I want to talk about coaching. Yes, I do want to one coaching with individuals, but I also train people to be, full-time professional coaches, if you like. And I also advise organisations on how to navigate their way towards, that's more of a coaching culture, particularly amongst the, the leadership and management populations.

So I thought it'd be useful. Just let's, let's start off with a definition of coaching. Some, some of you will have greater experience of coaching than others, maybe you've been coached yourselves or even indulged in a little bit of coaching, but let's ensure that we're all using the same definition.

So I would describe coaching as it's a two-way relationship that's between a coach and a coachee, the person being coached, that encourages, it empowers, and it, it enables the individuals to do a number of things. First of all, it helps them to define their goals. It's helps them to challenge their current way of thinking or behaving or operating.

It helps individuals to to find solutions to problems or to obstacles, and most importantly, it helps them to create an action plan for themselves. So if we're looking at a traditional coaching relationship, or looking at a traditional coaching definition, it kind of incorporates this notion of the space that's created by the coach. Typically lasts about an hour, and where the individual can safely explore ideas without any sense of judgement, where they get challenged by the coach to think or to behave slightly differently.

And where they are motivated to to create their own solutions and to find a way forward. Here's one of the important parts. So one of the central pillars of coaching is that the ability to find the way forward comes from the individuals themselves.

The coach themselves offers no advice, no solutions. They're there to motivate, to, to provide the challenge and to probe for those new ways of thinking. But one thing I'd like to stress, certainly in terms of the context of this evening is it it's not an all or nothing approach.

And we can incorporate some of the learning from these, this traditional standpoint of coaching into our leadership and into our management practise. And that's what we're looking at in this webinar. So let's have a quick overview of what we're going to cover in this session.

I'm gonna take a step, a step back first of all, and let's have a bit of an insight into human behaviours, the way in which we work, the way we interact with one another, er looking at behaviours, emotional intelligence and communication skills. I'm gonna have a quick overview of different leadership styles, and where coaching sits across all of those as a management tool. We'll have a look at the way er the impact of coaching conversations and when you can use them.

And that's a term I'm going to use here, rather than the the formal definitions of coaching, it's how we can embed this notion of having coaching conversations with our teams and with our members of staff. I'll quickly go through some coaching techniques, that you can embed into your own leadership or into your own management style. And hopefully by doing all of this, we can look at how coaching can support support performance management, whether that's to help people to excel and to flourish, or whether that's to help people who are, perhaps not performing as well as we would like.

So that's what we're aiming to cover. There are certain areas which do require a little bit more detail. So, after this session, this webinar has been made available, there will also be some supporting materials, and I'll let you know during the course of this session.

Where those are going to be more relevant. So we'll signpost you to those. Similarly, if you've got any problems during the course of the session, feel free to just jot those down and we'll, answer all the questions that you may have at the end.

So that's what we're covering in this particular session. OK, so why is it all, why is all this going to help? And there's 3 words that are used in part of that coaching definition.

This is about encouraging, this is about empowering, and this is about enabling our teams and our members of staff. It's about helping to develop them. And what I really like here is it's helping to engage with them, to help them to feel involved.

Now, as well as perhaps encouraging a bit of a shift change in their behaviours. In some ways, it's gonna be a shift in our own behaviours as well, depending on your current leadership style and depending on your own current management styles. But for example, it's, it's, thinking about ways in which we stop solving all their problems for them.

Stop micromanaging and start to bring out some of the best in our teams. But as I said, first of all, it'd be useful to have just a little bit of understanding about human behaviours, how we interact with one another. And I just want to spend a little bit of time unpacking how human behaviour works.

Very often when we talk about human behaviour, you often see this analogy of an iceberg. And the reason we use this is because we talk about the iceberg having only so much of it is visible above the water and actually the vast majority of it lies hidden, it lies beneath the surface. And the analogy is that what we see above the water, the equivalent is what we see of other people.

Here are the behaviours that we observe in other people. But what we need to remember is that behaviour is actually just the visible end result of a whole sequence of both internal and external inputs. There's lots of stuff going on in somebody's world, in somebody's lives, that's hidden from us, but that's what's driving this these behaviours that are visible.

And much of what drives people behave, as I say, lies hidden beneath the surface and that's why we use this, this kind of iceberg analogy. But flipping it to ourselves now and looking at the iceberg perhaps the other way round and from, from the, the hidden piece upwards, we we ourselves experience sometimes that sense of frustration when we think, cause people don't understand us. Guess what?

They can't see what's going on underneath the, underneath our surface, what's going on underneath the iceberg for us. They can't see below our surface. Only we can see that, and we can, with practise, start to understand our own personal drivers, what is governing our behaviours, what is driving these visible aspects of our behaviour.

So we can start to unpack our own behaviour, but we can't necessarily start to unpack other people's. What we can do is to try to understand what's going on with other people. We need to recognise that what we observe isn't necessarily the full story.

So it's being aware of ourselves, what's driving us, but equally being mindful that what we observe in other people might not be the full picture. And this is where emotional intelligence comes in. This is a great model, the the key author in this work is a gentleman called Dan Goldman, Daniel Goleman.

And what he talks about with emotional intelligence is we take this journey. First of all, we recognise ourselves and we become aware of our behaviours. We call this aspect self-awareness.

We become aware of our behaviours, we know, but we're comfortable in our own skins. We hear people say to say to us, I'm very self-aware. I know what's, and I, I understand how I behave, which is great, which is marvellous.

But actually, the next stage of it is important. It's how we regulate those behaviours. What are we doing to moderate those behaviours?

If, for example, our behaviours in a particular context, aren't particularly appropriate, is there something we need to do to regulate that, and we call that self-management. What can we do to regulate our own behaviours? But as we've seen from the iceberg model, it's not just about us.

There's plenty of other icebergs knocking around, and there are other people that's that we come into contact with. And we start to recognise with other people is that they have different behaviours, and we start to to to recognise. Not everybody behaves in the same way that we do.

Unfortunately, the default position is when we have less emotional intelligence, is to make the automatic assumption they're wrong, they're different. It's not people are just different and social awareness is about understanding that and recognising that. The important area is when we start to not only recognise that other people behave differently, but start to regulate our behaviours so that we can establish ourselves in in a in a group setting and also start to make some influence about that, and we call that relationship management.

