Coaching for Behavioral Change - FULL SERIES

learning from a great leader in my role is an executive coach I have a very unusual way of coaching I don't get paid if my clients don't get better better is not judged by me betters not judged by my client betters judged by everyone around my client this is a great way to test us so what actually believes what they're saying you can ask a person one question and instantly determine their level of belief and it's a very simple question it always works what is that simple question do you want to bet on it if they say I believe it but I don't want to bet on it you know what you just learned I don't really believe it they say here's the money they believe it now this is something I bet on every time this is something I believe in it's something that works now when you get paid for results you learn a little humility the client I coach that I spent the most amount of time with did not improve at all I did not get paid the client I spent the least amount of time with improved more than anyone ever coached 200 people probably got better and I did get paid and he was fantastic to start with very humbling experience well I made a chart on one dimension it said time spent with Marshall Goldsmith the other dimension improvement there seemed to be a clear negative correlation between spending time with me and getting better I thought that's not a troubling chart now I go talk to my client to improve the most who I spent the least amount of time with is fantastic to start with his name is Alan Wally Alan is now the CEO of the Ford Motor Company CEO of the year in the United States fortune magazine just said he was number three's leader in the world he ranked only behind the Pope and Angela Merkel so Alan is a pretty fantastic leader and he's also just a great human being so I got to talk to Alan I said Alan of all people I've coached to improve the most I spent the least amount of time with you and you were great start with what should I learn about coaching from you other why I'm sitting there thinking about my chart and I was thinking if that guy never met me the way this chart looks he'd really be good well I asked Alan what should I learn about coaching from you he taught me two great lessons I'm going to share with you mr. Marshall lesson number one your biggest challenge as a coach is picking great customers if you pick great customers your coaching process is always going to work and if you pick the wrong customer your coaching process is never going to work work with great people pick great customers and he said number two don't make the coaching process about yourself and your own ego and how smart you are make it about those great people you work with how proud you are of them and how hard they work then he said my job isn't that different as a CEO of this company he said I don't build these cars I don't design the cars I don't sell the cars I gotta have great people here at Ford to help me they're the ones doing the work and he said every day when I Drive to work I tell myself leadership is not about me leadership is about them well these are some great learning points from a very very great leader and you know what that applies in so much of our lives yeah I'm going to ask you a question most of us never deeply understand these points have you ever attempted to change the behavior of a successful adult I've had absolutely no interest in changing well how much luck did you have in those religious conversion activities now I'm going to ask you another question a troublesome question yes an embarrassing question have you ever attempted to change the behavior of a husband wife or partner that had no interest in changing and how's that working out for you how's this one have you ever attempted to change the behavior of mommy or daddy who had no interest in change I was teaching my class at Dartmouth the woman raised her head I said who are you trying to change mommy or daddy she said patty I said what soldat his problem she said he does not have a healthy lifestyle I said how old is daddy she said ninety four years old I said leave the old boy alone I'm gonna teach you a great lesson now for being a great coach what is that lesson in terms of coaching adults if they do not care do not waste your time if they do not care do not waste your time how much of our lives have been wasted try to change the behavior of adults that do not care and what is our return on that investment now I'm going to give you a great lesson for developing yourself as a leader what is that great lesson if you do not care do not waste your time if you're going to get better at anything your motivation for your improvement is going to come from one and only one place where we got B in your heart if it doesn't come from in here you won't do it anyway so in terms of coaching others if they don't care don't waste your time in terms of coaching yourself developing yourself as a leader if you don't care don't waste your time the essence of being a great coach pick the right customers work with great people work with people that care and make sure that you realize your success is not a function of you your success is more function of them feedforward now I'm going to teach you a very positive upbeat way to help yourself get better to help other people get better it's a key component of my coaching process it's called feed forward now in feed forward you're in two roles roll number one is called learn as much as I can and when I teach the classes I always ask are there smart people in this room everyone says yes let's say if you had a chance to learn from these smart people would you like to do that or versus of course well 2 is help as much as I can then I ask her they're nice people in the room everybody says yes I said if you had a chance to help these nice people would you like to help them and everybody says yes again so I say look you then you'll be learning from these smart people which is good or helping these nice people which is also good therefore it is all good now what are the rules of feed-forward rule number one is no feedback about the past no feedback about the past we spend too much time in our lives talking about the past have you ever been impressed with your husband life or partners near photographic memory of your previous sins which have been documented and will be shared with you in a repetitive and annoying way well