Welcome to Back in your Leadership. I'm Chris and I'm Lorenzo. And Lorenzo.
On this episode, we're going to continue our discussion on the pieces of
advice that coaches would give to their younger selves from the Forbes article written by
their coach's counsel. On the last episode, we talked about a couple of
them. We talked about pacing yourself and following your dreams. On this episode,
there's a couple more and I want to discuss that kind of go hand
in hand. The first of them is embracing discomfort. And as a person
who's done some coaching in my life, I will tell you that there are
very few things as uncomfortable as the first time that a coach is asked to
coach someone. And I say that that kind of puts the cart before the
horse, before a person is asked to coach somebody before they are actually a
coach. There are very few things that I remember in my career as being
as uncomfortable because I just wasn't used to it. I wasn't used to kind
of engaging with a person in that specific way, and and there's some growing
pains there and I kind of had to fumble my way through it. Yeah,
no, it's so true. It's I think it's the ability to understand
the kind of relationship dynamics of how do you approach someone to provide them with
coaching, feedback, whatever we want to call it, basically with the intention
of, like, I have a goal in front of me to help you
get better at the thing that you're responsible for. But I don't necessarily have
the relationship or trust yet to do that in such a way that you believe
it's genuine right or right like all those things is what runs through it.
But and this is my advice that I give to to leaders constantly. And
I'm because I'm trying to break down that wall, as I said, tell
them that, say hey, Chris, you know what, we're here to
spend time together, right, A part of my role is making sure that
I can help support you and finding success and there are things that you're responsible
for and be honest with you, man, I'm a little bit nervous.
I want this to go well. Right. I know that we don't have
a relationship that is one that's like, hey, we know each other like
that, Like you know that you don't know if I'm doing this because I
have to, or like, am I really invested in you and your development
your growth? And what I want you to know is that I want to
be that I want to make sure that this goes really, really well.
I want to make sure that you know that, like my intentions here are
to help you be successful. I obviously have a responsibility right as a leader
in the business to execute these strategies, to drive these outcomes and these results,
to be responsible for these types of things. But I really want to
build a relationship and such that we can feel comfortable, you know, working
with each other in this space that I can say, hey, this is
what I see and this is where I need you to get better, and
you can tell me, hey, this is what I need and this is
the roach that I appreciate most to help me get better. So like,
let's talk through that, right, Like, Like being that open and transparent
I think is absolutely critical to building a relationship quickly, but also to be
able to get the work done in a way that that you know that that
is not not all the grey areas, not all all the undefined conversations with
you not sure what I'm saying or what I'm doing, me you know,
like stumbling through all of that type of stuff. But that's it's a really
hard thing for leaders to do because it has to show, you know,
this element of just because I have the title, doesn't Maandy, I know
everything. And and you may believe, you may you may have bought into
this idea that you can't be that person and be that open with your people,
but I just I don't believe that. I think that's great. I
think it's so well said. I think that there are in order to do
this right, you have to essentially tell an employee that you can't get your
job done unless they do something too, and that it's on them to do
it. And that is a level of vulnerability that a lot of leaders don't
feel comfortable with. They want to seem like they are in control of the
situation, not from a I'm going to control you, but from a you
know, manifest destiny standpoint, like I'm here to do my job, which
is to coach you, and then you will do your job, which is
to get done that thing almost like it's a foregone conclusion, right, And
if the leader was doing this correctly, they would have to admit to themselves
that it is not a foregone conclusion that the person you're talking to and trying
to coach is going to do this thing differently after you're coaching, and that
you have to admit to that person that you know that, that you understand
that, that you know that they know that, and that you're looking for
some type of reciprocity or symbiosis in the relationship to be able to move forward
together. And that involves a leader kind of stepping down a notch in and
kind of eliminating the hierarchy. And and and if you think about it from
the standpoint of like the a relationship between a coach and a player. We've
talked about this in episodes before. You if you look at some of the
best, you know, sports players of any professional sport, they would not
necessarily make good coaches. And if you look at the best, most well
renowned coaches in professional sports, maybe at some point in time they did play,
but very few of them were star players on their teams. They were
just good players who decided to go into coaching and they definitely could not play
anymore. Like they're done with that aspect of it. So, so knowing
how to coach somebody and knowing how to execute the thing that needs to be
done. They are very different skills, and it should be admitted and openly
discussed that the person who is doing one of those things and the person who
is expected to do the other one of those things aren't necessarily the same person.
