Five Steps to Become a Great Coaching Leader

Coming up on the Leadership Growth Podcast. - Over the years, I have kept thinking about what the most important thing is for leaders to be able to do, and I have an answer. - Yeah, do bring the drum roll. You have the one thing, the one most important thing for leaders to do. - The most important thing, and in my view, it is to coach.

It is to coach effectively, because that essentially means you are looking at each person specifically, you're understanding the strengths and challenges that each person has. You're able to provide guidance, you're able to ask great questions, and you're able to then help elevate what they can do each day. It shows a level of empathy and care and performance. - Wow. - And what's so interesting is this coaching. It inevitably is one of the most important in any survey you see.

Coaching is up there, and yet we consistently fall short, oftentimes, with how well we perform coaching. At least that's what a lot of the different research will indicate. So I will then, so my answer is to coach effectively. - The one thing, we could just mic drop right here, just start coaching. - Be a good coach, and you'll be a fabulous leader.

(upbeat music) Hey, everybody, welcome to the Leadership Growth Podcast, where we discuss and dive into tools and ideas to help you grow your leadership capability. I'm Daniel Stewart, joined along with my brother, Peter, and we are your hosts today. We're excited to be here with you, and we want to start off with an Insight of the Week.

(upbeat music) Peter, take it away. - It's always good to have an insight, to have some good thoughts. Thoughts are good, but before I dive into an insight, Daniel, have you had a good week? - You're saying that's not a usual thing for you, Peter? He was like, you were surprised with some good insight. - I had an insight. I had some thought. It was good, but yeah, but have you had a good week, Daniel? Is it going well?

- It has been a very good week, packed as usual, a lot of great client conversations. Anyway, it's good, and it's always fun. Looking forward to doing this with you. - Oh, it's one of the highlights, that's for certain. So my insight is I've been thinking about sleep, such an exciting topic, right? Exciting topic, no, it's great. The power of sleep is so important, so important, and we're learning much more about some of the benefits of sleep. So here's a fact.

The fact is we're learning, so we'll get a little, you know, get into the body, the anatomy today. So in our bodies, we have lymph nodes, okay? The lymphatic system, and the function of that system is basically to help get rid of cellular waste in our body. All right, every cell we have in our body produces waste, and there's a means by which we have to get rid of that waste, helps us be healthy. But here's the fascinating thing is there are no lymph nodes.

The lymphatic system does not extend into the brain. And so for a long while, the medical community was just absolutely fascinated, or actually confused by, well, what about the brain? The brain has a whole lot of cells, and the brain's going to produce some cellular waste. So how does the brain clean itself? And it wasn't until a little while ago when they started to do some imaging of the brain while you're sleeping. And what they found is the brain actually starts to shrink while you sleep.

As you get in that kind of stage two non-REM sleep, your brain starts to shrink, and cerebral spinal fluid goes all around the brain, and it flushes it, it washes it out. So literally while you sleep, your brain is having a bath. And it's not just that it's washing out that cellular waste, but one of the most important things they find that it washes out is what's called amyloid beta proteins. Now, why do I bring that one up?

Besides the fact that it's fun to say, amyloid beta proteins, say that 10 times. But amyloid beta proteins, those are the primary components that would build what's called brain plaque, which the buildup of which is a significant contributor to the development of Alzheimer's. So we want to keep the buildup of brain plaque low. We need sleep in order to wash our brain. So if we want to help our brain function longer, sleep's a great way to help with that.

So there's a little fun fact about why it is good to get your sleep at night. You got to give your brain a bath. - Now, I just want to be clear with all of our listeners. I want them to make sure they know, we make sure that they know your background, Peter, because this is Dr. Peter Stewart, clinical psychologist in training. That's your training, that's your background. And so you didn't just read this in some article. This is what you actually really studied and understand.

So you know what the heck you're talking about. And when you say these things, the sleep factor, you know, we've all been hearing how important sleep is, but to really understand the fact that it actually helps cleanse our brains so that it gets rid of all of these dead cells that just take up space and in fact can contribute to buildup, this plaque-like stuff. - Yeah. - Anyway, it's very valuable for us to pay attention to. - It is.

