ilrhr528 transcripts - Amazon S3ILRHR528 Transcripts Transcript: Welcome Coaching is one of the tools of employee development that organizations use to help their talent learn and

ILRHR528: Fostering a Coaching Culture Cornell University ILR School

© 2013 eCornell. All rights reserved. All other copyrights, trademarks, trade names, and logos are the sole property of their respective owners.

1

ILRHR528 Transcripts

Transcript: Welcome Coaching is one of the tools of employee development that organizations use to help their talent learn and grow. This introduction to coaching is going to help you identify when this is an appropriate intervention, when it can be used to help employees learn and grow, open you to the possibility that maybe you'd like to become a certified coach, but also give you ideas about ways in which your organization could be more developmentally oriented, and more talent focused, and really help people learn and grow and become better professionals, so you have a more effective organization. Transcript: Categories of Employee Development Coaching fits under the broad umbrella of employee development. And employee development are all of the formal and informal tools and techniques that our organization uses to help grow talent. In fact the new language of this is talent development not just employee development. And so, what are the things that are under this umbrella? Well, there are four broad categories of them. The first is education, and it's kind of formal and informal training, like on-the-job training, or classes that you might take. The second are assessments, and so the performance evaluation system would be one kind of assessment, but there are lots of assessments, like personality assessments or skills assessments, interest inventories. These are tools and techniques for gathering information about people's skills and capabilities, helping them see where they might grow. The third is experience. Experience including the things that an employee would have brought to the organization, their prior work experience, but also the kinds of experiences that they get while employed. And this can be things that they do in their particular job. Perhaps job rotation or temporary assignments to help stretch people and help them learn and develop new skills. And then the last category, the last kind of bundle of tools for employee development are relational tools. These relational tools, right, these are the developmental relationships, the interpersonal relationships that you have that help an individual grow and develop. And these can be mentors, coaches, advisors, counsellors. And in fact, lots of people use those words interchangeably. So, coaching is clearly a relational strategy for employee development, and I'm going to spend some time really trying to distinguish, I don't want to use those as colloquially as they're often used, I want to separate them. Mentoring is



2

quite different from coaching, and quite different from counseling. And so we'll spend some time talking about that in this course. Transcript: Understanding How Employee Development Works in Your Organization Before we get started you really want to have a sense of the lay of the land. The employee development lay of the land in your organization. How developmentally oriented is this organization that you are working in? Who is the organization investing in? Who's being developed? Are all of the developement activities around new hires? And so there's extensive orientation and training when you first come, but after that you're left on your own. Or do we invest in entry-level employees hoping that some of them will be groomable towards senior levels? You know, like, for example, in a law firm where new associates are kind of groomed and trained and socialized extensively, some of whom will be ultimately made into partners. Other organizations really focus their development efforts on what they consider to be the high potentials. And still others kind of reserve this as a perk for the most senior leaders or only the top executives. And so a question in addition to, well are you doing any development at all, who if anyone is being developed in the organization? Then at the next level, you want to think about, as we do development, if we do any development, is that development focused on helping people perform their current job better? Or is it developing talent for future performance? Are we trying to build a strong bench with an eye towards succession planning for example? You'll want to get a deeper understanding of how employee development, how talent development works in your organization, to think about where coaching might fit. Whether there is an appetite for coaching. Whether it could be developed internally, or would have to be done externally. Again, organizations really vary in how they think about employee development. I can tell you a little bit about Cornell, and we're widely seen as an excellent employer, and the staff have a lot of talent development and employee development opportunities for staff. This comes in the form of tuition reimbursement. People are allowed to take university classes. They're also reimbursed for taking classes elsewhere. For doing certifications. We have access to a full variety of online courses like this one. But also ones that are focused on very specific skills, like how to do Excel spreadsheets, or how to format documents. So these resources are out there. What's interesting about Cornell is that none of it is mandated. It is all voluntary. It's kind of, here's a menu of things that you, if you're interested in developing yourself, could take advantage of. That's in contrast to an organization I'm currently working with. It's a consulting firm, and here the consulting firm is doing a very explicit talent development initiative, where they're mandating that their employees go through a set of experiences. Some online courses, some in-person courses. A formal mentoring program where you are assigned a mentor. Each junior consultant is assigned a senior consultant as a mentor. There is a



3

career counseling division. There are actual coaches who can be called upon to help develop employees. So, there's a very robust employee development effort and a lot of resources in place in this organization. Again, you'll want to know more about your organization, and its both existing development programs, but also kind of the philosophy and attitude towards how the organization thinks about talent development and employee development more generally. Transcript: Supporting and Partnering for Employee Development Okay, so we want to talk about HR's role in this relational approach to employee development. What is HR's role in coaching and mentoring and counseling? I want to distinguish two different ways that HR can participate. One is that HR could just be setting up the systems. Putting the system in place, developing the administrative routines around coaching or around mentoring or around counseling. Or HR could be taking on the role. In particular HR could be playing a coaching or a counseling role. In practice we know it works best, employee development works best when HR works in partnership with line managers. One of the dangers here, right, one of the dangers of setting up systems is that you're spending a lot of time setting up systems that no one uses or no one takes advantage of. So we want to be conscious of, we don't just want HR to be on the books. We want HR to be part of the practice. And the HR tool that we're talking about, right, we're talking about employee development. We don't want employee development in theory or employee development on the books. We want employee development in practice. We want people actually developing, growing and in particular, taking advantage of developmental relationships in order to facilitate employee development. It's a little bit tricky here because one of the things you have to worry a little bit about, and again, be conscious about, and this is why it's important to understand your organization's approach to employee development, when HR starts talking the language of growth and learning and development, implicit in that is a notion of professional advancement. That you will be promoted. That you will be given new opportunities. And sometimes an organization is not in a place where that is even possible. So being clear about whether the development or the growth is intended again towards excellent performance in the current role or whether it's oriented towards future roles, you want to be clear about which one it is because you don't want to set the expectation that you're being groomed for advancement that doesn't happen. That can lead to enormous frustration, and even turnover. So setting the wrong expectations. And then again, in partnership, you don't want to be setting up, proposing or designing systems that no one actually wants to use. And so this is why the idea of partnering with managers and being conscious of the context in which you're operating is really essential for these kinds of employee development activities.



