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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Manager Tools.
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B
This is Sarah and I'm Mark.
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A
Today's podcast, Coaching a Direct on Relationship Development, Part 1 of 2.
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B
As always, our content has been crafted by humans and we are now certified by Proudly Human. The questions this cast answers are how can I coach a direct on building relationships? Can I coach one of my better performers? How much time and energy does it take to coach one of my directs?
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A
If you want answers to these questions and more, keep listening.
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C
Hi everyone. Ali Ozanne here with the Manager Tools team. Most professionals never get honest access to how senior executives think, what they're measuring, what keeps them up at night, and what they actually want from the managers below them. The mconference puts accomplished executives from banking, technologies, technology, aerospace, healthcare and consulting in the same room as serious managers for two days of unfiltered conversations. We look forward to seeing you in Los Angeles October 6th and 7th. For more information, visit manager-tools.com mconference
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A
we talk about the Manager Tools Trinity One on ones feedback, coaching delegation often. And we know, I mean coaching is the least used of all the Manager Trinity tools.
- [01:33]
B
Yeah.
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A
And I mean it's really too bad because it only takes 10 minutes a week, maximum 5 to 10 minutes a week. In fact, for those of you that we've talked to about the coaching model in our public conferences, you'll know that the model itself is designed to be modular so that you don't have to carve out a chunk of time. Rather you, you can do it in five minutes here and there at the end of your one on one while there's still time. And, and keep your eyes on that goal in that, that short but often kind of way.
- [02:04]
B
Yeah. And I'll tell you, we're essentially fighting against the common wisdom. And of course, wisdom isn't common that in order to coach somebody you have to be their trainer, which is wrong. You can use other resources. It shouldn't be you in the vast majority of cases. And, and also that you have to come up with a six month plan. You have to write out a six month plan. In fact, I used to joke that when I saw dusty folders at the back of someone's desk, I assumed it was a coaching plan that they had intended to create and kept looking at it 5 o' clock in the afternoon and yeah, never did. Yeah. So this guidance is about coaching one of your directs on building relationships. And part of the reason we're putting this out now is in the last couple of years I have had so many more conversations than I remember my memory's pretty good about topics and what people ask about regarding relationships. Certainly if you don't have good relationships, particularly external to your firm, when there's a discontinuity in your career, that's a very nice way of putting a layoff or getting fired or whatever, you're going to regret it. And I am now talking to a lot of executives and I'm trying to help them expand their external relationships. Now, obviously in this case, you wouldn't coach an executive on expanding their external relationships, but I want managers, we want managers start learning to do this, particularly for those directs who are high performers but maybe don't have good relationships and they need them because as they get promoted into management, we're going to start having politics entering into the equation.
- [03:38]
A
And that's often the case. Right? Those top performers are top performers because they're killers, because they get the work done, but not because people love them.
- [03:46]
B
Yeah. Now you can coach a direct on building relationships even if they're struggling with the basics, but it's probably far more likely it's going to be a top performer and needing some help to get to the next level. But relationship skills or relationship building skills, Sorry, whether you're a natural relationship person or not, it's not that complicated. And whether you're naturally good at relationships or not doesn't really matter. As you'll see from this example we're going to take you through, you can follow this guidance to get your direct to wherever they need to be in their relationships.
- [04:24]
A
Yeah, that's exactly it. So, folks, we're gonna start by going over our outline. We're gonna begin by going over a brief review of the manager tools coaching model just to prep you. If you've not learned listened to those podcasts in a while, then you'll at least have a reminder of it. For those of you that are unfamiliar, it won't give you enough to be able to replicate it, but it'll be the beginning of that. Then we're going to go through the four steps of the coaching model as it pertains to this activity that we're looking to accomplish today. So step number one is going to be collaborate to set a goal for relationships. Two will be collaborate to brainstorm resources. Three will be collaborate to create a plan and then ultimately your direct acts and reports until your goal is accomplished.
