Bill: hello, Marty. Here we go recording another episode of Not Your Typical Leadership Coaching. Good to be here. Good to have you here. We've already had a robust conversation this morning, a couple of them. Yes, we have. For the listener, Marty and I have been participating in a coaches mastermind group on Friday mornings.

Bill: I've been involved in that group for about eight years. How about you, Marty? Do you have an idea of how long you've been involved in the group?

Marty: Less than eight because you were part of it before I was, but it's. Yeah, it's

Bill: a long time. And what happens in that group is there are currently are there are five of us.

Bill: We've had more and less than that. And most of the time we have three, four or five of us but it's almost every Friday. And what we do is we share our wins for the week. And then we share our challenges. And the challenges can get so interesting, so powerful. I just had a powerful experience this morning, bringing one of my challenges, but that's not what this episode's about.

Bill: What we're going to talking about today is powerful coaching questions and how that relates to leaders. So what's your understanding of that, Marty? Why would. Aspiring leaders and season leaders who are trying to become better leaders care about powerful coaching questions.

Marty: Yeah there's, there are 2 different lanes, the leader and the coach, but those lanes do overlap.

Marty: Coaching is a kind of leadership and leadership can make very good use of coaching techniques, especially around asking powerful questions. So I'll give you an example. I was talking to a client Wednesday who just doesn't quite understand how her salesperson, she's a CEO, how the guy in sales what, how is he thinking?

Marty: What is, why is he do it that way? And and, She and so she was trying to figure out how to get him to be the way she thinks he should be as the head of sales. And I thought if I were coaching him, I would 1st, ask him, why do you do it this way? What's your strategy? How are you thinking about this?

Marty: And then we can talk about it and, maybe ask further questions about what might work better or, if he's challenged by it like that. So you see there the, my thinking as a coach and. Yeah. Her thinking as a leader started to overlap there ask him these powerful questions about his strategy and you'll be better able to manage him.

Bill: That's a great example. And as you were telling it, sharing it, I. I thought, there's a couple of ways those questions, though, could be asked. One takes power away and one gives power to. One way would be to ask those questions with an agenda, which would be really easy to do in a leadership position, if in fact what you're trying to do is manage something or someone.

Bill: I'm going to bring these questions into the conversation with an agenda to make you different. How well is that going to be? How well is that going to be received? And how well is it going to go?

Marty: Right and that's so that's weak leadership and it's not coaching

Bill: so that's a but it also points to a dilemma then.

Bill: And maybe we can explore around that. The dilemma is, let's say I'm the leader. I'm in, I'm, I do have a concern that I want to address. I have an objective in other words. And so how do I leave my agenda at the door and not let it interfere with what could be powerful questions that I could ask that could bring power to the situation and power to the person I'm talking to.

Bill: Yeah,

Marty: I think there are 2 different things here to distinguish 1 is

Marty: having an agenda to change people and having an agenda like that. The company has that then that the, you're, the people that you're managing implicitly, if not explicitly agreed to. So those are 2 different things. If I'm trying to get you as my sales person. To do your job in a certain way.

Marty: That, you got to do it with the way that you do it best. And so all I want to do is bring out the best in you. That's leadership, right? As opposed to on another page is this whole question of we agree as I'm your CEO and you're my salesperson. We agree. We want to increase sales by 50%.

Marty: Let's say, okay, we're agreed on that. So it's not just. My agenda to change you. It's something we're both working toward.

Bill: And as I hear you say that, that points out a couple of really powerful and important keys. Great coaching. One of them is agreement. That's right. Yeah. And then the next one that could come after agreement would be permission.

Bill: So given that we, we have this agreement I have a concern. Can we talk about that? Yeah, we address that now.

Marty: And for me, what it brings up I often find myself when a client comes to the call with a coaching request. 1 of my 1st questions is, and how does this relate to your overall purpose?

Marty: Because that will often and that's the larger we agree, we want to further your purpose. I, as your coach want to further your purpose. If this coaching request is. In some way against your purpose. We got to distinguish that because then you're working against yourself here.

Marty: And also, if it, oftentimes what happens is once the client sees, oh, I see how, let's say my purpose is to be free. And I'm asking you a question about the how to deal with this obligation. Let's say. And you remind me of my purpose, then I'm going to now I've got some insight into how to deal with this obligation.

Marty: Oftentimes, that's the way the bringing up, how does this relate to your purpose? Since we both agree coach and we want to further your purpose. And, when I ask that, oftentimes people sort themselves out about the coaching request really quickly. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. If I just be my purpose, if I come from what I'm here for, that shows me the way through this dilemma or challenge that I brought to coaching.

