20 Creds - Leadership

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] Coaching for Behavioral Change. I’d now like to share the steps in my behavioral coaching process and hopefully teach you how to use this process yourself. Now, what I love about my process of coaching, it is highly transferable. For example, GE has taught hundreds of people to use our coaching process, and their results are just about as good as mine with their internal coaches. Thousands of people externally have been trained around the world to use our coaching process, and again, many of these people have fantastic results. This is a very, very transferable process. Now, I’m going to describe how I coach people. I’m going to use an example of someone who has the potential to be a CEO. In my own coaching, I either coach the CEO or I coach the future CEO. On the other hand, it doesn’t really matter. This coaching process works just as well with first-line supervisors, second-line managers–works with every level of management. I’m going to give an example of how I coach people, using a potential CEO and a CEO as my case study examples. Step 1 in the process… In my coaching, it’s incredibly time efficient. What is the cost to my CEO or could be CEO clients of hiring me? There’s only one real cost–their time. One of my coaching clients has a company with a market cap of about $250 billion. What’s his time worth? He doesn’t need me to waste his valuable time. I don’t get paid because I spend time, I get paid because I get results. The less time I spend to get the same results, the better it is for my clients and the better it is for me. So I’m not about wasting time. My process is incredibly efficient. Why is one of the reasons it’s efficient? No arguing. Everything I do in my coaching is either required, and if something is required, there’s no arguing. Do it or I refuse to work with you. Or it’s optional. And optional there’s no arguing. Do it if you want to do it. Feedforward, not feedback. Now first, let’s talk about what’s required. If I coach someone, you will get confidential feedback from everyone around you, it’s not a vote. You will pick important behavior to improve. You will talk to people about what you learn, responding and involving these people. You will follow up on a regular basis with your co-workers. You will follow up with me. Your manager will agree, if you’re not the CEO, that this is the right behavior and these are the right people. You will get measured twice, and then, assuming that you get better, I get paid. And again, I don’t get paid if my clients don’t get better. How does the process work? Let us imagine I’m coaching a potential CEO, and here’s the CEO. The first thing is–what’s required? I go through what’s required. You have to get that confidential feedback, you have to talk to people, you have to follow up, you have to get measured–all these are required steps. If the person says, I don’t want to do any of those things–what do I say? Goodbye. I’m not judging the person, I’m–no one made me God this week. On the other hand, since I don’t get paid if they don’t get better, I have very low tolerance for wasting my time. Well, let’s say the person says, Yes, I want to do it. Now I bring in the CEO, and the person and their manager both have to agree, yes, this is a good process. Then, the next step is the potential CEO and the CEO have to agree who are the key stakeholders. Now these typically would be peers, direct reports, manager, perhaps board members. I don’t tell them who the stakeholders are, they tell me who the stakeholders are. So we reach an agreement. Who are the key stakeholders? And my average client has about 18 key stakeholders. Nothing magic about 18. The least I’ve ever had is eight, the most I’ve ever had is 40. Eighteen is about the average amount. Then the next step is, once the stakeholders have been identified, I interview each of the key stakeholders and ask them some questions. Question Number 1: What is this person doing well? I write down the positives. Question Number 2: What does this person need to change? What suggestions? Then Number 3: Imagine you’re this person’s mentor, coach, or advisor on any topic large to small, what advice would you have for this person? Well, I write a report. And as you can see, here’s an example of what’s some of these comments might look like. The reports are very straightforward and some might say very hard to hear sometimes. Well, I write the report and you can’t tell who said what. Then after writing the report, I go talk to my coaching client, and I say, Mister Potential CEO, here’s who I talked to, here’s what you’re seeing as doing well, here’s what you are seeing as need to do better. What do you think? Person says, Yes, I feel good about this and this and this, and I want to get better at this and this. Next step, bring in the CEO. The CEO says, Yes I agree, this person is doing a good job here and here, needs to get better here and here. Then I ask the CEO a classic question, If this person gets better significantly at these behaviors as judged by these people, is it worth this much money, yes or no? If the answer is no, don’t hire me! The answer is yes, you can’t lose. The person gets better, pay me; the person doesn’t get better, it’s all free. By the way, the lawyers love this, it’s a big escape clause. Only pay me if you feel like it. CEO says yes. Now, we have a contract. Now, what happens? The key to the success of my process is not me talking to my clients, the key to the success of my process is my clients talking to their co-workers. So now the client comes back and talks to the co-worker, and says, Mister Co-worker, thank you so much for the feedback, I really appreciate you participating, and communicate thankfulness. They’re thankful for the good feedback, they talk about what the positives were, and how grateful they are. Then the client says, Here’s something I want to do better, please give me ideas. Feedforward, not feedback. They ask for ideas for the future. Now I have also coached the stakeholders on how to help my clients. What advice do I have for the stakeholders? Number 1: Let go of the past. Now, whatever sins my clients have committed in the past, I can’t fix and they can’t fix, and if you bring up the past, you demoralize people. Easy theory, hard for some of us to do. Number 2: Tell the truth, have everyone swear to tell the truth. I’m not naive, I know if they swear to tell the truth, they might not, they’re more likely to. Number 3: Be positive and supportive, not cynical or sarcastic. And then Number 4: I say to the stakeholders, You pick something to do better too. So this is two ways, not one way. So the client comes back and says, I want to get better at this, please help me. The stakeholder says, First, thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate you putting in the effort. I’m going to do my best to help you. I’m going to give you ideas for the future. And then the stakeholder says, Here’s something I can improve. One of my clients, I was hired to coach one person–and 200 people got better. Why? They are all trying to help each other, not judge each other. Now, my client has talked to everyone, all 18 people. Now, I go back and talk to my coaching client. I say, Mister Coaching Client, who did you talk to? What did you learn? What are you going to do about it? Now, from here on in, for me it’s all feedforward. I say now I’m going to give you my ideas to help you do better. And then I say, It’s feedforward from here on in. You don’t have to do what I say, you do have to listen to what I say. And I don’t want you to judge or critique my ideas. Just say thank you. If you want to do it, do it. If you don’t want to it, don’t do it. I also tell my clients, I don’t get paid because I’m a good coach, I get paid because you’re a good customer. Don’t make this about me, it’s all about you. Well, what happens is, they follow up, follow up, follow up with their people. I follow up, follow up, follow up with them. And then we do a simple measure. For example, minus five to plus five scale on each item. Has the person gotten better, gotten worse, stayed the same? And then, we do a mini-survey. Follow up, follow up, follow up, survey. Follow up, follow up, follow up, again another survey. Now, it’s been about a year and a half. I go back to my clients, say, Here’s the report. The client says, Hey, I got a lot better at this stuff judged by these people. Bring in the CEO, What do you think, Mister, Miss CEO? CEO says, Lot better at this stuff judged by these people, you should get paid. Can you see why I can get my clients to pay only for results guaranteed? And can you also see why I almost always get paid? And can you also see why this is a transferable process? Most of what my coaching clients learn, they do not learn from me. They learn from everyone around them. I’m much more of a facilitator than an expert. I facilitate a process helping them learn from everyone around them. I’m a participant in the process, I’m certainly not the driver of the whole thing. Also, I never make the business case for my clients that this is important. They make the business case for me. I don’t tell the CEO who the stakeholders are. They tell me. I don’t tell them it’s worth the money. They tell me. Everything in this process is driven from where? It’s driven from inside the people I’m coaching, it is not driven from me. [MUSIC]

2 Steps

• Watch Video
• Answer Question