So here's a summary of of emotional intelligence. We talk about self awareness when we start to recognise our own emotions and begin to understand that there are certain triggers, and we assess the appropriateness of that to the context of the environment which we're in. And then we start to recognise that there are times that we need to moderate our behaviours, interrupt that thought to emotion process.

There may be a reaction that we would typically have, have adopted, and now we need to perhaps change that reaction in some way, self manage our behaviours. Then comes social awareness, where we start to recognise these multiple emotions that are going on within a team, interpreting signals from others, and start to recognise what available options there are to us. Then we can moderate our behaviours according to this group setting, understand others, engage with us.

He's the important bit about influencing, having influencing emotions, within that group environment. So when we're talking about leadership and management with the overlay of emotional intelligence. That's the area.

If we're working as really effective leaders, really effective managers and wanting to get the best out of our teams, we need to be operating from this position, from a position of relationship management. OK, let's talk a little bit now about some leadership styles and leadership and management behaviours, and, and from about the 1950s or so, they started to, or they began to apply a little bit of psychology to leadership and management practise and behaviours. And from that point forward, there was an evolution almost as different management models to help describe different leadership styles.

I'm gonna start with one of the earliest ones that was published, and this is known as the Blake Mouton managerial grid. And what the blatant managerial grid takes into consideration is it recognises that there are people who have or managers or leaders that have a concern for people versus those leaders and managers that have more of a concern for the task in hand. So some are more concerned about the people they work around and work through and and work with, whereas others are, it's all about the task, it's all about the activities that need to happen.

So you can imagine, let's just do it as an arbitrary scale. For reference, you can actually do assessments on this, and you can actually work out where you are. But let's just do it as an arbitrary scale from low to high.

And if we can imagine we have a quadrant of, so over here, we've got people with a high concern for people, low concern, high concern for task, and a low concern for task. Let's consider this quadrant here first of all. Being an American, being American authors, they called people who are leaders and managers who they deemed to have a high concern for people, but less concern for task.

They described those as being having the country club style of management. So you can imagine the country club, it's, oh, as long as everyone's happy, as long as everyone's comfortable, as long as everyone's, motivated and enjoying what they do, that's all that matters. We'll get the job done through people.

And they contrast that with. The produce or perish style of management, which is where we have the leadership style or the management style, whereas it is all about the task. Doesn't matter about the cost of the individuals concerned, as long as we get the task done.

So no prizes for guessing what they described as being the, the more effective leaders are the ones that had, they had sight of both, they had sight of both the people and they had sight of both the task in hand, and they call those, perhaps not very originally, the team leaders. And those who had low concern for people, low concern for tasks, they call that the impoverished management. Just for purposes of completeness, they also described there was one in the middle.

It was kind of like middle of the road. But it's interesting to look at these and start to consider for yourselves, OK, is the one to which I, I see myself, is the one to which I, I see myself as naturally gravitating. And whilst they were saying that the team leader was the aspirational position, there wasn't necessarily one that was poor with the exception of the impoverished management style.

So what emerged was a whole series of, of different management and leadership theories and styles. Let's see if any of these resonate with you. So we started off with the Blake Mouton model, which was based, as I say, on your preference for whether it's concern for people or the concern for results.

So it's very much focused on your preferences. I'm gonna pick another one. The theory X versus theory Y.

It's worth reading into this, this looks into your beliefs about your team, the team for which you are responsible, and what you believe motivates your team, and the impact that that has on your leadership and management style. So theory X talks about . A leader who is responsible or has a team of people working with them who believe who he believes or she believes have absolutely no motivation for their job whatsoever.

They are doing it purely because it's a means to exchange time for money, and they they've got no pride in their work whatsoever. Leaders who have that belief about their team are described as being theory X. Versus those leaders or managers who were described as being theory why, in other words, those leaders or managers who believe that their team are, do have pride in their work, they are motivated, they are happy to be part of a a greater piece of work.

Consequently having a different management style or a different leadership style as a result. And theory X versus theory Y starts to compare and contrast the difference between those with no judgement out of interest being made between which is the most appropriate, it's more about what's the most appropriate in particular settings. So that particular management, management or leadership model is focused on your beliefs about your team.

Last one I'm going to look at is, is, it's a slightly more complex and and a more dynamic model, and it's referred to as situational leadership. And this takes as its reference point, the Blake Mouton model, where we look at, whether people have the whether we have leaders with a concern for people over leaders with a concern for task. But what we, the overlay we added.

Into that is actually, let's start looking at the team now. They talk about performance readiness, and let's talk about the maturity of the team. And let's see if how technically adept they are or how well trained they are or how good they are at doing the job.

And we look at, well, what's the most appropriate leadership style, for example, if you have a team that's described as being highly performance ready, in other words, they're highly trained, they know what they're doing, what type of leadership and management style would be most appropriate there, in that particular instance, it would be a delegating style. Don't need to direct them too much. I don't need to support them too much, they know what they're doing.

The middle range of this would be those who are moderately trained, fairly adept at what they're doing, fairly confident and competent, and we look here at, the participating and the selling style of leadership and management, where they still need a little bit of support and the, and the people side of it, and maybe an increase on tasks depending on how well trained they are. Those who are deemed as being low or not performance performance ready, or the ones that perhaps aren't technically a debt, they need a lot of support in terms of the task. They need to be shown what to do.

It's less about making them feel good and feeling motivated by it. There's a different style of leadership for it. Lots of different styles.

Does it focus on your preferences? Does it focus on your beliefs about your team? Is it looking at the maturity of your team?

It's where you feel yourself, your own personal styles as being if they're fixed versus are they fluid. But the point here is It's useful to recognise your, your natural, your default, if you like, leadership and management style. What's equally important is understanding the importance of the need to shift that, and to adapt that according to the needs of your team and according to the maturity or of that team, and also the individuals within that.

So where does coaching come into all of this? OK, well let's just just have another look through what we mean by coaching, and let's now think about it with perhaps a bit of an overlay on leadership and management. So, coaching is described as being this empowering and this supportive relationship between the coach and the coachee, or in this instance, the leader or manager and the member of staff.

Remember, it's about helping them to find solutions from within themselves. We're starting to think about how we can use powerful communication techniques to help them to explore these alternative perspectives. And not just the habitual ways of making decisions that they've normally done in the past, perhaps think of different ways of working, and challenging their existing thought processes, their existing thinking habits, their existing ways of working.