you know what we can't change the past anyway rule one no feedback about the past real two is harder you can't judge or critique ideas and feed forward you're asked to ask for input and listen to it without judging or critiquing a good philosophy is when I get an idea I should treat it like a gift treat the idea like a gift you know somebody gives me a gift should I say stinky gift bad gift I don't like your stupid gift what should we say when somebody gives us a gift thank you treat the input like a gift and you say thank you now how does feed-forward work well you can do this with the team a large group I've done it from six to six thousand each person picks one area to improve not 30 not 50 not 100 1 and whatever they pick needs to come from their heart then each person says my name is I want to get better at the other person gives them one or two very quick ideas for the future no feedback about the past they say thank you the other person says my name is I want to get better at one or two quick ideas for the Cherno feedback about the past thank you they shake hands and rush off and talk to another person the goal is to talk to as many people as you can when I do this in a large group maybe in five or six minutes at the end of the exercise I say to the group I want you to complete this sentence with one word this exercise was and they all say positive simple a helpful even fun what's the last word you think to describe any feedback tivity fun syndrome for called you up and said I have feedback for you I'd like to have you come into my office and you said Oh fun fun is the last word you think of yet when I do the feed-forward exercise no matter what country I'm in ninety five percent of the people say it's positive useful helpful or even fun then I ask why why do people see this as fun as opposed to painful and they said well to start with it's fast one thing we do about coaching is we talk too much and in this exercise you're learning to give one or two very quick ideas don't babble on by the way if I'm doing coaching we often talk too much I give you my best idea now I talk some more my second best idea I talk for an hour or my seventy fifth best idea what's happens to the quality of ideas we keep babbling they get worse and worse and worse and you don't remember my first good idea you remember my last stupid idea another term is it's simple it's not too complicated it's positive it's focused on a future you can change not a past you can't change any way have you ever made a fool of yourself in front of important people before how much fun is to relive that event well that's not a whole lot of fun this is focused on what you can change not what you can't change some other comments no judging I was telling a group if I would have allowed you to judge or critique each other's comments you to spend twice as much time debating about the comments as listening to the comments how much do I learn proving you're wrong nothing how much do I learn proving I'm right nothing what percent of all interpersonal communication time is spent on somebody talking about how smart they are somebody else says about 65% of all time is wasted on that cut that out life is much much more positive one gentleman said I listen better than this speed forward exercise in almost every list of my life asked him why he said normally whether people talk to me I'm so busy composing my next comment to prove how smart I am I am not really listening I'm just composing the irony he had a Nobel Prize a man with a Nobel Prize in a management class trying to prove he was smart I said look he got one Nobel Prize should I go into it's okay let's just declare victory here well a couple of final points on feed-forward that make this work a common misconception of coaching is I have to have a deep knowledge of you to help you I've done this with groups of people didn't even know each other and they're shocked how much they learn sometimes we learn more from people we don't even know they don't have stereotype they don't have history they don't have baggage a bigger misconception of feed-forward is I have to be better than you to help you or superior to you or you have to be smarter than me to help me wrong at the end of the exercise when I work with large groups I say how many of you felt the need to say this to the people around you I have your problem - I have your problem - I have your problem - they almost all raise their hands it doesn't matter what country I'm in even though our cultures are different in here we're not the difference we're not that different on the inside and most people say I am amazed at how similar everyone else's issues are to my own issues well we don't have to be better than others to help others better off being a fellow human being stumbling through life without clear answers two tiny little questions like Who am I where are we and what is going on here that's all we are anyway we're not little gods we're just little confused people stumbling around what's great about feed-forward is the whole focus is on helping each other not judging each other so if you look at feed-forward a very simple process what do you learn you learn to ask input you learn to listen on defensively you learn to say thank you and give people recognition for what they say you treat it as a gift you don't have to use the gift you listen to it and you thank them for giving you the gift and on the other end you learn not to judge you learn not to critique what's great about feed-forward is everyone is focused on helping everyone no one is focused on judging everyone coaching for behavioral change I'd like to talk about wind behavioral coaching works and just as importantly when behavioral coaching does not work first Quinn will behavioral coaching not work when will my coaching process be a waste of time number one my process does not help people that don't care if somebody doesn't care they don't want to try this process is not going to help them get better this is not for saving the unsavable this process works when people would do care so number one you have to try number two have to be given a fair chance sometimes big companies write people off and they don't really give them a chance and have this fake coaching process which is not really about coaching it's a thinly disguised seek-and-destroy reactivity well if somebody doesn't really have a chance they've been written off by the