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VoiceAmerica 0:04
One problem facing people at many levels of business is how to make time for a work life and a personal life. Do you find that one seems to keep getting in the way of the other? This is the work life balance with Rick Morris. Even if you're not involved in the business world, you'll have a lot to gain by tuning into today's show. Now, here's your host, Rick Morris.
Rick A. Morris 0:26
And welcome to another edition of the work life balance. So excited to have you guys on this Friday afternoon. In we're gonna forego my normal lead in because we've got so many people on the show this time, just like we're having a Mardi Gras party right here on zoom. But I have the almost the whole gang most of the gang here maybe on consulting and so we're just gonna welcome them right and we'll forego the BIOS you can find those on the website voice America comm search the work life balance, but I'm going to bring in john gates, Steve Williams and Morgan Massie. How are y'all?
John Gates 0:58
Good, Rick. How are you
Rick A. Morris 0:59
all doing fantastic and we're here to discuss really an exciting new thing. And, you know, a lot of my listeners are john Maxwell team members like myself, we're all coaches, a lot of coaches, a lot of project managers out there. And so they have just released the book, The five coaching conversations, which is a research based model for maximizing people's performance and potential. And that's what we're going to be discussed. I mean, this is like brand new hot off the shelf. I think I got copied number two, I wasn't sure it's not signed. It's pretty, pretty sure it's there. But anyway, I mean, this is you guys released this when john
John Gates 1:36
actually our formal release on Amazon is tomorrow morning between nine and 10am. Pacific time. So I actually got an advance copy
Rick A. Morris 1:46
Oh advance copy, so it's still not signed. But Saturday, April 4, then is the official launch if you guys are catching this on the podcast. So Saturday, April 4, it goes official on Amazon. You can get your copy now but obviously what we want to do is jump Write into and find out what is the question that you're trying to answer behind this book.
John Gates 2:06
Well, thanks, Rick, and thanks for having us on. The short answer is that our question was, how do effective coaches actually coach? In order to provide a somewhat longer answer, I think we need to talk about really what we mean by coaching obviously, for a long time, the term coach really applied mostly in the sports context for phone coaching, so on. And then at one point, I think, you know, we realized we meeting management consultants and so on, that what managers and leaders and organizations do can be thought of as being kind of talking about coaching in the organizational context. And sort of like sports coaches, coaches in an organization are trying to maximize the performance and potential of their people. But the thing is, and again, we have a lot of respect for john Maxwell and you No, I think there's a lot of great stuff out there on leadership and coaching, we started to notice something about the way in which the term coach gets used in organizations these days. And to simplify a little bit, it's generally sort of asking good questions. So not just giving people the answer, but asking good open questions in a structured way to hopefully sort of lead them to a good outcome. And we think that's one great and valid way of coaching. But we also started to notice that in certain contexts, that approach to coaching could actually be a little frustrating for the person being coached, and could actually even sort of hurt the coach's credibility a little bit. So we actually wanted to find out okay, what do actual highly effective coaches do beyond just asking good questions, and that was really the question that led to our research and ultimately, our book.
Rick A. Morris 3:50
And he just said, so my mentor is Christian Simpson. He rocked my world in terms of me being a very directive leader in the quote there That he gave me is Rick, when you give somebody the answer, you rob them of a lifetime of learning. Right? If they discover the answer within themselves, they're most likely to hold on to it and to grow from that. But you bring up a really interesting point that I want to dive into here, because there are a lot of coaching models. And there's a lot of different management coaching models and coaching really is exploding. A lot of people are using the term loosely, I see all these people, you know, on Facebook claiming to be a coach, and, you know, I know those people, I know that they can coach themselves out of a paper bag. But the difference in in history, there's a difference in your book, though, is its research base. Right? So you're, you're saying this is a research based model. So what what was the nature of some of the research that that you guys did?