It's particularly effective at helping people to overcome actual and perceived barriers, problems they're having, ways of finding new solutions. And in a, in a work environment, and a team environment, is particularly good at promoting the sense of engagement that they feel involved, they feel part of that process. And here's the important bit.

This is regardless of your leadership and management style. Coaching's a technique. Coaching is something that you can adapt, you can add to your, your, your, your suite of tools that you use as leaders and managers, regardless of your preferred leadership style.

Some of you will find this more natural than others, but all of this can be learned. Just want to spend a little bit of time just going through what coaching is and is the, the aspect of, of what we're not looking at with coaching. It's non-directive.

It's purely led by the coach. The coach, you, the manager, the leader, whoever's leading that coaching conversation, doesn't provide the answer or offer advice. And for many of you, this will be one of the biggest shifts, one of the biggest changes.

And it's, it's not about solving people's problems. It's enabling them to find the solutions from within themselves. So it's not solutions focused.

Lots of emphasis you will see when we show you how to go through the coaching process, lots of lots of emphasis placed on exploring different options. This is an important one, this is not a therapeutic intervention. This is coaching conversations are not the right conversations to have if you believe that somebody is struggling with any workplace stress, any mental health issues.

It's not a therapy, and it should never be deemed as such. And it's not always the right approach, having a coaching conversation. If there's a regulatory or, or a legislative framework, if there's a way that somebody has to do something, that's not conducive to a coaching conversation.

And part of the skill is, is spotting the opportunities and recognising when is the right time to use coaching or have a coaching conversation with your team. So just for clarity, there are different types of support, and different ways in which that we can interact with our team members. Obviously, we're talking about coaching here, just to be specific and to make the distinction, if we are wanting to share the benefit of our skills, of our experience, let me tell you what I would do in a situation like that, that would be mentoring.

That's not a coaching conversation. We've talked about counselling and therapy. This is to help people to overcome previous traumas or to manage with low mental health.

Clearly, that's not what coaching is going to help them with. And similarly, training, if we're, we're going to put people through a training programme or show people how to do something, that's not a coaching, conversation. Although interestingly, coaching is a really useful, technique and a really useful way of helping people to implement or to embed some of their training.

But the, the traditional training, that's not coaching, there is a difference. So where does coaching sit within that, that whole leadership model, if you like, and I think this, this illustrates it quite nicely. It's, it's not an all or nothing approach.

There is, there is, there's, these are two separate disciplines, if you like, but there is a clearly, a degree of overlap. He's, if you like, where the coaching sits. This is where coaching sits.

Coaching in itself is a separate discipline, and this is where the leadership side of it sits. There's a whole raft of skills and behaviours that sit outside of coaching and ways in which we communicate, operate with our teams that that doesn't involve coaching. This is the important bit, this piece in the middle, the interact, this, this intersection, if you like.

And this is where the coaching conversations happen. And if we are wanting to encourage, if we are wanting to empower our, our teams, if we're wanting to enable them and to engage with them. That's where there is the distinct overlap between leadership and coaching, and that's where the coaching conversations happen.

This is where relationship management happens from the emotional intelligence framework. I just want to go back to the management models again, and more recently in 1985, . Though, or certainly in the 1980s, there was more of a sway towards inspirational leadership, what they call transformational leadership.

One of the authors here is a Bernard Bass who who published his theory on this in 1985. And here are, here's just a a snippet of some of his definitions about a transformational leader. Let me show you what some of they are, some of those are.

OK, so he describes a transformational leader as being somebody who has a model of integrity and fairness, who sets clear goals. So that notion of having goals to work towards, having high expectations, OK? Encouraging others, providing support and recognition, stirring the emotions of people, it's very emotive, getting people to look beyond their self-interest, inspiring people to reach for the improbable.

How many of those descriptions there are actually similar descriptions of coaching. And now we can start to see how the coaching techniques, the coaching style can start to thread into that leadership and management practise for ourselves. OK, so let's think about now.

Why should organisations consider this approach if, if, you know, what we're considering within our businesses, within our practises, within our companies. What why is this something that's, that's worth considering? And we often talk about the cascade effect within organisations, how businesses, companies practises disseminate or cascade the strategic aims, the business plans essentially.

And this is one way of, of describing that. So let's imagine we've got an organisation, whatever shape or form that takes, whether it's a practise, whether it's a company, whether it's a business, whatever size that may be. But they will have a business plan, a business strategy, if you like, a mission that they will communicate.

And then they will start to pass that down through the organisation. So from that mission, it'll start to be broken down and passed across the board, the senior managers, the partners, whoever they may be, and that will start to get, if you like, chunked down according to whichever partner, whichever member of the board, and they will have their own objectives that they then pass down through the organisation to their individual departments or teams who again will cascade those down. Typically, you tend to see this done.

The appraisal season when people are having their performance development reviews and objectives are starting to be set across teams. And to individuals. So what we have are individuals who have their own personal objectives.

But who interestingly may actually have their own objectives that they want to achieve, their own personal goals, their own career aspirations. So what we see across the business is this business wide, practise wide, organisation wide strategy developing into objectives which as they get cascaded down the organisation, have increasing focus coming against individuals who've got their own drivers for success, their own things that they want to do. And their own achievements they want to make for themselves.

But if we can couple that with the objectives that they have been, that have been cascaded down to them, once they can fulfil and achieve those objectives as individuals, collectively as a department or team, they reach their objectives, that gets passed up to the board and through back through the organisation. So the trick is, for any organisation is, is to ensure that this that the time between the, the definition of the organisational strategy to the implementation of it is to get that time frame to be as short as possible. That's the first trick.

And secondly, for those to have the maximum impact possible. And that's where coaching can help, particularly if we can ensure that. These cascaded objectives that come down through the organisation are in some way aligned and congruent to what the individuals are wanting to achieve for themselves.

Coaching is a perfect platform to enable that to happen. OK, so that's from an organisational point of view. When I'm working with, leaders and managers, particularly those who are, working towards perhaps, who are on that career trajectory, if you like, and working their way to get more responsibility, to be promoted, to become more senior managers.

I talked about the operational versus strategic continuum. And it kind of looks like this. So we can imagine over a period of time, we where we imagine our career journey to have taken.

