You're listening to the coach approach with Diane Ravenscroft, whether you're an entrepreneur, an ambitious employee or someone interested in getting the most out of every connection, responsive communication is. Join management and learning specialist, Dr. Diane Ravenscroft, as she gives you the tools to improve any relationship that matters to your business, your career and your life. All right. Here's Diane. I am Diane Ravenscroft and you are listening to the coach approach podcast.
The coach approach is a mindset and a skillset with steps to achieve, avoid, and celebrate along the way towards responsive leadership and improved relationships. Today, I will share about my vulnerability commitment, declaration of inter dependence and other snapshots of trademark programs. As we explore some coach approach skills time for a story stories, have a title, and I will call this story. Contrasting mindsets. The story takes place in a small conference room in a local hotel.
This story of contrasting mindsets is one of my favorite encounters with smart, dedicated people, expressing their individuality, amid changing roles and restructuring. I was invited to facilitate an important meeting with a group of financial services leaders who are being asked to collaborate more fully with their business development team leaders. The lenders were seeking to grow their market share by introducing new products, I will call them bankers.
The bankers invited the business development leaders. I will call them sales people who you guessed. It were eagerly discussing what was possible, attainable, exciting and aspirational while the bankers were making sure to prepare for the worst while planning for the best due diligence above all admirable. The banker's enthusiasm was directed more towards caution in a reserved manner, which at times perplexed.
And for some demotivated after an hour of brainstorming, many of the bankers sounded pretty negative and pessimistic to the sales people. Sorry, bankers, regrettably. Many of the sales people sounded toxically positive and unrealistic to the bankers. Sorry, salespeople. This feedback to each group member was part of the vulnerability commitment. Agreed upon prior to the meeting in high stake, potentially high risk and even high conflict meetings.
I asked for a vulnerability commitment from everyone. I meet alone with each team member prior to the retreat or group meeting and ask about the culture. What I'm hoping to learn is that people trust one another for the most part. And so are willing to commit to honest and open dialogue, to deal with any uncertainties with people or with process.
The vulnerability commitment is an important part of the declaration of interdependence that ends the meeting and becomes a personalized mission of the new team. The declaration of independence is very familiar to Americans. And so a declaration of interdependence is an acknowledge that each person needs the other and a decision made by one may impact.
It's basically a governance agreement for attitude, behavior and conduct a, B, C. I have helped write numerous declarations of interdependence with many teams, and each is as unique as the people who have worked on them together. The vulnerability commitment also helps with how people hear themselves and others. People come to the meeting, ready to listen to their coworkers with a willingness to be open to potential.
If before they limited or marginalize the potential of a coworker by prejudging, assuming, or having low expectations, the vulnerability commitment opens the door to new ways of hearing each other. Eventually this practice manifests in transformational communi. It takes practice. It takes effort, but it's worth it. The vulnerability commitment and declaration of interdependence are part of the coach approach skillset. And your first challenge, should you choose to accept?
How willing are you to be vulnerable with your coworkers? How interdependent do you feel as a team, a member. Applying the coach approach helps people hear themselves in a new way to become attuned to not only how we think we sound to ourselves, but how we may sound to someone else. Someone who may not have the same mindset or wiring hearing ourselves is a little bit like holding up the figurative mirror or put another way, taking an audio selfie.
How we sound to someone else can also get to perception. I cannot control how people perceive me, but I have a lot of control over how I present myself, listening to myself as a starting point, helps me evaluate the tone of my voice, my word choice as relatable and hopefully warm. And if I'm really self-aware and you are evaluate our motive, our intent. If any of you out there know Robby burns a Scottish poet, he has a poem about seeing yourselves as others. See you.
It's the same idea, except it's really focused on our words, hearing ourself. The reason this is important is because there's another skill I will describe in a future podcast, hearing yourself and stopping yourself. But for now, let's get back to the vulnerability commitment. To fulfill the vulnerability commitment. Everyone must come with good intentions and be ready to collaborate.
The customer needs are central to the outcomes while each person contributes their vision for how to work together in a new team. Listening to ourselves can be transformational. It adds to our self knowledge because it produces awareness of our thinking and possibly our predispositions, our, our knee jerk reactions. What's automatic in our thinking. Believe it or not, I'm fairly predisposed to being cautious and sometimes I'm a naysayer. I can even be critical.
So as I describe some of my characteristics, please think of yourself or someone you work with or work for. So you can become attuned to your preferences. When I said I was critical. Did you think I'm not critical? I can't stand critical people or did you think yes, I can be pretty critical myself or cautious or even a naysay. I wanna be optimistic, but my wiring, my mindset, sometimes even my outlook often defaults to what could go wrong. I tend to also be a little hypervigilant.