- [05:10]
B
Yeah, that's it. So let's start with a brief review of the coaching model, right? Yes, folks, the MT coaching model is built around four simple steps and you've already Sarah's essentially edited out. Set a goal, brainstorm resources, create a plan and then implement the plan. And iterate on implementing the plan and you continue to do so until you've accomplished your goal. We're going to go over them at a high level now and then we're going to dig into each one of them. As we walk you through how to coach someone, we're going to apply it to the issue of I need to help my direct. I need to coach my direct on developing relationship skills.
- [05:48]
A
And folks, it's important to note that the first three steps I.e. set a goal, brainstorm resources and create a plan are really collaborative. You and your direct meet to discuss and decide how you're going to proceed on the goal, the resources and the plan. Don't attempt to create a coaching plan for one of your directs by yourself without their email.
- [06:09]
B
No, definitely not. That's the dusty folder at the back of the back of the desk. Doesn't work.
- [06:14]
A
That's exactly it. Now folks, that doesn't mean it might not work in exceptionally rare, very difficult cases where you're using the coaching model for systemic coaching or performance improvement plan esque type activities.
- [06:29]
B
What we would call late stage coaching, right?
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A
Yeah, exactly. But in, in a case like this, just helping them be better at relationships. No, you want to collaborate on the plan because what you need from them is that they engage in the behavioral change you're asking for. And if you've created the plan, they're not going to be engaged. They're going to be instead of collaborating with you, just doing what you tell them to do. And that's a very different place to begin your learning engagement.
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B
It doesn't lead to growth. It doesn't. It leads to following. And it's just.
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A
Exactly. That's exactly. They're not leading, they're following. And that's the mindset we want to change in this case.
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B
Yeah. Okay, so the first step is you agree on a behavioral goal and again, we're going to tell you how to do that. Next, it's not hard. You and your direct are going to brainstorm resources to help them get there. Notice it's helped them. And by the way, you don't have to be a resource. I often tell the story of I'm a fairly skilled public speaker and I've trained people and coach people on public speaking. I've written speeches and coached presidents and senators and congress people and governors and CEOs and executives on their speaking skills and rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed with them over and over and over again. But when Wendy asked, hey, can you make me a competent professional, you know, effective speaker? I said yes. She assumed that I was going to be her coach trainer. And I told her, no, I'll coach you, but I won't train you. Because the value to the company of me, an hour of time spent being her trainer is not as valuable as it would be in terms of me developing new relationships, getting new clients, delivering for clients and so on. And so we don't want you to think that your job is going to be a trainer. You, you're just going to be the coach.
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A
Yeah, I think about it sometimes. The analogy I use for that, Mark is you're an accountability buddy. That's what you are. Oh, you're just helping steer the ship.
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B
I've not heard that before. I've never heard, okay, yeah, you're there
- [08:40]
A
to give the guard rails. You're there to make sure that they're doing what they say they'll do. You're there so that they can report to you. But really they're the ones in control of this path toward learning a new activity. You're just their sounding board.
- [08:54]
B
Yeah. So again, you're going to agree on a goal. We'll explain it in a minute, and then you're going to brainstorm resources. The resources might be a class they attend, it might be reading, it might be podcasts, it might be company training that exists. It might be an external training or something like that. The point of brainstorming resources is to come up with a list of things that your direct can use to learn and practice the skill that we they and you want to improve.
- [09:21]
A
Exactly. And then, folks, once you got your goal laid out together, you're going to plan out the first weeks of actions. Now, this plan is just a list of tasks, ideally tasks listed as deliverables that your direct agrees to accomplish. You don't want to plan out any longer than one week, maybe two weeks for a top performer. So much is going to change. I mean, if you're a fast moving organization, I mean, every day we're getting new, different work to do, and if you plan too far out, you're going to want to stick to your plan. It'll become obe overcome by events and then you've spent all this time on your plan and you're going to feel like you failed and you're going to quit. Whereas if you're just responding week to week, what we can handle now is just, it's, it's. You're creating the plan, live time and it's more likely to get accomplished ultimately because you didn't spend all this time time planning something that immediately became irrelevant.