We tend to go from an operational position. We start off doing very operational hands-on activities, and we work our way up to a more strategic level within that business. And we find ourselves at any point in time, taking that journey from lower level operational activities up to the more strategic level, and we'll find that there's a point where we can say X marks the spark.

Largely speaking, I'm operating at arbitrary point here on that particular scale. With the view that hopefully they will be that level will become more senior. But also recognise that whilst it's an ex marks the spot, there are days that they're operating slightly more strategically, and there are days that we're operating perhaps slightly more operationally, depending on what's going on.

When I speak to these leaders and managers and say, OK, let's talk about this upward trajectory, how we can get you to move up there a little bit. What are the reasons you can do that, I can list all of those. What are the things that are holding you back?

And what are the things that are preventing you? And one of the most common answers I come across is, well, if I move further up that operational strategic continuum, I'm going to create a vacuum between myself and my team. What's gonna happen to that vacuum?

Who's gonna pick up that work? Who's going to be, who's going to be able to do that for me? And if we have a team that's anchored in position and can't move forward and isn't able to, take on more responsibility to develop themselves, if we cannot empower them, and we anchor them in position, guess what?

We're going to be anchored in position too. So again, coaching helps to empower our teams, release those anchors, if you like, and enable us to work at a more strategic level. So that's looking at ways of empowering people, of improving performance to help people to flourish.

One of the third reason why coaching is a really useful platform, is when we're looking at managing performance, when it's, poor performance, or it's below par, or, not working at the, the levels that they should be. It's there are two different ways in which people can maybe not working, or have poor performance. It can either be related to the requirements of their jobs, the tasks, the activities that they perform, or it can be related to their behaviours in the workplace.

Poor performance covers all of those, the terminology of poor performance. We often find it easier to deal with a task related activity, if it's something to do with the way in which they work, or something quite tangible, when it, we start to look at something around behaviours or the attitudes that people have in the workplace, sometimes it's a little bit more difficult and a little bit more tricky for some people to consider dealing with. And again, those coaching conversations helps across all performance.

In particular, if you are struggling a little bit of dealing with people who have behaviour issues around performance or an attitude issues around performance. And it's learning to push back, and it's learning to find ways, acceptable ways of saying, These behaviours, this performance is not acceptable. These are the standards that we expect.

And again, the coaching model that you'll see is a really useful platform for doing that. There's 3 golden rules, as far as I'm, I'm concerned with managing performance. First of all, if we change nothing, nothing's gonna change.

We can't hope that somebody's gonna get better on their own or improve on their own. Something needs to happen. We need to be the ones making those changes, or initiating those changes.

Because if we don't, we will get what we tolerate. If we change nothing, nothing changes, and what we're getting back is what we tolerate. Here are some examples.

So say for example you have a member of your team who, It's the kind of person that needs an awful lot of reassurance, and every time they make a decision, every time they want to do something, they're asking you, they're coming to you, they're asking you to to to to give them the answer, to tell them it's the right thing to do. And if we continue to give them the answers, if we continue to give them that reassurance, guess what? The next time they feel that way, they're gonna come straight back.

We are getting what we tolerate. So unless we can shift that in some way, shape, or form, it's gonna keep coming back at us. OK.

You know what I'm gonna say? Coaching is a great platform for doing that. So it's about having those conversations, those coaching conversations.

And if we just resort to our traditional ways of work and the easy conversations and hope it'll all go away, we end up with a challenging or a tough life, or a tough work environment. Whereas if we take those, if we have those conversations, they may feel challenging at first. If we have those conversations and open up the discussion, it makes for an easier life in the long run.

I fully acknowledge those initial conversations may take a bit longer, but in the long run, The rewards are very beneficial. So the coaching approach supports performance management, it's non-directive. It's less of this, this sort of the discipline the disciplinarian, I'm gonna tell you off approach, and it's more of an opening up that conversation, the dialogue.

It helps the individual to feel that they're part of the solution, that they are included within that. It's not being dictated to them. And it allows the individuals to find, to have the space to find their own solutions for themselves.

OK, I've spoken enough about what coaching's about, some of the reasons why it's gonna work, and, you know, some of the, the ways in which it can support you in your role as leaders and managers. Let's now talk about coaching behaviours and coaching skills. And, you know, I'm using this term skills, I really advisedly here.

These are techniques that we can learn. There's 4 we're gonna focus on this evening. Now clearly this is not going to enable you to walk away and be a full-time professional coach, but it's gonna give you enough to start those conversations and to really change the way in which you're communicating with your staff and with your teams.

So there's 4 things we're going to look at. The first one is about understanding the importance of establishing rapport. So it's before, in many cases before we even started talking, it's what can we do to help those people to to feel at ease, and to make those conversations, to feel, not necessarily relaxed, but as relaxed as possible.

We're going to consider our communication styles and preferences and the impact that that can have on the conversation. I'm going to go through a coaching model, probably the most popular coaching model, the grow model. I'm going to talk you through that.

And we'll also talk about questioning techniques as well. And I'll signpost you to the points where there will be some supporting material, and conscious time is very limited. There is so much we can do in an hour.

So we've given you some supporting material to accompany this as well. So let's talk about rapport first of all, . It's an interesting one report, because it's one of those things that just happens.

Where without us even being aware of it, is a good description. The harmonious relationship in which the people or groups are seemingly in sync with each other. They understand each other's feelings or ideas and communicate smoothly and effectively.

It all happens at a very much a subconscious level. And it's, we've evolved with this man by nature is a social creature, and it's our subconscious way of kind of seeking evidence and affirmation that we've been accepted into this social setting, this social environment. So it's, it's kind of very deep, but it is at very much at a subconscious level, which is all going to feel a bit weird, because as I talk about it, we're now talking about it at a conscious level, and you're gonna suddenly become aware of it.

But this is happening all the time when we're we're operating in groups. You've listened to some of this, maybe when you're out and about, observe people, particularly in social environments, social settings. It's really interesting to watch rapport at play.

There's a 3, actually 3 different types of rapport that are important here and are relevant here, and 2 we're going to discuss tonight. The first is emotional mirroring, which can demonstrate and enables us to listen and question effectively. We're going to talk about posture mirroring.

