[music]

0:00:10.2 Junior: Everyone listening to this is currently doing something that is limiting their organization. Welcome back, everyone, to The LeaderFactor. I'm Junior, here with my co-host, Dr. Tim Clark.

0:00:20.6 Tim Clark: Good to be with you.

0:00:21.4 Junior: Nice hat.

0:00:22.1 Tim Clark: Oh, thanks. I like yours.

0:00:23.7 Junior: Thanks.

0:00:24.2 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:00:24.5 Junior: This is my coaching hat.

0:00:25.6 Tim Clark: That's your coaching hat?

0:00:26.6 Junior: This is my coaching hat.

0:00:27.8 Tim Clark: Oh, wow. I guess this is my coaching hat too.

0:00:30.1 Junior: It is. You might be wondering why we're both wearing hats. These are our coaching hats. Anytime we coach at LeaderFactor, we put this on. And when we stop coaching, we take them off.

0:00:39.2 Tim Clark: Is that how it works?

0:00:40.3 Junior: No, it's not how it works, but it did work well for a podcast intro.

0:00:44.6 Tim Clark: Okay.

0:00:45.2 Junior: Yeah.

0:00:45.7 Tim Clark: But you know what? We're going to make a good point here.

0:00:47.9 Junior: We are now I'm trying to decide if I should keep this on for the whole episode or if I should take it off.

0:00:53.2 Tim Clark: I like it.

0:00:53.8 Junior: I think I'll take it off.

0:00:54.6 Tim Clark: Yeah. All right.

0:00:55.7 Junior: But how cool is this hat?

0:00:57.2 Tim Clark: Yeah, it's really cool hat.

0:00:58.2 Junior: This is Pre-World War II.

0:01:00.4 Tim Clark: I know.

0:01:01.0 Junior: You can keep yours on. I. I guess take it off. I think it's pretty darn cool.

0:01:05.7 Tim Clark: That's a cool hat.

0:01:06.8 Junior: But that's going to come in to a point that we're going to make today as we talk about coaching. So today's conversation is about coaching derailers. Things that each of us, each does. Each of us does. Each of us do.

0:01:20.3 Tim Clark: Each of us do.

0:01:22.5 Junior: Each of us do. That's what I would say.

0:01:23.4 Tim Clark: It's weird.

0:01:24.0 Junior: Yeah. Each of us do.

0:01:26.2 Tim Clark: That subject, verb agreement is a weird one I know.

0:01:29.5 Junior: To limit our organization and our career in a professional sense.

0:01:33.8 Tim Clark: So when we get in our own way?

0:01:35.1 Junior: When we get in our way.

0:01:36.3 Tim Clark: Is that what we're talking about?

0:01:37.4 Junior: Yeah. And as you said before, this is an attempt to move to a higher level of self awareness.

0:01:44.4 Tim Clark: It is. Junior on that, I wanna begin with a quote from the great and eminent psychologist Carl Rogers. And I'm going to quote from his book on Becoming a Person, which is incredible, filled with insights. But I think this is relevant because as you said in this episode, we're going to try to help people elevate their level of self awareness. Why is that important in becoming a better coach? Well, here's what he says. He says the curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I change. That we cannot change. We cannot move away from what we are until we thoroughly accept what we are. Then change seems to come about almost always unnoticed. Wow. So what he's Saying is that a massive part of being able to get better is to be aware of that and then to accept that. Like that's 3/4 of the work, if you can do that. So think about you as a coach. You've got some strengths, you've got some weaknesses, you've got some assets, you've got some liabilities. You've got to become aware of some of the coaching derailers that you exhibit, really come to terms with those, accept those, and it's going to be a lot easier to then move to the next level as a coach. That's what he's saying.

0:03:31.6 Junior: In the coaching and accountability course, the first time I took the new assessment for derailers, with the updated list, I had my top three. And at that point you're met with an opportunity to take responsibility for that, to own that, to develop some more self awareness around that based on what you're saying.