Steve Williams 4:43
Yeah, thanks for asking. We actually did a few different types of research to be able to validate sort of a theory that we had seen in practice, to make sure it was real and then to dig deeper to find out how it actually I was applying to work. So let me give you a couple pieces of research that we did. One was we have the luxury of having done 360 feedback for most of our professional careers. And with some of our clients, we have time one and time two feedback for them. So we have a baseline before they got coaching, and then we have, you know, somewhere between 612 18 months later, a follow up to see if they've actually made any improvement. We use the items in that to create a coaching index. So we looked at outcome did they improve? a, you know, was the person seen as an effective leader, more effective leaders result? And then what were the independent variables that that sort of drove that in a regression analysis? We got it down to, you know, the the five or six independent variables against the outcome variable, and we created a scale on it. So it was pretty simple. And then we, we use the leaders and we measured them on that scale, and we took the highest rated leaders from their followers on those independent variable items. That was the sort of the the quantitative analysis that got us to the leaders that then we could do qualitative research on, we could ask them, you know, what do you think of coaching when you coach? How do you coach? What do you what do you consider coaching and not coaching? How do you help your people improve? So basically qualitative research to answer the question of what are the best leaders coaches actually doing to get the improvement. And we got really robust data on that. What we found is they don't just take one approach, they sort of have not all had the same tool kit, but we found a composite that adds up to the five coaching conversation. So that was one peretta research with real life business leaders and people. The second was we found people who were objective Lee successful coaches. We have people in the book who manage baseball teams or ran large companies where they saw their primary job as coaches. And we found those people who were considered to be really, really good Good coaches, and basically asked them to help us understand what they did and didn't do as coaches and what they found to be effective and less effective. So, so we did quantitative qualitative research, and then tried to build the model off of it in terms of what do they actually say that they do? And what's their reasoning behind it as well. That's, we could probably go on a little bit more in detail on it. But that's the, the overview of it. Well, and
Rick A. Morris 7:24
again, just in fairness to the listeners, and in fairness to you, there's a tremendous amount of research here that we're boiling down to about 45 minutes of talk, which I believe we could talk for a long time. But one of the things that was just sticking out in your answer there, Steve, is your said that, you know, how did they improve? So that was directly attributed to coaching and not other factors of improvement?
Steve Williams 7:45
Well, you know, that that's a very fair question. We can never totally control for other variables that are going on. We sort of admit that as if we if we were doing a full research paper that was going to, you know, a committee to judge it. We would put that in our exceptions, you know, there are, you know, things that we would need to look forward to really be able to prove this. But we do know that these folks went through a time one time two, we do know that it was the same group of people by and large, rating them from time one to time two. And it was a lot of coaching, but it was also usually attached to some training as well, Rick, there was usually some leadership skills training that was concurrent to the coaching. But there could have been some other factors, but we think we sort of randomized them out when we looked at, you know, I don't forget the number 100 and some people in that cohort, and that's what you really meant then by regression testing to as well, Correct. Correct.
Rick A. Morris 8:39
Okay. Because if I look at over, you know, the last 18 months for me, there's been probably 60 factors that I would consider, you know, aspects to my improvement aspect, different relationships, changes of scenery, the whole nine yards. I think there's a tremendous there. So I was interested to see how we were narrowing down that coaching aspect. To be able to pull that algorithm through,
John Gates 9:03
right. So if I can chime in here. Yeah. One thing I'd like to add, and I think I can safely give you a few names because they're right in the book when Steve says that we also did interviews with sort of objectively successful coaches. Here's some of the people that that we actually interviewed for our book. So Bruce mochi, the former manager of the San Francisco Giants, who won three World Series championships with his team. He's a, you know, a demonstrably great coach. He was one of the people that we talked with to find to find out, you know, what he thinks great coaching actually involves Marshall Goldsmith, who many people consider to be one of the, you know, preeminent executive coaches in the world. He was one of the people we talked with to find out Marshall, what do you think growth rate coaching looks like? A guy named Gary rich, who's the CEO of wd 40, which is a product I'm sure many listeners are familiar with. So I want This boat to be a rigorous study, which is why we use all the statistics that Steve described, but also wants to where we can say, look, you know, even if that's not the type of research that you're really interested in, here's a group of leaders that anybody would agree are great coaches. And we also included them in our research.
Rick A. Morris 10:18
That's fantastic. And we know several of those people, so right, appreciate that. So, what we're going to do right here, we're going to take a quick break. But what I want to do when we come back is get into what those five coaching conversations are. And so we'll get, we'll get to Morgan, right, Morgan, you're gonna answer that question? That's right. All right. We want to make sure that we're not excluding Morgan will have Morgan run us through briefly what the five coaching conversations are and we're gonna do that right after the break and listen to the work life balance with our course.
VoiceAmerica 10:53
Are you frustrated with the overall productivity of your project management processes? Do you lack consistency and project deliver R squared consulting provides end to end services to assist companies of all sizes and realizing and improving the value of project management. Whether you want to build a project management office, train project managers, or learn how to bring the oversight and governance to your project processes, r squared has tailored best practices to help you in all areas of project management, visit r squared consulting.com are you getting the most out of your project management software? In many cases, it is not the software that is failing, but the implementation limitations or processes surrounding the use of that software. r squared can analyze your current use and help improve your return on investment. r squared can also suggest the best software for your organization and goals and assist in the selection implementation and training. Allow r squared to ensure that you are getting the value of your investment, visit r squared consulting.com today
From the boardroom to you, voice America business network.
You are tuned in to the work life balance. To reach Rick A. Morris or his guest today, we'd love to have you call into the program at 1-866-472-5790. Again, that's 1-866-472-5790. If you'd rather send an email Rick can be reached at our Morris at r squared consulting.com. Now back to the work life balance.