This is the one that most people are familiar with when we talk about rapport, and we're also going to talk a little bit about tone and tempo, how we speak. And whilst this, this happens naturally and as I say, at a subconscious level. The reason we talk about it in coaching is, yes, it happens naturally.

Yes, it happens at a subconscious level. But when we're leading a conversation, we can manufacture that state of rapport so that the person or the people with whom we're communicating, they start to feel more at ease. And that's really important we're trying to create that safe space that I talked about so that people can open up into the coaching conversation.

So, emotional mirroring. So this is when we start talking about empathising with the individual's emotional state. We described this as meeting people where they're at.

But it is easy when the emotional state is, is a positive one. If they're smiling and they're happy, and they walk into either our office or our workstation, or come and greet us and they're smiling and they're happy, we can smile back. That's emotional report.

But what if they're agitated? What if they're upset? Clearly, it's not appropriate for us to be agitated back or to, you know, start.

Being upset in front of them. But what we can do is to just briefly acknowledge their emotional, their emotional state, either by the words that we're using. So, for example, if someone greets us in an agitated state, acknowledge it with, Gosh, I can see you're really agitated about this.

OK, acknowledge it. Don't ignore it. Equally, if somebody's upset, there are facial expressions, there are gestures that we could use to demonstrate we've recognised their emotional state.

But what it does is it shows, it demonstrates that we, we, we've got them, we hear them, and not just, with our ears, but almost with our eyes as well. It's giving their subconscious evidence, and they, they, they will feel more at ease. And there's a way we can do it, it's part of our conversation techniques and and and a technique that is widely used here is a thing called active constructive responding.

So it's a way in which we can respond to what they're saying to us positively and constructively. Let me talk you through this grid that's on the screen now. So, active, constructive responding is when we actively and constructively reply to them.

So, for example, let's use the example. Somebody comes into you and says, Oh, I got that promotion I wanted. So an active constructive response would be, that's brilliant, fantastic.

Well done. You must be delighted. We've leaned into the conversation.

We've matched their emotions. If we were being passive and constructive, the kind of response we might give would be, OK, I thought you might. So you're kind of acknowledging it, but in a very passive way.

Start to think, how would you feel if somebody said that to you, a little bit deflated, I would guess. There's also, just briefly, active and destructive, the response to the promotion example would be, that's more pressure you don't need. It's, it's actively acknowledging it, but in, in a very destructive way.

And again, that would just, I don't know if it was me, my heart would sink. It's thinking about how that person's going to feel. It's about the emotional intelligence.

Passive destructive, the passive aggressive's favourite would be, well, I've had a tough day today too. It's, you know, not even taking that conversation on board. So the point I'm making is, it's matching their emotional state emotional state, meeting people where they're at and leaning into those conversations positively will help them to open up more easily.

Remember, that's what we're trying to do. OK, here's the one that most people know about. It's the posture mirroring, where we start to see visible external clues that two people are in rapport with one another.

And again, it happens at a very subconscious level. You're almost not aware that it's happening, but when it is happening, it feels good to be in that, to, to, to be with somebody that we're got, rapport with, with it in terms of our body language. Let me show you a couple of images.

I've used these because they're familiar to all of us, but here are a couple who quite clearly are in rapport with one another, not just in this photo, but when you see them around and about. Compare and contrast with this image. You're clearly a couple who, as we know, history tells us, we're clearly not in rapport.

And I don't know about you, but I actually feel uncomfortable myself looking at this image. If, you know, you, you just look at that and you can tell that they're not in report. So if you were with somebody and having a conversation with somebody who was not mirroring and matching your body language, that's how it's going to feel.

So that's posture. So wherever you can, match their body language, subtly, gently, but in a way that makes them feel comfortable being with you. And then the third piece of report is about our, more about our communication and how we communicate.

So we've talked about body language and posture, but what I'm focusing more on here is about the tone and tempo of the way in which we talk, even right down to the verbal language. And phrases that we're using. We all have our preferences.

But it's about recognising our tone of voice, recognising the spoken word that we're using because it equates to a really significant part of a person's understanding of what it is that we're saying to them. So if, for example, you are, like myself, perhaps a a fast, some new talks very quickly. Maybe it's about moderating the speed if the person you're talking to speak slowly themselves.

If you find that you, you, you have a lot of modulation in your voice, the person you're talking to doesn't. It's about matching that. It's all about applying our emotional intelligence to it, managing our language, managing our communication preferences, just to adapt to the other person's needs.

So we haven't even started talking to them yet and already we're trying to make them feel comfortable and make those conversations start off on the best possible grounding. And if you miss this point, you feel like you're on the back foot all the way through the conversations. I can't stress enough how important these are.

But then we get on to the more technical aspect of it, the questioning techniques. And this is the first supporting material that you have access to, and there's a whole sheet on the different types of questions that we can use to good effect during these coaching conversations that we're having with people. So I'm just gonna give you the headlines of these, perhaps a couple of examples, but I really encourage you to look at the detail on the supporting material.

So wherever possible, when we're working with people, ask them open versus closed questions. Ask them questions that rather than eliciting a yes no response, we start to get a bit of a story around it. How's that making you feeling?

What do you feel the problem is about that, rather than, are you OK? Did that go all right? Probing questions.

Let's get to the detail behind what's going on. What are the reasons behind it? You may be presented with a, with a symptom rather than a cause.

I'm feeling really stressed. So we can start to probe that a little bit. We can start to understand the reasons behind it, and then start to look at helping them to come with a solution around it.

A 5Y technique actually comes from industry, but it's, it's a great technique for asking. Series of questions 5 times to get to the absolute cause of the issue. You'll see on on on the handouts, I wouldn't necessarily endorse using the word why 5 times in rapid succession, it starts to wear a bit thin, but I've seen questions like, OK, for what reason?

And why do you believe, for what reason do you believe that? Just ways in which we can probe and probe and probe? And similarly, funnel questioning does the same thing.

It's all, it's important to gain that clarity to really establish where the challenges are, what their aspirations are, what it is that they want to achieve. And again, there's some great examples there for you. Couple of question types that are to be avoided more in coaching.

Certainly leading questions. You didn't mean to do that, did you? Or let's go with that then, shall we?

They're leading questions where you're trying to impose your will or your wish, or your way of thinking onto the person we're working with. If you find yourself asking those kind of questions, just rein those back in a bit. Similarly with rhetorical questions, they're those questions that don't necessarily need to elicit a response.