- [10:22]
B
Yeah. Now look folks, we've been training people on the coaching model for 30 years, okay? And so it may surprise you when Sarah says we're only going to do a week at a time, but that's in fact the model of the coaching model that we have settled upon after trying many different other models and figuring out it didn't work. And there's another surprise here. The first three steps, which is set a goal, brainstorm resources and come up with your first week of plan. You can accomplish those three steps of the only four step coaching model with your direct in a one on one, in a five to ten minute meeting during your one on one.
- [11:09]
A
That's the money shot. Exactly.
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B
Yeah. Most managers don't believe this. They think they have to come up with a six month training plan or a syllabus or something like that. But we tried that, guys, we tried it for years and people wouldn't do it. We would check in with them every three weeks like, hey, how's that coaching plan coming? Yeah, I'm working on it. Yeah, it's like, okay, look, that doesn't work. There might be some academic who tells you, yeah, that's technically the way to do it. I'm like, I don't care whether it's the way to do it. Nobody does it. And if somebody's going to ask you to do something and you've got other stuff to do and you look at your priorities and you say, yeah, you know, it's going to take an hour at the end of the day for four or five weeks. I don't know many managers going to say, yeah, we've tested this model and that old way it never works. So we're really only putting our toes in the water in this first meeting. Okay. We're not worried at the start that we can't see clearly all the steps and actions our direct is going to take in this four to six or seven month process. Don't worry about that. Just get started. And can I, can I tell them about the yellow brick road?
- [12:22]
A
Oh yeah, sure, yeah, do it.
- [12:24]
B
So I use the example of the yellow brick road in the movie the wizard of Oz. In the movie, of course, the road to Oz has already been built. If you remember when Dorothy ends up in Munchkinland and they do that, there's a, you know, welcome to Munchkin Land and the Wicked Witch's dad and so on. The yellow brick road actually starts as sort of a circle, an unwinding circle. I don't know what that's called in geometry. But anyway, it starts and they go around in a circle and then they show you this yellow brick road leading off. In the distance and in the way distanced, you can see the Emerald City, which is where the wizard is, which is where they say Dorothy should go to be able to get back to Kansas. Okay, most managers think that they have to build a yellow brick road, the entire thing, get all the way to Oz, then come back upon it and build the Emerald City, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, that's a whole nother kettle of fish right there. Or actually, even better, to quote the movie, that's a horse of a different color. It's too daunting. And managers don't do it, and that's why we don't teach it. But the, the most effective coaching processes that we've discovered is more like building the yellow brick road with only 10 bricks. Now, this is, this is an analogy, folks, so don't beat me up about it. If you want to write me, you can write me. Mark@manager-tools.com I'll be happy to respond. But just to be clear, 10 bricks. You take your 10 bricks, okay? You throw, throw down five of them in the direction you want to go. The general direction of what you think it is. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's not a straight line. We're not, we don't have a laser. Munchkin Land. That's exactly a compass, right? We don't have a laser. From Munchkin Land to the, to the Emerald City, you throw down five in the direction you want to go. You walk forward on those five, and you throw the next five out in front of you while also going back and picking up the previous five you laid down. Because you're five. You're five bricks in, right? And then you walk till the end of those second five bricks, and in your hand are the previous five bricks, and you throw those out in front of you, and then you pick up the ones that you just walked over. And you might think, well, it's not as straight. You're right. You're going to be a little bit off track every once in a while, every couple of weeks, you're going to try something that's going to be like, yeah, that didn't work, but you've made progress. You've learned something that doesn't work, and you look up and go, eh, we're off track. Let's try something different. I often tell people the joke is everybody in Toronto wants their first step in February. Let's say they're being trained in February is to go to a training in Orlando, Florida in February. Well, because it's warm. Right. It's reasonable. Maybe that training works, maybe it doesn't. Although I wouldn't recommend putting training first because training costs money.
- [15:18]
A
Costs money. You got to get a budget. Now, that adds to your planning.
