How to Coach Skeptics: Building Trust and Getting Buy-In from Sponsored Coaching Clients

Building a Coaching Culture - #120: Skin In The Game === J.R. Flatter [00:00:00]: I think if you focus on the person and not the problem, you're gonna create that buy in. You're gonna allow them to create skin in the game. Voice Over [00:00:08]: You're listening to the Building a Coaching Culture podcast. If you need to compete and win in the 21st century labor market as an employer of choice, this podcast is for you. Each week, we share leadership development, coaching, and culture development insights from leading experts who are developing world class cultures in their own organizations. And now, here's your host, JR Flatter. J.R. Flatter [00:00:39]: Hey. Welcome back, everybody. JR Flatter here with my sidekick, Lucas. Lucas Flatter [00:00:44]: Hello. How you doing? Good. I got my teeth cleaned today, and they they were praising me on on how clean they were. And I was just, like, basking in the compliments. Situation. Thank you so much. J.R. Flatter [00:01:01]: Hopefully, Declan was there to hear. You look like you've been getting a little bit of sun. Lucas Flatter [00:01:07]: I think so. Yeah. Just from the weather changing. J.R. Flatter [00:01:10]: So in this session, I wanted to focus on skin in the game. I know that's a phrase that might be an American colloquium, but it means being invested in coaching. So you and I working largely in a b to b environment, b to g, business to government, or business to business. We have a lot of people that show up in our coaching practice that might be a bit skeptical. And what can we do as coaches to get them invested? Because one of the things I found in business, this probably resonate with a lot of our listeners. If you give something away, people don't feel as vested in the product. And so when someone's sponsored, someone else paid for the coaching. It's similar to being given a gift in some ways. J.R. Flatter [00:02:06]: They're not as invested. And this is an absolute it's just a theme that I've seen in my practice. Lucas Flatter [00:02:14]: Yeah. I mean, just off that statement about, you know, free versus a more premium, It's definitely some sort of, like, subconscious thing. If you pay for something now, you're literally invested with, you know, your your hard earned money. So, okay, now it's up to me to get value out of this, you know, so I feel like I'm a rational economic decision maker. You know? J.R. Flatter [00:02:44]: Yeah. Absolutely. Even if it's just a few dollars. I went to a restaurant a few days ago and we've been going to this restaurant for years, But now they're charging for a basket of bread, and it's $1. And they donate the dollar to a food bank. And so they're making no money off of it. And you might ask yourself, well, why would they do that? Well, it's a curb to entry. It's an investment. J.R. Flatter [00:03:12]: If you get the bread for free, you might get the bread and eat one slice, and then they have to throw the rest away. If you pay a dollar for it, I'm betting you're gonna eat most of it, and you're probably gonna take the rest home. Lucas Flatter [00:03:25]: Yeah. Back it up. J.R. Flatter [00:03:30]: So the very first thing that comes to mind when I think about getting the leader that I'm coaching invested in their coaching, It sounds a bit administrative, but it's also, like, you were alluding to a moment ago, the way the human brain works, it creates an investment simply by filling out a document about what you agreed to in the relationship. And so we have a fairly well established coaching agreement that we use. And it's an agreement. It's not a contract. And so it's a social agreement between 2 adult human beings. We have a few coaches who coach adolescents quite successfully. Most of our leaders we're coaching are gonna be adults. And it talks about what is coaching, what isn't coaching, where some of the things that are associated with coaching, but are, you know, compliments. J.R. Flatter [00:04:34]: Coaching is not a replacement. It's a compliment to other mechanisms of leadership. What's the difference between consulting, counseling, therapy? All of those things are in the coaching agreement. But there's 2 2 other things that I I think are very important to creating investment in the relationship. The first is trying to identify a starting point of what we're going to accomplish together. And you and I use the mnemonic GOCRs, goals, objectives, key results, Geo, KR. And spending some time in that agreement conversation focusing on goals. What are those things that you wanna achieve in your lifetime? Objectives. J.R. Flatter [00:05:26]: What are some things 5 years out, 1 year out that you want to achieve? And then finally, key results. Put those things really close next month, this quarter, today to get you closer to your objectives. So they all waterfall down goals, waterfall to objectives, which waterfall to key results. And even, you know, with that conversation, oftentimes, depending on the level of skepticism, the level of pushback, maybe people might tell you, I have no idea. But that's fine. That's a starting point. And by the way, in my practice, and we teach that that is a not a coaching conversation. That is an administrative conversation. J.R. Flatter [00:06:17]: Most often, we call it the