4

Transcript: Coaching in Different HR Contexts So I'd like to take a minute to introduce you to one of the most widely used and widely known models of the HR function. I think this is a useful framework for thinking about employee development and where employee development fits and the different approaches you might take to employee development and to coaching in particular. So this model was developed by Dave Ulrich, and it's evolved over the years. If you read articles or textbooks about it, the words, the specific words might change, but the core ideas have been pretty constant. There's a vertical axis, and what this vertical axis differentiates is a future or strategic orientation from a more day-to-day and operational orientation. So are you strategic or are you tactical? And then on the horizontal axis, you differentiate more systems orientation from a more person orientation. So are you about developing processes, setting policies, or are you really about interacting with the employees in the front lines? So if you intersect these two axes you get four quadrants, and these four quadrants describe different ways in which the HR function can be organized, different roles that the HR professional might take. In the upper left hand quadrant you have the strategic partner. Okay, HR is a strategic partner. This is a very future oriented, strategic oriented, but also systems oriented. This is where HR is partnering with senior leaders to establish policies to think about the best way to have the people in the organization achieve strategic objectives. So one example of that is, are we going to invest in talent at all? Are we going to kind of hire at the entry level and groom people or are we going to look for people who already are fully competent fully skilled. That would be a kind of strategic partner choice that an HR professional could make in conjunction with leadership. And it's really, it's HR in the executive suite. It doesn't really touch the front lines or the day-to-day activities of what employees do. It's about setting policies and making decisions about how the organization can best organize to execute its strategy. In the lower left hand quadrant, there's a more day-to-day focus for HR. This is an HR professional who's worried about the HR infrastructure. It's the systems running efficiently, the systems that manage the employment relationship. Things like payroll. Are people getting paid? Are they getting paid accurately? Are they getting paid on time? The administrative expert worries about what have become the services of HR in making sure that runs efficiently and well. In the upper right-hand quadrant, we have a more people-oriented but strategic version of the HR function, and here this is about morale and culture. The role of the HR professional is that of a change agent. Really thinking about keeping the organization, but also renewing the organization as needed so that it continues to move forward. What is HR doing here? It's communicating widely, but it's focused on the business, but more oriented towards the people. And then in the lower right hand quadrant we have the employee champion. And here's a much more front line, day to day person centric and employee centric role that HR can take on where you're solving the day to day problems and interacting on a regular basis with the employees at the organization. Now, this model describes different ways in which the



5

HR function can be organized. But also applies specifically to how you'd approach employee development, and coaching in particular. A strategic partner would be thinking about coaching. Is this something we even want to take on as an organization? A change agent might look for opportunities where coaching could be used to change culture or to achieve new objectives. An administrative expert would be maintaining a coaching system but not necessarily doing coaching, right. Perhaps maintaining a referral base and helping facilitate matching. But the employee champion might very well take on the coaching role more directly. Again, we think about HR, you are taking on the role. How people oriented are you? Or are you setting up the systems? Transcript: Ask the Expert: Contrasting Views on Coaching Dale Wunder What guidance would you give an organization trying to decide how best to meet its coaching needs? For me, the most important relationship in the company is with the supervisor and their employee. And that's where I believe the coaching relationship should be. There are circumstances where you might want to bring in somebody from outside to be part of that, but it would be highly unusual. For me it’s better for the supervisor who sees that person on a regular basis and works with them to provide that coaching to them directly. What are the prerequisites for a healthy, effective coaching program within a human resources organization? I look at coaching program differently than others might look at a coaching program. So when I think of a coaching program, I think of a training course or a workshop or a set of workshops that we would have individuals go to, to improve their coaching skills. Others might think of coaching program as something that would set out for an organization or for a company that everyone has a coach. They're going to cover x, y, and z, as part of the coaching relationship. It'll be tracked and that sort of thing. I'm not an advocate for that. I personally believe with a relationship between a supervisor and employee, that coaching will be appropriate for that relationship, and it's for those two individuals to work what that looks like, and how often. Tom DiGiovanni How would you characterize the difference between internal coaching external coaching? Both roles have their advantages and shadow sides. I would say, the advantage of an internal coach is that an internal coach really knows the business. They know the culture. Hopefully they have really good established relationships with people throughout the organization and can leverage those relationships in a very positive way to move things forward quickly. Especially if the organization is looking to start a serious coaching program. Somebody from the inside can cover a lot more ground quicker with a lot more fidelity and trust probably than an outside person. An outside person can be really helpful for some spot coaching assignments or if the company's really not sure