executives don't coach some be merciful just fire them number three behavioral coaching only solves behavioral issues it doesn't help intellectual technical and functional problems I get ridiculous requests for coaching I probably get 10 times as many requests for coaching as I have time to do it and some of them were just nonsense a form of suitable company calls me Marshall we'd like you to coach dr. X I said what's his problem they said he's not updated on recent medical technology I said neither am i well I can't make a bad doctor a good doctor a bad scientist a good scientist am an engineer a good engineer behavioral coaching only solves behavioral problems next never coach and ethics or integrity problem if someone has an ethics or integrity problem fire them don't coach up how many ethics problems does it take to ruin the reputation of your company one never coach ethics problems fire ethics problems and finally this doesn't help someone is going in the wrong strategy the wrong direction if someone's going in the wrong direction behavioral coaching only helps them get there faster it doesn't turn the wrong direction to the right direction now when will behavioral coaching work behavioral coaching works at least my part of behavioral coach here my process works if three conditions exist one the issue is behavior it is not intellectual it's not technical it's not functional it's behavioral - the person is willing to try and three they will be given a fair chance if these three conditions exist my coaching process always works if these three conditions do not exist do not use this process it will probably be a waste of time so behavioral coaching 70% of all requests for coaching the issue is behavioral the person is willing to try and they will be given a fair chance this process really helps in at 70% coaching for behavioral change I now like to share the steps in my behavioral coaching process and hopefully teach you how to use this process yourself now what I love about my process of coaching it is highly transferable for example GE has taught hundreds of people to use our coaching process and their results are just a about as good as mine with their internal coaches thousands of people externally have been trained around the world to use our coaching process and again many of these people have fantastic results this is a very very transferable process now I'm going to describe how I coach people I'm going to use an example of someone who has the potential to be a CEO in my own coaching I either coach the CEO or I coach the future CEO on the other hand it doesn't really matter this coaching process works just as well with first-line supervisors second line managers works with every level of management I'm going to give an example of how I coach people using a potential CEO and a CEO as by case study examples step one in the process in my coaching it's incredibly time efficient what is the cost to my CEO or could be CEO clients of hiring me there's only one real cost their time one of my coaching clients has a company with the market cap of about two hundred and fifty billion dollars what's his time worth he doesn't need me to waste his valuable time I don't get paid because I spend time I get paid because I get results the less time I spend to get the same results the better it is for my clients and the better it is for me so I'm not about wasting time my process is incredibly efficient why is one of the reasons it's efficient no arguing everything I do in my coaching is either required and if something is required there's no arguing do it or refuse to work with you or it's optional and optional there's no arguing do it if you want to do it feed-forward not feedback now first let's talk about what's required if I coach someone you will get confidential feedback from everyone around you it's not a vote you will take important behavior to improve you will talk to people about what you learn responding and involving these people you will follow up on a regular basis with your co-workers you will follow up with me your manager will agree if you're not the CEO that this is the right behavior and these are the right people you will get measured twice and then assuming that you get better I get paid and again I don't get paid my clients don't get better how does the process work let us imagine I'm coaching a potential CEO and here's the CEO the first thing is what's required I go through what's required you have to get that confidential feedback you have to talk to people you have to follow up you have to get measured all these are required steps if the person says I don't want to do any of those things what do I say goodbye I'm not judging the person that no one made me guide this week on the other hand since I don't get paid if they don't get better I very low tolerance for wasting my time well let's say the person says yes I want to do it now I bring in the CEO and the person and their manager both have to agree yes this is a good process then the next step is the potential CEO and the CEO have to agree who are the key stakeholders now these typically would be appears direct reports manager perhaps board members I don't tell them who the stakeholders are they tell me who the stakeholders are so we reach an agreement who are the key stakeholders and my average client has about 18 key stakeholders nothing magic about 18 the least I've ever had is 8 the most I've ever had is 40 18 is about the average amount then the next step is once the stakeholders have been identified I interview each of the key stakeholders and I ask them some questions question number one what is this person doing well right down the positives question number two what does this person need to change what suggestions then number three imagine you are this person's mentor coach or advisor on any topic large to small what advice would you have for this person well I write a report and as you can see here's an example of what some of these comments might look like ports are very straightforward and some might say very hard to hear sometimes well I write the report and you can't tell who said what then after writing the report I go talk to my coaching client and I say mr. potential CEO here's who I talk to here's what your scene is doing well here's what you are seen as me to do better what do you think person says yes I feel good about this innocent is I want to get better at