Rick A. Morris 12:38
And we're back to the work life balance on this Friday afternoon talking with the group of Avon consulting, it's Morgan Massie, john gates, Steve Williams, about their latest book, The five coaching conversations a research based model for maximizing people's performance and potential. And right before a break we teased that we're going to introduce what those five coaching conversations are. So I'll let Morgan take that away.
Morgan Massie 12:59
Yeah, sure. Thanks. So, yes to allude to what Steve was saying about the research that we conducted through our research, we found that these great coaches, were all using around five approaches to coaching that they're being successful in and these terms, we kind of came up with five terms that we use for these coaching conversations. And essentially it's explain, explore, encourage, empower, and elevate. We try to make it easy for everyone to remember there. And each of these conversations we found utilizes a specific coaching approach. So I'll give you guys a rundown of what each of them are in kind of a nutshell. And if you have any questions, you know, feel free to stop me but essentially, explain is all around including specific performance based feedback providing the person you're coaching with clear performance expectations, really stepping it out for them what they need to do and how they need to accomplish it. Taking on that trainer or facilitator mindset, to really give them the steps they need to succeed, right? explore is a little bit different. And it's taking in encouraging cooperative to way problem solving dialogue. So those great open ended questions that we as coaches are very usually skilled at delivering and our coaching conversations. Encouraged is all around celebrating the successes that our coaches are achieving, and keeping or make sure that we're maintaining their motivation and their confidence overall. Empowering is keeping these folks, they're, they're motivated, they're independent, they're successful. And the key coaching opportunity here is to provide them with a lot of latitude, a lot of autonomy, and help these people really effectively delegate their responsibilities so they can become more strategic in their roles. and elevate you know, these folks, they're accomplished they've achieved success across the board through multiple avenues right? And so what we want to do here is help them to explore what's next for them. So new goals, new duties, what's next within their career? What are their career aspirations? and so on. So in a nutshell, those are our five coaching conversations that we kind of dive into our book.
Rick A. Morris 15:18
Now, do they work independently? Or are they connected? Or do you move from one stage to another or back a stage? How do those five conversations work?
Morgan Massie 15:26
Yeah, great question. Right. So essentially, our model we've developed it in the in the shape of a wheel. So you think of a wheel on a sports car or wheel on a coach, you know, the old time coach that was horse drawn carriage, right? And coaching is a journey. It's a fluid journey. So there's no starting place and stopping place for how you're going to enter into these coaching conversations, which is why it's really critical for our leader coaches out there, to pick up on what type of context they're coaching in and be able to use use their internal judgment to figure out which type of coaching conversation to apply within a given context. So, to answer your question, they each standalone, they're each very specific types of coaching conversations that have specific skills and delivering that conversation. But they work together to create this fluid journey of coaching.
Rick A. Morris 16:20
So then how would you use you? How do I decide which coaching approach I would use in a specific context?
Morgan Massie 16:27
Yeah, absolutely. So we found in our research is that effective coaches have this almost innate ability to size up the context in which they're coaching and adapt their coaching approach as appropriate. We found a way that we can teach folks how to kind of carve out this and create this innate ability as well. And one way that we found that coaches have the ability to do this is by tuning into specific coaching cues that present themselves really organically during a coaching conversation. And in our book, we developed a list of coaching cues that connects specifically to each of the five coaching conversations. And we dive really deep into that into our book. But as an example, if the leader that I'm coaching is someone who's relatively new to a project to a task to a situation, that is, perhaps they have little or no existing experience to apply, then, as a coach, I'll pick up on that coaching cue of inexperience, and I know that I'll have to apply that first conversation explain with that particular individual. And so I'll make sure that I set and discuss those clear performance expectations, provide them with specific performance feedback, give them that step by step introduction, take more of that teacher trainer approach, and provide them with that specific detail. They need to understand how to be successful.
Rick A. Morris 18:00
So the the issue that I see a lot of times when we roll models out like this, first of all, I think the models are your model is fantastic. And I think it's very well documented in the book. But there's people that are looking for that checklist, right? But I think you said it right that most of the successful and real successful coaches have a feel have an intuition can can really decide you really have to be well versed in all five, there's not, you know, step one, step two, step three, they really need to have their their own intuition and feel it out.