6

that they want to commit to a full range of coaching options for their employees. An outside coach can also bring a certain kind of, the grass is always greener, gravitas. Especially for the senior level executives in an organization than maybe an in-house coach might be. So that might be some of the differences I would see. Stephaine Jones What is your business relationship with the people you typically coach? From an organizational structure perspective, the management teams that I work with and myself are on the same level. And I think that is a very effective relationship to have as far as coaching is concerned. Because it ensures, number one, that the individual feels comfortable. I think sometimes when we have a coaching relationship in which there is a superior and a team member, that results in the team member not feeling comfortable and, you know, free to truly express how they feel. And then also with those types of relationships you run the risk of the boss or the superior employee providing coaching in a biased manner. We ultimately, we are concerned with this individual's performance. Right? And in order for them to achieve their goals is important, that this individual achieves their goals. So with those types of relationships, it really detracts from the innocence that you need when conducting a coaching session. Transcript: Ask the Expert: Building a Coaching Capability Tom DiGiovanni How did others in the company respond to the prospect of a coaching program? It's been a really fascinating process building a coaching program in an organization that had nothing, zero, in terms of professional development, leadership development before, other than an occasional workshop or something for a couple of hours where somebody might come in. Coaching really comes handy, and works most effectively when there's some kind of follow up, and where people can get a chance to actually work the muscles that they just found. So, for me, I knew that people were really hungry for couching in this organization. Really hungry for a chance to actually learn how to behave more optimally. Because most people just don't learn it. They don't have a way to actually learn it and exercise it. And so once we started it, it took off like wildfire, and I have more requests than I almost can handle. What coaching initiatives did you undertake as part of the human resources organization? So we start on different levels. Some one-on-one coaching for leaders in the company. We started a leadership program for the rising talent in the company. And those people are identified, by the CEO and the major leaders in the company, as talent that they really want to bring to an executive level. There are two cohorts a year of about 15 people each that go through a 6 month leadership program, which is just tremendous. We started a program that's very different for managers, directors, vice presidents. It's called a manager development program and this is a blended program of online, virtual,



7

face-to-face, one-on-one and social community interactions. Over the course of a 12 week period of time, where they cover an array of topics that relate to managing people and to being a better manager. And then they have access to the online content while they're there at the company as a reference. So there are various, and then, also coaching teams who are having some kind of dysfunction, and those kind of pop up as they come up. So that's how we've started the program at my company. To what extent did executives in your company support the idea of a coaching program? So our company went through a change of leadership from the CEO on down. The previous CEO was not very interested in coaching as part of an environment for the organization, the new CEO is. The new executives that he brought in really are committed to it. So for me it was, I don't want to say it was an easy sell, but people really understood the value of it. And understand how important it is to really developing the talent in the organization.

Transcript: Narrowing the Definition of Coaching Coaching's become a really popular term. It's used to describe all sorts of interactions in the workplace where someone is trying to help another person. And lots of the ways in which I hear it being used right like, I'm going to coach you through this. Well, let's just have a little coaching session so you can practice before you have to make the sales call or give the presentation. Managers working with subordinates, but really working on a particular skill, that's not coaching the way I'm talking about it. That really is more on-the-job training. And one of the important differences between on-the-job training and coaching, on-the-job training is a kind of one time event focused on a specific skill. Whereas coaching is much more a longer term engagement towards a goal. It's a process of discovery and of learning. And another important distinction here is that coaching is a development activity. It's not an evaluative activity. We're not trying to judge whether you're doing a good job here. The reason we're thinking about coaching as an interventionist because we've identified a gap, something that an employee needs to work on, would benefit by improving on, and the spirit of coaching is one of learning and growth and help, not evaluation. So purely developmental, not evaluative. Now, in the context of this course, we're talking about work-related coaching, job-related coaching. There's a whole booming industry of life coaching. People can work with coaches to help them achieve life related goals, whether they're relationships or organization, spirituality, all sort of things. I'm going to bracket that off, this kind of life coaching, even though many of the tools and techniques are the same. The kind of appreciate enquiry and the listening and the questioning and the kind of engagement. There's some similar techniques and processes. I'm going to focus specifically on organizational and work related coaching. It's a big investment in employee



8

development. If an organization is going to refer someone to a coach or provide a coach, this is a real signal that we're developing you for the long term. And, there's some evidence that coaching and employee development more generally does improve retention and reduce turnover. People want to learn and grow in their jobs. Coaching is one of the tools in the toolkit of employee development. Transcript: Mentoring and Counseling Coaching is also used to describe what I would really consider quite different developmental functions. And I'm going to be explicit and quite clear about the difference between the other kinds of relational developmental activities, in particular, mentoring and counselling. Now what's the difference between coaching, mentoring and counselling? What differs both in who does it, but also what's being done. Let me describe. So mentoring, in a mentoring relationship it's really a senior practitioner working with a junior practitioner in a role. Mentoring is done by people who have the same job but are more experienced in the job. Think about a partner in a law firm working with a new associate. Helping that new associate learn all of the things they need to learn to be an effective lawyer. That they didn't learn in law school. It's how to navigate in the court system. It is the tacit knowledge that you need to be effective to do negotiations. Now, some of the ways in which you do this, a way a mentor can do this for a mentee, is by making introductions or making sure they're assigned to the right cases. They also serve as a role model and provide some informal socialization and even some commiserating, some emotional support. Mentoring is done in a role. It could be a long term relationship. A person could have many mentors. They could be formally assigned, they could be informally assigned. But again it's a different kind of developmental relationship that's done by people in a role. Quite different from coaching right? Coaching can be done. It's a shorter term relationship and it's not necessarily provided by someone in the role. Coaching could be provided by a trained certified professional coach. All right? It could be provided by a manager. It could be provided by a trained peer. Someone who is effective at helping someone learn, discover, skilled in listening and questioning, to help people achieve goals. Coaching could be done by the HR function. Someone within HR takes on the role of the coach. Again, distinct from mentoring. It's also quite distinct from counseling. And this is where coaching and counseling is often confused. And I think one of the reasons is that there's a kind of counseling that's done within HR by HR that really is career counseling. It's helping people navigate transitions across jobs. What I'd like to highlight is that career counseling, like all other kinds of counseling, mental health counseling, addiction counseling, bereavement counseling. These are things that are really left best to trained professionals. People whose full time job is to deal with the kinds of problems, transitions, issues, that human beings have to deal with, and so