It's, it's more for emphasis. Again, it's, it's, it's not conducive in coaching, where we like to see open questioning questions, probing questions, and funnel questioning. So here's the grow model, the possibly the most widely recognised coaching model that there is, which was developed in the 80s by, what was then John Whitmore, now Sir John Whitmore, and, and, and other authors.

But the grow model is a technique that you can use in coaching and in coaching conversations, which provides structure and format to either a coaching session or a conversation, whether it's a formal one, it's an ad hoc one. The beauty of it is, and the reason I like this over other coaching models is it is so easy to use and very easy to follow. But most importantly, it establishes a whole framework to the conversation.

It helps the individual to identify what their desired state is, what the outcome is that they want to achieve, what the goals are for them, and whether that's a long term thing or whether it's just a, I don't know how to do this. I haven't got the answer to this specific query or problem. It helps them to explore what's going on, the reality of the situation, and you do all of that before you even start to help them consider all the available options and help them to come up with a chosen course of action, all of which is led by the individual team member.

So let's talk you through what does grow actually mean. It's an acronym. And the G stands for goals.

So this is what is it they're trying to achieve? Whether that's an end goal, performance goal, conversation goal. What is it they specifically want?

And now you can see the importance of the probing questions. What is the challenge? What is it they're trying to achieve?

And it's helping them to define and articulate what the goal is, doing that just provides that clarity and focus for them. Now hopefully, it's something that's empowering and inspiring and motivating. But the important thing is it needs to be stated in the positive.

It's, it's a positive. It's not, I don't want this. Start to ask questions around what, OK, what is it that you do want?

And how can we can go back to achieving that? If you can get the smart analogy, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic time, great. But it's about beginning with the end in mind.

So first of all, establish what it is that they want to achieve. Then we look at, OK, so what's really happening? What's going on back in the real world?

What's brought them to this point? What have they already tried and what was the outcome to that? Particularly important, particularly to those people that keep coming back to us with problems and we're starting to think, hm, have they actually tried to solve this themselves already?

Start to encourage them, what have you already tried? What is holding you back? What's stopping you from from achieving this or even trying to achieve this?

And equally, how long have they been in this particular position? How's that making them feel? It's useful to actually tap into emotions where we can.

Here's an interesting one. And this is perhaps a little bit of a challenge, particularly when we're trying to sort of push people a little bit. What are the benefits of staying put and actually not doing what it is that they want to do?

Is it that they're quite comfortable sitting in their comfort zone and perhaps don't want a little bit of a challenge. So establishing what the goal is and then exploring what's actually happening, what else is going on. Now we start to look at what options are available to you.

And what tends to happen is that they'll start with the obvious. These are things I've already thought about, these things that I may have tried. These are the things I've already, considered, but for whatever reason haven't started.

What we're trying to do is create that space where you want them to come up with as many ideas as possible and really say, say to them, look, no wrong answers at this point. They need to have that belief, they have to have that space that one of the things that they're going to come up with is going to be the right choice. Try and help by removing any notion of obstacles, any notion of barriers.

If they're saying things like, Oh, I haven't got the money, or I won't be allowed, or there isn't the finance, or the partners won't have it. Just remove any, the notion of any obstacles or barriers. Because sometimes they in could just be that little nugget of a gem that could actually work.

So push and push and push when we come to this stage. When you're at that moment you're trying to come and come up with the ideas. The reason behind that is, they're going to start to come up with the ideas that potentially they've already thought of, or they will come up with solutions using their typical, their traditional and their habitual ways of making decisions.

And what we're trying to do is help them to come up with something new. Which means using their prefrontal cortex, not the subconscious. So push and push and push as much as you can.

Just gen gently to start off with. Come, is there anything else you can think of? Can you think of one more thing.

God, if, if, if you were me, what would you suggest? But it's pushing and pushing and pushing and never coming up with the idea yourselves first, try and get that creative side of their brain going. There are some people that would endorse.

Make them come up with 10 ideas and discount the 1st 7, because the 1st 7 will be the blatantly obvious. It's the last 3 that will be the most creative. I'll let you make your own judgments, but do try and push.

There may be, at this point, long silences in the conversation and moments when they're looking at you or even asking you, pleading with you, please tell me what to do. But this is the time when we're really trying to empower them to come up with their own solutions. Then the final stage is the W, the will.

Try and hold off as long as possible, bearing in mind what we said at the options stage. But this is when we look at, OK, of those ideas, which one are they gonna do? When are you gonna do it?

How are you gonna do it, with whom, for whom, who needs to know? Start to explore all of those. If this is just part of a bigger piece, how does it actually link in to that end goal?

Start to really thrash out any obstacles that they might encounter, how lighter and start to think about how we can help people through. This is the time as well to say, is there anything that I can do or is there anything we, as a practise, we as a business, we as a company, is there anything that we can do? It's also worth thinking about, how motivated, how likely they are when they get back to their workstation, when they get back to their desk, whatever it is they're doing, how likely are they going to do it.

One technique is to say, come on, a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to do this? And if it's not a 10 out of 10, how can they make it a 10? I'll leave it to you how you feel comfortable doing that, but always check and see how motivated they are to actually, start on that particular course of action.

So in the supporting material, we've got, a couple of pages with a whole stack of typical questions that work at each stage of the grow model. Great questions you can use to help establish what the goal are, questions you can use to establish the reality of the situation, same for auctions and same for will. To give you a rough idea of the spread of how long you spend at each stage, I'd typically say about 30% goal, 20% reality.

But certainly 50% of that conversation is exploring what it is we're trying to get to here. What's the reality of the situation. Options and will, 30% options, 20% will, but about 50% of the conversation is at the options and will stage.

So that's the grown model. What I like about it is all the reasons we've talked about with coaching, is it, it throws the emphasis back on the individual. It's about helping them to come up with the solutions for themselves, it empowers them.

It makes them feel more motivated. If you were asked to take a particular course of action, if you were told to do something, particularly when it relates to performance management, if somebody's on an improvement plan, they are far more likely to do something that they've, Chosen to do themselves rather than something that they have been told to do. Think as well about the implementation of organisational objectives.

We want people to do stuff that they feel is part of their own development. It's why these, these, the coaching conversations and this grow model is really, really useful. But just before I close, it's worth just thinking about this, however excited you are about it, however much you think, oh this is gonna be great.