I mean, as we learn more and more, and what's fascinating is just how much we're learning about the functions of not only the brain, but what we can do to best take care of it. We can go for hours deep into those. Yeah, that's my side job, so to speak, the psychologist. You bring a shrink to the podcast, you're going to get some comments like that every once in a while. - Oh, this is great.

And I don't know about you, but if you had asked me 20, 30 years ago when we all kind of started our careers here, that I'd be talking about sleep to help leaders show up effectively, I would have said you're joking. But I can't tell you how many times sleep becomes a factor in helping leaders show up as their best self, how they're taking care of themselves, are they getting sufficient amounts of sleep? Are they able to rest so that they aren't on all the time?

Because that really gets in the way of, especially executives and middle managers who are just going nonstop, to be able to then show up as their best self in the times that make the most sense for them, and that they can rest as well. So anyway, very valuable stuff.

- Yeah, and not only for you as an individual as a leader, but think about the behaviors you're modeling for those around you, as you are a boss to others, as your coworkers, whatever, helping to model some of those more healthy behaviors to be able to get some good sleep. So maybe we'll throw in some other sleep tidbits, facts and trivia down the road. 'Cause man, we did come from a family who loves trivia.

(both laughing) Playing Jeopardy growing up, I mean, we were always wanting to share fun facts. So we'll just have to keep it coming on the podcast.

(upbeat music) - I'm just remembering how we would put that little masking tape spot in the middle of the table so that all of our hands who got there first would be able to answer the question, and we would just smash each other's hands as we're playing Jeopardy, try and answer, anyway. Yes, trivia was an intense part. - It was, you had to make sure nobody had rings on 'cause we didn't have any clickers or anything, and it was so intense.

So yeah, that was how you determined who could answer it. Who was the first person to put their hand on the X in the middle of the table. Oh man, fingers got sprained. I'm glad we can laugh at it now. Oh, it is good. All right, well, Daniel, we've had a little Memory Lane there of growing up in the Stewart household. Share a Memory Lane you had as you had an interaction with a friend from high school later on after you both had launched your professions. - Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, let's see.

I was actually, so as some of the folks out there may know, so Peter and I, we grew up in California as well as Oregon. So I moved up to Oregon when I was 17. Peter was 15. And so anyway, as we grew up there, I went back to Portland maybe 15 years ago or so, went out to a Trailblazers game with a good friend of mine, and he asked me this question, and it has stayed with me ever since. And he said, "Hey, so you work a lot" "with leadership development, right?" I'm like, "Yeah."

He said, "So what is it?" "What's the one thing that leaders need to do" "to be really successful?" - The one thing. The one thing. - One thing. And it kind of caught me off guard 'cause I had all sorts of answers. I mean, I wanted to say five things and seven things and 15 things and how to communicate effectively and set clear expectations and follow up. I mean, on and on, all of these things. And he's like, "Yeah, that's nice."

"What's the one thing?" He's like, "What's the one thing?" And so, do you know, to buy myself some time, I said, "All right, fine." And I switched the question back at him, and he is an amazing musician. And he was actually a choir director for a private high school out in Portland suburbs, super talented, and I said, "Fine." "I'm gonna ask you the same question." "What's the most important thing that a singer," "that a singer needs to do to be successful at singing?" - Yeah.

- And of course, he was really quick with the answer. He said, "Oh, they need to know how to breathe." And I'm like, "Huh? Clearly, I'm not a singer. And I'm like, "What do you mean?" - Neither of us had choir lessons. - Neither of us had choir. And he said, "They need to know how to breathe." "They need to understand how to be able to," "where to breathe," "how long to be able to have the practice."

"It matters how you breathe" "so that you can then produce the kinds of notes" "that you need to effectively sing." And I sat back and I'm like, "Well, what about reading music and all that?" He's like, "Yeah, sure." "However, you need to be able to breathe." I'm like, "Okay, that's fair." And so over the years, I have kept thinking about what the most important thing is for leaders to be able to do. And I have an answer. - Yeah, do you bring the drum roll?

You have the one thing, the one most important thing for leaders to do. - The most important thing, and in my view, it is to coach. It is to coach effectively, because that essentially means you are looking at each person specifically, you're understanding the strengths and challenges that each person has. You're able to provide guidance, you're able to ask great questions, and you're able to then help elevate what they can do each day. It shows a level of empathy and care and performance.

