HardTalk Biz Coaching
Many coaching conversations
Benefit from subtlety and nuance.
At least as many conversations
Are in great need of directness and candor.
Career Coaching
With Courage and Candor
Handouts for Participants to the
Roundtable Discussion
MCDA Conference April 26, 2013
, phone: 952.607.6027
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HardTalk Biz Coaching
Risk It! – A Poem, A Story
To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement.
To express feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas and dreams before the crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken.
The greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing
does nothing
has noting
is nothing
He may avoid suffering and sorrow
But he simply cannot
Learn, grow, feel, love, or live.
Only the person who risks is free!
Dare to risk and be wise enough to take the right risks!
, phone: 952.607.6027
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Career coaching with candid, courageous conversations
In your role as a career coach your clients trust you to assist them with reaching their objectives. They might not fully realize it, but among many other things, your clients need to be able to depend on you to discover their blind spots, to decrease their self-deception and for you to ‘say it as it is’.
As their career coach, you sense and observe many things, of which too many regularly remain unspoken. Often, these are relevant observations, helpful interpretations, and valuable new perspectives, even if they are painful.
Your clients need you to be direct and candid. They deserve a career coach who is willing to speak openly without the coach fearing that she or he will create the wrong results. Your clients do not benefit from you shying away from brutally candid conversations and from sugar coating messages.
No-escape conversations about what really matters and in which you are brutally and respectfully candid and direct might be confrontational and at times uncomfortable, but they are also eye-opening and refreshing game changers. These coaching conversations help you get to the root of challenges quickly, they help you act and hold accountable as a career coach, and they help your client get to the core of what’s blocking or deceiving them.It gets people moving promptly and convincingly. They start changing rather than remaining stuck in their search for causes, explanations, and pity. They stop denying and begin to see clearly what their challenges are and what role they play. They learn to see themselves, others, and life more realistically and they learn to laugh about themselves, their idiosyncrasies and their challenges.
, phone: 952.607.6027
Twitter: @cmoors, LinkedIn, Google+
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Assumptions Behind Candid, Provocative Career Coaching
Provocative coaching is inspired by, but different from, provocative therapy as developed by the American therapist Frank Farrelly. Some of Farrelly’s assumptions and techniques can be applied to career coaching. Six central assumptions I suggest you apply are:
- People grow and change in response to challenges.
- The client loses when a career coach beats around the bush, sugar-coats, postpones, or delays as opposed to a career coach who engages in courageous, direct, candid and, if need be, confrontational and provocative conversation.
- In a trusting and transparent relationship people can handle confrontations, provocations and the (sometimes brutal) truth.
- People have a greater ability to change than is often assumed by coaches and themselves.
- The psychological fragility of people is frequently overstated by both themselves and others.
- Unproductive behaviors can be drastically altered, no matter how seemingly severe.
, phone: 952.607.6027
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Nine Perspectives on problems, learning, believing
1. A problem is only a problem if you think about it as such.
2. People who are certain might not be capable of learning much.
3. Your obstacles can do two things: stop you in your tracks or force you to be creative and adaptable.
4. Two of your fiercest enemies are thoughtlessness and cowardice.
5. What you choose to see, believe, and think is how you develop and change.
6. Your ideas can enslave or liberate you. It’s up to you.
7. At times it's better to ask a new question rather than trying to solve an old problem.
8. It is often more valuable to ask the right questions than to provide the right answers.
9. Criticism has merit if it is used as a trigger to adapt and learn. Criticism is a perspective, criticism is information. Information that can help uncover blind spots and that can shed light on the gap between how something is intended and how it is perceived and interpreted.
, phone: 952.607.6027
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Example Questions to Ask your Clients
1. Do you know what is really worth hanging on to and what’s weighing you down?
2. To what extent do you act on the knowledge that what made you successful in the past is often not what you need to change in order to move forward?
3. How often do you allow the pressures of conformity to hold you back?
4. Could it be that the best way to embrace change is to create it yourself?
5. To what extent do you retreat to a place of safety and predictability?
6. How would a difficult situation that you cannot control change if you would change your perspective?
7. How often do you bring a variety of perspectives to the table?
8. Could it be that, in everyday life, you assume as certain many things that, on closer scrutiny, you find to contain more contradictions and uncertainties than you are willing to admit?
9. The Jack Welch question: “What would you do differently if you had just been hired for the job?”
, phone: 952.607.6027
Twitter: @cmoors, LinkedIn, Google+
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10. Did it ever occur to you that rejection can be critical for success? Rather than viewing rejection as that painful situation causing emotional doubts about your competence and self-worth you can decide to see it as a force to help you come up with more ideas. It can redirect you to different paths and it can keep you humble and open to learning (Inspired by Ron Ashkenas).