- [15:22]
B
But basically this coaching model is nothing harder than planning out a week in advance, checking in at the end of that week, in your next one on one, and then figuring out what the next week is. In some cases, your director is going to be shanghaied by a bunch of stuff that you know about and they're not going to get anywhere. And you should avoid punishing them and say, okay, we'll move all those things forward to this week and then when we get to the end of the second week, we'll come up with the things we're going to do in the third week, which should have happened in the second week. But. But that's okay. We're going to be forgiving as we take our. Our direct, as we are an accountability buddy for our direct on their journey to the Emerald City.
- [16:02]
A
That's exactly it. So then, folks, the last step is really the direct taking action toward accomplishing the deliverables that we've now set out, which, to be clear, happens separately from the meeting where we're talking about the first three steps. They're going to take their first week's list of deliverables, work on those deliverables, accomplish those deliverables, report to you the status of those deliverables or the completion of them.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And all the while, you're going to remember coaching is about your direct improving their skills. You don't have to do anything other than read or listen to their status reports and adjust your aim as they progress. You swing. A golf club doesn't improve their swing. They have to do it themselves. And that's kind of the idea here. Right. They are the one doing the work. If adjustments need to be made, they're the one making the adjustments. You're really just there to help with that plan.
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B
Yeah. I have never had a golf lesson in my life and I like golf and I play a lot of golf when I can. Not as much lately, it seems, but I was told by a very highly regarded golf instructor, a golf pro, that he can tell in five seconds watching a student And a golf professional teach that student, he can tell in five seconds in the first meeting, the first session, first lesson, whether or not that golf professional, who's teaching that beginner, let's say that learner, whether or not the coach, the professional, the teacher is any good. And the standard he applies is, okay. The golf pro's standing there saying, welcome, we're going to do something. And he says, if within five seconds, literally five seconds, the first meeting they have, the first lesson this amateur has, does the pro hand the learner the club and ask them to swing it. And the whole point of that is it doesn't matter how many times the golf pro shows the swing and talks about weight distribution or throwing the head at the ball, or the magic move is coming down from the top straight down to the ground, like you're pulling on a balloon to get it back to you from this, a helium balloon or whatever. You could do all that you want, but it's all theoretical until the person swings the darn club themselves. And so you are not going to make your people better by talking about the things they're supposed to do. They're going to get better when they start doing them. And that's why we've made the coaching model so modular, so weekly and actually so small. It's like if there are 10,000 bricks on the road to Oz, it's just one brick at a time. And you could say, well, I'd rather have the 10,000 bricks built. Okay, sure, but you go ahead and build the 10,000 brick road and I'm going to stand over here and me and my buddy, we're going to throw one brick, one or two or three or four or five bricks down, and we're going to walk forward and we're going to be in about 30 seconds further along than you are. So they have to do it themselves.
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A
Exactly.
- [19:24]
C
Your natural communication style works for about 25% of the managers on your team. The other 75% need you to communicate differently. And they're not going to tell you that because you don't have the framework to explain it. The Effective Communicator conference teaches you to read behavioral cues and adapt in real time. So every conversation with every member of your team actually lands for individual managers and full leadership teams. For more information, please visit manager-tools.com forward/ecc.
- [20:03]
A
So, folks, that was our really high level overview of the coaching model. Now we're going to get into the process with examples for again, specifically coaching a direct on how to improve their relationships.
- [20:17]
B
So Step one is, as Sarah said, collaborate to set a goal for relationships. Now, first we should probably say there's hypothetically anyway a step zero, which is letting your direct know you're wanting to coach them and asking them to come to your next one on one. Having thought about being coached on relationship, relationship development skills. In other words, if you suddenly surprise and say, okay, I'm going to start coaching your relationship skills, your direction go, okay. And they're not going to have any creative thoughts, any, any opinions, any impressions, any ideas about how they'd like to learn, and so on. So maybe in week zero, the week before you start the coaching model, you tell them, hey, you know, next week we're going to start some coaching for you on developing relationships or anything else for that matter.