Bill: That's your North Star. The purpose is the North Star. Now, what if somebody comes to you as a coaching client and they don't have a purpose? Would the purpose be replaced by the objective of coaching until purpose was identified? Yes. Yeah. And maybe that needs to be the objective initially is let's find your purpose.

Marty: It's funny though. I, you make a good point. Sometimes they haven't identified their purpose yet, but this might be the moment to do because otherwise, you get too far into just. Yeah. Answering this request, and then that request, and then they start to work against each other.

Marty: This seemed like the right thing to do, but it's actually against the so it's time. We figure out what's the overall purpose here. So that these things flow, they work with each other. And. A lot of times, even though they've never said my purpose is, there's an intuitive sense of it's definitely not that and it's got something to do with it.

Marty: And so I can often work with somebody who hasn't stated or declared their life's purpose just by there's a general sense. It's in this direction. It's in this basket.

Bill: I refer to that as warmer colder. Yeah, you know what I

Marty: mean? I think so. Go ahead and say.

Bill: There's a childhood game that I played with my siblings and friends growing up on the playground or in the backyard and one of us would hide something. And then everybody else would try to find it. And the person that hit it would then give clues of warmer, you're getting

Marty: cold, or yeah, you're getting warmer.

Bill: So you're what I hear from you is that as coach, you're listening for warmer colder, and helping the client to recognize that there is warmer, there is colder. Yes. Yeah.

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: Now, how does this last? 345 minutes of conversation relate to leaders in business or in a profession or a nonprofit or some leadership position.

Bill: We're talking in terms of coach and coach client and purpose being like the guiding principle. If I understood you accurately. So if purpose and coaching is the guiding principle that you use as the North Star for that client and that you both you and the client both agree upon, how can that translate for the leader who is working with someone in their organization that they have concerns

Marty: about?

Marty: In exactly the same way, once you presence. Somebody that you're managing what they, what their goals are, what they're working toward and how that serves the company. So it's got it, it locks in to their in certain levels. I want to give an example. We could go back to the example that I was just talking about from 1, my Wednesday coaching call the salesperson, he's very much on his own.

Marty: And yet, he's hired by this company to do sales for them, but he doesn't communicate as much. He's not a team player. He's like a superstar. And to, the more that we can bring his brilliance into the machine of the company the more. He's going to produce sales and get commissions.

Marty: The more the company is going to, satisfied their stockholders, et cetera. It's about aligning forces. And that's, I think how it's helpful. When you're a leader, you want to get. If everybody's sitting around the conference table and doing thinking and putting their energy into other things, other than these goals that we have on the whiteboard that we're all supposed to be interested in, the achieving those goals doesn't stand a chance.

Marty: We all have to get our energies aligned to produce the commerce on. So that's how it's helpful.

Bill: In other words, unified purpose. Yeah. Or a set of unified purposes.

Marty: And in the coaching call, it's obvious you're the client. It's all about your purpose. But when in leading a, a corporate team, there needs, we need to articulate that common purpose.

Marty: This

Bill: points to the collaborative leadership that I've heard you talking about.

Bill: In the example that I just envisioned, as you pointed behind your back to the whiteboard with the objectives that are up there that nobody's really paying attention to because they all have their own problems that they're trying to solve or strategies to pursue those or their own personal purposes that may or may not align with the objectives up there on the board, which is collaborative leadership where there is there's agreement.

Bill: There's intention. There's a common purpose. And everybody knows their job. Everybody knows the role that they play. And if they don't that's what's being discussed there in that conference room. In that discussion, whoever's in the role of leader at that point may need to ask some really powerful questions that will elicit creative and open and revealing answers.

Bill: That would reveal aware that would increase awareness and. For the person that's answering as well as for those that are collaborated, collaboratively working with that member of the team. So we shift there. Let's talk a little bit now about well, let me pause. Do you have something you wanted to say more about that before I shift?

Marty: Yes, but it's to bring you, bring back a point that you made before we started recording about another one of the important aspects of what questions to ask as leader is about how we're going to measure progress. So we got the common goal and we're getting aligned with it, right? Those that's where we've gotten so far.

Marty: And then it's and how will we measure that, that we're staying aligned? How will we measure that? We're that, whether this alignment is producing the result that we want. So that's another very important dimension of good questions, whether as coach or as leader is. The kind of questions that give us, something that we can measure are we making progress toward that goal that we've agreed on?

Marty: Like, how will we know? So anyway, that was your point and I think it's a great 1. so it's what would you add or take away from what I just said?