Steve Williams 18:30
Yeah, maybe I add a little color and maybe one quick story to sort of lend some detail to this. First of all, we think that a composite for any one person you're trying to coach so Morgan's comment about being fluid. That's absolutely right. But it has to do with what they're being asked to do right now. That would depend on what whether you use you know, explain explore encouraged, etc. and and, you know, if you were coaching me If you were trying to teach me how to, you know present to a board of directors, you might need to be very hands on and give me an example. And, and, and, and, and tell me what's working and not working. But if you asked me to present on the five coaching conversations to somebody, you may just need to give me a little bit of encouragement. I'm the same person, but you might adjust your coaching approach depending on my need to be able to do the job and to be able to get better at it over time, your sort of learning experience there. The one story that I love to tell John's heard the story a couple times, john, and I had the opportunity to travel internationally together a bunch and we were standing on a street in Frankfurt, looking at a map completely dazed and confused. And a woman walked up with a French accent and said, What are you guys trying to do? We said, well, we're trying to get to this place to have a beer and a bratwurst. And she goes, Oh, I know what you're talking about. You're never gonna find that on your own. You from where you are. I can't tell you how to get there. So come with me. It was like two turns. It was really easy to get to. But the street was blocked off. We were supposed Go down. So you had to go around, etc. And I said, I don't care how good she wasn't asking questions, we were never going to be asked questions on how to get from point A to point B. So sometimes what a person needs is, is is really the way you coach them. So you come to them, not them coming to you and what you prefer to do.
Rick A. Morris 20:17
But I think personality comes into a lot as well. So if I start thinking about encourage versus explain, and we were teasing in talking with each other in the break about disc profiles, which which I'm a huge steadier proponent of Right, so the high is more of an encouraged type of person, the high seas more of an explained person.
John Gates 20:37
Yeah, I'll chime in on this one. We actually have a whole chapter in the book on sort of the nature and importance of adaptability could give you more There are numerous factors that a coach really should be trying to adapt to. One is the personality of the person he or she's coached. There are others, you know, how critical is the issue at hand? How much credibility does the coach have? So? And then, of course, you know, what's sort of the competence and competence and commitment of the coachee. So we think that the good coach is just really skilled at sort of assessing the coaching context, including all those factors. And then saying, you know, by and large, this is the approach that's most likely to be effective with this person in this context.
Rick A. Morris 21:31
That's fantastic. So right now, obviously, we're going through a crisis, really unprecedented times for me as a business leader and what I'm seeing. And so I think it's apropos to start looking at, you know, how do leaders start to apply this model, not only for effective coaching, but leadership in times of crisis?
John Gates 21:55
Yeah,
Steve Williams 21:57
so that's a very provocative question, because it's a It's putting a real exigent circumstance on top of what we consider a more consistent application of a model. Having said that, if you think about what people who are in turmoil or in times of change, you know, what are their struggles, their struggles are fear ambiguity. I've never done this before. Am I doing it right and and as I reflect on sort of what's going on now, leaders haven't really been through anything like this before. So they need to skill up. Teams haven't really learned how to work remotely as well as as maybe we would like because we're thrown in into the proverbial deep end of the pool. And then people who are actually on teams, individuals, you know, have to learn how to work remotely and even things like running a zoom or, you know, how do you how do you operate the equipment or how do you participate? So, we can either go up or down the five coaching conversations depending on the situation. I would say by and large, the more ambiguous of the more, the scarier. And the more new it is, you should go back to explore and explain more than to empower and elevate. So if you're going to, if you're going to change, be a little bit more hands on during this time. So try to set expectations with people, tell them what you're thinking, or brainstorm with them, etc. At the same time, it's a great chance to stretch some of your people into leadership roles by empowering and elevating them to say, this is your time to step up, here's a chance to shine, you know, you won't get this chance again. So it really is a chance for you to look for opportunities to exert more, more leadership, more influence, so I can you can go either way, but being intentional about how you're coaching them to get the best outcome that you're aiming for is is what I would say.
John Gates 23:51
How can I offer Can I have an example of what Steve just said? So there's a leader I'm working with right now I'm serving as his executive coach. And he's in an organization that's in one of the coronavirus hotspots. A very intelligent guy very technically competent in our model, his comfort zone is probably sort of explaining and exploring, right, good and explaining expectations and that sort of thing. And also good at sort of exploring solutions to different kinds of problems. I think that's kind of the sweet spot. Well, in the midst of this crisis, an organization where, you know, previously, everybody was coming into work every morning now, virtually everybody is working from home. You know, as Steve said, people are scared, there's a lot of ambiguity and so on. And one of the things he's doing to help his his folks manage during this, this period of crisis is weekly, all hands conference calls, so everybody in his organization dials in and he gets, you know, he sort of leads this conversation, and he has stretched in the direction. I agree with Steve that in a time like this, you got to be really clear in terms of explaining how things are going to work and so on. But that's his, that's the sweet spot when he's really done a nice job of of stretching in the direction of encouragement. So on these weekly calls, he's doing a great job of things like empathizing with people, and saying, Hey, I know that we've got people on this call, who have children, and you're, you know, both parents work, and you're all at home now, and they're out of school. And this is posing some challenges, and he's empathizing. He's self disclosing. He's talking about the challenges that he's facing and how he can sort of hopefully relate to challenges that others are facing, instilling confidence in people things like that. So this isn't maybe his natural sweet spot. But because he realized he I probably tend to gravitate toward these couple of approaches. This situation really calls for this approach. He's very being very mindful and deliberate about about it. And I think his team is really responding well to all of his encouragement.