discovery conversation where we're seeing if our personalities mix, exploring what we wanna accomplish together. We haven't yet started the arc of our coaching relationship. So there's a little more freedom in that conversation. It's not a business conversation. That's what you talk about outside of that discovery conversation. But the second thing, in addition to doing our best to identify goals, objectives, cue results is a signature. And this goes directly to neuroscience and how committed someone feels if they sign a document. Even though it isn't a contract and it's not legally binding, that act alone creates some investment. J.R. Flatter [00:07:07]: So we get asked a lot, should I ask or require my leaders to sign a coaching agreement? I strongly encourage it. When your coaching is a style of leadership, that's not a formal coaching relationship. And so you wouldn't probably take that measure. But if you're in a formal coaching relationship, set number of sessions over a set period of time, I strongly encourage you to sign a coaching agreement. Lucas Flatter [00:07:37]: Yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting to frame this around investment on both sides. Like, you know, even if they're somebody gave, you know, your time, you know, the employer said, you know, JR coached this person. We'll pay you, but that person is not paying you on behalf of this person. You still are required to use your time, which is, you know, can be quantified in some way. This it's x valuable. So I guess, as coaches, we are invested in our clients, you know, monetarily, but also we care. You know, we wanna see this person succeed. Lucas Flatter [00:08:22]: Yesterday, I had was talking to another marine. And I say another because of you, not because I was a Marine. Yeah. J.R. Flatter [00:08:30]: Yeah. Yeah. I was talking Lucas Flatter [00:08:31]: to a Marine. And he said, you know, when I was leading people, there were some people that would not listen to any instructions or, you know, not want to grow. And they were kind of labeled lost cause. And and so he would stop investing in them and invest even more time in the people that were, you know, growing and learning and wanting to improve. So I think this idea that, you know, I care enough about you to give you my time. Therefore, I believe that you will succeed. You know, I I wouldn't invest this if I didn't see it flourishing in some way. So almost creating that subconscious, like, in the in the client leader, you know, I owe it to this person that's investing their time, but I also owe it to myself. Lucas Flatter [00:09:21]: You know, they see that I'm gonna be successful, and I need to see that in myself. J.R. Flatter [00:09:26]: Oh, that's a great point. You're investing in them. You're I hear a phrase pouring into them. And when you're coaching as a as a style of leadership, that's what you're doing. You're pouring into the other people's growth, But you've just reminded me about a session we need to do in the future. And that is when do you abandon a leader, which is a topic that we could talk for hours about. I don't wanna take up too much of our time today, but it's a pretty high bar when you say you're a lost cause, so I'm gonna walk away. So I'm sure that Marine didn't do that often. J.R. Flatter [00:10:02]: It was by exception. Oh, I was gonna tell you a real world story. So we've just gotten a new coaching customer. And in a b to b environment, we usually get tens of customers at at a time. And so this is 30 plus leaders that we need to coach. And we've been told unofficially, well over 50% of them are significantly skeptical. Things such as this coaching is just a bunch of nonsense, and I've been leading people for decades, and I've led people in the harshest of circumstances successfully. So this is a real thing. J.R. Flatter [00:10:48]: This isn't, you know, some academic notion. I'm confronted with this on a very regular basis, and I'm sure a lot of other coaches are as well. But one of the challenges of getting people beyond skepticism is simply educating them on what coaching is prior to a decision. So the 30 odd people that I was talking about are coming to coaching regardless of their initial skepticism because someone in their world said this will be good for you. Oh, that that includes the CEO. The CEO is significantly skeptical. And I'm gonna be coaching the CEO. And I relished the opportunity. J.R. Flatter [00:11:33]: As coaches, we should not shy away from these people. When I received my initial coach training, I was taught, don't waste your time on people who don't wanna be here. But it's been my real world experience as a practicing coach that I'm abandoning them before I've even given them any of my attention, any investment in them. If you don't show up enthusiastic if you don't show up enthusiastic and I choose not to coach you, I haven't invested anything. I haven't poured in you at all. And as I read the ethics and core values and the core competencies of coaching, I see an obligation to pour into you and try my absolute best. You know, I'm wandering in wandering into my abandoning leader's soapbox. But prior to the decision, a lot of the world simply doesn't understand what coaching is. J.R. Flatter [00:12:29]: It's focused forward. It's focused on the growth of the individual coaching. It's a compliment