Uncategorized

Want to be my client…at NO Cost?

You may have seen that I’m speaking at the World Business and Executive Coaches Summit (WBECS) next week (and then again in January).

BUT I need your help. I had a client lined up for the demos, but they had to back out over this past weekend. So now I have seven days to find a new demo client. To motivate the right person to step up, I’m giving away an executive coaching package.

8 Session Full Sessions.
Monthly from June 2021 until February 2022.
Assessments included, potentially

Condition: No charge, but you have to be willing to:

Be coached live on WBECS on June 7, 2021
Be coached live on WBECS on January 6, 2022
Give your consent to have every session recorded, and two short videos produced that tell the story of the coaching we’ll do together.

Here’s how to land the gig:

Step 1: If you want ot be considered, please fill out the form at this link: https://forms.gle/AfrMmVSDLbsAmAJR8

Step 2: I’ll be checking out the options in the next 48 hours! And this week, we’ll have some work to do!

Conduct chemistry sessions and choose the client.
Do initial goal setting with the client.
(MAYBE) first coaching session

Step 3: Pre-Summit: June 7, 2021 9am (NEXT WEEK!)

Live Coaching Demo.
Session #1 (or 2) in Engagement
The initial demo will be BEFORE any assessments have been used.
It will be an early in the engagement conversation and will explore the key questions that an assessment might help with.

Step 4: June 2021-January 2022: Ongoing coaching toward client goals.

Step 5: Full Summit

AM January 6, 2022 at 9 am Eastern | Assessments Session
- You won’t have to be in this session, but I’ll talk about our coaching during the session.
- I’ll also show some video highlights of what our work together has been like.
- Goal: Demonstrate best practices for using assessments, and the specific insight(s) the assessment process revealed.
- I’ll be using real-life examples from our coaching to equip the coaches in attendance with top-notch assessment skills in coaching situations.

PM January 6, 2022 at 5 pm Eastern | Coaching Demo, with two video clips
- You will need to participate in this session!
- Video clip 1: Set up the demo with sort of an “in case you missed it…” feel, referencing back to the morning session. (3 minutes)
- Video clip 2: “here’s what’s happened since the pre-summit…” which summarizes the coaching work we’ve done. (3 minutes)
- This coaching demo will include assessment data, applying the best practices.

Step 6: Wrap Up: February 2022

This will be a final session to end the engagement well.

So, if you’re entering a new phase of your career, starting a new endeavor/business, or looking for new directions in your leadership, this might be a great way to get some coaching for what you want to take on!

One note: I’m really looking for someone who is not already a coach. But maybe you know someone who has an interesting project, or who is a rising star in an organization you work with…THAT’S the person we’re looking for. The client just has to be willing to be coached with the WBECS audience watching as it happens!

This whole package can be yours at no cost! I’ll be reaching out to candidates today and tomorrow. We’ve got work to do, and I’m excited to have you join us!

Let me know if you have questions.

Seven Questions to Kickstart Your Move from Manager to Leader

Many careers get built around the mysterious difference between a manager and a leader. Don’t believe me? Google how to become a leader sometime. But what IS that difference?

Both get things done. Each produces on strategic initiatives and business outcomes. Execution is a priority no matter what your career trajectory, especially coming out of COVID-19. The entrepreneurial view requires the action-reflection cycle to move an organization forward. It’s not accidental that action leads to that combination.

Leaders follow a vision that they see and communicate to their followers. Understanding where you and the organization are going is the first step to having others follow. How a leader develops that vision and owns it is another article.

But mixing in another slight mindset shift sets leaders apart: Leaders intentionally look for opportunities to unlock/develop the people around them. When you follow or work for a true leader, full potential is within reach for both the individual and the organization.

Bringing that future to life challenges even an excellent leader. And taking people with you as you move toward a vision requires handling changing conditions and expectations.