Rick A. Morris 25:50
I think that's a great example of it. So we're gonna take a break right here. When we come back, I'm gonna I'm gonna dig into one of my words. It's kind of my trigger word. And so we'll do that when we come back. After the break, we're listening to the group from Avon Consulting and this is Rick Morrison the work life balance.
VoiceAmerica 26:11
Are you frustrated with the overall productivity of your project management processes? Do you lack consistency and project delivery? r squared consulting provides end to end services to assist companies of all sizes in realizing and improving the value of project management. Whether you want to build a project management office, train project managers, or learn how to bring the oversight and governance to your project processes. r squared has tailored best practices to help you in all areas of project management, visit r squared consulting.com are you getting the most out of your project management software? In many cases, it is not the software that is failing, but the implementation limitations or processes surrounding the use of that software. r squared can analyze you Your current use and help improve your return on investment. r squared can also suggest the best software for your organization and goals and assist in the selection implementation and training. Allow r squared to ensure that you are getting the value of your investment, visit r squared consulting.com today.
When it comes to business, you'll find the experts here voice America business network.
You are tuned in to the work life balance to reach Rick A. Morris or his guest today we'd love to have you call into the program at 1-866-472-5790. Again, that's 1-866-472-5790 if you'd rather send an email Rick can be reached at our Morris at r squared consulting.com. Now back to the work life balance
Rick A. Morris 27:58
and we're back to the workplace I found on this Friday afternoon talking with the gang here from ABN consulting. We've got john gates, Steve Williams and Morgan Massie on the phone with us. And so so you have five coaching conversations, one of those is in power. I said I was going to dive in a little bit into my trigger word. And that's a trigger word for me only because I think it's so misused. And it's such a buzzword, and people throw that term around. Like you need to empower your people. But then there's no coaching on how they empower their people. There's there's no direction, they think they could just say the word and now I've done to everybody. effective team members, right? It's like, we're gonna go agile, everybody's empowered. Let's go. That's it, that there's no follow up from there. They just think business is gonna run. So why choose that word? Yeah,
Morgan Massie 28:47
sure. Well, I can take this, at least at first. So what we're really trying to get at with empower is that we're doing something about it. So it's not just giving them the latitude and the autonomy and saying, as a coach, I empower you to go Fourth and be successful. And I'm going to sit back here and I'm going to watch it happen. Now, with each of our coaching conversations in our book, we provide coaches with tools that they can use to actually have these conversations, right? Because we want them to be able to achieve the best and maximize the performance of their people. So with empower really, what we're trying to do here is to enable the coach have a conversation, specifically, a part of it is specifically around how can they delegate things that are on their plates to other folks, either on their teams, if they're in a team oriented capacity? Or just how else can they create more room and in their daily life, so they can be more strategic in the work that they do. So that's not just a completely hands off approach. And one of the key tools that we use around this is something we call journalistic questions. So there's specific targeted questions that we would use in an empower Type coaching conversation that would drill down to relate to specific action that that person could take. So in a nutshell, I know john or Steve want to add on to that. But that's kind of what we're getting at when we talk about empowering someone through coaching.
Steve Williams 30:15
Yeah, that's Rick, when that's a great explanation of the way we presented power. But when you use the word trigger, Rick, it, it makes me think of what are the myths applications are the improper use of that term, and I've got two in my head that we've seen this is real one is we've heard people from some of our clients say, I shouldn't have to coach my people, we hire the best. We pay them a lot of money. I empower them to do their job and I expect them to do good work. And if they can't, that's on them.
Rick A. Morris 30:47
Well nailed it.
Steve Williams 30:48
That's not good coaching. That's abdication. There's another word that we can use instead of empowerment there. And abdication and empowerment are not synonyms. So you still need to be hands on you still need to Maybe move up and down the coaching levels a little bit, depending on what they need. The second one, we have to give credit to a guy that used to be a partner in our former company, who unfortunately is no longer with us. But he used to always say, if you're going to empower, you have to be willing to x power. You can't control all the power and tell somebody, you're empowering them. So you have to be able to give them the freedom and the latitude to do it. And quite often, you see people who say they're empowering, but they want you to double check everything with them, or, you know, want you to do it their way. And if you didn't guess what their way was, you didn't do it. Right. And so you have to give something up to go along with it as well, which is vulnerable. So empowerment can be very scary.
Unknown Speaker 31:41
And, john, you wanted to chime in?