to mentoring, but it's very different than mentoring. I see mentoring and coaching conflated. I see assessment feedback conflated with coaching. Both of those things are important and needed, but neither of them are coaching. And so just educating customers on what coaching is will create investment in your coaching, will create buy in. So we do minimum of 2 hour investment. J.R. Flatter [00:13:07]: I'm gonna do one next week, actually. Seminars, master classes on learn, see, and give. Learn about coaching. See the facilitator coach, and then they give each other coaching. So in 2 hours, we spend about the first 40 minutes teaching. This is coaching. This is what it is and isn't. We spend the next 30 odd minutes, the facilitator coaching a volunteer that the facilitator doesn't know. J.R. Flatter [00:13:39]: And then the final 30 minutes is breaking them down into groups of 2 and letting them coach each other with what they've learned and seen. And that really turns the corner. We like to have the leadership in the room. We like to have middle management in the room, people from across the organization in the room at the same time so they can all see firsthand what this is all about. And we found that to be very informative, opening a lot of eyes. I always whenever I facilitate 1 coach for 20 minutes, 25 minutes. And it's amazing how in a just a couple of minutes of coaching, the person being coached will forget everyone's there. And oftentimes, it gets very emotional because they are discovering what they never expect to discover in this 2 hour class. J.R. Flatter [00:14:34]: You've done a few learns he gives. You've been involved in a few of them. What do you think about educating prior to decision? That's what that's all about. Lucas Flatter [00:14:43]: I think, yeah, there's those preconceived notions. Like, I think you described that that kind of feeling of, you know, I've been a leader for x amount of years. I have my ways, and I'm effective and kind of bristling against this idea. And it's like, what do what what is the belief there that that coaching is antithetical to their way of doing things currently? Or you know, so there's some misconception that's causing this feeling of discomfort or, you know I'm trying to pinpoint what that feeling might be. Is it does it kinda vary depending on the person? Or J.R. Flatter [00:15:27]: Yeah. Absolutely. It does. And it doesn't fall to any particular generation either. You can have very seasoned leaders that are early adopters, which is, you know, is irrelevant. Irrespective of the change you're trying to introduce, 85% of human beings are gonna resist the change. And so this kind of skepticism and pushback is intergenerational and completely expected. You're gonna have early adopters. J.R. Flatter [00:16:00]: They're in single digit percentages. You're gonna have champions, but they're even smaller group. Most of the people that you're going to engage in your coaching world are gonna fall in that 85%. And we better be ready to have means and methods to get them over the apex of their skepticism. Accountability. So I mentioned the competencies again. The core competencies of coaching, specifically competency 8, cultivating growth, which is what coaching is all about, helping the leader discover and grow, talks about accountability. And so one way it did get investment from the leader to start to identify methods of accountability. J.R. Flatter [00:16:51]: So if they tell you, yeah. I think I wanna run a marathon this year. You and I coach at the intersection of personal and professional. We also educate at that same intersection of personal and professional. So a lot of the topics that come into the coaching room are personal. It might be a professional advantage to running a marathon, but that's mostly a personal objective. One of my questions would be, how are you gonna hold yourself accountable? Who in your world could help you? What methods do you have? Do you journal? Do you have, people that you're going to tell? And I never volunteer myself, but the coach can be an accountability partner. Clear expectations. J.R. Flatter [00:17:39]: I'll always be looking for goals and objectives and key results that I could figure it out. One of my favorite coaching questions and an assessor might mark me down on this, but because it's a yes or no question. So another way of gaining investment, getting skin in the game in a sponsored environment is to personalize the experience. Most often, the leader is sent to you for work, to be a better leader at work. And I always tell potential customers and customers, we don't fix people. So don't send us people that you think need to be fixed. But, occasionally, somebody still shows up since I was sent here because my boss doesn't like the way I'm doing something. But I'll quickly find out how to bring it back to them and make it personal. J.R. Flatter [00:18:37]: As much as you love your job and love the organization and believe in the mission, you're always gonna be supremely interested in self. And most of us are supremely interested in family and work because we need to pay our bills. We need to eat, drive a car, and live in a house. So we have this w in our life called work. We have family and self to consider. And probably my most profound volun told that I ever coached, That's how I broke