- [21:10]
A
Yeah, that's exactly it. And folks, don't worry that you have a lot to do before your first coaching session. For your first meeting, it's probably going to take all of your portion of your one on one with your direct. So what is that, 10 to 15 minutes? Yeah, but it's going to go faster if you reread or re listen to our guidance on coaching. We've got tons of podcasts on it. And also if you don't just listen to or refresh yourself on them yourselves, share them with your direct as well so that in that first week before you're actually doing the coaching, they can listen to them, they can maybe learn it for the first time or refresh themselves. And remember, if you are a licensee, you can share the show notes with your direct for them to read these very show notes. If you're collabor, if you're, if you're coaching them on collaborating to build relationships, share these exact show notes.
- [22:03]
B
Yeah, at the absolute minimum, you would share the MT coaching model which is linked to on this in the show notes. If you're a licensee or you can go to that web page and you can, you can listen or you can tell them to listen, or again, if you're licensee, you can share the show notes with them as part of our license to you. You can't share everything you get with everybody. That's a violation of our ip. But still we arranged our license with you so that you could share it with your directs so that they could learn faster by reading or if they prefer to listen, that's fine. Now the first step is of course collaborating. You're doing this together, ideally in a one on one. If you want to set up a separate meeting, that's fine. You Can I don't, we don't recommend it, but it wouldn't be terrible if you did. Okay. And the first step is, as we said, really simple. Once we've decided what our direct is going to get better at, in this case, it's developing relationships. We sit down with the direct and we collaborate to set a goal. So here are some examples, some good examples of goals you could use for your relationship coaching with this direct. And by the way, we're going to give some dates in here. We don't mean them to be relative to. When you're listening to this, the first one says by the first of December. Well, if you're coaching them in the middle of November, that's not a good goal. So we ask you to use your common sense here. By the 1st of December, you will have 10 new relationships where you have contact with the relationship every two weeks. Or by the 30th of October, you will have had 15 coffees or lunches with no less than five of your colleagues. Okay. And by the way, these are both fine. They're different, but they're both fine. Or by the 1st of January, you will have built a relationship map, an online spreadsheet with 10 important contacts and be able to show me bi weekly interaction with them. Now you might say, Mark, Sarah, that doesn't mean they're great at relationships. We know that. Okay, maybe what you do is they go through this process. They've started to learn, they're, they're, they're sort of knocking the rust off of their ability to interact with other people. And you'll say, okay, you did it, well done, congratulations. And let's take that to the next level. And because they're used to coaching process, you would then take them through another three or four months and say, let's identify specific people. Let's get the, let's have the goal. Be a little bit more specific about which people and about what you have, what you hope for them to achieve in those relationships.
- [24:49]
A
Exactly. Now folks, if you go back and listen to those again, you're going to note for each of our example goals, the outcome is not that you've made your direct into a consummate relationship professional. The life of the party with friends everywhere and 10,000 followers on social media. That's not the goal here. That's never the outcome of coaching. The outcome of successful coaching effort is your direct having the skills they need to do their job well or do their job well enough to be considered for the next role. But it's completely Normal that you would coach them through one phase of their important improvement effort and then based on how they do choose to focus on another part of their skill development.
- [25:41]
B
Yeah. For instance, suppose you wanted this direct whom you're coaching to get promoted, but she has limited to no relationships outside of your team. You're probably thinking, I can't just turn her loose on a bunch of execs or broader peers. And you'd be right. And that's okay.
- [26:00]
A
Exactly. Which is why in all these examples, we're focusing on one part of her relationship building. In the first, all we're asking her to do is start some relationships with a measure of staying in touch every two weeks. That's it. And the second one is similar. And the third one is similar but adds a tracking system. Again, we're not asking her to be the life of the party.
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B
No.
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A
Just to be better at building relationships. Influence influencer. Exactly.
