Just as a watch out for somebody trying to get into coaching.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_04: I call it the monkey on the back syndrome, right?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_04: When people like when you start asking questions and be curious, people are going to vomit up all sorts of stuff.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_04: And it's going to be personal, it's going to be professional, right?
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_04: And when they do that, it's really important that we keep a separation, that we listen with all of our senses, and that we keep a separation and understand where our expertise is and where it's not.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_04: So uh therapeutic intervention is is something that a someone is trained on for years, and they know what to say and how to say it, and they know the kind of path and direction that people to walk people down this road.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_04: And that's different than just having empathy and understanding.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_04: So what keeps us separated is to give them empathy and understanding and demonstrate you understand them.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_04: You're not trying to fix their problem.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_04: Therapists are going to try to fix the problem, right?
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_04: They're going to try to take you through modalities like EMDR or exposure therapy or things to fix the panic attacks or fix the to give you back emotional regulation.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_04: Like that's not our job.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_04: Our job is to understand with empathy so we can have insight so they can help themselves.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_04: Now, now I will tell you that a lot of our techniques and a lot of the things we teach come from the therapeutic world, right?
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_04: They come from that research and that experience, but we're not going to go down the rabbit holes because we can't fix them and we're not qualified to fix them.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_04: But we can sure give people empathy and understanding, right?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_04: And we can sure frame up prototypes for people to pick to solve their own problems.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_04: That's a different challenge.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_04: That's it, that's a different problem set.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, that's a different skill set you need than being a therapeutic.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_04: That's a different skill set than being a therapist and walking someone through some kind of therapeutic intervention.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_04: So was that a good enough separation?
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, did that answer the question, Rick?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, yeah.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think what I take clearly, and this is what I try to practice myself, is again, I value the relationship so I can empathize.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like I can be in the moment, I can be present, but I can still create that clear distinction, right?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like I hear that's heart.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: I can imagine the stress and toll it takes on you.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's not something that I'm qualified to help you unravel, but I could be here to listen to you.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_04: If I told you how many times in the last 20 years that I've been having a coaching s with some a coaching session with someone, I've identified that they got some serious emotional problems.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_04: And I say to them, you may want to consider as a prototype seeing a mental health professional.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_04: Like hand it off, man.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_04: Hand it off.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_04: And you know what?
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_04: I've done that several times.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_04: I had to do it yesterday.
• 32:37
  unknown: Yeah.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_04: And it and when people respond and they get the help they need, it makes all the difference.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_04: It makes all the difference.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it's from a place of care, it's from a place of love and respect and appreciation.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_04: And you're not doing it with any kind of phobia or weirdness.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_04: It's just like, yeah, you know what?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_04: Sounds like you you're having some difficulty with emotional regulation.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_04: There may be some things at work here that I'm not expert at, but you may want to go to a counselor and start that process, I think it can help you.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_04: Because whether someone needs to go on medicine or not, that's that those are all professional decisions based on that experts have that we don't have.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: So as a way to kind of land this plane, it seems like the first move to becoming a better coach isn't learning a new trick.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's just getting honest about what coaching is, what it isn't, and who you've been in the room up to this point, like what your presence is like and about.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I'll do, what we'll do in the show notes is again, we'll maybe put an example of a card and a video link so you can see what this looks like.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: We'll also link you to the Clear Performance website.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: If you'd like to purchase your own kit, we'd love to invite you to try that out and give us some feedback.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: So from all of us here, thank you very much.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for your time.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: I'd be with you.