- Wow. - And what's so interesting is this coaching. It inevitably is one of the most important in any survey you see. Coaching is up there, and yet we consistently fall short oftentimes with how well we perform coaching. At least that's what a lot of the different research will indicate. So I will then, so my answer is to coach effectively. - The one thing, we could just mic drop right here, just start coaching. Be a good coach, and you'll be a fabulous leader.

- Okay, thanks, it's been a great podcast. - It's been nice, here you go. - No, but it's powerful when you think about what that is and how even your friend there, I think was displaying some good coaching behaviors by not letting you get away with, well, there's lots of different things. He pushed back and said, no, what's the one thing that really forced you to think?

And that's an element as we can start to talk about what makes a good coach, what makes a manager, what makes the leader effective at being able to coach others. - Absolutely, so here's something kind of cool. So on our website, we have a blog. We publish articles all the time, one to two a week, have for a long time. And our most popular article that we have ever published was an article that I wrote several years ago. And it was all, and it's entitled,

"The Five Steps of Great Coaching." And so, "The Five Steps of Great Coaching" has been the most popular article that we've written. And so we wanted to touch upon these five steps because clearly these resonate. And we're talking thousands and thousands of people have read and downloaded and used this article. And so we wanted to touch upon these five steps because clearly it's resonating with folks. And if this is beneficial to you, great.

You can check yourself as we're going through these five steps and imagine how will you do each of these in a formal coaching situation with your employee, with your client, with others whom you interact with, maybe also in an informal situation, on the fly kind of coaching, because these steps also can be applied there. So Peter, you wanna start us off with the first step here?

- Yeah, and I think you touched on a really important part as you were leading into this, recognizing that these are not steps that just are applied when you've scheduled a half hour or 45 minute coaching session with somebody. These can be used in the hallway conversations, walking from the office to the car, someone just asking you a question. You can still leverage and think about some of these concepts and thoughts.

And another skill that underscores all that we're talking about is understanding core to coaching is the ability to stop talking. You have to be able to ask good questions, to probe that and then be quiet and let them share their thoughts. So even as we go through these five steps, they will not be effective if you are the one talking the entire time. So I'll call that that talk time percentage. You have to be aware of that as a good coach.

So with that-- - Oh, and I'll build on that just for a second. So as many of the listeners may have heard me say at various points, I often will picture a percentage above people's heads in meetings. And it describes how much of the meeting they spent as the main talker. And if you leave a meeting and it's 70, 80%, what were you doing? Unless you were like sharing information that nobody else had, and you just had to convey it and you were in a rapid.

But if you're in a coaching situation, to your point, Peter, if it's 50% or more, something's wrong. And so you want to assess yourself, how often do I shut up and listen and ask great questions? And so, yes, making sure that you pause. I just wanted to emphasize that. That talk time percentage is so key. - And that visual of thinking, okay, at the end of that meeting, 'cause everybody starts off a meeting at 0%. Somebody chimes into something, now they're at 100%.

Someone else chimes in, now both are at 50%. So there it's, and you just don't want to be monopolizing that conversation 'cause it kills other people's idea and input. So it's the old, I call it, God's ratio of two eyes to one, or two ears to one mouth, use 'em. Try and listen at least twice as much as you talk. So with all that underscore, the first step to great coaching is establishing the objective. Establishing what is the purpose of this conversation?

What are we trying to get out of what this interaction is? What are we wanting to do? Now, we might be setting up the stage for a more long-term coaching, series of coaching conversations, and it might be right away in terms of just as a quick call. Well, let's clarify the problem. Let's clarify the question we're really trying to get at before we start to just offer solutions. So I think that's one. Step one is helping to clarify that objective.

And here's a good question to help with that is what does success look like? How do you know if this has been a helpful conversation? - That's fantastic. And that's a question you can ask yourself. You could ask the other person. It can be an essential part of, at the end of this conversation, what will have been discussed that will be helpful? What does that success look like?

And I find that this setting the objective, there are only a few kinds of objectives that you're really shooting for oftentimes. One is a performance type of conversation, one in which you're setting expectations or following up around expectations, meaning that there was something done that hit expectations or didn't. And let's talk about that. So that is one. Another type of objective for a coaching conversation, though, is around the development itself.

