Intro to Coaching - Part 1

Building a Coaching Culture - #85: Intro to Coaching - Part 1 === J.R. Flatter: [00:00:00] You're not doing it because someone told you, you're not doing it because job requires it, but you've actually. seen it, seen it work, and now you have the self efficacy that you need to jump off that tower again and again and again, and change people's lives, change your own life. J.R. Flatter: Hey, welcome back everybody. It's JR Flatter. And as usual, I'm here with Lucas. Lucas Flatter: Hello? J.R. Flatter: Haven't been in the same room for over 30 days, but [00:01:00] that's my fault. I've been traveling, and definitely before we head out, you got to get together So I wanted to, um, you know, we were wondering about what we're going to do this session. I wanted to revisit an introduction to coaching. You know, you and I are so immersed in this. Teaching almost every day, one form or another. Coaching almost every day in one form or another. think it's a good opportunity to revisit some of the fundamentals and have a conversation about, you know, what is coaching? What is it all about? very much on my mind because I'm teaching a global cohort this week. we do, as you know, two kinds of 30 hour bootcamps. We do invitation only. 30 hours of the fundamentals and then open enrollment eight times a year, 30 hours of the fundamentals of coaching. And we just started one a couple of days ago and it's ongoing. Even as you and I speak, somebody's on the podium teaching. And so I taught this [00:02:00] class two days ago, two and a half days ago. And I started wondering, you know, when's the last time we really talked about the fundamentals? So that's how you and I got here today. it also, not only to revisit, but I know personally, my thinking, my maturation as a coach, we always talk about the scholarship and the neuroscience of leadership and coaching, my experiences as a coach and as a coach facilitator and as a coaching instructor, and our methods continue to mature and change, so it's very worthwhile to... Revisit, because certainly, I guess, what's that stoic philosopher always, Heraclitus, no person ever steps into the same river twice, because they're neither the same person nor is it the same river. and as I taught this lecture two days ago, I realize I'm, might have taught it before, but it's certainly not going to be the same lecture it was a year [00:03:00] ago, or a month ago even, And one of the things that comes to mind first when I think about this is this idea of mindfulness and how it's become woven into our coaching and our coach training. Three years ago, two years ago, a year ago, had you asked me, what's the second slide of every deck you teach? It would have been, let's talk about your emotions, let's talk about surprises that are occurring, and let's talk about insights that you're learning. Emotions, surprises, insights. but as we've continued teaching and I've continued thinking and hopefully growing, I realized, I'm talking about mindfulness as I'm talking about those three things. So now... In every deck we teach, the second page of every deck is let's take some time and get ready to coach, to get ready to learn. so I've been rambling on for a few minutes. What are your thoughts as we go back to the basics a little bit? Lucas Flatter: I guess, um, I think when we [00:04:00] talk about mindfulness, it's like it's encompassing a lot of the different, you know, smaller or like more specific things that we talk about with coaching. So it's like, As you interact with all these coaching concepts, eventually it distills down like a big thing that distills out is mindfulness, because it's all about your perceptions and your beliefs and, like you mentioned, how you come into the room, how are you showing up, and I think that's all related to mindfulness. It's interesting. J.R. Flatter: Yeah, you're reminding me that one of the metaphors we use in coaching is the coaching room and I've literally coached all over the world because I travel a lot. In that room can be a car, can be my office where I am right now, can be a hotel room, so it's much more metaphorical than it is physical. I was coaching in my car yesterday, had a doctor's appointment, and I don't know if you've scheduled a [00:05:00] doctor's appointment lately, but my general practitioner retired, had to get a new one. There were none available in our area. And I finally was referred to one, called them, and was told, yeah, that we're taking appointments in December, which if you know, it's October. I was like, what? So you don't miss doctor's appointments nowadays. So I'm waiting for my doctor's appointment during a scheduled coaching session. think I'm mindful and I'm in the room, even though I'm in a parked car in a parking lot. I have no real distractions. not looking at my iPhone. I might have the air conditioner running. It's still plenty warm here where you and I live, but I'm still mindful and I'm doing my absolute best to coach this human being that's not halfway around the world, but several thousand miles away. So for me, that's what mindfulness is all about. It's [00:06:00] much more I guess it would be redundant to say mindful than it is physical, you know, the core competencies, the eight core competencies that you and I teach for coaching and follow. The second one is, do you have a coaching mindset? And so I don't think it's any accident or coincidence that the International Coaching Federation is asking us to have a coaching mindset and that you and I. As the second slide in every deck we ever teach are talking about Lucas Flatter: I think, yeah, like you think about your physical environment and how it can affect your mood. Like if you have like decorations and pictures of your family and you know all the things, the tokens behind you that kind of prompt certain thoughts and feelings. And if you're not in that particular environment, you almost have to. use mindfulness to put yourself in, you know, so you might get it automatically if you're in your office, whereas if you're in a different location you gotta [00:07:00] have a conscious effort to do that. J.R. Flatter: Yeah, that's an amazing insight. So you just coached me. You didn't even realize it. I guess I can expect an invoice in the mail. yeah, so first of all, all of these books behind me, you know, I pull them off the shelf all the time and talk about them all the time because they're very real to my scholarship and my method and my experiences. Being a coach, being a leader, being an educator, and then my good friend David Quarterman would call these things behind me artifacts, and they're artifacts of my life. There's some