0:03:53.0 Tim Clark: That's right.

0:03:53.6 Junior: Or to deny or excuse it and consequently make no progress.

0:04:00.1 Tim Clark: That's right.

0:04:00.2 Junior: So we're going to be talking about coaching and the two things that we do as leaders are on this slide. Modeling the way you lead yourself and coaching the way you lead others could be oversimplified, but I think painting with broad strokes, this makes a lot of sense. Describe to me modeling behavior. What is that?

0:04:22.8 Tim Clark: Modeling is just being you.

0:04:25.6 Junior: This is what you do.

0:04:27.0 Tim Clark: What you do.

0:04:28.0 Junior: It's the way you show up and behave.

0:04:29.2 Tim Clark: There's no long clinical definition needed here, Junior. It's what you do. It's the way you act.

0:04:39.2 Junior: You. Do you ever stop modeling?

0:04:41.3 Tim Clark: No.

0:04:42.7 Junior: Right. Coaching the way you lead others?

0:04:44.9 Tim Clark: Yeah, I can't find a switch to turn it off.

0:04:49.0 Junior: No. And you do this every day and it happens regardless of whether you acknowledge it or not.

0:04:57.5 Tim Clark: Doesn't matter.

0:04:58.3 Junior: Hence the joke with the hat.

0:05:00.7 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:05:00.8 Junior: It's not something that I can just say, okay, I'm coaching now, I'm modeling now, and now I'm not. It's something that we do that you can't turn off. There's not even a dial. Anytime you interface with another human, they're observing your modeling behavior and you're coaching.

0:05:20.1 Tim Clark: Hang on a second. But can't you stop coaching? Can't you just like... Can't... There's another switch for that one. So you can stop coaching. Because we talked about this earlier and you made a very, very good point.

0:05:34.6 Junior: Well, if I think about the coaches that I've had in my life. And it could be like the explicit coaching role. You're a sports coach. You're a debate coach.

0:05:43.1 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:05:43.5 Junior: These coaches that I've had or just people who have done coaching, I don't think about that. When someone says, were they a good coach? I don't think about. Oh, let me think about the times they were explicitly coaching me.

0:05:54.1 Tim Clark: They had their hat on.

0:05:55.1 Junior: Yeah. I don't think that way.

0:05:58.2 Tim Clark: Doesn't work that way.

0:05:58.9 Junior: I think more generally what do I think about the interactions I had with this person on average?

0:06:03.7 Junior: All of the interactions are part of the coaching that you received.

0:06:09.2 Tim Clark: Well, and Let's say I have a track coach. Is that track coach coaching me only when we're on the track? No, that track coach is coaching me on the bus, in the locker room.

0:06:21.7 Tim Clark: Good point.

0:06:22.3 Junior: During physical therapy, that coach is coaching when the coach texts me, Sends out newsletters, sends out anything. Anytime I have any interaction with that person, there's coaching that's happening. And anytime I'm not even interacting with that person and I see them at a distance, I'm observing their modeling behavior.

0:06:44.2 Tim Clark: That's right.

0:06:44.9 Junior: So it never stops. And that's part of the reason that I think this is more profound than maybe we give it credit for. The modeling and coaching distinction. The way you lead yourself. The way you lead yourself doesn't change whether or not you're a coach. It doesn't change whether you're an individual contributor or you have a massive team.

0:07:04.2 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:07:05.1 Junior: Your modeling behavior should be the same in either scenario. It just depends on whether or not you have direct reports. But in that case, now we do maybe a little bit more explicit coaching. There's a little bit more on the accountability side of the ledger that has to be going on. But the modeling behavior, to me, is the most important thing of the whole conversation, because it's what you do every day.

0:07:29.2 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:07:29.7 Junior: And you talked a little bit previously about modeling behavior as it relates to leadership and performance. Tell me about that.

