Category: Leadership

A Coach Asks Questions

Last week at an event, I met several new people. One gentleman asked me, “What do you do for a living?” I told him, “I am a coach.” He responded, “Interesting. Who do you coach?” I let him know that most of my clients are business professionals, just like him, but I have also coached CEO’s, VP’s, doctors, business owners, pastors, volunteers, engineers, writers, managers, and students.

“Wow!” he said. “Coaching people with all those backgrounds, how do you know what advice to give?”

I smiled. The most common misconception about coaching just revealed itself again. “That’s where most people miss the point of coaching. A coach doesn’t give advice, a coach asks questions. Powerful questions have the ability to raise your consciousness. Raised consciousness produces new thoughts, new ideas, new options. It allows thinking on a new level and new opportunities for success.”

I then started asking him questions about his profession. I was searching for his boundaries and his roadblocks. “Why did you come to this event today? How effective do you find these events? How else could you achieve this purpose? Who is more successful than you in achieving this? What could you learn from them?”

After only five or ten minutes, he was excited because he had some new ideas about how to reach one of his goals. The power of coaching is in the questions that unlock potential. I added, “A coach also provides a level of accountability to follow through on those ideas.” He learned how a coach can really help people. Every one has the opportunity to benefit from having a coach.

Be Sincere in Your Praise and Feedback

We can tell when someone is using flattery to make us feel better. With friends it can be harmless fun, but within a business it can be disastrous.

To lead a growing organization, you must provide honest and helpful feedback. Too often we provide only critical opinions on how we perceive performance or we compensate for negative comments by adding flattery. To be effective, performance reviews need to be honest. They need ton consist of two-way discussion. For an employee to improve in your eyes they need to understand your perspective (or change your perspective). Effective feedback can include examples of behavior, discussion of alternative actions, or revision of goals.

If you are able observe without judging, you will be able to increase your capability for compelling evaluation. It takes practice.

To show you really care about a person, always be open and sincere. This applies to both praise and constructive criticism. This quote from Dale Carnegie puts it into perspective.  “The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simple. One is sincere and the other insincere. One comes from the heart out; the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish; the other selfish. One is universally admired; the other universally condemned.”

Open and Authentic

There are times in my life when I have felt hurt or betrayed. Those feelings can come from situations where I was not told the truth, and then blindsided by something for which I was not prepared.

As I spent some time reflecting this week, I realized another benefit for being open and authentic with others. You enable yourself to tell the truth and prevent those types of hurt feelings.

Leading an organization and being open can be difficult if you are dealing with confidential data. Here are a couple of practices that can help you be authentic in these situations.

When an organization makes personnel changes, rumors have a tendency to propagate  because of information leaks. The best policy is to announce changes immediately. Once the change is decided and approved, just make the announcement. It is the simplest way to minimize the time for rumors. It also reflects openness.

Secondly, if someone asks me about a rumor of an upcoming change, I would be honest and tell them I could not answer. But I would always be able to tell them that changes are being considered, and that as soon as they are approved, I would announce them. This too is being open.

For me, these two practices help create trust and authenticity with the organization. What has helped you be more open when faced with difficult questions?

The Process of Success and Failure

We tend to think of success and failure as events. They are not moments in time, but rather processes. Our successes and failures come from the actions we take leading up to that moment in time.

In 2013, I defined a goal for myself to write a book. My target date for completion was December 1, 2016. That day passed by without having a book written. I had failed. In fact when I reached my target date, I had not even started writing the book.

Many excuses played in my head. I was busy. I didn’t know where to start. It was too much work. I can’t write very well. But the truth is that I never had a process that would lead to success. By default, I had a process that would lead to failure.

Doesn’t that happen to us quite often. For me, I have a more ideas and plans than time. It requires sifting and selecting the ones that are more important. The probability of success is defined by the next step. We must take that idea and develop a process that will lead to success.

Defining the process is different than defining milestones or goals. Milestones check progress toward a goal. The process is actually doing the work.

If I had dedicated 15 minutes a day toward writing that book, I would have completed about half a page a day. In two years, I would have accomplished over 300 pages of material. Even if I allocate a year for editing a rewriting I would achieve the goal in three years. Instead I wasted five, by not having a process.

But if failure is not an event, we can recover. After realizing failure, I changed my process. Today, I am writing a book using only 15 minutes at a time at least five days a week. It is a process that will eventually lead to success.

When we recognize failure as a process, we can change our process. What process do you need to change to achieve your goals? What should you allocate 15 minutes of your time to every day?