And that's okay. A coach who is a leader shouldn't necessarily be expected
to be able to execute the job of the employees that they are coaching to
the level at which those employees are expected to execute. It's just not a
real thing. And I think I think in a lot of businesses, leaders
believe that it is a thing, and therefore they try to act like it
is, or like they could do it too, or that they know what
they're doing here, to the point where they lose the authenticity that they need
to have with their people in having these conversations. And so to kind of
get yourself there mentally, to have to admit all that it will be uncomfortable
to do that. And that's why I think it's important to when this article
talks about embracing discomfort, that is a very uncomfortable thing to do if you've
not done it before, if you're not used to it, yeah, one
hundred percent. And I think about if if you pull back and really think
about this idea. Right, so, you as maybe an individual contributor or
somebody that's in your career, you get coached because you have leaders that you've
built relationships with, they're invested in your development, you're doing good work,
you're doing better work, and you're continuing to be coached as that individual.
Then you then you roll up into a leadership role, right, right,
And what tends to happen is that there is this belief now that because you
are in a leadership role, the fact that you've been coached before now makes
you a quality coach, right. And what we don't have a lot of
is like the actual are you actually being coached on being a coach to other
people? This is good? That's that's and that's that's the facts is like
what how how do you know that you're actually good at coaching people, not
just being coached? And I think like that that's where you even see in
like in in in athletics and stuff, is that like some ex players make
great coaches and then some ex players do not make great coaches, right,
And I believe that it's because of that, it's because they have not actually
been taught how to coach people. They've only had the feeling of how they've
been coached and what do they like and what worked well for them or or
maybe what did they not like. But that's how they were taught because that's
how they were coached, which now they coach people that same exact type of
way. And it's kind of like if you're waiting for someone to teach you
how to do that versus doing what you ask your people to do every single
day, which is, go find someone to teach you. Go spend time
in doing research, Go read some books, listen to podcasts, listen to
an audiobook, watch YouTube videos, watch ted talks like go actually spend time
better understanding how you could show up in that space, versus waiting for someone
to make you better in that space. Because I don't believe that there's a
whole lot of great people out there in leadership that know how to coach coaches,
you know, And so that's my belief. I've I've seen it.
I know a lot of leaders, I've met a lot of people. I
think a lot of people have some amazing theory. I think a lot of
people have an amazing way of explaining it, which is super helpful. I
think people have a great way of sharing examples and analogies and stories that help
people understand how to go about being a good coach. I struggle sometimes to
find people that actually know how to put it all together besides telling you how
to go to you in real time. Yes, show me how this actually
happened. Show me the nuance, show me the informal dialogue, show me
what we did earlier. Show me how you build the relationship at the beginning,
to open up the spaces, to have real dialogue, to be able
to then give somebody the feedback to then be able to make it something that
actually touches them in a way that's sticky, where they retain it and then
apply it to Then how do you follow up on that the next time you
see them, Where they feel great about the work that they've done versus the
work that you've told them to do. These are all things that are a
major part of actual coaching. That to this whole point of like embracing the
being uncomfortable, you have to spend time in your own head realizing what you're
good at, what you're not good at and then you have to go out
there and ask for that help. And sometimes you don't have it sideways.