0:07:38.3 Tim Clark: I got to raise my hand and talk about this because it bothers me so much. There's a school of thought over the years that says that leadership is a performance, that it's theater. I can't tell you how much I disagree with that. Leadership is who you are. It's your modeling and your coaching all of the time. You don't put it on and then take it off. What is that? Right? What are your people going to think about that. This is theater. You're performing. Sometimes you're on stage, sometimes you're not. What are the consequences of that? Right. This goes to the... Well, this goes to the. The concept of acting. And Arlie Hochschild at UC Berkeley. We're surface acting. That's not leadership. How authentic is that? So that is. You're creating. Are you creating? So here's the distinction, Junior, as a leader, if you think that leadership is theater, if you think it's performance, if you think it's acting, you're creating a synthetic experience, not an authentic experience. That distinction is not lost on anybody who wants to be led by someone who thinks that leadership is theater and is creating a synthetic experience.

0:09:23.9 Tim Clark: Right.

0:09:24.4 Junior: Well, if it's analogous to theater, then there's a curtain. And now we have to wonder what actually goes on behind the curtain.

0:09:30.9 Tim Clark: Exactly. And do we not see examples of that over and over and over again? Oh, I thought that you were this person and you're not. No one wants to be led that way.

0:09:41.7 Junior: Yeah. The next point is that most people aren't naturally good coaches. This is the next place I want to go. Becoming a good coach is not a natural consequence of the passage of time. It's not that you stick around for long enough and you suddenly become a good coach. It's also not true that once you're assigned a managerial role that you become a good coach.

0:10:04.1 Tim Clark: You're suddenly anointed. You're a great coach.

0:10:07.1 Junior: Yeah.

0:10:07.5 Tim Clark: Because we gave you...

0:10:08.4 Junior: You get a sword on the shoulder.

0:10:10.7 Tim Clark: Title, position, authority. You are therefore knighted. Go and lead and coach.

0:10:16.6 Junior: Yeah. It doesn't work that way.

0:10:17.8 Tim Clark: No.

0:10:18.4 Junior: But it is a learnable skill. So tell me about coaching being a learnable skill. You said it's like being a musician.

0:10:27.4 Tim Clark: Yeah. It breaks down into behaviors. So think about a virtuoso musician like Yo-Yo Ma, the great cellist. Now, Yo-Yo Ma began performing at a very young age. But Yo-Yo Ma was not a born cellist, even at a young age, had to start practicing. That's what we're talking about. Now, you may have an aptitude, you may have a gift, maybe more than other people or less than other people. And we do see an uneven distribution of perhaps aptitude and talent as it relates to it. But it is a learnable skill.

0:11:11.3 Junior: And part of what is most impactful in becoming a good coach, in my mind, is not necessarily learning what to do, but learning what not to do. And I think that that's a very useful frame when you're entering leadership to say, okay, stay away from these things, because if you can stay away from the failure patterns, you have a much better chance of becoming a good coach. And you can learn through observation that a whole bunch of other stuff just doesn't work out the gate. And so that's a big piece of the conversation today, is coaching derailers. We're going to talk about the things that derail us as coaches, as managers, and what we can do to spot those things symptomatic in our team. We can look at the team, see what's going on, and reverse engineer what we might be doing to cause the problem and then some very practical things that we can do to ameliorate the problem and to become better, to not be so susceptible to these common derailers. So we have coached, I don't know how many executives, a lot of executives, over the course of this course of this organization.

0:12:15.7 Junior: And there are failure patterns. We've used all of those failure patterns, both quantitative and qualitative, all from... We've done a lot of assessment research over time with emotional intelligence, psychological safety, 360s performance reviews, and we've seen where leaders go wrong through the data, a lot of data. We have a list of 16 different coaching derailers that fall into four categories. And these are the categories. Communication issues, emotional reactivity, control and micromanagement, Engagement and focus. So these are the different categories that house all 16 of the derailers, among them dominance, judgment, micromanagement, ego, engagement, disregard negativity. There are a whole host.

0:13:04.5 Tim Clark: A lot of stuff.