9

counseling. I mean especially mental health counseling, but also even career counseling is typically done by someone who is specifically focused on this kind of work. Whereas coaching, many people can acquire the skills to be an effective coach and to engage in a coaching process over a few weeks or a few months. Transcript: Identifying Potential Coaching Situations So once we start thinking about coaching and you start looking around to where there are opportunities to use this as a developmental tool? Where can you coach? Who can you coach? When would you use coaching? When would it be appropriate? So let's start looking around and trying to find those situations. And really think about when coaching might be the best developmental intervention as opposed to say mentoring or training. Coaching interventions tend to be places where there's someone who recognizes there's a problem and wants to learn and improve. So that's one kind of coaching opportunity. For example, someone wants to get better at their public speaking or wants to be a more effective meeting manager. Those are specific kinds of skills that you could work with someone and help them learn and develop and acquire those skills. So those are coaching opportunities. A person comes to you and wants to work on something. Another kind of coaching opportunity might be the kind of problems that you hear about. So you have a manager who is complaining about a problematic subordinate. What we know is that most subordinate problems are, in fact, manager problems. And so this an opportunity to coach a manager on their managerial skills. Or for example, there are employees who are unhappy and complaining. So perhaps there's a coaching opportunity around, expectations or professionalism. So the kinds of problems are, you can see as I'm describing this, the kinds of problems, or skills are, they tend to be things that are time bounded, that you don't acquire in a one-off, but you acquire through interaction, through feedback, through practice, through actual reflection. Those are the kinds of situations that are the perfect target for coaching. Now let me point out that it's much easier to see coaching opportunities that are problem focused. But in fact, you have much more leverage if you're able to see coaching opportunities that are future oriented or potential oriented. So for let me give you an example. Say you're in a department or you see a department where there are lots and lots of senior people who are going to retire and you know that over the next two years these retirements are going to leave a big gap in the management rolls. Part of what you should be doing as an HR person is thinking about workforce planning and perhaps coaching some of the up and coming, the more junior people to take on these leadership and these more managerial roles. Now how do you become a manager? How do you become a leader? There are a set of communication skills. There are a set of planning skills. There are some leadership skills. All of those could be coached. And



10

this is kind of a future-oriented way to think about coaching and coaching opportunities, rather than a problem-solving way of thinking about coaching. And again we want to be clear that we're not using coaching inappropriately. Using coaching at times when it would be much more appropriate to do informal socialization with a mentor, or to refer someone out to a professional counselor to deal with personal problems or temporary setbacks. Transcript: Prioritize Coaching by Urgency and Importance So keep in mind, as an employee development activity, coaching is very expensive. It takes time, it takes resources, it's a one-on-one activity, and it is not scalable. And, if you offer it, I mean who wouldn't want it? Everybody would want a coach, wouldn't they? So, you're opening flood gates, right. And you want to think about, as you consider offering coaching, or taking on a coaching role, where will you invest your time and resources here? The easiest way to think about that is to use the framework that Stephen Covey made popular in his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People where you have to differentiate the urgent and the important. The urgent things are, the things that are right in front of you, day to day, those squeaky wheels. But, what is it that's important? Often important things are not right in front of you. But there are things that are worthy of investment. And so clearly when there are urgent and important problems, you want to prioritize those. But, if you're trying to coach for future performance, you want to be thinking about those things that might not be right in front of you, but are worthy investments for the long term. They're important investments to make. Maybe in developing managerial capabilities, or building your bench, finding ways to help people grow, right. Which investments are worth making is going to be an important decision to make as you think about coaching. Transcript: Ask the Expert: Coaching Individuals and Teams Tom DiGiovanni What kind of work do you do as an external coach? As an outside coach, I typically work in either one of two ways. One as a one to one coach, usually with an executive level person. Or to come in and do some type of team intervention, or team coaching around a specific topic for a group in an organization. What are some common issues you help clients address through coaching? One on one, it really varies a lot by the individual in terms of where they are and what they're looking to do. As a coach, I believe we have the answers inside of us. And I help



11

coach that person to where they are looking to be in terms of their professional goals, usually. And that can really be a range of things. It could involve time management. It could involve being a better communicator. It can involve being more fluid and flexible in terms of working with their teams. It can involve using their emotional intelligence to a much higher level. It can involve many different types of things. In terms of working with the team, usually the teamwork revolves around some kind of dysfunction that a team is having working together. And so often times that can be a communication problem. Often times it can be a lack of, just self-awareness about how they're interacting with each other. Sometimes it's a generational kind of conflict. Again, there are many kinds of different coaching opportunities that are related to team dysfunctions. Can you describe a recent team coaching experience? I worked with a team recently who was very distant from the leader of the team. And it was after a lot of prodding, I met with everyone individually, including the leader and every member of the team. And the basic theme was where the members of the team didn't trust the leader. They didn't trust the leader because they felt like he didn't have their backs. They didn't trust him because they felt like he didn't represent their interests to the upper levels of the organization. They didn't trust him because they felt like he didn't actually spend enough time with each of them to know them one on one. And to help them, help each of them be better performers within their own organization. And actually from the leader's perspective, he thought he was doing all those things in a positive way. So his intentions were good he just didn't execute it very well. And there were some people on the team who were reluctant to have a conversation with him because they felt like there might be some type of retribution if they did. And so I spent a lot of time working with the team on trusting each other. Which in order to trust each other people have to share a lot of things that they've been holding inside and to feel free to engage in conflict. And we spent a lot of time on that with that particular team. They went away with some very specific assignments, both the team and the leader. It was a real success story. We did a follow up three months later, another follow up three months behind it, and the team is really working very effectively now. Transcript: Attribution Errors So as you think about coaching and as you think about the kinds of situations or problems that come to you that might be opportunities for coaching, it's really important to keep in mind that we are hard-wired to be somewhat biased in the way that we view situations. Human beings, and this is kind of a known psychological process, where when we look at others, we make judgment about others in terms of their character, or in terms or their personality, or in terms of their disposition. We kind of talk about others as particular kinds of people.