Sometimes you don't have it directly above you. And my thought and advice in
all of that is that your people can actually be your best help if you've
built a relationship with them for them to want to help you, if you
tell them I want to be the best coach possible for you, what do
you need for me? Here's my objective is to make sure that your behaviors
are aligned with what we're looking to do and that your outcomes increase so that
the betterment of the whole team's outcomes increase. Like that's my objective here,
but I want to do it in a way that is helpful, that's inspiring,
that's motivating, and that allows you to drive your own experience here and
be authentically yourself, Like having that conversation I think is critical and that your
team can be the best resource in helping you do this work if you don't
have other resources around you, right and admitting that it's okay that there's both
meaning, don't as a leader try to mask the fact that there's something in
it for you. It doesn't just have to be Hey, I'm coaching you
up because I want to see you succeed. I want to see you have
doors open for you. I want to see you accomplish your goals. I'm
trying to hide the fact that for me to get promoted, for me to
get recognized as a good leader, for me to be given a good review
of my next performance review, my people need to be performing to the level
they need to perform. You don't need to hide all that. It's obvious
and it's true, and it's both. So it's not just I'm doing this
because I need to succeed, and it's not just I'm doing this because it's
one hundred percent altruistic the goodness of my heart, I want to see you
succeed. No, it's both. It's their outcomes. I'm expected to deliver,
and this is how we're going to do it. But I know that
the most effective way of doing that is to make sure that you and I
are good, that you and I have a good relationship, you can talk
to each other. It's both. The next one I want to go into
on this discussion is very closely tied into embracing discomfort, and this is the
idea of failure being used as a learning tool and not just something to you
know, say, woe is me over. And I think that the reason
why I like these two is being tied together is that I think it's very
rare for you to be uncomfortable in a situation where you know there is no
risk of failure, right that that's where the discomfort comes from, is I
hope I don't fail. And if I think about the examples that we just
talked about when it comes to coaching people, you know, the the failures
that I have had in coaching definitely came from situations where I was uncomfortable first
uh and then failed. It was if I was completely comfortable in the situation
and it was a good relationship and we had a great conversation, then it
was very unlikely that I would fail in that conversation like it was going to
go well. And so this idea of failure is absolutely a learning opportunity,
and it's it's only a failure if you don't learn something from it. So
you either need to get the result you're looking for, which means you didn't
fail, or you need to get a learning from it so that you are
less likely to make the same mistake again, which is also a win.
It's only a loss if you if you don't learn anything from it and didn't
do it right. Yeah, one hundred percent. Like I think that whether
you call it failure or mistakes or learning, like, like I you have
to like if you're not if you're not making decisions that result in the right
thing, maybe the wrong thing, and maybe the like in between thing,
Like, if you're not making decisions where there's a risk involved of it not
actually having the outcome that you want, like, then you're not really,
in my opinion, you're not in a space to truly encompass learning. And
a failure is just a major part of that. And I love what you
said there. It's just like it's only failure if you don't learn anything,
Like if you just like you know, you did it, it didn't work
out and you're like, oh, well, you know, I guess it
didn't work out, or or you blame other factors for your lack of execution
or quality strategy right out of my control. It was out of my control,
right exactly. If you push it that way, then you know what
you're going to find out that like everything you look at is out of your
control. And then if it's all lot, it's a lout of your control,
then what exactly do you control? Right, You're living the life of
everybody else and everybody else's problems and issues and situations and decisions, and you're
not taking any of that on. So like for me, that element of
failing and risk taking is your personal learning that when you learn from it,
it builds confidence, capability and understanding to make you more effective. But whatever
it is that you're doing, and it provides you with the space to know
that even if I fail, I'm gonna be okay and I'm gonna figure this
out. And again you're building that confidence to then run you know, solo
by yourself, and you're able to better get away from some of the external
factors that may slow you down in life and in leadership in general. Right,
if everything is out of your control, then really it doesn't matter who's
in the position to begin with. Right, you could put ay if there's
if nothing that the individual brings it impacts the outcome because everything is out of
their control, then that person should be very easily replaceable with somebody else who
will also not have any control over the situation because it's all external factors anyway,
So clearly that's a lot of bogus, absolutely, and with that it
brings us to this episode is one minute Hack. But first a few words
from our sponsors. All right, for this episode one minute Hack, here's
what I want you to do. I want you to get out a pen
and paper and write down a list of all of the one on one interactions
you had with employees where there was some coaching involved over the last thirty sixty
or ninety days. You know, every man you can remember or put down
on paper, and I want you to look at each one of those things
and think about the ones that stick out as didn't go as well as you
would have hoped it was going to go. Go back to those, look
at those specific ones and write down why you think it didn't go as well
as you as you wanted it to go. Was there something that you could
have done differently? Was there something that if you could go back in time
and redo the interaction over again. Is there something you wouldn't have said that
you did. Is there something that you should have said that you didn't say.