this and this next step bring in the CEO the CEO says yes I agree this person is doing a good job here and here needs to get better here and here then ask the CEO a classic question if this person gets better significantly of these behaviors as judged by these people is it worth this much money yes or no if the answer is no don't hire me the answer is yes you can't lose a person gets better pay me the person doesn't get better it's all free by the way the lawyers love this it's big escape clause only pay me if you feel like it CEO says yes now we have a contract now what happens the key to the success of my process it's not me talking to my clients the key to the success of my process is my clients talking to their co-workers so now the client comes back and talks to the co-worker and says mr. coworker thank you so much for the feedback I really appreciate you participating they communicate thankfulness they're thankful for the good feedback they talk about with the positives word and how grateful they are then the client says here's something I want to do better please give me ideas feed-forward not feedback they asked for ideas for the future you know I have also coached the stakeholders on how to help my clients what advice do I have for the stakeholders number one let go of the past now whatever sins my clients have committed in the past I can't fix and they can't fix it if you bring up the past you didn't realize people easy theory hard for some of us to do number two tell the truth have everyone swear to tell the truth I'm not naive I know if they swear to tell the truth they might not they're more likely to number three be positive and supportive not cynical or sarcastic and in number four I say to the stakeholders you pick something to do better - so this is two ways not one way so the client come back and says I want to get better at this please help me the stakeholder says first thank you so much for doing this I appreciate you putting in the effort I'm going to do my best to help you I'm going to give you ideas for the future and then the stakeholder sister is something I can improve one of my clients I was hard to coach one person and two other people got better why they're all trying to help each other not judge each other now my client has talked to everyone all eighteen people yeah I go back and talk to my coaching client I say mr. coach a client who did you talk to what did you learn what are you going to do about it now from here on in for me it's all feed-forward I say now I'm going to give you my ideas to help you do better and then I say it's feed-forward from here on in you don't have to do what I say you do have to listen to what I say and I don't want you to judge or critique my it is just say thank you if you want to do it do it if you don't want to do it don't do it I also tell my clients I don't get paid because I'm a good coach I can paint because you're a good customer don't make this about me it's all about you well what happens is they follow up follow up follow up with their people I follow up follow up follow up with them and then we do a simple measure for example - 5 to +5 scale on each item has the person gotten better gotten worse stayed the same and then we do a mini survey follow-up follow-up follow-up survey follow up follow up follow up again another survey now it's been about a year and a half I go back to my clients say here's the report client says I got a lot better at this stuff judge me these people bring in the CEO what do you think mr. mosz CEO CEO says a lot better at this stuff judged by these people you should get paid can you see why I can give my clients a pay only four results guarantee and can you also see why I almost always get paid and can you also see why this is a transferable process most of what my coaching clients learn they do not learn from me they learn from everyone around them I'm much more of a facilitator than an expert I facilitate a process helping them learn from we went around them I'm going to participate in the process I'm certainly not the driver of the whole thing also I never make the business case for my clients that this is important they make the business case for me I don't tell the CEO the stakeholders are they tell me I don't tell them it's worth the money they tell me everything this process is driven from where it's driven from inside the people I'm coaching it is not driven from me changing behavior or changing perception I'm often asked a question do people really change their behavior or are they merely perceived as changing because they do that follow up well the answer to this question is kind of the opposite of what you might believe it's much easier to change behavior than it is to change perception one of the best research principles in psychology is called cognitive dissonance theory cognitive dissonance theory what does that mean well we all see people in a manner that's consistent with our previous stereotype we all see what we think is there we don't necessarily see what's there we see what we think is there let me give you an example let's imagine that I think you're a bad listener once I have that stereotype I'm going to look for bad listener and whatever you say and do until I find bad listener let me give you an even simpler example let us imagine your problem is you make too many destructive comments about other people I picked that because it sounds so simple that's easy to fix just quit doing it not so simple I'm your coworker you go 7 months to never make a destructive comment about anyone 7 months later you say stupid SOPs in finance idiot bean counters how do we get any done in this company is run by a bunch of stupid accountants I hear you my first reaction is he's never changed situation B you talk to me I'm your coworker you say co-worker Marshall I went through a great job of being a good team player not make destructive comments give me ideas tell me in the future I don't believe you're going to change I don't believe you're going to change everyone I coach you know what I teach him if you practice this good stuff when you start out you know what's going to happen well your coworkers are probably just going to laugh at you behind your back they don't believe you're going to change then I always say if you practice these good techniques at home our family members will laugh at us behind our back they're just going to laugh in your face