Bill: I just took a couple of notes as you were pointing that out and I'm so glad that you did because you gave some structure. To the beginnings of an outline that we may end up reviewing here in a few minutes when we wrap up this session number 1, we want to establish common purpose.

Bill: Everybody needs to be on maybe not the same page, but at least in the same chapter that we all know if we're collaboratively working together as a team, for example, and in a corporation or in a business or any organization, we all agree that we know what it's about. And then somewhere down the line is measuring progress, but I suspect that between establishing that common purpose and measuring progress, there's something else that needs to happen.

Bill: And it feels to me like it's something like a plan, like we all agree on a plan for how to get there. Yeah. The common purpose would be the lag measure. We won't know whether we've achieved that common purpose until we arrive at the deadline that we've set. For the result that we agree that we want to achieve, that's our common purpose.

Bill: Along the way, there needs to be lead measures that reflect the strategies that we all agree will get us there. Yes, that would be the plan. And of course, that requires a collaborative conversation where rules have been set up that either limit or broaden the freedom to be able to fully express.

Bill: Each of our brilliance, each of our opinions and skills and strategies and experiences that can contribute to, to, to a great plan that can get us to that common purpose.

Marty: Yeah, it's exactly at this point, either in the coaching conversation or in the corporate conference room that you start to see people fidgeting or wrinkling their brows or.

Marty: Having outbursts or something that starts to indicate where the challenges are going to be. So that's the next I think that's the next level of questions is like, what concerns you about this? This plan, right? What do you see is going to be, you're growing, you're going to have to grow, right?

Marty: You're going to have to practice at this, or you're going to have to develop practices that, will allow us. To move through the plan toward the goal, what are your objections? What do you see is going, where are you resisting this plan? This is where all the real, the juice starts to happen is right there when you get to making a

Bill: plan.

Bill: And if I'm in an organization where disagreement or resistance is not allowed how is that even possible? It's not, it's going to be a closed system. Like a dictatorship. One person says. The CEO or owner of the company says, this is the objective and this is how I want you to get there.

Marty: And just get on board. Yeah.

Bill: And so if there's going to be some, that conversation that we talked about at the beginning, if I'm in a leadership position and are in an organization like that, and I've agreed, okay, my job is to do whatever the CEO or the owner of the company, whoever the authority is that, that decides what we're trying to object.

Bill: Has said that we need to do this and accomplish this by this time. And this is exactly the way that we need to do it. And if I have somebody that's out of line, and I need to have a conversation with them, then my job is to get them in line or get them out of the organization altogether. That's a completely different conversation that the coaching ideas that we're talking about today probably aren't going to be a good fit for because that's burdened with the agenda that where that's fixed and not open and there's no room for discovery and exploration.

Bill: Exactly. I think the kind of non typical leadership that you and I are talking about is in an open system. Yeah, boy, my mind just went off in another direction there. What do you do if you are an open leader in a closed system? What do you, what can you do about that? But that's another conversation.

Marty: Unless you'd like to expand on that right now. I

Bill: Sounds like you have some thoughts about it. Let's hear it. No, I

Marty: wanted to hear yours

Bill: honestly. It seems to me that it may seem as simple as I need to either find an organization that and embrace who I am. My, my ideas about open leadership.

Bill: Where I want to collaborate and support people and help them discover their strengths and what they can bring to the table and how they can find their purpose within our purpose. Find an organization like that seems like a pretty good easy route, or I can put, pit myself up against the closed organization that I'm in and see if I can change it from within.

Bill: That's a much, much bigger challenge, but some people may find that their purpose calls them to do that. Yeah, those are my only thoughts about that. Yeah. Yeah.

Marty: I'm imagining, like the difference between, when you go to watch your let's say 8 year olds soccer game versus when you go to watch your 18 year olds soccer game, right? The 8 year olds, they're all running after the ball. They don't. Yeah, positions and roles, right?

Marty: Yeah they just all go for the ball. And so there's just this crowd of little kids all vying to be in control of the ball,

Bill: you guys visuals. I got the whiteboard behind you in the conference room. And now I got these little 8 year olds running after the ball,

Marty: right versus, a professional team that, they know their roles and their positions and they're constantly.

Marty: Empowering each other in their own varied positions and supporting each other. You go down the line and I'll forward the ball to you so that you can take it down or, or pass it back to me. The fullback, you're getting too much defense in the way there.