How can an effective leader release the people around them to reach their potential? Here are seven structured, systematic questions that you can use to challenge the people around you in developmental conversations:

What progress have you made?
Right out of the gate, a leader has to decide: will it be more helpful to track progress by measuring back from the starting point? Or is the distance to the goal more compelling? Looking back to where you started roots the progress conversation in tangible outcomes. Keeping your eyes on what’s in front builds ownership of the vision. Both have solid reasoning behind them.
How on track are you?
This second question invites an assessment of the progress from the perspective of the client/team member. Leaders who develop people gain insight into how well their team evaluates their progress, a key growth area. You’ll not only measure progress but also understand and improve strategic skills. Sharpening this area equips individual contributors to level up to leadership.
What’s working?
Now we move from the strategic to the tactical. This question focuses on the practical actions that have produced beneficial results in the recent past. For example, the conversation might focus on the results produced since the last you spoke. You can target these areas later in the conversation.
What’s not working?
This practical corollary to the last question explores actions that produced unhelpful or useless results. These items can be shut down or cut back.
What are you learning?
The client describes their discoveries out loud. The process of forming their learning into clear thoughts and then pushing the words out of their mouth reinforces the insight. The client hears their words and gauges their reaction to them, which further confirms the moment. This question drives discoveries more often than any of the others, so don’t miss the opportunity to ask it!
What needs to change?
Adapting or developing a client’s thinking becomes the goal here. Learning that gets named but not acted on slows development. Be sure to connect the change with the realizations identified previously. Even a few moments of reflection may inspire new connections and actions.
What now/next?
Splitting the last step into two questions helps team members focus and order their commitments.

“What now?” points to the first thing the client will do after the conversation ends. This action grows out of the last two questions and should move the client toward the critical outcome.
“What next?” carries a less clear priority. As long as what the client names in response to this question moves them toward their vision/goal, the timeline can be more open-ended. A good rule of thumb expects completion of this action before the following conversation or next team meeting.

These seven questions shift a manager from directing the actions and priorities toward being a leader that invites team members to make meaningful contributions daily. The mindset shift requires the leader to depend on team members and work to bring out the team’s abilities. Team member growth AND bottom-line outcomes indicate how well this is working.

Important note: This seven-question framework only works if there is an existing goal, vision, or destination. The leader and the team member focus together toward specific outcomes. Clarity wins. Ideally, the client names the target as the conversation begins. If that target isn’t clear in the client’s mind, the leader/coach becomes most effective by asking open-ended questions that become specific about what they want to accomplish.

Whether you or the team member identified the future target isn’t the point. Clarity about what you want is the multiplier. It’s potent if you can specify how you’ll know you’re getting what you want in the moment.

One unintended side effect is that this approach can make your team more prone to turnover. BUT it’s the kind of turnover that comes from team members being promoted or taking on more responsibility. The converse of this side effect is that you will become the leader in your organization that helps people advance their careers, and that is a decisive recruiting advantage!

Three Self-ish areas in which you can grow

The way you are in a relationship is determined by who you actually are. That absolutely is a part of effectiveness in a coaching conversation–both for a coach and for a client.

It’s time for some self reflection…what do you see?

To reach the pinnacle of your coaching effectiveness, there are some self-oriented realizations that will make you more effective. You can group those realizations into three categories: self-awareness, self esteem, and self efficacy. Self-Awareness is defined on Wikipedia as the capacity for introspection and the ability to reconcile oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals.

Put more simply, it’s the ability to be on top of the feelings, impulses, and thoughts that run through yourself at any given time. High levels of self-awareness are especially important for coaches because your thoughts and feelings help determine what you say to your client. The ability to be decisive about the helpfulness of your thoughts and feelings to your clients is a crucial skill for effective coaching.

Self-Esteem is a term used in psychology to reflect a person’s overall emotional evaluation of his or her own worth. Issues of low self-esteem are familiar topics in coaching relationships, but may be more effectively dealt with in a counseling relationship. The key factor is whether an action plan will help an individual deal with their self-esteem challenges, or if the key issue is rooted in the individual’s thoughts or feelings about their past.

Self-efficacy is the measure of one’s own ability to complete tasks and reach goals. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-efficacy) Even though we typically pay much more attention to self-awareness and self esteem, I would argue that self efficacy is the most important measure a coach can focus on. Helping a client understand accurately what they’re capable of doing is one of the things that good coaches do most effectively.

Challenging a client to see their capabilities as just a little bit stronger than they actually are can inspire the client to take on projects that are harder than the norm. What are your strategies to coach for higher levels of self efficacy?

his is where bold questions really began to pay off. A question that helps a client see possibilities that otherwise weren’t on their radar changes their overall perspective. Questions that stretch a client beyond what they thought also add to self-efficacy.

And maybe most important, stretch goals that take several sessions to actually accomplish are a tremendously effective strategy for building self-efficacy over time. Clients that believe they can accomplish more than their previous track record would indicate are usually the clients that end up being most satisfied in coaching relationships. And self-efficacy is a key part of that process.