John Gates 31:44
Yeah, just basically to elaborate on one thing, Morgan said, she made a brief reference to journalistic questions. And it's kind of consistent with what Steve just said about how empowerment is not abdication. coaching, I think necessarily means that you're doing something to positively influence the person you're coaching. So for us and empower conversation involves sort of answering with the person, you're coaching, a few questions that are along the lines of those famous journalistic questions when somebody's doing some recruiting.
So why are you empowering somebody to do something? how might it benefit them? And how might it benefit you as a leader or coach, as Morgan said, Sometimes, the leaders we work with the challenge that they have is they should be focusing their time on certain things that are maybe a little bit more strategic, but they are just so busy, they have a hard time doing that well, by delegating and empowering more it might free up their time to focus on other things they should be focused on. It might also be helpful to the person that you're, you're empowering in the sense that it's a development opportunity and so on. So the questions the famous journalistic questions are basically why what, who, where and when, and if you have a 10 or 15 minute conversation with somebody where they need to come with clear answers to those questions, why is this being delegated to me? How are we going to proceed? That sort of thing. And hopefully everybody is sort of set up for success. It's not just sort of dumping something in somebody's lap and expecting them to perform.
Rick A. Morris 33:18
Yeah, I was going to say delegate is generally means toss and acquiesce, right, throw it over the wall back away. That's, that's what that what delegation means it rarely comes with the instruction. So I pray I appreciate you guys humoring me a little bit going into that. Normally, when I hear that word being used by an executive, that that makes my ears perk up that I need to be on my toes because that means I don't want to have accountability. I'm going to empower you so I don't have to wear the accountability sleeve of when you do something wrong. It's not going to be my fault. And so that's just in my career. I, I perk up when I hear that word, when I hear delegate and I hear in power, it says, Okay, we're going to be on P's and Q's here. Let's go right. Let's Let's see what this is gonna be about. Now, we've got a lot of listeners that are listening to this, what can they actually do with the model that you guys have presented in the book?
John Gates 34:10
You know, I'll take the lead on this one. I think it depends on what type of role a listener is in. So Rick, at the outset of this conversation, you mentioned that a lot of listeners listening in today are probably in some sort of a project management role. And I think that if you're a good project manager, that sort of means that you're doing some coaching stuff and doing it effectively. And so I think what they can do with it is to say, Hey, I should I should get a feel for types of coaching conversations that I'm comfortable with, and skill that and others where I'm less comfortable or less skilled Think back to the leader that I mentioned earlier, probably was comfortable and skilled when it came to explaining and exploring not so much with encouraging, so I would encourage your listeners to kind of reflect on their own profile. What's types of conversations are they probably more or less comfortable with? And I would say that, and Morgan may say a bit more about this a little bit later, but we actually have an opportunity we'd like to share, which is we've got an online self assessment. We call it the coaching conversations assessment that anybody listening in today can take, all they would have to do is go to five coaching conversations comm that's our books website, and they'll see an opportunity to complete an assessment and that would tell them a little bit about their natural profile.
Rick A. Morris 35:34
Is it the number five or five spelled out?
John Gates 35:37
Five spelled out?
And actually, if they want to do that, to do it for free. All they would have to do is when they see a field for promotional code, just enter FCC as in five coaching conversations, gift, all one word FCC gift, and they can you know, complete this online assessment and find out what natural tendencies, probably our as coaches. That's one very practical thing that any listener can do.
Rick A. Morris 36:04
I think that's fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. Morgan.
Morgan Massie 36:07
Yeah. What's awesome about that assessment is that you can really simply see and the report out what your most and least preferred coaching approaches are based off of our model of five. And then you can have that conversation. If you you and your team decide that you want to take it and kind of compare notes, you can see what the trends are overall on your team and hey, as a team, are we taking more of are we leaning towards taking more of one type of approach than another in our coaching for our employees, so it provides some really cool insight and to kind of what you're using with the ultimate goal and developing yourself across all the five types of coaching conversations, but you have to start somewhere. So the coaching conversations assessment, there is a great place to start.
Rick A. Morris 36:51
And I assumed you guys went through, you know, to go to go role model and all the different types of models that are out there right now do you overlay those at all with your Your conversations, or is this kind of completely new?
John Gates 37:04
Yeah, we do actually sort of overlay those. In fact, we have a whole section on the grow model and other popular models out there. And again, back to the original point that I made at the start of this show. What those models have in common is a really largely involved structured question asking, which in our model is kind of the Explorer approach. So for us, a lot of those models would fit into that category. What does a good explorer conversation look like? We offer our own model of an explorer conversation, but it's kind of consistent with a lot of the other models out there like what you're probably referring to, is that the icy model?
Rick A. Morris 37:42
Yes, exactly. You wanna you want to go through that really quickly.