0:13:05.9 Junior: And inside the coaching and accountability course, you take the assessment, it spits out your personal derailers, those that you fall susceptible to.

0:13:15.0 Junior: Let's go into the consequences of these communication issues. Emotional reactivity, control and micromanagement. Engagement and focus as the four categories. If we fall prey to one of the derailers, inside communication, we're going to get misalignment. Now, this is important to connect the symptoms that we can see in the team back to the coaching derailer categories. Emotional reactivity results in poor information. Control and micromanagement ends in learned helplessness. Poor engagement and focus ends in low discretionary effort. Have you seen these in teams, in organizations, Tim? These outcomes, Misalignment, poor information, learned helplessness.

0:13:57.7 Tim Clark: Absolutely. These are patterns, unintended consequences that are quite common. And as you said, we can trace them back to coaching derailers. So concrete behaviors, things that coaches are doing or not doing, that that lead to these things again and again. I mean, just think about misalignment. Misalignment is a very common condition that exists with teams and organizations. Alignment is something that is perishable. So this is something that we constantly have to align and realign. So think about how relevant that is.

0:14:40.4 Junior: One of the things that you called out in preparation for this episode is that if behavior is symptomatic of your mindset as a coach, you need to study your mindset as a coach.

0:14:49.2 Tim Clark: Yes.

0:14:49.9 Junior: Tell me about that.

0:14:50.9 Tim Clark: Well, if you. If you are exhibiting a coaching derailer, that's a behavior that is likely symptomatic of your coaching mindset to begin with. So let's take an example. So take teaching. Being a teacher. As a teacher, there are three different primary orientations. You can be oriented to toward the teacher. So you're kind of consumed with yourself. You can be oriented toward the subject. The subject matter. So you're fired up about the subject matter. Great. That's the second orientation. The third orientation is the student. Your primary focus is the student. So those are three different mindsets. So as a coach, in a similar way, you need to ask yourself, what is your mindset? Is it focused on the individual? Is it person centered? Is it person focused? So that's the mindset that then informs your behavior. That's what we're talking about.

0:16:01.0 Junior: So to pull that back, we find symptoms that we may not like in our team. We may see the misalignment. What we're saying is that that symptom at the level of the team sheds light on what you might be doing as a coach.

0:16:17.7 Tim Clark: Every time.

0:16:19.2 Junior: And what you might be doing is behavior. And that behavior comes from whatever mindset you have. So if that mindset, your paradigm as it relates to your people, is wrong, then it's going to show up in poor behavior and then bad symptoms on the team.

0:16:35.7 Tim Clark: Well, think about it this way, Junior. What if your mindset is wrong? Okay. What if you don't focus on the person? What if you're focused on yourself or you're focused on some other priorities? Is it possible that that's not going to come out in your behavior?

0:16:55.2 Junior: No.

0:16:55.6 Tim Clark: Over time?

0:16:56.6 Junior: No.

0:16:57.0 Tim Clark: Impossible. It's going to come out. Yeah. Ask your team. It will come out. Inevitably it comes out.

0:17:02.8 Junior: Yeah. So let's take the first example, misalignment as an outcome. If you find that your team is misaligned, then look to these four derailers. Impulsiveness, interruption, dominance, and nonverbal cues. If you're doing one of these chances Are you're going to create misalignment in the team? So impulsiveness. When I coach, I tend to offer my opinion too early in the conversation. I feel that impulse. I jump right in.

0:17:31.4 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:17:32.3 Junior: Interruption. I tend.

0:17:33.4 Tim Clark: I'm guilty. I've done that.

0:17:34.7 Junior: You and I both tend to cut people off before they have finished speaking. Like, I have this idea. I need to get in there. I interject dominance. When I coach, I often talk over people when they're sharing their thoughts. Nonverbal cues. When I coach, my body language sometimes sends negative signals. So how could these things create misalignment in a team? How would it. How would misalignment show up and be able to be reduced down to these things that you are doing as a coach?