How are you actively developing the other person? How are you helping them position themselves for their career, for individual growth, for their ability to challenge themselves and stretch? So that's a whole nother type of conversation. So oftentimes you have this performance and also you have this talent. And you can have both, but you wanna then be clear about what are we meeting for? What does it look like? What does it mean?

So setting that objective, that's realistic, it's understood, it's mutually agreed upon as well. You can capture it and you can memorialize it. Yeah, absolutely. First step in any coaching conversation. And that could be during a half hour or an hour coaching one-on-one, or even in the hallway as you're, or on a team's call in between to clarify why the heck are we talking? What really needs to come out from this?

Yeah, it's that performance question, the development question, and the one that's a little bit more of an extension of the development, but some what takes a life of its own is more of a career-based conversation as you're helping to look toward what is that next position, that next opportunity that they're wanting to get to? Absolutely, absolutely. So different objectives. And so then with this objective identified, the second step. The second step is all about assessment.

The assessment to be able to ask great questions, often open-ended questions, and with the courage to shut up and listen, not to have so much talk time percentage, but to learn, to learn and understand what happened, what the perspective was, what was your frame of reference, what you're coming in with, and to challenge yourself to make sure you're focusing on behaviors and you're resisting the temptation that we all have to tell stories, and to resist using those stories

as the basis from which to then interpret, but instead asking great questions and being open to the answers. And you may wanna be asking the person you're in the coaching conversation with. You may also wanna get and do additional assessment with others who are involved. And this could be good, bad, ugly situations. Oftentimes we think of coaching as something bad happened. This could be something great happened.

Let's understand what led to this greatness happening so that we can sustain it, so that we can applaud, so that we could compliment, so that we can keep it going as well. So this assessment is so critical as well. - And just to really clarify, when people hear assessment, they can think of a formal assessment. They can think of a 360. They can think of a disc or Myers-Briggs or a very formal assessment of questions and rating skills, and you get a report.

That's not the assessment we're talking about here. The assessment tool we're talking about are the questions you ask, and how good you ask those questions or how well, and to whom you ask them. That is the mechanism by which you will be able to obtain and gather information, focusing on the behaviors. Questions like, oh, so you just had that presentation that you were preparing for. What are two things you feel you did really well? All right, great.

What are a couple of things you noticed about yourself that you could improve on next time? Two examples of very effective questioning that are not, well, did it go well? It's like, okay, that's a start. It's not a bad question, but it doesn't allow them to elaborate and really focus on specific behaviors that they may need to change to improve or to replicate if it went well. - Yeah, and building on that, I often find the what and the how questions are the most effective.

So you sit back and say, yes, what did you learn? How will you continue to do this in the future? Or how will you change this up in the future? These kinds of questions are powerful. And then I will go against a little bit of what you said, Peter, that the 360 or the disc might not be needed to talk about all the time.

However, if somebody did have something like that, maybe they've done a strength finder before, any of those things, and the boss and the individual have that, they most certainly can look into and use some of that to be able to help inform, prevent, or encourage certain behaviors, understanding tendencies, especially as people show up during stress. So those can be helpful. And maybe what you're getting at, what I'm really hearing from you, Peter, is you don't need that every time. - Correct.

- You can leverage that, but you probably aren't gonna have it every time. So you wanna first and foremost rely upon great, great questioning to be able to help provide that assessment. - Yeah, no good clarification, because what I was meaning there is formal assessments are a tool to be leveraged when they're available, when it's helpful, but sometimes you don't always have that. And so the other tools in that assessment bucket, we can use. So yeah, really good point. I'm a fan.

I mean, we can talk all day about assessments. I'm an assessment junkie. (laughing) - Stats head here. We can dive deep in them. They're really helpful. But sometimes we get too focused on those formal ones that we forget the power of some really good, powerful questions. - Yeah. Yep. And then the third one. So first, objective, second, assessment, and the third is all about feedback itself.

Feedback to be able to then inform us, inform me as the person providing the coaching, inform the person who's receiving the coaching and in the coaching process. What's the feedback? And I want to be very clear. Too often we think of the feedback situation and it's like, oh, it's negative. We want to go and tell the person how they screwed up. Okay, that might be the case. However, let's be clear that we can talk good, bad, ugly, anything in between.