John Gates 37:45
Morgan, Steve,
Unknown Speaker 37:49
Kevin, so
John Gates 37:52
I'll go through that. So I basically means trying to get clarity on what the issue is. So in a given case, conversation, oftentimes, there's some sort of an issue that the coach is trying to help the coachee work through. So get clarity on the issue. The S stands for situation. So what's basically the situation or the context within which this conversation is happening? The E stands for exploration. So kind of brainstorming is, if you're coaching me, Rick, you might say, once we clarify the issue of the situation, okay, let's explore some options, john, what comes to mind for you? What else that sort of thing. Now, the thing is, you know, you as a coach should feel free to offer your own ideas. But a metaphor that we like to use is sort of allowing the other person to empty his or her glass. So the coach should let the other person empty his or her glass is any sort of the ideas that they can bring to the conversation. And then finally, the last E and IC is E stands for execution. So basically, what's the option or the set of options that we've explored, that you think is most likely to have a sort of positive impact and what are your next steps in order to execute that? So that's the Well,
Rick A. Morris 39:00
and that's that's specifically though to the Explorer coaching conversation.
John Gates 39:05
Exactly. Okay,
Rick A. Morris 39:06
outstanding. Well, we're going to take our final break right here. We're going to come back with this group and lead them through the question that we always ask, which is what is some of the best advice they've ever received? And we're also going to check to see if the answer matches when john was on the show last time, so we'll be right back. after this break, listen to work life balance with Rick A. Morris.
VoiceAmerica 39:31
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you are tuned in to the work life balance to reach Rick A. Morris or his guest today. We'd love to have you call into the program at one eight 664725790 Again, that's 1-866-472-5790. If you'd rather send an email, Rick can be reached at our Morris at r squared consulting.com. Now back to the work life balance.
Rick A. Morris 41:17
And we're back to the work life balance this Friday afternoon hitting our final segment. First question I want to do is how do people find you and how, again, talk about when the book drops and how they can order it?
Morgan Massie 41:28
Sure, I can answer that. So you can find us at www dot five coaching conversations.com. That's our books website. The books available on Amazon, our official book release is tomorrow. So you can go on Amazon and type in five coaching conversations and it will pop up. And if you want to reach us as a team at on consulting at Avon, consulting.com, AV IO n consulting.com.
Rick A. Morris 41:57
And so since you're on the hot seat more, we're Morgan we're going to go right to you first. So what's some of the best advice you've ever received?
Morgan Massie 42:02
I knew you were going to ask this. So I had to put some thought into it right. And I think the best piece of advice I've received is really a combination of advice that my parents have given me over the years, which kind of boils down to the same message. And so I'll try to make it short and sweet. And then my dad, my dad's a retired federal judge, my mom was a home health social worker also retired. And I remember sitting in my dad's courtroom when I was small, and drawing on the floor and filling up water glasses during his hearings. And when it was time for me to go to college, I felt a little bit of self induced pressure to follow in their footsteps. And I had to eventually break it to my dad, that, that I wasn't going to go into law, essentially. And I was really afraid of that conversation. And his response was something that I'll never forget. And he said something to the effect of you know, even if you took the same path as your good old dad, you wouldn't achieve the same success. Why is that? Because you were born with your own set of skills, your own set of strengths, and you have to carve out your own path and not traveling someone else's. And my mom's advice over the years to stay true to myself, instead of molding myself into someone else based off someone else's standards, etc, solidified that in my mind. And I love how I can weave in these lessons in the work that I do now to encourage the clients I work with to discover their own strengths, to help them turn their strengths into spikes, and carve out their own path to success.
Unknown Speaker 43:33
Wow. So Steve, we'll go to you.
Steve Williams 43:36
Oh, thanks for letting me follow that.
You know, I've been pondering this since you said you were going to do this coming into the break. one bit of advice that stuck with me that that has never served me wrong and it's it's very easy to follow is if you have to try and do something that's going to have a risk or an error attached to it. make it an error of omission, not an error of omission. All of the things being equal, get in trouble for doing something you shouldn't have rather than not doing something you should have. So making errors of omission versus omission is probably the piece of advice that sticks with me, the Claire's. And john.
John Gates 44:19
Well, Rick, of course, I've been on your show twice before. So I've answered this question twice now. Therefore, I'm not going to answer this time, but I'm going to do something a little different if I may. You know what I'm about to say, because you read our book, your listeners haven't read the book yet. So I want to let them know that Rick Morris is actually in our book. And here's me say, I found it very intriguing for smiles on your show that you would wrap up the show by asking what some of the best advice you've ever gotten, because some of the other models and books out there on coaching suggests that you know what good coaching really doesn't involve giving advice And I, you know, part of the reason we wrote this book was I think back to actual coaches I've had, I've played a lot of baseball growing up. Baseball coaches give advice. If they see something that's wrong with your swing, they'll say, let me give you some advice in terms of you know, how to make better contact or whatever. And why wouldn't coaches in the organizational context are project managers who are trying to coach people on their project teams? Why would they be willing to do that? And so, I guess the point I would like to make is that I think, maybe, you know, because of this sense, that we're too inclined to want to give advice. And good coaching is all about asking good questions. I think because of that notion, the pendulum may have swung too far in the other direction. We're now we're so reluctant to ever give advice for fear that it's not going to be good coaching, that we refrain from doing it even when that's exactly what the coaching needs. So I think your query in itself, that's advice you've ever gotten is a good question and my advice to people like guess would be, you know, realize that giving advice, just exploring solutions and so on is a perfectly valid form of coaching. It just needs to be used in the proper context.
