Episode #323: What Sort Of Coach Are You

Many Japanese executives have grown up in the “tough love” school of OJT – On The Job Training. They were scolded severely by their bosses and given a very hard time. Their bosses did this in the belief that this is how to get people to perform correctly. It might have worked in a different era, but not today. Young people won’t put up with that type of treatment and they don’t have to put up with it. The next generation are the first “free agent” employees in Japanese history. There are already 1.6 job offers open for those seeking work. In the case of youth, they are in serious, serious short supply. This situation is not going to change or improve. This means that anyone imagining that “tough love” is how to coach and develop people is in for a rude shock, as young people will simply quit and walk out the door to the competitor.

What sort of coach do we need to become? We have to be an excellent listener. How hard can that be? Not very hard you might be thinking, except we are all becoming poorer listeners in this advanced high tech age. We are all super busy, so we are rushing around doing many things and we are short circuiting every interaction to fit it all in. What this means is we are so busy thinking about what we need to do, we are not really listening to the staff members. We don’t ignore them because that is too confrontational and unprofessional. What we do though is to pretend to listen. We look like we are concentrating on what they are saying, but in fact we are tuning them out, because our own thoughts are too dominant.

You may not be guilty of this sin as a listener, but are you a selective listener instead? This is very common with salespeople, who are listening for verbal cues from the buyer so they can make a comment or offer a suggestion. They are not really fully concentrating on what the buyer is saying and are only focusing on the pieces that excite them about a possible sale.

Coaches can become guilty of the same thing. They are listening to part of what they are being told and are racing ahead with their own thoughts anticipating where the conversation will go. This is a guaranteed method to miss key cues and signals from the staff member. A better form of listening is attentive listening. This means shutting out all the distractions and giving your 100% full concentration to what they are saying. You are “in the zone” so to speak. This is immediately felt by your listener, who appreciates the fact you are giving them your full and undivided attention.

The highest form of listening is empathetic listening. It sounds a bit esoteric, but it is listening for what is being said and what is not being said. It means studying the words that are being chosen and what is not being revealed fully. It is gauging the body language to check this against the words coming out of the staff member’s mouth. It means really feeling whatever the staff member is feeling and relating to them at that level. This and attentive listening are so powerful today, because everyone else is doing such a poor job of listening. We will immediately stand out if we operate in this way.

Often the issue is the staff member won’t open up to us with their issues. There may be some trust requirement not quite built yet, sufficient to tell us their thoughts. They may be guarded. It is very difficult to deliver effective coaching if you don’t know the full scale of the problem facing them. We need to be asking them open questions. An open question is one to which you can’t answer with just a “yes” or “no”. You need to state your opinion. We can also ask hypothetical questions to get them dealing with scenarios they may not have considered as yet. This is particularly useful when dealing with projects and anticipating problems which may arise once the project is underway. We can ask exploratory questions to dig a bit deeper into the background, the current situation and why they think what they do. We might ask them some comparable questions, “If this happens, is it better to do A or what about B?”. This gets people engaged and talking. Sometimes a closed question, where the answer is a yes or no is handy to get clarity around a subject.

Bosses tend to be very interested in what they have to say. But when we are coaching we have to suspend that desire and get the staff member to do 80% of the talking. That means asking questions, getting more information and in particular listening in a way that builds trust. If I feel you are only giving me fake listening, then I won’t open up to you and share what is really going on. The honesty of the listening invites honesty in reply. Here are some considerations: which level of listening are you applying – pretend, selective, attentive or empathetic?

Also, do you feel you have earned sufficient trust from your staff, where they can tell you honestly what are their issues? To coach the team is no easy matter because most of us confuse coaching with giving orders. Take a moment and reflect on how you have been as a coach for your team?