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B
I'm gonna move into sales. I got taught how to do relationships. I'm moving into sales now. No, that's probably not it. Yeah. And you can be happy with a 10 to 15 to 20% improvement in your direct relationship building skills. That's fine. But if it's not enough for a top performer because he or she isn't, they started at less than zero, perhaps. Maybe you get them just above zero and then you run it through again. But the second time you run it through, the model will kind of disappear. Because there's a cadence, there's a structure. They'll know the structure and be like, yeah, I can do that. I can take bite sized things every week. And it only takes me maybe a half an hour or 45 minutes a week. I can figure out how to do that. Now, we've been talking about people who might be high performers, but the low performer who needs to get to a certain level, maybe not in relationship skills, but in something else. You can say to them, it's only going to take you 30, 45 minutes a week. And that allows you to continue doing your job and doing it hopefully reasonably well, or at least to the standard you've been doing it up till now if it's not quite good enough. And we're going to help you build those skills. We made these examples to only address potentially part of whatever our direct in this situation might need. We don't want to unnecessarily try to create something we don't know how to do or measure. And we recognize that there might be several facets to a larger behavioral change. And you might have to go through two or three or four coach engagements to get them there. But this coaching engagement is not something you need to prepare weeks for or spend hours before every one on one get ready for. It is far better to bite off something small to get your coaching skills warmed up and to get your direct use to the model and do a couple of iterations rather than trying to figure out the entirety all in one thing. Fell swoop and and just say one more thing. What's more, if you struggle with any of these steps, please just reach out to us@customerserviceanagertools.com and we can help you with any of the four steps. I've been saying for years when I deliver the effective Manager conference. And by the way, if you've not been to an effective manager conference, we encourage you to come, we talk. I think we spend two, two and a half hours on coaching.
- [28:43]
A
Yep.
- [28:44]
B
And I always tell them if you're coaching somebody in something you're not super strong in, that's okay. By the way, you don't need to be an expert on the topic in order to coach somebody. You need to be an expert to train them. But you don't need to be an expert to coach them because you're going to use other resources. If you're not an expert, email us. I still have records of everyone I ever coached and I have some of the actual detailed deliverables that I gave them. And we'll send you an example of how to get started for the first 2, 3, 4 weeks so you can feel comfortable and sort of gradually work up to taking it over on your own.
- [29:23]
A
Yeah, that's exactly it. So folks, the Manager Tools coaching model uses a goal structure called DBQ Deadline Behavior Quality. We start with the deadline portion because deadlines drive behavior and we usually don't set deadlines of less than four months away when it comes to a coaching engagement. Because I mean if someone can change their behavior in less than four months, the person probably just needs a lot of feedback and we don't need a coaching plan which to our point earlier is a very simple, low effort way of doing this education, if you will. But it's certainly more effort filled than just give them a lot of feedback. You could do that 30 seconds a bite.
- [30:09]
B
Yeah. So what Sarah is saying is when you set your deadline, that's the first thing every Manager Tools Coaching model goal is DBQ Deadline Behavior Quality. The deadline should be not less than four months away.
- [30:24]
A
Exactly.
- [30:25]
B
And in fact I often tell people if you're thinking Four months, double it. And the reason why is some of you might think it's cynical. I think it's very optimistic. And that is this. If I think they can be done in four months, but I was wrong. Let's say I can magically predict the future. And I thought it was four, but in fact it was five. When we get to four, they failed. And now that's a negative.
- [30:50]
A
Yeah.
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B
So I say if you think it's going to take four, give them eight. If they only take five, that's a huge win. And what's funny about the one that you set a goal of four, but it takes some five and there's a failure at four. What's funny about that is we focus on the failure of not achieving the goal when in fact they've been doing stuff to get better. Yeah, they're actually better off than when they started. But nobody thinks that way. Oh, you, you missed the goal. So four months is the minimum. And I would recommend in the beginning give them eight, let them win in five, and feel like, wow, I thought it was going to take eight, but you did it in five. Let's go to the next level. And they're going to be like, yeah, this is actually not hard. I can fit this into my existing work and it's going to be okay.
- [31:38]
A
Yeah, that's the biggest fear, right? I mean, it's that, okay, fine, sure, I'm going to do this learning thing, but holy, whoa. I don't think I have time for that. They don't realize what we're talking about when we're talking about coaching. They're expecting a big thing that's going to be laborious and time consuming, and that's not what it's going to be.