Marty: Pass it back to me and I'll get it over to the other side. There's this coordination, collaboration. That is what we're calling an open leadership, an open modeled leadership that is it affords so much more than if there's just like one way, then everybody's trying to do it exactly that same way.

Bill: So there's curiosity, there's room for choice, there's freedom and that is what informs the plan and the strategies that make up that plan

Marty: and in an empowering the differences between actually empowering that you're in a different role than me and I want to see you do well at your role not to be me.

Bill: Yes. Okay, I want to summarize where we've been and where it looks like we could be going. I also want to acknowledge that we want to keep these podcasts around 30 35 minutes or so. So I have the sense, even though I didn't write down the time that we started, that we're probably got, we've got to be at about 20 25 minutes somewhere.

Bill: So let's shoot for another 5 to 10 minutes before we close this episode. Does that sound good to you? Yeah. And number one, establish a common purpose in the organization. If it's coaching, establish a common purpose between the coach and the client. Or if it's between a leader and their charge or a collaborative leader and someone that's asked for support or that needs support, whether they know it or not, that would be to, first of all, establish a common purpose.

Bill: Yes, once that common purpose is established, you pointed at what are the concerns? What are the problems with standing between where you're at now? And where do you want to be? I'm wondering if that needs to be addressed before a plan can begin to be devised. Because if the problem, if what's causing the problems in the 1st place between where we are and where we want to be, and where we want to be is the purpose that we've agreed that we have.

Bill: Don't we want to explore those concerns first? Explore the problems that either would have to be solved, the problems that would be solved if that purpose were achieved? Isn't that where we want to go next?

Marty: I, yes, and I think that it's iterative. It's reiterative. In fact, like we, there's only so much about what's going to be challenging or problematic that we can see until.

Marty: We have a plan and then, oh, if that's the plan, then I got some new challenges, right? I didn't know that was going to be the book, right? I agree with the goal. But now that you say, I'm going to have to make 30 phone calls to fulfill this. Purpose that we both agreed on. I have some challenges now that we know the plan.

Marty: And then those get solved and we start implementing again and then new challenges arise oh, this telephone doesn't work. I'm going to need a new telephone. I think it's reiterated. We come back to that over and over again through the process.

Bill: Let's acknowledge the concerns and address them.

Bill: Yeah. So here's our purpose. Number one. And what are the problems that we're experiencing in getting to that purpose? We're just not getting there and part of the problem is attitude and part of the problem is motivation and part of the problem is whatever that would be. Yeah. Okay. Given that these are the problems that we've identified, let's begin to put together a plan that can begin to address those problems that are preventing us from getting to the, to, to that purpose.

Bill: Now let's execute the plan that seems next. So we've got establish the common purpose. Number one. Number two, address, acknowledge and address the concerns. Let's say it this way. Acknowledge the concerns that we know the problems that we know that we have that is stopping us from achieving that purpose.

Bill: And then number 3 address those concerns by putting together some sort of a plan. Number 4 would be implementation. Implement or go out and

Marty: work the plan, find out where, what obstacles you're going to hit there, then reiterate the addressing the problems

Bill: concerns again.

Marty: And so I want to also bring back those, you have a set of questions that you ask in the coaching context now.

Marty: Yes. Yeah. That are really good at giving some shape to this process and what can be measured and what can be what we need to keep iterating

Bill: on exactly. So these questions serve a couple of purposes. 1, these questions. help to keep the eye, keep your eye on the ball. No, remember what is the purpose?

Bill: And in the context of that purpose, how challenging does it, is it, does it seem how challenging is it? How challenging does it feel to accomplish that purpose? In my program, what I do is I set the purpose up in a way that I call the aspirational results statement, which is a present tense statement of what things would look like if we were living our purpose.

Bill: Or if we were cheap, if what things would look like in a life where we're actually achieving the result that we want right away, once that's established, once the problems that are preventing that from happening and the problems have been revealed and then also the problems. That would be solved if the result was achieved, once that's all established, then I put the problems out in front of the client and I say, I ask them these nine questions.

Bill: Number one, how important is it that you solve these problems? Number two, how urgent is it that you solve these problems? I'm not sure if I'll remember off the top of my head all nine questions, but let me see how many of them I can remember. Number three, how that you have these problems?

Bill: Number four, how much energy are you putting into managing these problems? Five, how many how problematic? Oh, here it is. How painful is it for you and others that you have these problems and they're not solved? You get the idea. That's not all nine, but that's a lot of them.

Marty: And checking back with, okay, where are we with that?

Marty: What grade would you give yourself on each of these check in questions at this point is a great way to stay in communication about all the different levels of what it's taking to work this plan and then you can see, oh this score went up that went down. Let's address that.