[]: https://jonathanreitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/self-reflection2.jpg

Asking BAM! Questions to Go Deeper in Coaching

Deep listening, bold questions, and action steps are the cores skills that function as the building blocks of effective coaching. Bold questions is in the middle of this list for a reason.

The holy grail of being a coach is asking that question that causes the client to think. It’s a moment that can’t be undervalued, in impact for the client, and truthfully, enjoyment for the coach. Think back to your recent coaching sessions: there was a moment where you asked a question and the client was quiet. You could almost feel their brain moving, thinking through all the options your question caused, and beginning to prepare an answer that would be forming as they were saying it.

Moments like those, are why coaching is so powerful. Drawing out of another person exactly what they’re thinking, and what’s most important to them–well, there’s nothing better in a coaching relationship.

But how can you improve your question-asking skills so that these moments happen more often? I want to suggest forming your questions around a core set of ideas I call BAM! will take you there. BAM! questions are called that partly because the pieces of a given situation seem to all of a sudden BAM! together and make sense. But the acronym B-A-M also focuses the areas where BAM! questions have the most chance of making an impact.

Behavior—The first focus for a BAM! question is behavior, meaning things you can actually do differently. Sometimes these are simple changes, but other times they require multiple action steps–or even multiple coaching conversations–to get to the point where what you’re doing actually changes. Examples of behavior questions are: “What are you going to do differently this month?”, “What might be the related outcomes that this behavior might cause?” and “What results can you anticipate from doing this particular thing?”
Attitude–The “A” in BAM! stands for attitude. These questions focus on the mindset behind the behavior. Examples are questions like: “How is your previous experience or relationships affecting your thoughts about this issue?”, “What is your outlook about this particular situation/task?” or “How might your ideas be conflicting with your big picture vision?” An attitude question seeks to dig deep, focusing on existing thougths that might be behind a particular behavior. Attitude questions can also challenge clients to think more deeply about what circumstances might affect their actions. As a coach you have an opportunity to help a client instill new thought patterns, beginning with attitude.
Motivation–Motivation questions work on an even deeper level–closely connecting core values or key beliefs in a client to what they’re doing on a day-in/day-out basis. Without deep clarity about what’s important to the client, motivation questions often fall flat. The coach has to understand the relationship, and the client has to have a fairly high level of self-awareness for these questions to be most effective. Many coaches say they don’t ask motivation questions until well into a coaching relationship because they require a more solid relationship. Examples of this kind of question include “How does this action help you live out your values?”, “What makes this so important to you, and what you’re trying to accomplish? “, And “where might be the best option for you to actually move toward your vision? “

There are other kinds of questions as well, each designed to accomplish a different purpose. Some other examples include: Commitment (probing what risk the client is willing to take), Situation (helping the client understand current circumstances) and Assessment (gathering data about a given situation).

Start listening to the questions you asking your coaching conversations… I suspect you’ll find plenty of opportunities to focus on in these three key areas.

How to Coach for Progress that Makes a Difference

Too many coaching relationships brainstorm action steps that seem good at time…but in the bigger picture, don’t really take the person being coached anywhere close to what they’re trying to accomplish.

When coaching a client toward outcomes, there are two different kinds of progress worth drawing out:

Learable change — ]1 You know, book learnin’.

Learnable progress: measured by what a client learns during the course of pursuing a new goal. This might be research, new skills, insight learning, or other meaningful knowledge that’s acquired during the course of pursuing a particular goal. This also can include character-development and other internal growth components. The core component is that this new information must change the client’s thinking on one or more levels.

Observable change — ]2 Change that you see…and believe in!

Observable progress: By setting the right goals and choosing the right action steps, measuring progress should be clearly visible to the naked eye. Observation is the core of any good change system. Effective coaches help mark starting points and note when the scenery around their clients change because they’re moving forward.

It’s crucial to note while both kinds of progress are just that, progress. For the coaching you do to be it’s most effective, there has to be progress toward something. Vision–the bigger picture–has to drive. If your clients can describe how what they’re learning in your coaching relationship is pushing them toward their vision, that’s helpful progress. Observable progress toward your vision is helpful as well.

Uncategorized

So, what is YOUR cause?

Let’s talk about getting you focused on the thing(s) that get you up in the morning…or what keeps you up at night!

Let’s talk about getting you focused on the thing(s) that get you up in the morning…
or what keeps you up at night!