The point of debriefing these with yourself is to make sure that you don't
just leave these interactions as failures of coaching, but an attempt to learn from
those interactions so that the next time you have it, you are less likely
to make those same mistakes again. It's very important, no matter how long
you've been coaching, and no matter how good you are at doing this,
that you interact with people in a way that says that the next step of
this interaction is me debriefing with myself afterwards and kind of taking inventory about what
went right and what went wrong so you can learn from those things. You
will do that your entire career if you want to continue to be a good
coach. Yeah, I think it's it's it's such a great point, you
know. I think sometimes I've been in situations where you go to a conference
or you go to like a learning space and you have these theoretical leadership ideas.
You talk about self reflection, you talk about like, you know,
what have you learned and how are you're growing? And then you sit there
and you're like and you write down these things, and you're like, you
know, you get asked these questions and you write them down and you go
like, wow, we have all these epiphanies and like, oh my gosh,
it was such a great breakout. We had such a great time.
And I'm always in the back of my head, I'm like, yeah,
but like you should be doing that weekly, you know what I'm saying,
like like like you don't go to a conference or something. And then we
have this epiphany of like how great it was to take time to reflect,
to write things down, to answer questions, like that should be a part
of what you do pretty consistently. Sometimes it doesn't. You know, you
and I are both like write it down somewhere. Some people like to do
it in their own heads. Some people like to journal about like whatever that
is that you do. Taking the actual time to reflect upon the decisions that
you made, the conversations that you had, the directions that you were given,
the impact that you're having, Like all these things are so critical to
actually again finding patterns, finding successful behaviors, you know, being able to
give yourself credit for the work that you're doing, things that you've learned,
Like all these things really really matter if you're truly committed to, you know,
to growing your own self, which in turn I think grows your career.
Yeah, that's so true. I remember the first time that I was
kind of new in my career and I went to one of those kind of
you know, day long off sites or multi day off sites, and the
last hour of the first day we were asked to kind of write down learning
from the day, journal the learnings from the day. And I sat there
for forty eight minutes doing nothing and then not and then and then writing down
like a few little quick things because I just wasn't prepared to do that,
didn't know I was going to have to do that, and wasn't good at
doing that, most importantly, and it's not the kind of thing that you
just learn how to do on the fly. You actually have to get good
at doing it in a way that is useful after the fact. So if
you're writing things down to journal or to debrief with yourself or take inventory of
what happened during a day, it's so that you can revisit it later on
and jog your memory about the things that you got out of it, the
learnings you took from it. And if you so, if you're not good
at writing things down succinctly and in a way that you know, kind of
filters out the noise, and puts down the most important things. Then you'll
never get good at it unless you actually do it, And so the easiest
way to get good at this is to do it based on your everyday stuff,
so that when it comes time to these you know one offs or off
sites or things kind of take you out of your routine. It's not like
a new skill you're having to learn. Is now debriefing with yourself or journaling.
These are all things that will help you as a leader get better at
leading and at coaching. So you know, going through these things as often
as you can or putting time on your calendar to do them means that you
will get more out of them, and then on should be like a waste
of time. Absolutely, and with that it brings us to the end of
this episode. This is hacking your leadership. I'm Lorenzo and I'm Chris,
and we'll talk to you all next time.