12

Let me give you an example. A manager comes to you and complains about a problematic subordinate. Boy, I've got this new guy, and he really has an attitude problem. I don't know, he's so negative and really judgmental, really bad attitude, I don't know what I'm going to do about him. So, the idea here is that the problem is viewed as something about the character and the disposition of the person. Now, this is a really problematic way of viewing things because if it's a bad person, the only solution is to remove that person. We don't typically try and change people's personality or their character or their disposition. But when you view things in this way, what you forget to see is the broader context, or the situation. What else might be going on that might explain what you're seeing. The classic example of this is someone coming late to a meeting. Let's call him Bob. Bob comes late to a meeting. And you kind of notice Bob didn't say anything about coming late. What's the attribution? Oh, well he knew it was going to be a rough meeting, and he's conflict averse. So you kind of look down on that person. But there could be an equally plausible or equally likely situation attribution. Well, Bob was on an important call with a client and it went longer than expected and so the situation explains the behavior. It wasn't anything about him being conflict averse or irresponsible. Now what's interesting about this is that we're really good at seeing the situation, the broader contextual factors, all of the things that are contributing to our own performance, or our own lack of performance. We're really good when it's us. We can see the situation. You're late and you know why you late. You had a hard time getting your car started. The dog ran away. All of the things that were out of your control that led you to be late. So part of what understanding situations and hearing problems, part of what you have to do to diagnose whether coaching is a good invention, is to really recognize that when problems come to you, they are coming to you in a biased way. And that you have to figure out what else might be going on in this situation that could explain this. One trick for doing this is to put yourself in the other person’s shoes or ask the manager to put themselves in the other person’s shoes. What might be going on? Why might someone have a negative attitude? Maybe they don't have the resources they need to do their job. Maybe no one ever explained to them what the job was. Maybe there are other frustrations in the work situation that are leading to a negative attitude. And so the first important step of you in your HR role in thinking about coaching is to fully assess and diagnose the situation. And this is going to involve getting multiple perspectives and trying see beyond any dispositional characteristics that people might describe someone as unmotivated or a bad attitude, and try and dig into what else could be going on. What might explain this problem or this situation and what could we work on to resolve it? Transcript: Skilled Listening



13

So one of the essential skills in coaching in employee development is going to be listening. It's really going to be hearing what people are telling you, and understanding what people are telling you. And we of course, we all think we're great listeners. We all think we're good at conversation, this is basic stuff. But it turns out that skilled listening, intuitive listening is quite actually difficult, quite challenging. Now there's some basic tips for how you should do it. Right? You have to stay focused, you have to be in the moment, you really have to be paying attention to the other person, observing and interpreting the non-verbal cues, reflecting things back, summarizing, well, what I think you're saying, and repeating back to people. And those are some techniques for intuitive listening. That I'm sure you've heard. But, I want to just remind you of how important this is by explaining some bad examples. Some examples of not very good listening. I'm going to use an example of a conversation with a colleague to illustrate this. These different levels, these different ways in which you're listening, but you're not really listening. And so imagine a colleague says, hey I'm, yeah, did you have a good weekend? Great. You know, we're thinking about taking up sailing. Oh, yeah, well we went to the movies this weekend. Right? So that's just our responding, recognizing it's your turn. But not picking up on the thread of what someone's saying. This is someone who wants to talk about sailing and you're talking about going to the movies. Another way this is, you're listening but you're not really listening, would be to turn it towards you. The colleague says, yeah, hey, I'm thinking about taking sailing lessons. You say, oh, I took sailing lessons. That was terrific. I really enjoyed it. Yeah, you should definitely do it. So that's a kind of turning it. It's a giving your own experience and giving it advice but not really engaging the conversation that the person wants to have. A next level, which is a little bit better, but again, it's not quite what we're going for. A colleague says, oh, hey, I'm taking up sailing. I'm thinking about taking up sailing. And you say, oh, really? Oh, what made you think about doing that? And let the person talk more about why they want to take up sailing. And so that would be a listening and asking for more. You're clearly engaged, you're focused on the person, and you’re talking with them about what they want to talk about. But it doesn't quite get at the kind of diagnosis of the situation, the kind of analysis, the kind of coaching that we're looking for. So, for example, let's stick with this same example. So, a colleague says hey, yeah, I'm thinking about taking up sailing. Oh, that's interesting. What made you want to do that? Well, I just thought it be nice to take advantage of the water and get out there a little bit more. Oh, I bet you'd meet new people doing that as well. I mean, is that one of the reasons you're thinking about do it? Are you trying to get new skills or are you looking to kind of build a bigger or different network? And so there what you see is I'm trying interpret or infer why it is? Why am I hearing this? Why are you telling me this? What else might be going on behind the situation? And this is a simple example, but you can