0:18:02.6 Tim Clark: Well, let's think about impulsiveness, Junior. Just the first one. Okay. Impulsiveness. Let me. Let me go back to the definition. When I coach, I tend to offer my opinion too early in the conversation. Okay. Well, think about this. If you do that, then You softly censor your team. You're preemptively. You're cutting them off. Okay. They have ideas, they have opinions. They have a point of view. They have things to share. You don't get the benefit of that. The team is not getting the benefit of that. You're cutting off the flow of communication traffic in this case, which is inevitably going to result in misalignment. How do you align the team when you're acting that way? You can't do it because you're not working through a healthy dialogue process that usually includes discussion, analysis, and then decision making. You're not going to do that.

0:19:14.0 Junior: Yeah. Let's go to the next three. We'll walk through these ones quickly. Poor information. If you see that upstream, you may find impatience, defensiveness, judgment, and emotionality. All four of those contribute to poor information. If you become defensive when you're coaching. Do you think that you're going to get the best information from the front lines of the organization? No. That's going to be filtered by the time it gets to you because people know you can't handle it.

0:19:45.3 Tim Clark: More scrubbed, more sanitized, and less of it.

0:19:49.7 Junior: Yep. Emotionality, same thing. You're going to censor the team. They see that you're overly emotional, they're not going to give you the right information because they know what that's going to trigger. On the flip side, if you have that in check, the team feels more comfortable coming with whatever it might be. Bad news, a surprise, bad outcome.

0:20:09.3 Tim Clark: Contrary point of View.

0:20:11.4 Junior: Contrary point of view. New idea.

0:20:13.7 Tim Clark: Challenging the status quo.

0:20:15.7 Junior: What's upstream from learned helplessness, control, ego, micromanagement, negativity. If you fall prey to one of those derailers, you're going to teach the team, I need to be involved in every little thing. You don't have the autonomy that you need to go and make independent decisions. And so I'm going to be here all the time as Big Brother, as oversight, as paternalism embodied. And you're not going to be able to go and do what you need to do.

0:20:44.9 Tim Clark: And then you condition that behavior, and then people are waiting for you.

0:20:49.9 Junior: Right.

0:20:50.3 Tim Clark: Tell me what to do.

0:20:51.2 Junior: Yep. Last one. Low discretionary effort. If you see this on your team, think about these four derailers. Focus, timing, engagement, and disregard. So think about timing. When I coach, I may choose times that are not the best for my team members. Think about focus. When I coach, I tend to multitask, which distracts from the conversation. This one is poignant. If you and I are having a conversation, I'm doing something else. Do you feel like I really care about what's going on? No, of course not. Think about those for whom you give discretionary effort. Are they the same people who don't treat you well, who you think don't care about you? No. You give your discretionary effort to people who you think careful.

0:21:36.2 Tim Clark: And really respect you.

0:21:38.3 Junior: And respect you.

0:21:39.1 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:21:40.2 Junior: Okay, let's get into the practical. What should we do about this? Let's say that we see one of those symptoms and we think we might be falling prey to one of the derailers we've gone over. Here are some things that we can do. If you're experiencing communication issues on your team, make the message impossible to misunderstand. So that's the level of aspiration. It's not enough to say, well, just communicate effectively. It's too ambiguous.

0:22:10.2 Tim Clark: What does that really mean?

0:22:11.2 Junior: Right.

0:22:11.6 Tim Clark: I don't know.

0:22:12.2 Junior: I'm not sure. Different people have different ideas. I've seen that.

0:22:16.0 Tim Clark: We know that. We know that.

0:22:17.2 Junior: But if you say, make the message impossible to misunderstand. Kindergarten terms.

0:22:22.6 Tim Clark: Yes.

0:22:23.6 Junior: Now I get it. Now I see how that message needs to get to its irreducible form. I need to put something in language so plain that anyone could understand in any circumstance, in text, in speech, in whatever modality, in whatever context, I'm going to get my message across. And this is really, really important. When you're saying something that's really, really important. If there's something that is mission critical, all the more reason to use this filter.