through finally, is I was able to make it personal. And I don't mean personal in a negative sense, but personal in what's important to you as a human being, and how can I help you discover how to make more of that or do that better? And it's an easy transition from personal to professional. If you ask someone to sit down and tell you where they wanna be 30 years from now, they're almost always gonna tell you personal things. J.R. Flatter [00:19:45]: But they need professional things to get them to those personal goals. So it's an easy transition. Lucas Flatter [00:19:53]: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, just hypothetically, if somebody is being sponsored by their boss or, you know, somebody says this person could benefit from coaching, there might be some degree of, okay, I want to please my superior. You know, I do want you know, I've always wanted to do a good job. So it's like, yeah, you know, I'm gonna agree to do this. This is an easy thing that, you know, I can say that I've, you know, at least tried something. But I think there might be some, you know, disconnect. Like, I want to do a good job and please, you know, the organization, but I wanna do it in my own way, or I wanna do it in a way that makes me happy. Otherwise, if their preferences and, you know, activities and behaviors were already aligned, then, you know, there wouldn't be any need for them to be sponsored in the 1st place. Lucas Flatter [00:20:53]: So it's like some disconnect. So I guess, yeah, just saying, like, okay, let's talk about what we can do for you personally. I think that kind of takes that as a factor away. Now I'm not worrying about how to please somebody else. But, you know, how do I do things my way so that they do end up pleasing, you know, people that I wanna please? J.R. Flatter [00:21:15]: That's a really important differentiation. And you just reminded me about, you know, coaching to their house of leadership. And you and I use that framework a lot. And asking them what's important to you. Not what's important to your boss, but what's important to you. What is your work family self balance? What do you want it to be? Where are you going in your life? If you have significant others, where are you going together? All of that is at the intersection of personal and professional, but the professional, I wouldn't say almost always, but oftentimes leads to discovery of the professional. And as human beings interested in family and self, usually rates higher on our priority levels. And we have the w in our life because we we love what we do maybe. J.R. Flatter [00:22:07]: But more importantly, it allows us the freedom to do family and self, time on our calendar, resources to do it. In the competencies of coaching, actually 5, 7, and 8, they talk about the who and the what. The who is the leader you're coaching, and the what is the topic that you're coaching them on. But the who is always preeminent. The what is tangential. Now you might have to solve the what, the challenge, before you can help create discovery with the who. But the who is personal. The what is very likely professional. J.R. Flatter [00:22:47]: So I think if you focus on the person and not the problem, you're gonna create that buy in. And you're gonna allow them to create skin in the game. If you show them a critical path from if you take care of yourself, you're gonna be able to take care of your family, and therefore, you're gonna be able to pay attention to work when you do work. That's gonna connect. We just had somebody tell a story. So one of the things we do at the beginning of every class, so we talk about success stories. Give us a coaching success story that you had since we last met. And this person was talking about a success story that they had with an individual that was entirely personal discovery. J.R. Flatter [00:23:32]: And that created immediate buy in to someone who had therefore henceforth been skeptical about the relationship that they were in. Building trust, you're likely going to meet a stranger that shows up maybe very likely virtual. And so they're even more of a stranger. Could be in a different time zone, different country. They don't know you, and you don't know them. Human beings, based on instinct, are skeptical of strangers. And so you're gonna have to build trust with that leader. Different ways of building trust, you know, creating value is gonna build trust, creating discovery, showing vulnerability on your side of the agreement. J.R. Flatter [00:24:20]: I regularly tell stories of mistakes I've made and things I wish I had done differently, bring in real world case studies, keeping, confidentiality of things that I wish I had done in a coaching relationship or even as a person. How do you build trust in your coaching relationships? Lucas Flatter [00:24:43]: I think a very polished and professional or at least for my preferences, leaning too far into this, you know, buttoned up. I've practiced this many, many hours. Kind of presenting that way for me is unnatural. And to be genuine to myself, it's, you know, the tone is a little more casual. You know, we've done the agreement, so that's formalized and everything. But I guess to build trust, I wanna present myself genuinely. And, you know, I'm not unprofessional, so to speak. You know, I'm not gonna be unprepared. Lucas Flatter [00:25:24]: But to just say, you know, this is who I am, and I'm not putting up any, you know, presentation for you. And it's hard to do that without trying to talk about yourself. You know? It's kind of like this. Okay. This is the base. This is in the background. And then I like what you said about the anecdotes and experiences. Those are can be really helpful because, you know, I'm not giving you advice. Lucas Flatter [00:25:55]: I'm just saying this has happened to me. I've seen it. It's anecdotal. So it's not a be all end all, but it's just it reveals part of me to you and can just get those gears turning. J.R. Flatter [00:26:08]: Yeah. And to be genuine requires significant amount of courage. Almost everyone I talk to in the confidentiality of a conversation, maybe within or not coaching relationship. If you build up enough trust, they'll tell you they have a bit of impostor syndrome. And as a coach, depending on who you're coaching, in the grand scheme of things, they could be you could see them as more confident and capable than you are. As I'm getting ready to coach that CEO, I'm telling you, I am excited, but I'm gonna go in the room with a bit of trepidation too because I wanna do a good job. I wanna help that person discover. So you you're never gonna get rid of imposter syndrome. J.R. Flatter [00:26:57]: You just have to learn to manage it. That little voice is gonna be in your head no matter how many thousands of hours of coaching you may have, what level of accreditation you have. So learn to manage it and and coach through it. So the last thing I'd talk about, eventually, in the arc of our relationship, I'm gonna drag the 900 pound elephant into the room, and I'm gonna openly talk about the skepticism. I've done this in multiple occasions. You can't do it in the first few sessions because you don't have the trust and safety. You haven't created any value. You haven't created any discovery. J.R. Flatter [00:27:36]: So in the first few sessions, I'm really looking for those discoveries and and values that I can bring into the room so that I have something to stand on when I choose. This looks like a good time to just bring this into the room. I'm getting apathy, passive aggressive behavior. Whatever your clue is that this person isn't bought in yet, I just drag it into the room. And I don't drag it into the room as a potential end of our relationship. I drag it in the room to say, what do we need to do to get past this? Because we're gonna be together, and I'm gonna keep trying. And I've had great success with that. One of the first things I learned when I did drag it into the room is that my perception was incorrect. J.R. Flatter [00:28:26]: No. I get great value from this, and I look forward to our time together. Oh, wow. That's a that's a surprise to me. And our relationship was never the same again. Lucas Flatter [00:28:37]: I just wanted to go back to coaching the who instead of the what. I think if I'm somebody's boss and I wanna solve a problem, like, we can you know, you can meet with x, y, z person in different departments. Like, let's solve this problem. But if I want to, you know, have JR talk about his own personality and work through some, you know, whether issues or just, you know, to grow as a person. I need you to be in the room. So it's like, this is this coaching conversation, it's like this conversation that requires you. It doesn't even require me as a coach necessarily. But it's like, I think that's pretty powerful. Lucas Flatter [00:29:27]: It's like we all wanna be in those conversations that are really important and impactful. And this is one conversation that, you know, you're invited to and and you're essential to. J.R. Flatter [00:29:38]: Yeah. You're actually the star. And you reminded me something I tell all of our sponsors is that they might have an idea what coaching is and what we're going to achieve, but it might go in an entirely different direction. And they need to be supportive and encouraging that reality, or they're not going to invest in our services. And I know you're a young hungry coach, coaching in a corporate environment and looking for revenue, or if you're an internal coach and it's part or all of your job, you might not have that luxury. But If you really wanna stay true to coaching, you can't allow the sponsor to preconceive the outcomes of the coaching. You know, I I tell everybody who hires me to do analysis for them in a former life. There might not be a pony under this pile, and you have to accept that reality before I even start. J.R. Flatter [00:30:38]: If you have a preconceived notion that there's a pony under there and I don't find 1, that doesn't mean I didn't do my job. And the same is true of coaching. You have a preconceived outcome that I'm gonna come back and be something. I will have discovered something. That that's not that's not how coaching works. Lucas Flatter [00:30:58]: I like that. J.R. Flatter [00:31:02]: Alright, my friend. See you later. Well, that concludes this episode of building a coaching culture. I truly hope that this episode was helpful to you. If it was, be sure to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. Maybe stop and give us a rating or review and share this podcast with someone who might find it helpful as well. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.