14

see how you could use this, both to better understand what's going on, to understand motives, to understand situations, to understand context. And also then to talk with someone and help them think through what they're thinking about, what they're working on, what they're hoping to achieve. Transcript: Techniques for Effective Asking So in addition to listening, an essential part of engaging with others is asking questions, drawing people out. So this is the conversational interchange, or the exchange that you're trying to have here. And so why in addition to listening, why do you have to ask questions? This is the other essential skill here. You're asking questions, thoughtful, fruitful, productive questions, so that you yourself can gain a deeper understanding of the situation. You can help the person you're talking with see things differently. You can learn about other people's perceptions of this situation, get your own perceptions. You're gathering data. You're looking for gaps in understanding. You're trying to engage with others and draw them out and hopefully, in the process of asking skilled questions, you learn a lot but also the person you're talking with, learns a lot. That's the essence of a coaching conversation, it's this interactive engagement of asking and listening, and learning in real time. But this questioning skill or the ability to ask good questions is also incredibly valuable for diagnosing the situation, the first step before you even get to coaching is well what, what is actually going on here? And to try and figure out what is going on here, you have to be quite skilled at interviewing and at asking questions. So let me give you some examples of questions that would help you access a situation, understand what's going on. Here's an example. So, are you getting the results that you want? So think about that question. Are you getting the results that you want? You gather information about the person's performance expectations. You know whether they're satisfied, how satisfied they are. You know, it's a kind of question that encourages someone to talk in a kind of open and fluid way. Are you getting the results you want? And you could probe, you could say so what would need to change or improve or happen differently so that you would be getting the results that you wanted? And, again, you're asking questions that encourage the person to think about the situation, to reflect on the situation, to analyze the situation. Now the risk with these sorts of questions is you might get someone kind of Really in a negative spiral and so then a technique you could use there would be to ask a question like, well so is anything going well? What are some positive things about this situation? This is again a kind of a question for gathering data for allowing someone to open up to explore what might be going on in this situation. Transcript: Closed Versus Open Questions



15

So in thinking about questions and asking questions it's useful to just characterize questions as either open questions or closed questions. Okay, what's the difference between an open and a closed question? So, let me give you an example. How are you feeling? Versus are you okay? Okay, now think about the difference between those questions. How are you feeling? In order for someone to respond to that, they have to pause, think, reflect, come up with some descriptive, come up with some adjectives to describe how they're feeling. It's a kind of question that invites engagement that invites interaction. Whereas, if you think of the question, Hey are you okay? Someone could easily say yes or no. Yeah, I'm fine, right. Yeah, I'm fine. You don't have much information and could walk away from that encounter when you ask. Are you okay is a much more closed question, it's not as inviting as a question as how are you feeling? And the idea here is open questions allow you to get more than simple yes, nos. Allow you to get more than just the basic information. You want to craft a question that elicits interpretations. That elicits ideas or opinions or feelings that really get beneath the surface of the interaction. Again, what you're trying to do is get people to pause, to reflect, to think, to analyze, and to respond in a genuine and serious way. So, an open-ended question, what's interesting about them is there are some tricks here. They typically start with why or how or what. You're asking people to describe. You say things like well, tell me about what? Tell me about how you're feeling. Tell me about what you did. Tell me what do you think about this? It's interesting. You can, of course, be too open. Those of you who have kids may have had this experience where you say, huh, what happened at school today? The quintessential open question and the response is nothing. But it's interesting that kind of a question is almost too big, it's too hard to answer, and it’s too open. And so a variant on that is a more focused but not a closed question. Oh, what did you do in social studies today? Or, so what was the most interesting thing that happened to you at school today? Both of those questions as the alternative, to what happened, nothing. You would get something, you'd get a response. It would be rude to not respond, and you open then a conversation that lets you probe and gauge, and interact. Transcript: Judgmental Versus Neutral Questions So, in this questioning mode, another thing you want to be careful about is not revealing your own attitudes or perceptions or your judgements about what might be going on. And engaging with someone in an interactive way really affectively questioning, you



16

want to be neutral, you want to be open, but also neutral and not at all judgmental in the way that you ask the questions. Now some of this is in the language, so for example, a neutral question would be, is there anything else? Or, is there anything you'd like to do about that? Or, can I ask you more about that? Those are, kind of, neutral questions that encourage people to talk more. A kind of judgmental question would be, how could you let that happen? Or, why on earth would you do that? And so those are questions that, while they technically are open, they express judgement and they're the kind of questions that would cause people to feel defensive, to shut down. Now one of the things you should've picked up here is that some of that is in the tone, it's not actually in the words. If I say, and why did you do that? As opposed to, why would you do that? The same words are experienced differently. And so in this questioning, being a skilled questioner, you have to be conscious of your own reactions, your own body language, your own judgments, and your own tone of voice. And work hard to ask questions in a way that are inviting and open and neutral, that encourage people to engage and don't reveal any bias that you have or make people feel judged or uncomfortable. Transcript: Using Three Lenses So knowing that it's challenging to fully understand the situation and that no one's a villain in their own story and everyone has a biased perspective in the way they explain the situation, so the first step is to get multiple perspectives. But now I want to introduce you to another tool. It's called the three lenses, that can be used to do a more rigorous analysis of the situation. These three lenses, this idea of three lenses was developed at MIT as a way to understand organizations and to analyze and diagnosis organizational problems. It's a way of fully, more fully understanding what might be going on in a given situation. So what are these three lenses? The first lens is the strategic design lens. It's really a way of looking at situations and thinking about the structures that are in place, the nature of the work, the formal reporting relationships, and the materials that are required. It's kind of thinking about the machinery, the apparatus of the work. Who reports to who? Might there might be a communication breakdown? Might there be a resource problem? You use the strategic design lens to think about what should be happening and why isn't it happening and is there something structural about this? Are forms not coming in a timely way? Are expectations not being communicated clearly? Have performance standards not been set? All right, there's a kind of way of thinking about breakdown in terms of just what are we supposed to be doing and very structurally what's happening. That's called the strategic design lens. It's a kind of engineering view of the world. The second lens is the political lens. The political lens is a way of looking at the world in terms of contests and politics. Who's getting ahead? Who's vying for power? Who's got