0:22:54.1 Tim Clark: Junior there's an added benefit to this, and that is that if that's your standard of communication, that kind of clarity to make it impossible to misunderstand what happens is not only are you going to translate any secondary terms into primary terms, but it also brings, as you do this and as you're seeking clarity. So that becomes the intent. So that you can understand if that becomes your intent. It washes away any ulterior motives or mixed motives that you might have about trying to impress. And so there's a humility that comes with the clarity that is so very important for you as a coach and the other, your team members, they feel that.

0:23:49.4 Junior: Yeah.

0:23:50.3 Tim Clark: They feel that your intent is to be understood.

0:23:56.1 Junior: Well, we each see this in our own lives. If you interact with somebody who's incredibly verbose, what do you think? Like, chill out.

0:24:05.1 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:24:05.6 Junior: So, like, it's okay.

0:24:07.1 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:24:07.4 Junior: You know, just say what you need to say.

0:24:09.7 Tim Clark: Right?

0:24:10.6 Junior: Yeah. We had this experience recently in preparation for the last episode that we did when we're talking about the four boxes, and we changed one of the labels on the Y axis. It used to say affiliation, right?

0:24:27.1 Tim Clark: Yes, it did.

0:24:27.7 Junior: And we changed it from affiliation to relationship. Why? For this very reason.

0:24:34.2 Tim Clark: Very reason.

0:24:35.2 Junior: We wanted to make it impossible to misunderstand.

0:24:38.5 Tim Clark: And we were having a little. We were having some ambiguity there.

0:24:42.3 Junior: Yeah. And is affiliation the wrong term? No. Perhaps it's more technically sound.

0:24:47.9 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:24:48.4 Junior: Right.

0:24:48.7 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:24:49.3 Junior: But was that really helping?

0:24:51.1 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:24:51.8 Junior: Do we seem. I mean, if you use the word affiliation, well, maybe you're an erudite.

0:24:57.6 Tim Clark: Right.

0:24:58.7 Junior: If you use the word relationship, maybe you're too basic. Right?

0:25:02.2 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:25:02.9 Junior: No, we're concerned about communicating effectively. So do we know that word? Do we know a whole bunch of other synonyms that we could use? Sure. Is it useful to everybody else? No. So let's just use what's useful. Let's make it as plain as we can and let's use that word. And so we find ourselves doing this, tweaking models, tweaking items in our assessments all the time.

0:25:27.0 Tim Clark: Because we're field testing those. And when we create ambiguity or confusion, we take note of that. We don't persist. Well, we. I hope we don't.

0:25:41.6 Junior: I hope we don't.

0:25:42.2 Tim Clark: I hope we don't.

0:25:43.5 Junior: Yeah, we try not to.

0:25:44.6 Tim Clark: Yeah, we try.

0:25:45.2 Junior: Let's go to the next one. Move from theory to practice with emotional reactivity. So if you're seeing emotional reactivity, give yourself space between stimulus and response. The best Example I can come up with for this one is unsavory news, just bad news. There I go. Using bad instead of unsavory. Case in point. But if you get bad news your knee jerk reaction is often emotional.

0:26:16.9 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:26:17.9 Junior: Because it's bad news. What else are you going to do?

0:26:19.8 Tim Clark: Yeah. It's destabilizing.

0:26:21.4 Junior: But one of the things that you said a long time ago has stuck with me for a long time, that one of the most important things you can control as a leader is your emotional response to dissent and bad news. And the bad news ones hung with me. And I've had experiences since then where I've received bad news and I've seen my options.

0:26:41.5 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:26:42.1 Junior: And I've chosen amongst those options before and some of those are react emotionally immediately. It's bad news. Let's just be mad. There's also an option to leave some space, say, okay, you know, thank you for sharing that. Let me take a minute and think about this.

0:27:00.4 Tim Clark: Let's just pause.