- [31:56]
B
And for the, for the direct who's maybe needs coaching because they're facing a performance improvement plan. I mean, they really, they're performing below the standards. Giving them something they can do that's tolerable and tenable as opposed to untenable and intolerable will reinforce, hey, I'm not going to give you such an enormous goal and such a short deadline that you'll begin to think, I'm just trying to get rid of you. No, we're going to take it week by week. We're going to come up with stuff that you can do. We're going to adjust as we go because the purpose is get you to a better place, not to just gather data to prove that you're not good enough. We don't want to do that. You start doing that, you might as well be a hatchet man. So Sarah shared the deadline and it goes by blank. So you give them a deadline by October 1st, by January 15th, whatever you want. Not less than four months. And ideally eight is a good number to start with. The behavior portion, dbq, Deadline behavior quality. The behavior portion is what we want the direct to do. The actual behavior we want to improve. Okay. And then the quality portion is how we're going to measure the behavior. For instance, we can't just say that we're going to have a direct run a meeting. In other words, by January 1st or January 15th, you probably wouldn't set a goal. You wouldn't set a deadline of January 1st, would you?
- [33:23]
C
No.
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A
That's really hurtful over Christmas holiday.
- [33:26]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Welcome back from Christmas. You failed. Right. So by January 15, you will run a meeting. Okay. Let's say that's what we're coaching, running a meeting.
- [33:38]
A
Sure.
- [33:39]
B
Under that criterion, the direct could run a meeting and it could be the worst meeting in the history of meeting.
- [33:45]
A
Exactly. Run it right into the ground.
- [33:48]
B
Right. So we not only have to say the behavior you're going to run a meeting, but then we have to define the quality standards for what we consider successful success in that meeting.
- [33:57]
A
And it needs to be measurable. So let's talk a little bit about the nature of this measurable goal. A key part of the goal is that it describes behavior or results that demonstrate the skill as being coached. This is key. Sometimes managers are going to say that your coaching goal is to read some books on, again, say running meetings. But that's not a coaching goal. To know and not to do is worthless for professionals. Book learning isn't valuable in business unless you take that learning and you do something with with that learning. That is, you behave upon it. So to prepare a report on meetings or to go to a class on meetings, again, they're not coaching goals.
- [34:47]
B
But let's be clear though, those could be tasks.
- [34:49]
A
Yes, absolutely.
- [34:50]
B
In step three. Right, Step three. That they'll have to implement in step four. But they're not the end goal.
- [34:56]
A
Exactly. The coaching goal is the actual behavior being improved upon. So running an effective meeting, raising a million dollars, delivering a 30 minute presentation, those are goals, those are behaviors.
- [35:11]
B
Yeah. Now you might be thinking right now, okay, fine. But I have no idea how to get from here to there. Don't we need a detailed plan? Right. And the answer is no, not yet. You don't need a detailed plan. If every manager had to have a detailed coaching plan that lasted for six months. Again, none of us would do it. For now, we just have to set the end state. So for example, it might be, well, the examples we gave you. I'll just reread the examples because I think people will just to go back to the goals that we said, right. By the first of December, you will have 10 new relationships where you have contact every two weeks. By the 30th of October, you will have had 15 coffees or lunches with no less than five of your colleagues. Now, you may disagree with details of that, but we're just trying to be clear with you about the structure of by a certain date deadline, there's a behavior and there's a standard so that the behavior is not just doing something that's ineffective or inefficient or. By the 1st of January, you will have built a relationship map, an online spreadsheet with 10 important contacts and show biweekly interaction with them. By the way, I don't even care if one of those 10 ends up in bad interactions because my direct is getting reps.
- [36:33]
A
Yes, exactly.
- [36:34]
B
And we'll talk about that and we'll say, okay, that person you're not gonna have a great relationship with, let's take
- [36:39]
A
them off the list if you're not gonna win.
- [36:41]
B
Right? Because the idea that we have to have great relationship with everybody, not. Not just not gonna happen in my lifetime anyway. So, yeah, that's it.
- [36:51]
A
Thanks so much for joining us, folks. Join us again next week as we continue this topic. Now, help us help others and tell your friends. And of course, follow rate and review our podcast. And remember, five stars only, please.
- [37:03]
B
Five stars only, please. Sam.