It's actually, how is it gonna work in practise? How is it going to work for yourselves? And it's worth spending a little bit of time thinking about that after this session, and considering when you're going to, when you, when you think you may start it, how you, how you think you're going to implement these things.

Have you got the time, the space, the people to do it? How you're gonna frame these conversations? How motivated are you to do it?

Is it one of these nice things you've heard about, but actually I feel a bit too scared to do it, or is it something you think, do you know what, this is absolutely ideal and I can already think of people with whom I can have these conversations and people who would benefit. In a nutshell, it's about how can you nurture a coaching culture within your place of work. I'm described this as being over a period of time.

It takes the reality is, it takes a little bit of time to, to shift the way of working, firstly for yourself. And as you start to implement it with the teams around you and the people around you, the conversations to start off with may take a little longer than giving somebody a quick answer or telling somebody what to do if they're not performing correctly. But over time, it does start to take, it's, it starts to take its own momentum and we have start to have this kind of exponential growth, if you like, as as the maturity of that coaching culture increases over time.

Things to think about are, when are you gonna start it? Is it something you can implement straight away? Is it something you want to perhaps discuss first with whom will you have those conversations?

Will you have those conversations with your team? You know, guys, when we have a next time, next time we have a performance review, it's gonna feel a little bit different. I'm gonna shift the way in which we, which we have that conversation.

Do you want to explain the rationale behind it? Maybe it's something you just think, I'm just gonna do it. Let them see if there's any difference.

The trick is spotting the moment. The trick is identifying when somebody presents to you with what you think, oh this is it, this is that coaching conversation. Now I'm gonna try the grow model.

Please try it. Go for it. That grow model will give you, such a good structure and and such a good framework to to work with and to function with.

And don't forget the other things we've talked about as well, the rapport, the rapport building and making people to feel comfortable and confident. So I'm hoping lots for you to think about, and perhaps just to frame that a little bit, let's think about what could be for you, a good action plan from what you've heard during this webinar. Have a little moment after this session and think about, what are you gonna stop doing?

Maybe it's giving them advice. Maybe it's thinking about, you get what you tolerate. Maybe I need to work a little bit differently.

What will you continue doing? So much of your practise is gonna be sound, it's gonna be work, it's gonna be working for you, and it's gonna serve you well. I'm not necessarily saying you need to change everything.

You may have seen some leadership styles that's given you some great reassurance about the way in which you operate. That's what I'm interested in. What are you going to start doing?

And I hope part of that is about having coaching conversations with your team, with your peers, with the people around you. And I certainly wish you the best of luck with it and have fun with it. It'll certainly give you a, a great sense of reward, and I'm sure your teams will benefit from it too.

Thank you for listening tonight. And, Andy, I'm gonna hand over to you now and perhaps you can let me know if anybody's shared their thoughts or if they've got any questions or comments from. Yeah, thank you very much for that, it's very thorough, great piece of theory and, and also leading on to some very practical tips there.

Just before we have got some questions coming already, just to encourage anybody else. To use the Q&A box, but before I take the questions, just one thing that springs to mind, particularly with the growing model, are you familiar with Michael Bunyania's book, The Coaching Habit? And he talks about the a question and what else.

And I just think that certainly I find that a very useful one, particularly when you, you know, you talked about get 10 options. You just keep saying, and what else and what else and, you know, you just keep going through. So just reminded me of that when you were talking about.

Yeah, and that's very useful. Thank you. Yes.

You've obviously got a fan here. Hillary has asked 5 questions and I'll I'll work my way through them. But again, to encourage anybody else who's on at the moment, please, if you've got any questions or comments.

So starting from earlier in your presentation when you were discussing the X and Y theory, what happens if you think some of your team just do the job and others take pride in it? Does that mean you're both X and Y? You can be, and, you know, one of the, the things I'm, I'm very keen to stress on leadership styles is when they first developed leadership management models.

The view was very much you had a fixed style, and it was one style and one style only. And what we start to recognises as over time was we should have a more fluid approach. So if you have a theory X and a theory why style of management, because that's what gets the best out of the individuals concerned, then the quick answer, but there's a caveat coming, the quick answer is, yes, you can be, both X and Y.

How However, Hilary, the thing I would just ask you to question a little bit is, I, I, I don't know these individuals. I don't know the context, but how appropriate are some of the behaviours that are being displayed. And maybe, is that something that could be addressed through coaching conversations.

I, I, you know, again, I don't know the context of it. The quick answer is, yes, you can be a range. You can fall within a spectrum of styles.

And I I actually actively encourage people to have a fluid approach to the leadership and management style to the team, the individual. Great, thank you. Next question then, how long does it take to achieve a mature team?

Oh gosh. For the honest answer, I'm so sorry it's going to be I'm not avoiding it or evading the answer is it depends. And, and so much of it will depend on the individuals, and so much depends on the the context and the environment.

But there's a nice model. The authors Bruce Tuckman, who I always get the order wrong. I have to think.

Forming, norming, storming and performing. Google it. It's a nice model that describes the journey that teams can very often take, when they first form and perhaps they don't start to know each other very well and actually people are very well behaved when teams first form.

But then as they start to understand what's expected of them, what's going on, they start to sort of normalise a little bit and start to understand what's going on. But then there's an interesting dynamic was people starting to, to, once they get more comfortable in what their role is, there's a bit of jostling going on. They call that the the the phase of the sharp elbows.

So there's, there's an interesting journey that they take, how long that can take will vary according to the, the, You know, the specifics of the of the context. And and again, think about perhaps for yourself, we talked about how organisational objectives, how the the trick is to get them that to be implemented in a shorter time as possible. It's about how we can get our teams as effective in as short a time as possible.

But yeah, I'd I'd flag up the, Bruce Tuckman model as as a useful source of reference there. And maybe also another one I've thought of is the energy investment model, about the different character types you see in teams. So Tuckman and energy investment model, be some good ones to Google.

OK. I personally, I'd always also thrown another one there. Michael West's work on team development.

I don't know how you feel about that, but one of the things we encourage is getting the team to reflect, as a group, and that helps in terms of getting to that performing stage of of Tuckman. I love that and and and getting communicate with them individually and communicate with them effectively. And bring something like that in absolutely into, you know, one of those team discussions is brilliant like that.