0:27:00.7 Junior: Let's just pause. That can help. So that one, I think is really important as a coaching derailer to think about. If you're seeing the emotional reactivity in yourself, take a minute.

0:27:16.1 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:27:16.5 Junior: And if you get the bad news, if you get the dissenting opinion, if something takes you off guard, just pause, take a breath, think about it. And that's where the awareness piece comes in, is you've got to have that third party view of yourself. You're seeing yourself from above. You're looking at the situation.

0:27:31.4 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:27:31.8 Junior: You're in the booth and you're saying, okay, this could go one of several ways. What do I do here? And you do that math quickly in your head. And the right answer is almost always, well, pause, take a second and think about what you're going to do next.

0:27:45.1 Tim Clark: Right.

0:27:45.4 Junior: What do you think about this one?

0:27:47.2 Tim Clark: No, you can't argue that Junior. Poise composure is always, it's always the right answer.

0:27:57.1 Junior: Yeah. I had a instance a couple weeks ago and this one was different because it was asynchronous. But it still applies because this happens to me in email.

0:28:05.8 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:28:06.2 Junior: I'll get an email or something and I just want to reply with an absolute ripping of an email. Just like. And what I'll do is I have to give myself literal time. Say I'm gonna come back to this email tomorrow morning.

0:28:24.5 Tim Clark: Yeah, sleep on it.

0:28:25.2 Junior: And usually when that happens, I write a different email.

0:28:29.4 Tim Clark: Every time.

0:28:30.0 Junior: And nine times out of well, probably 10 times out of 10 it's a better email and I feel better about sending it because I've sent the emails before that have been knee jerk emails. Just not the right thing.

0:28:41.8 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:28:42.4 Junior: And sometimes those emails should have been phone calls and sometimes so on and so forth. You find out after the fact. You know what, if I would have waited a little bit longer, things would have cooled down. I would have made a different choice. So I like this one. Next one in engagement and focus move from here I am to there you are. I cannot remember who shared this with me. It was many years ago. But it's just a simple phrase that has stuck with me is change your orientation from here I am to there you are when you walk into a room. And again, as we've all done, I've done both things.

0:29:20.3 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:29:20.6 Junior: I've walked into a room and tried to immediately get attention. I'm here.

0:29:25.4 Tim Clark: It's your focus.

0:29:26.1 Junior: Yeah, I'm here.

0:29:27.2 Tim Clark: Right.

0:29:28.2 Junior: Versus, hey, you're here.

0:29:30.3 Tim Clark: Yeah. Oh hey.

0:29:30.9 Junior: I'm so glad you're here. You. And that frame of reference. I don't know if it will land the same way for other people, but that just puts so much in perspective for me as a very simple phrase like, oh, I know what that means. I know what that means. When I go in somewhere, I want to make the person feel like, hey, you know, there you are. It's good to see you. I'm happy you're here. What's going on with you? Not walk in and immediately, oh, my word, what a day.

0:30:00.5 Tim Clark: Well, Junior, think about how consistent that is with the person centered model of coaching. That's what it is.

0:30:08.6 Junior: Yeah.

0:30:09.2 Tim Clark: You're focusing on the person.

0:30:11.1 Junior: Yeah.

0:30:12.1 Tim Clark: And they feel that.

0:30:13.4 Junior: Yes. You have to move away from what's in it for me, whatever the case may be, to what can I do for this person to make it the best for them.

0:30:23.1 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:30:23.6 Junior: And it could be simple. It could be a conversation with someone you haven't talked to in a couple days. And instead of immediately going into something about you ask yourself, how could I make this the best 30 second conversation for this person?

0:30:36.1 Tim Clark: That's right.

0:30:36.6 Junior: Maybe it's a compliment. Maybe it's a personal question. Maybe it's an acknowledgment of something important to them. Doing that goes so far. And you'll be much better known and respected as a coach and a leader if that's your orientation. It's something we can all work on. Some of us struggle with this more than others. But I think that if we improve here, people will feel it and we'll have better outcomes.