My favorite new word, a client taught me. My client said, and I'll talk more about this. That being hypervigilant is sort of like ducking you're in a boxing room. You're ducking, you're dodging you're hedging. You're waiting for that next punch. So hypervigilant people tend to be very cautious. These predispositions are why I am effective as a coach, because I tend to work with people who think like me to help them learn, to use descriptive praise as an example.
Critical people, as you might imagine, don't necessarily praise as the first thought. So teaching descriptive praise, teaching people to be encouraging and acknowledge the great work done in affirm helps individuals find the good in just about any situation and just about any person while at the same time, not ignoring what could go wrong to be ready for anything. My default, think about yours. My default is to think about processes and details.
First as I'm naturally an analytical problem solver, an idea person, a troubleshoot I've increased my vocabulary to practice descriptive praise to say what went well specifically. So the actions can be replicated. I'm quite serious. There really are people who like me needed to learn how to do this. Find someone to affirm. Describe what went well with some detail being really specific and sincere and see what happens. What's your result. Seriously, try it. Hearing yourself.
Affirm will impact your mindset. And if you really mean the words you say, and I hope you do once affirmation becomes a regular part of your conversations, whether in person or in groups, affirmation can actually impact your mindset. I encourage this practice as part of the coach broach. I have literally learned to shift my thinking and teach others to do the same, to take people at face value, be willing to think the best of everyone until they prove my best intent. Wrong. How about you?
What's your mindset? What's your default setting mentally. Do you first think about achievement or do you first think about what to avoid? Everyone has these predispositions and I've observed these in individuals for a long time. And these predispositions come out in our speech. They come out in our tone of voice. They certainly come out in our body language and our facial expressions.
So how does a predisposition impact what you or I say our choice of words, for example, the energy and the tone that we bring to our voice. Let's challenge ourselves to listen to ourselves today. So let me challenge you, listen to yourself today, what you say out loud and what you think before you speak. Ideally, we all think before we speak, right, this is an instructive exercise and is the second challenge of the coach approach? Remember, the first challenge is the vulnerability commit.
If you're really brave ask the people in your life who know you best, if they can define your default setting, maybe they'll share this about themselves with you. So are you curious what happened with those group of bankers and sales people? Much of the morning was spent unpacking perceptions. Unpacking prejudgments conclusions, knee jerk, reactions, and assumptions by all parties, as part of the vulnerability commitment as a step towards interdependence and our declaration of interdependence.
Once we were able to unpack these perceptions, these assumptions, these prejudgments, then we could get to the essence of why we're meeting, forming the new team. I was primed by the CEO who invited me to facilitate the meeting, that there would be opposites attracted. He hoped to the same result, profit and.
And of course client satisfaction, ultimately towards client loyalty, but getting everyone I was told to attentively, listen to one another, really listen to one another internalize information, understand and act upon the strategic goals. That's the list would take some doing so here they are. Again, these are important things to consider. Getting everyone to attentively, listen to one another internalize information, take it in, absorb it, understand.
So there's no misunderstandings and then act upon the strategic goals. Yes, it took some doing to be aligned in decisions and priorities. A very important process conversation since a new team was being formed. People realized they were basically a group. A group with limited common goals and no real shared vision yet. That's why they weren't a team.
Because as you know, teams have a shared vision, everybody going in the same direction towards alignment, everyone having a line of sight towards the strategic goals, the great news was every person was open to the vulnerability commitment. They. They were willing to explore this important collaboration. I believed everyone was sincere. Openness is a key trait of people who demonstrate the coach approach to apply the coach approach. The first step has three opportunities.
Each of these opportunities starts with the letter a if I'm ever leading a training. I think AAA AAA don't forget AA words and AR acknowledge, accept an account. So if you wanna remember the first step with the three opportunities of the coach approach, if AAA helps you, it helps me again. These three opportunities are to acknowledge, accept, and account. Let's look at the last word first account. To embrace the coach approach. I must be willing to account for the differences in people.
Interpersonal styles and ultimately in communication styles, before I can acknowledge that I might be contributing to the very challenges that drive down results. I must be willing to accept that I could be part of the problem. Whether that's my communication style or lack of transparency. Do you see how the vulnerability commitment plays into this? There's a lot of personal responsibility I'm taking there a lot of acknowledgement.
So therefore I must be willing to account for the differences before I acknowledge that some of these issues might actually be me. Once I accept that I could be part of the challenges. Maybe my communication style or my lack of transparency. I have to be also willing to ask myself a question. I ask in coaching on a regular basis, especially executive coaching. I write this on a piece of paper and I hand it to a leader.