Rick A. Morris 46:09
So I'm, I'm gonna drop one of my favorites on you guys because I think it's apropos for the three of y'all. When I met with john Maxwell, one of one of the things he said to me that that had my largest impact was you certainly can be successful by yourself. He's a very cool, you'll do great by yourself. But you'll never be significant without a team. And once you taste significance, success will never satisfy. And that is how I've lived my life ever since. And I really applaud the three of y'all your great team, it shows on being able to do an interview like this where it's somewhat unstructured and you never know where I'm gonna go and all three of you are there. So my hat's off to you on the book. Congratulations. And I'm so thankful. I want to give up we have just a couple of minutes left. I want to give each of you an opportunity to just say anything else you want to say or anything I left unsaid. Just some final words for the audience.
Morgan Massie 47:01
I just want to say thank you right for having us on the show. It's been fun to chat back and forth. And I appreciate it. Thank you.
Steve Williams 47:08
Thank you. I'll go next. I think one other thing that people should consider if they want to be really good coaches is how to diagnose what the person they're coaching most needs. And we have some sections in the book that get it that that we didn't have time to get through today. So if you really want to be a good coach, have the tools to coach but then also learn how to assess what people need, from your coaching to have the most impact. So those two together will will make you the most effective coach possible.
Unknown Speaker 47:35
Outstanding.
John Gates 47:38
I guess my final thought is this, when I think back to the interviews that we did, and some of these just profound insights into coaching that the great coaches we were talking with shared, I think one of the most memorable interviews for me was with a gentleman that we mentioned earlier, Gary Ridge, the CEO of wd 40. And at the outset of that conversation, I asked the question. So Gary, to what extent do you see yourself as a coach? And he paused for a second. And his response was, that's all I do. And I think there might be a little bit of hyperbole there. I mean, he's a CEO. So he's responsible for casting vision and execution and change leadership and lots of other things like that. But I think the fact that that was his visceral response, that's all I do says a lot about sort of the importance of coaching. And I think his point was, what if we as leaders envision our job first and foremost as being that of coach and if by being great at coaching others on a project team or direct reports or throughout an organization or whatever, it by being great at that, it allows us to be effective at virtually every other leadership role that we've got? Wouldn't that be a great thing? So my encouragement to all your listeners is, think of yourselves as coaches. And then be asking yourself the question, you know, in whatever Am I probably quite comfortable in skills when it comes to coaching others? And what other areas? Might I have a little bit of work to do? And, you know, there are resources available to us to help.
Rick A. Morris 49:10
Outstanding. Well, again, thank you guys so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom with us. We appreciate you having me, john, just as a fair warning, we do have somewhat like a Saturday Night Live tradition here. So once you're on my show five times you get into the five timers club, and they're special, you know, options. So we'd love to have you back and love to have you talk to the audience again.
John Gates 49:30
Great, thanks.
Steve Williams 49:31
Also, you get a blazer.
Rick A. Morris 49:32
Yeah, we'll get him a blazer, but it's it's a little mini one, he can just wear it around his thumb. So we'd have a lot of money here. I mean, you know, we were scraping together. But anyway, thank you guys so much for being with us. Thank you for joining the show next week. We're gonna have Scott Aaron on the show. He's an internationally acclaimed award winning online marketer, best selling author, top podcaster and international speaker and is really kind of a go to specialist when it talks about creating residual income Using lead, LinkedIn lead generation so we're really looking forward to having him on next week. So we will join you next Friday with Scott and until then we hope you live your own work life balance. We'll talk to you next Friday.
VoiceAmerica 50:20
Thank you for joining us this week. The work life balance with Rick Morris can be heard live every Friday at 2pm pacific time and 5pm eastern time on The Voice America business channel. Now that the weekend is here, it's time to rethink your priorities and enjoy it. We'll see you on our next show.
Thanks again for listening to The preceding program brought to you on the voice America business channel for more information about our network and check it out. Additional show hosts and topics of interest please visit voice America business.com the voice America talk radio network is the worldwide leader in live internet talk radio visit voice america.com. The views and ideas expressed ON THE PRECEDING PROGRAM are strictly those of the hosts or guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and ideas held by the voice America talk radio network, its staff and management.
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