17

things at stake here? Who could be a winner? Who could be a loser? What might be an alternative explanation for what you're observing? And this is thinking about rivalries and jealousies and all of the ways in which politics come into play in organizations. The third lens is the cultural lens. What are the norms, the expectations, the taken for granteds that people hold? And this is often a lens, it's hard for people inside an organization to realize what is taken for granted in their own organization and you only see it when you're a newcomer to an organization. You know, think about foreign travel, it's, when cultures become visible and kind of clash. But here you want to think about what might be a source of a problem. Could there be just a kind of cultural mismatch? Could there be something going on in what people are assuming or are taking for granted that would lead to the problems that you're observing? What's interesting about these three lenses, is that to really, fully understand the situation, to see clearly, you'd need all three. People tend to rely heavily on one. You are oriented towards the world in a particular way. You either always see politics or you always see structure or you always see culture. So you need to know what's your dominant lens, but you also need to have some skill to exercise these other lenses. To step back and think about, again, force yourself to think about what else might be going on here? What else might explain this behavior? By thinking strategic and structurally, politically and culturally, you have a better chance of generating some alternative explanations and really thinking through what might be going on. Who might be involved? Who are the stakeholders and how you might intervene to help improve the situation. Transcript: Factors in Selecting a Coach Okay, so now you've identified a coaching opportunity, a coaching situation, and a person who would be best developed by having a coach work with them. The next question is who should be the coach? And as we talked about, lots of people can play this role. A manager can be a coach, HR can be a coach. You can have an internal coaching staff dedicated, or you could rely on external experts. This is people whose full time job, people who have been certified and trained to be professional coaches. Lots of people can play the coaching role. How do you think about whether to use an internal person or an external person? Some of that is about the nature of your organization. Do you have this capability on staff? Do you want to invest in a coaching culture where managers are responsible for coaching? Do you want to develop that capability within HR? Or do you have to rely on the external market? That's one way of thinking about it. Another way of thinking about it is there are different kinds of situations where it would be better to have an external versus an internal, or vice versa. One of the things we know is that as you get higher up the organization, particularly at the executive level, those coaching interventions are typically done by external folks. People who are specialized in particular kinds of coaching techniques or coaching for particular



18

capabilities. Another thing to keep in mind is how confidential it needs to be. Is the fact that someone has a coach and is being coached going to be helpful, or is it likely to be embarrassing? Of course everyone knows that elite athletes have a coach. There's nothing embarrassing about that. And you can imagine that it would be helpful. Say a manager is known to be kind of brusque and harsh to subordinates. It might be helpful for subordinates to know that that person is being coached on their interpersonal skills and trying to soften themselves. On the other hand, it might be harmful for subordinates to know, for example, a leader was being coached for their executive presence, or their confidence. Those are things that you could imagine working with a coach for, but you wouldn't want anyone to know that that was what the coaching activity was about. And so you might use the nature of the coaching engagement to guide whether it should be internal or external. The other thing you'd want to think about and that's really important, that we know is very important in coaching, is the match between the coach and the coachee. All right. Is there a good chemistry? Is there a good rapport? Is the coach able to work with the coachee? Does the coachee respect and respond to the coach? And so some of this might be about credentialing or credibility or experience, but some of it just might be about the comfort level that you have between the two people. And that's something that you might want to check in on. You might mistakenly think someone isn't coachable, and it might be that just the wrong match was made. Coaching is the right intervention, but it's the wrong match between the two people.

Transcript: Elements of a Coaching Plan So coaching as an employee development activity isn't just done on an ad hoc basis, it needs a clear plan, who's the target of this intervention? Why have you chosen this person? Is this a good investment? Is this person ready to be coached? Are they open to the process, are they ready to engage? So, who's the target of the intervention and what's the goal? What is it that you're trying to accomplish? And being clear and explicit about the who and the what is the first step in developing a plan. The second step is identifying the coach. Making sure you have a good match, making sure you have a good interpersonal chemistry, making the decision about whether it's an inside on an outside resource. Then there are a lot of factors around the scope of the coaching engagement. We know from some survey work that most coaching engagements last between three and six months. They could be as long as a year. They rarely last longer than that. And this is because coaching engagements have a very specific objective. There is something that's being worked on. Now it might be that someone works with a coach over multiple years. But in theory, each coaching engagement should have a specific goal or objective, a thing that you're working on that you can know if you've been successful at achieving. And so putting a bounded time frame on it is, and being clear about what the goal is and realistic about how long it will take to achieve the goal is going to be an important part of the coaching plan.



19

And building into the plan is a check-in. Is this working? Do we need a mid-course correction? And some of that checking in should be done early on. Is this is a good match? Is there good chemistry? Is there good rapport? And then some part way through, do we seem to be making progress? Is it working? Now, most trained coaches will know to have this kind of feedback to stakeholders and this kind of plan and check-in. But as the HR function, if you're taking this on or if you're facilitating this, you should know that this kind of check-in is normal and expected. And the last part, the most important part is how will you know if you have been successful? How will you know if you have achieved the goal? What would constitute success? And here again it's going to depend a lot on what the goal is. Right. Is it interpersonal skills? Is it executive presence? Is it oral presentation? Can we figure out a way to know that the person has improved and developed, and that the coaching intervention actually worked? And so some of the ways you figure out what are the outcomes, or how would you know what was successful, is to talk to the coach, talk to the manager, talk to the person. But also think about the broader stakeholders. If you’re coaching is part of a succession plan to develop the bench to have people who are ready to take over and be promoted into leadership roles. You can easily know if you've achieved that. Are the people that you are grooming as capable and talented as the kind of people who you might plausibly be able to recruit from the outside? So really being clear on what it is you're trying to achieve and how you'll know that you've achieved it has to be part of the coaching plan that you develop. Transcript: Ask the Expert: Managing Coaching Relationships How do you know you're successful in a coaching relationship? Tom DiGiovanni ThefirstquestionIaskeveryclientis,attheendofourcoachingtimetogetherwheneverthatmightbe,howwillweknowthatwe'vebeensuccessfulwithcoaching?Andthatpersonwilltellme,IwillhaveknownbecauseIwillhavedonethis,orIwillhaveexperiencedthis,orIwillhavecometoknowthis,orwhateveritisthatthey'relookingfor.It'stheveryfirstquestionIask.SofromthatmomentforwardIgearourworktogetherinaveryindividualizedwaytoaccomplishthegoalsthatarearticulatedbythatperson.Andthat'showwemeasureoursuccess.It'sprettymuchthesame,becauseifit'sateam,Iusuallymeetoneononewitheveryone.Mostcases,thesamekindofpatternsandtopicsandissueswillarisebetweentheteam.Andagain,Iusethoseasthebenchmarkforwhatweneedtoaccomplishtogetherfortheteam. Stephaine Jones I think the first way is if in regards to performance coaching, is if you see improvements and performance? So if you establish those smart goals with individuals and you follow up with them and you're holding them accountable, and you see that their performance