You want to be able to be as prompt about giving great feedback when things go well. Catching people doing things well. In fact, that's often how people receive feedback the best is when you're able to catch them and give feedback around things that are doing really well in the process as well. So the feedback component, the other thing I'll mention around this is to keep it behavior focused.

Resist, again, resisting the temptation of diving into your own interpretation or building it around your own emotional reaction. Make sure you're checking yourself as you're then having conversations to make sure your feedback is coming from a place to help the other person, not just to help you feel vindicated or validated about your own emotional situation.

You may need a vent somewhere else so that you are ready to have an informed behavior focused feedback conversation with the other person because you want the other person to be able to accept it, understand it, and then do something with the feedback as well. - Yeah, all such good points, especially helping to balance both the positive and negative feedback.

And I want to add on to the thought of feedback that it's also not just focusing on things that happened in the past that were outside of this conversation, but also sharing feedback on observations you have. You might be talking about a topic and their demeanor's changed. Maybe their eyes have lit up. Maybe their posture's down a little bit or something. It's sharing that, hey, I just noticed as we were talking about this, your demeanor's changed.

Fill me in a little bit about your, what are the thoughts you're having as you're doing that? So those are also some of the very helpful feedback you can have in the moment where those observation cues you're able to really build off of. - You're bringing up a good point, especially in terms of the coach needing to be present in the moment.

And so if the coach is thinking and creating their own story in their mind the whole time, or it's already a preconceived judgment of some sort, you're not actively listening to be able, during the assessment phase or even around the feedback itself. Making sure you are present. You may have your own hypotheses about what happened. Suspend those. Don't let them take root yet. Suspend it until you get all of the information or you have enough information.

And I often will care less about what happened in the past. And I care more about what can we do to make sure things can go better in the future. Let's talk about in the future a little bit more than the past. Because the future is unwritten and that person can have more choice, more opportunity and greater opportunity then to showcase what they can do. So let's talk about what we can do in the future as well, which really kind of gives way into the fourth step here.

And the fourth step in great coaching is all about setting goals. Clear goals, clear next steps, clear what am I gonna do now? And this is where we heartily recommend making sure it's not 15 things or even 10 things. What's the one or two things that you can do to then focus on what's the next action? What's the next goal? Making it clear, concrete, measurable, realistic. All of these things are critical to then turn all of this feedback and assessment and objectives into action.

- Yeah, and when you focus on the action part, that is really what helps prevent these conversations from just being gripe sessions or ripping something or whatever it's, and you're focused on, well, what am I going to do about it? We've identified a situation, we've been talking through some of the issues, we've broken down this problem. Okay, well, what are we gonna do from these lessons learned? What are the actions we're gonna take?

And to your point, it's not, I'm gonna do these 15 things over the next month. What are the one or two things that you can focus on now to make an impact, to make a difference so that you can develop, if we're talking about a development perspective, that will prepare you for your next role if it's more of a career focused, or to do better if it's a performance-based conversation. - Yep, and write 'em down, be clear about what they are.

And sometimes maybe you need to take a break, and then that's an assignment for the person to come back and say, "Yep, here are the one or two or three actions" "that I will do, yep, this makes sense." Whatever you need to do so you can have mutual agreement. Now, sometimes as the coach, because if you're the boss, you may need to say, "This is what needs to happen."

Okay, let's be crystal clear, make sure and check for understanding, and then make sure that they have the skills and support to be able to execute clarity in a clear way, those goals. And of course, that also leads into the fifth step. - The fifth step, but before-- - Which is the support. - Yeah. - Oh, please, yeah, dive on in. - Before we dive into the support, 'cause it's just, what you were saying about writing things down, it gets to help us understand again about our human nature.

And one of those cheesy little sayings that I love, "A goal that is not written is merely a wish." And I think it's very true. Now, here we're in a situation and we're having a conversation in the hall, okay? And we've just been processing through this, an event and we've identified a next step. We might not have a pen or paper, we might not have time to type in an email or a note or reminder to ourself, but just saying something verbally, it's going to get forgotten.

We have all these competing thoughts in our brain. So it's identifying maybe just that next step, somebody says, "Who's going to email what's happening" "to each other so we remember?" Or we're getting it in some written format helps ensure that it's not forgotten. So I'm just really putting a double-click emphasis on that factor 'cause, oh, that's key. - Yeah, yeah, write it down, absolutely. And that then enables this next step, which is all about support, that fifth step, support.