Are you inadvertently contributing to the very things you were trying to reduce or eliminate? So I ask myself, you ask. Am I inadvertently contributing to the very things I am trying to reduce or eliminate. If I am working towards eliminating unproductive conflict, I must be willing to acknowledge that I may be unknowingly contributing to the conflict by my words, actions or inaction. So you pick a goal and you plug and play, you pick a behavioral goal or some kind of a strategic goal.
And fill in that blank. If I am working towards blank, I must be willing to acknowledge that I may be unknowingly contributing to blank by my words, my actions or my inaction. Sometimes it's just about perception as someone's reality. But when you and I are ready to accept personal responsibility for our impact, we're ready for the coach approach. You can see how openness fits in here as a key trait.
I hope when we learn to listen to ourselves and to evaluate ourselves to improve, we're getting closer and closer to responsive leadership. So once we acknowledge, we accept and we account for individual differences, we are ready to take the next. To be willing to consider differences. Is uniqueness a benefit? I don't know about you and I'm gonna play with my tone of voice here a little bit, but the word different is often used as a negative ever heard someone use this tone.
That's different as if different is bad or strange or negative. What is it about the word different. That somehow makes me anyway, think of something less than great, by the way, when I discuss differences, I don't just mean differences as we were describe embracing diversity, for example, in the traditional sense, I mean, differences or diversity of thought different work styles. And so on the coach approach invites us to believe differences are a benefit.
Like-minded people who exclusively prefer group think and enjoy an echo chamber of agreement, agreement agreement, may in fact be limiting potential in every corner of the fading corner office. So step two of the coach approach is embracing uniqueness among people as a strength to leverage and scale. Step three of the coach approach is how. To leverage these differences for continuous positive improvement member CPI, continuous positive improvement, timeless step three can get challenging.
Sometimes it's really difficult to leverage differences. So we must again, challenge ourselves. There is a mindset shift required of leaders that takes some skill to ease out of the daily grind, to focus on what to achieve, to remain competitive and nimble. We can be weighted down by pressure and struggles and anxiety and stress. Did you even hear my voice change? My energy drop. When I said those words we can be, we can be absolutely weighted down.
So there is a mind shift required of leaders that takes skill to ease in and out of the daily grind to focus on what to achieve because we have to remain competitive and nimble. So another challenge of the coach approach is empathy. Many coworkers, managers and leaders spend several hours a day avoiding the next bad. And when required to encourage support and discuss what's possible. A shift in mindset is necessary to sound optimistic. This is step four of the coach approach.
The shift and shift just happens to spell a concept. I follow to rise above the daily grind. As I rise above, I seek higher ideals. There's the first three letters S H I seek higher ideals. Ft can go one way or another. You can either fix your thinking or be flexible. You choose, fix, or flex seeking higher ideals, fixes thinking as a statement for shift or seeking higher ideals with flexible thinking. It's up to you. You choose.
For me, the biggest deal is seeking the higher ideals to rise above the daily grind. Then I can shift and literally shifting my mindset, fixes my thinking because as I fix my thinking upon higher ideals, lofty goals, what's possible potential aspiring. Then I can move outside of the here and now what bogs me down. And I can transcend these difficulties.
Rising above the demands of each situation that is hard work takes practice, but it's crucial to not feel crushed under the weight of so many responsibilities. So to move forward, we must always look towards what's next, ideally, towards what's possible. Excellent. And finding potential. In summary, building productive relationships between people who think very differently about how to produce results is certainly a challenge for every worker today. No matter your role.
And I've talked a lot about leaders and managers. So let me say again, the coach approach is for everyone. So the summary for the first trait and challenges of the coach approach are the first trait require. To accept. The first challenge is openness. The first challenge is a vulnerability commitment to yourself and others. So you'll become attuned to listening to yourself. The next trait is also a challenge empathy, and by the way, have empathy for yourself as well.
Discovering and applying empathy is important for everyone, but especially for people who work with individuals, unlike ourselves, The first step in applying the coach approach is to acknowledge, accept, and account for differences and diversity in people and communication and leadership styles. The second step is embracing the uniqueness among the different people as a strength. If you haven't read Tom RA's book yet about strengths, I hope you do.
We all have a top five and it's a pretty fantastic book. Highly recommend. Step three is leveraging and maximizing these differences towards continuous improvement. Step four is mastering the mindset shift as appropriate to practice transformational communication. As we master all of these challenges. We start to understand responsive leadership. I'll spend more time on future podcasts on responsive leadership. The coach approach is ready for you. Are you ready for the coach approach?
I am Diane Ravenscroft and you have been listening to the coach approach podcast. See you next time when we will dig further into this model, and I will share about the exception to transformational communication. What I call excellence through avoidance. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.