Bill: And that. So to do that, we need to establish a numeric value and the value that I use is a five, five points.

Bill: One through five. One is it's, let's say for example one represents no or not at all. And five represents let me restate that. We'll edit that piece out. One represents low or not at all. And five represents high. So if the question is, how important is this to you to solve these problems?

Bill: If it's a one, it's not very important. If it's five, it's extremely important. So at the beginning of a project, if we're not close to, with nine questions, a potential of 45, if we're not close to that 45, then I wonder if we're really addressing the first and most important problem that needs to be addressed, or result that needs to be achieved.

Bill: So let's just say we start out at a 39. We, when we establish our project, we start out at a 39. And then the next week we want to remeasure and the questions just change slightly instead of how important is it that you solve these problems now it becomes how important is it now that you solve these problems and go through Adam all up again and now let's say we one week after you've established the project.

Bill: It's likely if those questions have been answered honestly, that number is going to either remain the same or go up. It's now going to feel even more challenging because as you pointed out earlier, once we begin to implement and move in the direction of the aspirational result statement, what we couldn't have known until we did begin to implement begins to be revealed.

Bill: This is going to be hard. Yeah. This is going to be outside of the norm of what I normally would do to try to achieve a result. Yeah.

Marty: And so then you can look in, whether it's in on the board, that's the in the corporation, or if it's with the coach, you can look and see okay, the fact that number went up.

Marty: Is there something to do about that? Can we bring it down? Or is that appropriate to be working at that level of effort and difficulty? Is that what it's gonna take? Or is there another way that this could go? So that it raises the right

Bill: question. Exactly. Now in my program, what I assert and my clients agree before we even begin the program, it.

Bill: Is that the hypothesis is that you're, we're not getting the results that we want because we're already stuck in a pattern that automatically gives us results that we're getting. So if that's the case, when I go back in week to week to check the challenge score, it's going to go up, stay the same or go down.

Bill: The question I ask is, how does that make sense to you? Help me to understand how you understand that number to make sense. And that requires my clients to, to really consider it. Sometimes they know me to, Oh, that makes perfectly good sense to me. I had this thing going on this week.

Bill: And so it feels even more challenging. Or it feels perfectly good. Let's just say I have a client that wants to improve the relationship with their spouse. They go from a 39 to 35 one week. How does that make sense to you? And they might say I had a great conversation with my spouse this week and I saw that we were making some progress.

Bill: So I feel some relief, like maybe this is working a little bit, right? But the plan, as we talked about earlier this, I think the third step is plan is to Establish what is that cycle that is unconscious and bring it into the conscious. Let's bring it out of unawareness into awareness so that we can see how the mechanics of it.

Bill: Let's lift up the hood and see what's producing the results that we're getting now. Once we've done that, now we have something to work with. We can start doing diagnostics. We can start, is it just a part of the engine that needs to be? Moved around a little bit, or is this a whole rebuild? What do we need to do here?

Bill: Yeah,

Marty: maybe it just needs oil.

Bill: Look at that filter. Ooh, that's just when's the

Marty: last time we tried it, right? Whatever the analogous thing maybe the analogy there is maybe you just need to step back and let things work, or, clean out the filter might mean.

Marty: Yeah. Maybe, you need to have a completion conversation with that one person so that you're, that resistance isn't there. That filter gets cleaned. So I think those are those kind of questions that you come back each time and re ask are very helpful. So that you can see progress and you can locate where the snags are so that they can be addressed.

Bill: And it keeps you focused on the objective. Remember what we're trying to do is this particular. Yes. So in, in the context of that, how are we doing this week? Here's nine questions to help you answer that question.

Bill: Yeah. And now given that, does it make sense? And now where are we in the process of our plan and where do you need support? And how can I support you? Can you

Marty: make those nine questions available to listeners?

Bill: Yeah, I'll put them in show notes. Absolutely. You bet. It's probably time to wrap up. I really appreciate this conversation, Marty.

Bill: I've really enjoyed it. And I think that we've established a process for how to be the coach in a leadership position when working with either a fellow collaborative leader. Or someone who you actually have some power and authority over in such a way that, that brings out the best in them.

Bill: We've

Marty: also established the kinds of things to ask about in either of those contexts to forward the action and have it be aligned with what's most important.

Bill: And that is the key. We start with what's most important. What is the purpose? Steve objective Marty. Thanks. I, we may want to just continue this conversation into the next episode.

Bill: That'd be fun. All right, Marty. Thank you. Thank you.