11. How do you best recognize and resolve the tensions between flexibility and control?
12. How do you avoid becoming the prisoner of your personality and your natural tendencies?
13. How do you ensure not to be exaggerating your strengths to a point where they turn into your liabilities?
14. How actively do you combine perspectives, skills, and knowledge in new ways?
15. Can and do you adopt new ways of doing things without necessarily being under pressure first? How do you stay sharp, how do you stay away from complacency?
16. In which ways do you actively encourage yourself and others to challenge ‘business as usual’ or ‘thinking as usual’?
17. Are you dealing with a problem to be solved or a polarity to be managed?
, phone: 952.607.6027
Twitter: @cmoors, LinkedIn, Google+
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I do not mind to be the one to bring it up. Do you?
Are you hesitant to confront and be direct? Do you fear the possibility of people disliking you or disagreeing with you? Are you reluctant to stir up emotions? Are you locked up in an upbringing and training that falsely taught you that respect equals keeping quiet about what you really see and think? That respect equals avoiding doing and saying anything that might upset someone? That’s a pity, because direct and candid people, if practiced with a good sense of timing and respect, of course, are generally very well respected. They are transparent and trustworthy because they tell others what they see, suspect, think, and believe. They really add value by revealing blind spots and speaking the unspoken. It is the direct coach who is clear, candid, and open who is often preferred above the one who softsoaps, beats around the bush, avoids, postpones, and talks in disguised terms. What would you prefer if you were on the receiving end?
So lets be honest about a couple of things:
The most destructive conversations in the workplace and during coachingare the ones left unsaid.
Most people instinctively avoid conflict even though good disagreement is central to progress. Dare to be unlike most people.
Conflict avoidance and selective blindness lead managers, employees, and coaching clients astray.
Self-deception is inherent in the psychology of human beings. Self-deluded people believe that intention automatically translates into behavior.
The best partners aren’t echo-chambers and yes-men. The best teams allow people to deeply disagree, the best coaches stimulate and train disagreement.
One of the saddest phrases in the workplace is: “No one ever told me.”Don’t be the career coach who adds more untold perspectives.
, phone: 952.607.6027
Twitter: @cmoors, LinkedIn, Google+
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HardTalk Biz Coaching
Tough Conversations
As leadership expert Geoff Aigner found in his own research, the biggest road block managers and leaders (but anyone alive, really) must overcome is their reluctance to engage in tough conversations, usually for fear of being unkind.
There is a common mistake at work here: confusing compassion with kindness. Leaders and coaches who truly care about the development and growth of their employees or clients are able to push through the awkwardness, and tell it straight. Just like parents who really care about their children, adult children who care about their aging parents, friends who care about their friends… the list goes on, beyond the workplace.
Tough conversations can be and usually are the most valuable conversations we have. If you throw caring, courage, and candor in the mix of your coaching conversations, you will be able to provide your clients with information and perspectives that others might have too, but are unwilling to share. Tough conversations help decrease your client’s blind spots. Tough conversations from a caring professional force the client to move away from self-distortion and ego-saving defense mechanisms. Tough conversations, if held well, decrease the need for cover-up practices. Tough conversations are tough in the here-and-now and become some of the strongest bonds between people.
What are you afraid of? What is holding you back? What skills do you need to strengthen in order to start tough conversations? Why not start now? Mistakes are okay. These types of mistakes aren’t fatal, you know.
, phone: 952.607.6027
Twitter: @cmoors, LinkedIn, Google+
Blog:
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Some Closing Thoughts to Ponder
Every time you discourage disagreement,
Every time you are not completely honest,
You do a huge disservice to all involved.
Many coaching conversations
Benefit from subtlety and nuance.
At least as many conversations
Are in great need of directness and candor.
It is relatively easy (and safe)
To sit up and take notice.
What is difficult and more courageous
Is getting up, speaking up, standing out, and taking action.
Einstein: “Any intelligent fool
Can make things bigger & more complex.
It takes some genius & much courage
To move in the opposite direction.”
Honest, forthright discussions –
It’s a rarity in many organizations, families, and other systems. Unfortunately.
It takes courage
To uncover selfishness and confront arrogance.
It takes courage to take responsibility
For what you do and for what you neglect to do
Instead of blaming others and circumstances.
“Courage is the most important of all the virtues,
Because without courage,
You can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”
Maya Angelou
, phone: 952.607.6027
Twitter: @cmoors, LinkedIn, Google+
Blog:
HardTalk Biz Coaching
Resources
Books
“Radical Honesty” by Brad Blanton and Marily Ferguson
“Crucial Conversations” by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, Switzler
“High Altitude Leadership” by Schmincke, Don and Chris Warner
“Fierce Conversations” by Scott, Susan
“I Dare” by KiranBedi
“Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl
“The Business of Belief” by Tom Asacker
TED Talk
“Dare to Disagree” by Margaret Heffernan:
Article
“Have the courage to be direct” by Anthony K. Tjan on Harvard Business Review Blog Network, Nov. 14, 2012
, phone: 952.607.6027
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