Thank you. OK, great. Next question from Hillary.

What do you do if the person's really excited about something? So I think this was your emotional mirroring, I think this is referring to. So they're really excited about something they believe they've done really well, but actually you consider the achievements quite mediocre and it's not actually the standard required.

OK. Yeah. Yeah, and again, it's, it's all the things we've talked about, acknowledge the excitement.

Whether you believe it's well founded or not, it's still acknowledged that, OK, actually delighted with that is acknowledging it because you ignore it, there'll be a subconscious part of them thinking she hasn't got it, she can't, she can't see how pleased I am. To, to, to acknowledge it. But when you're in rapport with somebody, when you start to look at it more deeply, you can actually lead that rapport.

So, once you've met it, is to then try and calm it a little bit. So we've got the emotions, adult to adult state, and it's a bit calmer. But it is about having those, it's, it's, you can use the grow model in terms of performance.

So the goal there would be around your performance is at level X. Actually, the standards of performance that we expect are actually level Y, and there's still a little bit of a way to go, there's still a bit of a gap. Now that gap becomes the goal of your grow model.

So you're kind of bringing your theme, if you like, to the table. But yeah, match, first of all, match the excitement, but bring it down a level. And then when you're, having that conversation, it's about, I, you know, your standard is here, but actually, the performance we expect is actually in a different position, and we've just still got a little bit of a way to go.

Let's have a conversation about that, and then you can use the grow model. To elicit the types of things that she can do, because there'd be nothing worse than you say you still need to do this, you still need to do that. Try and engage her into, or sorry, I'm saying to her to be say she try and engage that particular individual, to what they can do to to still improve their performance.

Great, thank you. Next one then, how do you manage, someone who really doesn't mind making mistakes when it's really important they don't. A similar approach, to be honest.

The, the, the standards of the organisation. This is about pushing back the boundaries. When I, I do quite a bit of work around performance management, I, I encourage people to use the grow model, as, as part of that.

And one of my rules that I often have is, is have that conversation 3 times. You, it sometimes takes a little while for the message to get through. But their standards aren't acceptable.

So it's finding a way of saying, there are a set number of mistakes are being made. Our expectation is that there are either no mistakes or fewer mistakes. Clearly we've got a gap, and there still needs to be that gap needs to be rectified.

And again, it's the grow model. What can you do? And, and go through that grow model with them, try and establish further things that they can do, that they've clearly not thought of already.

The reality is, they may not. Get to that point straight away, and you may need to have the review points, you may need to have the conversation, but it's not 3 times and you're out, or 3 strikes and you're out, but 3 attempts at it. But if it's of a significant discrepancy, then it's, you know, you're on performance management and it starts to take a formal process rather than just the encouraging conversations between my manager and member of staff.

But it still needs to be addressed. Great. Yeah, thank you.

I think, you know, again, once you get to that performance management stage, we use a model called the best model. So you talk about behaviours, the impact it's having, feelings it's provoking in the future, and that should look like that type of approach as well. Last from Hillary then.

We have a problem in the practise of distracting each other from what we're supposed to be doing. We've discussed this and agree it's a problem. However, we still keep doing it.

How do you start tackling this? I wish I could say it's the first time I've ever had that one, but it's not the first time, and equally, it will probably not be the last time. It's, I'm not sure how it's been.

In tackled in the past. Again, it's down to standards, standards and, standards of behaviour or the expectations of behaviour, and what's actually happening on the ground. But there's a fine line here, because, you know, at the end of the day, we're all human.

We do want people to, you know, enjoy and and have a good time in the workplace, but there are clearly boundaries. In my experience, it's, there, there are some individuals who tend to be a little bit more chatty than others, and they seem to be the ones that are, Tend to lead people into it and to lead people into the distraction. And what can be challenging is actually within that group.

Let's say there's 4 people in the team who all seem to be chatting. What you actually find is there could be 12, maybe even 3 other people that just like, I wish this person would stop talking. So, Although it may seem people haven't good, it does need to be tackled, it still needs to be dealt with, in the same way, but I, I, my advice would be this is one that's dealt with well in, say, team meetings, in team environments, and I'm sure you've done this before, but.

How about trying the grow model technique as a team and find a way forward? Some of the techniques I've worked with, with, with other teams, would be to allow individuals the opportunity to opt out of a conversation. Is there a clue that we can.

Have around the office, around the workplace, that states, I want to be quiet at the moment. I don't want anybody to disturb me. Different people have done different things.

11 organisation I work with, they all had, do you know the self-adhesive furry animals with the wobbly eyes on them, I think they call them gongs. And if you had your gong on top of the computer, it meant, please don't disturb me, I'm doing something. It sticks in my mind because it was such a visual image, and apparently it worked a dream, so people knew not to disturb an individual.

But they were allowed to shout out a code word if the chatter was built up. If one person shouted the code word, there was a group agreement that they had agreed in the team meeting. Oh yeah, we're chatting a bit much.

OK. Heads down, back to work. So these are things that you can do as a team, as a group that can emerge from doing a grow model approach.

And I'd actually, in a situation with the chit chat in the office, I'd encourage it to be, Not a soft touch, but like a quite a friendly way of doing it, so that there's a almost like a shared approach, a shared language, there's a currency to it that they all agree to, make it a fun, a fun way of doing it, I think that's the point I'm trying to make. Great, thank you very much for that. Well, we've had quite a few questions.

There are some very comprehensive answers. Thank you, Hillary. That was great.

Yes, yeah, well done, Hillary. I hope that's helped you out there. And there have been no more questions coming in during that time.

I think people have had plenty of opportunities, so I'm assuming there are no more questions. Just to finally then, remind you of our sponsors, Simply Health and MWI Animal Health. Once the recording goes live, as Liz mentioned, there will be the supplementary material.

That will help you in terms of your coaching questions, etc. So it just reminds me to thank you again, Liz, fascinating talk. 00, hang on, might be another question just come in.

It's Hillary saying thank you. Oh, you're welcome, Hillary, and good luck with that. I hope it goes really well for you.

Fantastic. Thanks, Hillary. Yeah, so that was brilliant, Liz.

Thanks very much, and, thank you everybody for attending. Look forward to seeing you on the, the next practise management webinar. Thank you.