20

begins to improve. Well, then that's one way to determine that. You know what, I'm a pretty effective coach. What I'm doing is working. Another way to determine your effectiveness is based on the feedback that you receive from the individual that you're coaching. Some individuals will advise you that what you're coaching is truly making a difference. And then another way is when you have that aha moment during a coaching session. That moment in which the individual, the lightbulb goes off, and they say, I get it. In as an affective coach, your role is not to provide individuals with the answers, but to guide them along the way. So when you are able to help an individual to be able to obtain that aha moment on their own I think that is a true indicator of success. Do you change your approach to coaching depending on how well you know a person? Stephaine Jones The main points of any coaching session, regardless if you know the individual or not, I still make sure that they're still present. I think that is important that number one, you identify what the purpose is of the meeting or of the coaching session. Clearly identify what those goals are to the individual. Now how you say it to the individual may differ based on the relationship that you have with them. The differential can be in the way that I position some of the coaching questions, and the diction or word choice that I select for the coaching session. For an individual that I don't have a relationship with, I tend to be very formal. And you know as we begin to establish a relationship and I learn more about the individual and more about their communication, their idea of communication style. Then I'll alter my approach so that way it reflects their preferred communication style. How do you provide feedback in a way that makes the recipient more open or receptive to it? Stephaine Jones So if you see an individual who is performing a behavior on the job and doing a fantastic job in doing so, then it’s important that you point that out. And so, when an opportunity arises, or if an opportunity should arise, in which you need to discuss development opportunities for this individual, or there's an opportunity for them to improve their performance, you've already deposited into the bank of trust where they trust you, and they feel like you are providing them with that constructive type of feedback. Because you truly care. Without depositing into the bank of trust, and providing that reinforcement coaching before you begin to refine a behavior, or redirect a behavior, it's more difficult for individuals to be receptive. So when I had to identify one approach, it would be to provide reinforcement coaching. As an external coach, how do you meet the needs of the coachee while still satisfying key stakeholders, such as HR? Tom DiGiovanni Well my main focus is always on that person that I am working with. I might be hired by somebody else. And that person hires me to work for that person. And everything that I



21

and that person who I'm coaching talk about is confidential. And it's between us and I'm beholden to that person and to nobody else. So generally what I do internally and externally in that regard, I just will provide a very base-line commentary to the HR people about what's going on but without revealing any confidences. So I will say we arranged for a 360 this week. We did a debrief of the 360 and we highlighted these development issues that came out of the 360. We focused on this without going into any detail, but it lets them know that work is progressing, particularly if there's a timeline associated with the engagement. In your role as a coach, what kind of coordination is there with human resources? Tom DiGiovanni I do work with the HR department on a regular basis, although we don't have a formal relationship as far as the organizational structures concerned. So I work with them on items such as training classes or workshops for coaching. I also work with them in order to ensure that the training that they are providing to some of the staff members, is in line with the coaching standards that we have implemented in the organization. Transcript: Ask the Expert: Becoming a Coach Tom DiGiovanni How did you know you wanted to pursue coaching as a career? In my work, in my organizational work which really has a foundation in educational media. When I've managed people and I've managed a lot of people in my roles in educational media. I've always been drawn to the interpersonal aspect of helping people reach their potential and be the best that they can be on their team, to find their strengths and to do that. And so I really connected with that part of myself pretty early on as a manager and a leader. And then secondly through my own volunteer work, I helped people with a lot of end of life types of situations and issues. And I found that that connection, in terms of helping to bring someone to be their most optimal self, and at the end of life was just a terrific, fulfilling experience. And those two things combined led me into coaching, and to seek certification as a coach. What recommendations do you have for someone who wants to become a certified coach? Well, I looked at a number of different programs and I chose IPEC because of their philosophy. And also because of the thoroughness of their training. They had a business component, which I thought was very practical and very helpful, because you



22

can be a great coach, but if you don't know the business side of it, then you kind of lose your staying power. And also they were ICF certified. And in the coaching business having been approved or certified by the International Federation for Coaching, that’s sort of the standard worldwide. And I would recommend that a person looking to get certified in coaching make sure that it is an ICF approved program, because that is the standard by which all coaching is measured. Can you talk a little bit more about your training in the certification process? The training, you know there are a lot of different training opportunities out there. You want to pick a really thorough program. And to be really a professional coach, you know, it's going to take pretty much of a year's commitment of time in order to get certified as a coach. And that's just the beginning, really, because that sets the stage if you will, for the foundation of much more kind of professional development work, that you're going to need to have, as you continue on through coaching.

Documents

ilrhr528 transcripts - Amazon S3ILRHR528 Transcripts Transcript: Welcome Coaching is one of the tools of employee development that organizations use to help their talent learn and