0:31:00.5 Tim Clark: Think about how much of your overall interaction comes down to these very short touch points. Informal touch points. A whole lot.

0:31:09.1 Junior: Yeah. Let's go to engagement and focus ask instead of tell. This one's fairly simple. We have the ask tell model, the assessment in the course to plot you to see where you are. And there are times and situations where both are appropriate. But if you're having issues with this one where you're not engaged as you should be, you're not as focused as you should be in the conversation, stop telling and start asking. If you lead with inquiry, things will go much better and you will fall prey to those derailers in this category, much less.

0:31:44.5 Tim Clark: It just makes me always realize that people love to have others do joint discovery with them. It's such a. It's one of the greatest processes that we go through in life is that when someone is sharing that with us, we're learning together, we're asking questions together, we're engaged in joint discovery. So if you come and you lead with inquiry, it's refreshing.

0:32:15.5 Junior: Yeah.

0:32:16.2 Tim Clark: And you're engaging.

0:32:17.7 Junior: One thing I've been thinking about in this domain recently is if you immediately come in and you advocate for a certain point of view, if you feel strongly that the team needs to go do a certain thing or be in a certain place, it's really easy to come in and just say that, hey, go do this. We need to go do this thing, and here we go. But if part of your responsibility as a leader is transferring ownership, it's really difficult to transfer ownership through telling. And this is a point I've kind of stumbled on. If I just tell you, you don't take ownership of this thing. This is what I want done. Just go do it. Some people might think that that's transferring ownership, transferring accountability.

0:33:04.9 Tim Clark: Yeah.

0:33:05.4 Junior: But if you come with a question and say, hey, how do you think we might do this? When the person volunteers an idea or volunteers an answer and it's done in joint discovery, they're much more likely to take ownership for the thing. And so think twice when you come in. Even if you have a really, really strong point of view and you're 99% confident that something is the right decision, see if you can get there through questions. More often than not, you can, and you will have transferred more ownership. You'll have less to do as a leader because now you've transferred ownership and there's more autonomy. It's just better for everybody.

0:33:43.6 Tim Clark: Junior. I think the reason for that is that when we engage in our own critical thinking, it naturally leads to the ownership.

0:33:53.0 Junior: Yeah.

0:33:53.7 Tim Clark: If you do the critical thinking for me. And I get to outsource my critical thinking because you've done it for me, then how much natural ownership do I feel and am I inclined to take for a course of action? I didn't go through that process.

0:34:17.6 Junior: Yeah. So not as much.

0:34:20.7 Tim Clark: Not as much.

0:34:21.5 Junior: Not as much. Okay. Well, that's our conversation for today. Thank you, everybody, for hanging around. My final thoughts would be as we started, simply because I want to wear this again.

0:34:32.5 Tim Clark: Oh, yeah.

0:34:33.4 Junior: That you can't take your coaching and modeling hats on and off. It's not something that you can just stop doing. You are modeling constantly. You're coaching constantly. Even if you think you aren't, you are. And that's really the big picture for me. The big takeaway. You don't turn those things off. They're always on. And your effectiveness as a leader is going to come down to how well you model and how well you coach every single day. If you want to learn a little bit more about which derailers you are most susceptible to, they're in the coaching and accountability course. You can take the assessment and find out for yourself. Tim, final thoughts.

0:35:13.5 Tim Clark: As a coach, be person centered. Focus on the person.

0:35:19.5 Junior: I love that I'm going to underline it as a coach, be person centered. I think that encapsulates a lot of what we talked about. Okay, thank you, everybody. We will catch you next episode. Bye Bye.

0:35:37.7 Jillian: Hey, LeaderFactor listeners. It's Jillian. If you liked the content in today's episode, we've compiled all of the concepts and slides into a downloadable resource for you. Click the link in the description or visit LeaderFactor.com to explore our full content library. Don't forget to subscribe and we'll catch you in the next episode.

‍