And there's often two different kinds of support. One is the one-on-one personal level of support. I care, I recognize, I want to applaud, I want to follow up, I want to catch you doing things right and acknowledge it. I also want to be able to be there to help course correct, reshape.

And then the second type of support is the organizational support, the cultural support, the systems around, and to be able to take a look to see what kind of system structure is out there that's going to help or hinder you from accomplishing this goal. Let's talk about it. What are the things you can then influence or shake up or shape up in different ways? So you got the personal support and you have the organizational support.

Some combination or one or the, something, so that there could be effective follow-up. And I'll also say, asking the person you're coaching to then follow up with you. They own the goal, they own, in some ways, the follow-up. Or in other words, it's not just you doing the follow-up. It is a shared activity where they know, okay, so for example, next Tuesday at three o'clock, they're going to be following up with you. Or at the end of the day tomorrow, they will be following up.

What is that follow-up and support mechanism so it's not just something that was a pleasant conversation and then we forget about it? - Yeah. Yeah, you outlined that really well. It's really looking at, as a coach, as the person having this conversation, what can I do to help facilitate you being successful at your goal and thinking through that? And then also, what can I do to help you remember this goal? And that's where those follow-ups.

So you really highlighted that well so that it doesn't get forgotten. We want these goals to happen. And if they're struggling with it, that they're coming to you and sharing that. And you've created this atmosphere as you have the conversations in which, okay, the goal didn't go as well as you thought it might. Maybe it was harder than you thought it might be. Great, that's a part of being human. Let's dissect this further. Let's continue the conversation.

What do we need to do to readjust, to recalibrate, to alter or adjust what that goal is so that progress can be made? - Yep, yep. Okay, so Lightning Round as we're wrapping up here, Peter. Are you ready? - Yes.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - What is the one thing that a coach should not do? What's one thing a coach should not do as they're coaching somebody else? - The most important thing for a coach to not do as they're coaching someone else is shift into lecture mode. Do not just tell the stories of what life was like for you or how you know exactly how they feel. Because I've been there. Or that you assume what the problem is before you've really clarified it.

Be careful to just stop that talking, stop the lecture, and focus on the questions. Focus on really being curious to understand what's going on. That's the one thing. - Fantastic, fantastic. - All right, Daniel. Lightning Round for you. What is the one thing to do to help ensure that goals are accomplishable? And I think that's a true word, accomplishable. That's a good word. - Accomplishable, yes.

So to make good effective goals, you wanna make sure that it aligns with the overall objective of the team and with what the person cares about. To be able to then find the intersection of those two things.

Because if the person, if their heart is not in it, in other words, if one of their strengths is not being able to be showcased, if they can't make a difference each day, and it's not aligned with something that is desired from an organizational or team perspective, that mix up, that interchange is critical to be able to then optimize the likelihood of that goal to be able to achieve. Yes, you wanna have effective follow-ups. Yes, you wanna be able to measure it. Yes, all of that.

And yet at the same time, to be able to make sure they care. Because I'll take somebody who cares any day as a place to start. And when they care about something, to accomplish it, and it aligns with the organization, that is a beautiful combination to start with. And then you can keep refining from there. - Oh, really well put, really well put.

So to just review the five steps of great coaching, clarify the objective, make sure you assess the situation, ask those good questions and things to understand what's going on, to give feedback appropriately and clearly, to help clarify good goals, and provide the support necessary. Those are the five steps.

So in our quest to help coach you as listeners to be better leaders, I want you to think to yourself, you've now been listening to these steps on coaching, what is the one thing you are going to do now to be a more effective coach? And in the spirit of what we were just talking about, write it down as soon as you're not driving or distracted and all those other things. One thing you're going to do to be a better coach. - Fantastic, that's a great challenge. Okay, folks, Peter, always a pleasure.

And all listeners, thanks for joining us today on another fantastic episode of Leadership Growth Podcast. Please subscribe, like, and visit us again as we all will help continue to build and strengthen our ability to be great leaders in the future. Take care, everyone. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend or colleague, or better yet, leave a review to help other listeners find our show. And remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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