well nobody thinks we're going to change what happens so two months later when I do the follow-up and I say you know mr. coworker it's been two months I said I want to be a great team player not make destructive comments based on the last two months give me ideas for the next two months now what happens score goes you're doing a good job keep it up it's been four months it's been four months good job keep it up it's been six months you know to be honest I didn't think you change at all it's been six months you've worked very hard I'm proud of you keep it up seven months later stupid SOPs in finance idiot bean counters the co-worker says you know you should have said that you went seven months without doing that you say you're right I'm going to apologize situation aid to behavior change yes to perception change no situation B did behavior change yes did perception change yes in leadership it doesn't matter what we say it only matters what people hear and we all see what we think is there one final little example next time you see a Roman numeral watcher clock I'm going to ask you two questions what does it tend to look like and what's the for look like almost everyone says the town of course is an excellent or is an IV look closely at the Roman numeral washer clock 98% of the time the force not an IV it's for eyes and almost nobody that owns the clock and looks at it every day you can see what's there why we don't see what's there we see what we think is supposed to be there team-building without time wasting now I love this process team-building without time wasting what I love about it is the title team-building without time wasting the cost of my clients hiring me is their time every CEO I've worked with loves this process why it is incredibly quick its efficient and it works what are the steps in team building without time wasting first get up in front of the team everybody has two separate pieces of paper one people are going to evaluate how else a team doing on a 1 to 10 scale on 2 questions question number one is how well are we doing in terms of working together as a team now I want to say that that doesn't mean how much money we make are we efficient how effective is our team process interaction dialogue communication with each other and question number two how well do we need to be doing how important this team work for this team well I've asked thousands of teams around the world this question the average answer is we are about a 5.8 we wish we were about an eight point seven most of us don't feel our teams are working together as well as we hope they would be well let's assume that you're doing this with your team and the team says we are a 5.8 we wish for an eight point seven simple you say great let's close the gap how do we close that gap between five point eight and eight point seven the next step in the process is every team member you say write down two behaviors there for everybody in this team got better on these two things it would improve the quality of team work and they write down two behaviors and these are typically common-sense behaviors like listening recognition common goals good things they write down the behaviors then what happens next is you have everybody share the behaviors you don't discuss people you only discuss behaviors and when you share those behaviors the next step in the process is you say okay team let's prioritize work with the team to help the team come up with the one most important behavior that if everybody on the team got better just one thing you improve the quality of team work for example let's say the team says listen we all need to listen better fine now you practice feed-forward every team member has a very brief one-on-one dialogue with every other team member that sounds like this I'd say mr. team member we are a 5.8 in terms of working together as a team we want to get to an eight point seven everybody's working on listening other than listening please give me one or two quick ideas that if I did these things better it would really help improve the quality of team work what are the rules ideas for the future no feedback about the past second rule when you get the idea you have to shut up listen take notes and say thank you you can't judge or critique positive simple focused and test positive simple focused fast what happens next after about ten minutes every team members talked to every other team member you look at the team members say now you have a list of things for you pick one each team member picks one key behavior for himself or herself now let's say in my case I'm a team member I pick recognition now we have a very simple three question follow a process that occurs about once a month every team member talks to every other team member about once a month in a process it sounds like this this team member we're all trying to improve teamwork we've all committed to be better listeners give me one idea based on last month to help me be a great listener next month to my own area for improvement is recognition give me one idea based on last month help me do a great job of recognition this month and three I just want to be a great team player give me one I did help me be a great team player three ideas thank you thank you thank you return the favor three ideas thank you thank you thank you follow up follow up follow up follow up follow up follow up and then a measurement at the end as you can see what the measurement looks like simple mini survey measure you will get more long-term improvement in team building doing what I just described then you'll get chipping people off to the woods for a week where they can hold hands and climb trees and sing songs nothing really changes why this process has follow-up measurement discipline follow-up measurement discipline one it works too it's incredibly efficient why it does not waste time and it does get results you you you you

Channel: Marshall Goldsmith

Views: 72,167

Keywords: Coaching (Industry), Behavioural Change Theories, Business, Training, Success, Development, Personal, Marshall Goldsmith (Author), leadership, thinkers 50, blog, blogging, leadership development, tony robbins, Richard Branson (Organization Leader), Coach, Speaker, Motivation, Life, Inspiration, Secret, Marketing, Speaking, Management, Sales, Motivational, Entrepreneur

Id: k9-VOHw9lCc

Length: 34min 5sec (2045 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 03 2015