things up there that I could tell entire stories about, for entire sessions, but yeah, they do remind me now that you've connected those two dots for me about this journey that I've been on and who I am as a leader and a coach and a father and a grandfather. I don't know if you saw on LinkedIn last night, there's this, um, idea of generations decaying over time, and I don't know, you and I joke about this [00:08:00] a little bit within our family, but. You have a generation that goes through hard times and it creates strong people and then they raise strong people who create children in good times and those children are less strong. I think the artifacts remind me that you can break that cycle because we've done it. And continue to do it. But I laughed and I told him, I'll let you know how it turns out. I'm only 40 years into the experiment. Lucas Flatter: Yeah, it's hard to say. When do you cut off? It's, uh, yeah, the story doesn't have an ending. J.R. Flatter: Well, it does, but not yet. I hope. For a while, anyway. so, Two Roads Leadership. Where do we get that name? This is the third slide in every course we teach. it's about where do we get our name? And it's unabashedly borrowed from Robert Frost, two roads diverged in a wood. And I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. And it's in the fundamentals of coaching. It's an [00:09:00] introduction to coaching because I think it's so fundamental and to coaching. Every session, we talk about the arc of sessions. It's five minutes or 50 minutes. There's an arc to that session. Every relationship, whether it's 15 minutes or a year, by the way, I'm discovering I love every other week for a year as a pace for a coaching relationship, It gives you enough time to really develop some strength and trust and safety. but when you're starting that relationship, you and that leader are at. Two roads diverging in a wood and in what direction are you going to go? And then at every session, when we do coach training, we have something we call one on one feedback. And it comes from us, the facilitators, but it also comes from the peer students. What's one thing you loved and one thing you thought might have been done better? we were literally just talking about this in our one on one a few minutes ago. I don't think Frost was telling us [00:10:00] one road was better than another. Frost was simply telling us, make a decision and go, and live with it. And fundamentally, for me, that's what coaching is. In every session, in every question, I'm standing at that intersection for every question. Is this the road less traveled, and will it make all the difference? What goes through your mind when you think about coaching and being at that intersection? Lucas Flatter: well, I like, um, hearing that at the beginning of, you know, like a learning journey because if you think about, like, picking up a new skill or a new talent or, you know, an ability, we talk about it a lot, like, embracing, you know, being bad or embracing sucking at something new. and that's true, like, if, if everybody that picked up A Spanish book could learn Spanish in a month without any friction. Everyone would learn a second language. Or if [00:11:00] everybody picked up a guitar and said, there's no friction, I'm just playing and playing, and then I got it, everybody would have that skill. So if you choose a new skill, and it could be coaching. you need to say, okay, I'm, I'm going on this road and it might be less traveled because it has those frustrations ahead or those complications, but, just choosing to do that every day is what's, I feel like that makes a difference, like those continual commitments. J.R. Flatter: yeah, I was thinking about you over the weekend as I was watching. I don't know why, but I keep getting these guitar playing videos popping into my feed, even though I don't play guitar, never really have. And all of the different methods necessary to be a good guitar player, and even a good guitar player and all the different styles and preferences and methods, I mean, it's just infinite, and almost all of life is so [00:12:00] infinite, and so you're faced with these two road leadership decisions every day, and in many ways. Your willingness and ability to make them and then go do them. It's funny you talk about Spanish. This is literally sitting at my desk. 1001 Spanish words in context. For probably five years and read it three or four times. so the fourth slide in every deck in the introduction to coaching is a pretty bold statement. And I feel comfortable saying it because I've seen it happen so many times. the statement is, this journey will change the course of your life. If you choose the road less traveled that happens to be a coaching journey. that journey is going to change your life, it's going to change your life personally and professionally. It's going to change the way you learn, it's going to change the way you lead, it's going to change the way you [00:13:00] communicate, a parent, partner. It's a really transformational journey. One of the things I ask all of our new students is write down Your thoughts when you hear me say that, that this journey is gonna change your life and then we revisit them, at the end of the course, at the end of our time together, changes have you seen in your life and leadership and parenting, et cetera, with your coaching journey? Lucas Flatter: I want to say that it's, it's kind of like a lens that you look at things through almost you think about having a different perspective and okay now I'm now I'm thinking from this perspective where I used to think these things but now I'm starting to think that like and we talk about it with like perception and beliefs leading to different actions but I think you Like, by learning how to coach, you're changing your beliefs, you're starting to believe that, [00:14:00] you know, there's value in these conversations that, and you start to believe that it's not all about my solutions, you know, you start to, when you see these things happening and you see the evidence and you see, okay, this person, when I coached them, I didn't think any change would come and then it does. So it reinforces itself and then now I, I believe that it, you know, it's valuable and it works, but that belief changes, like you said, like how I go about other things, like when I'm trying to teach anything, like to Declan or teach something at work or, you know, learning things. And I don't know what to pinpoint as the belief. I think one of them is like, you believe that small, consistent changes, I kind of hinted at this earlier, but small, consistent changes lead to, you know, gain momentum and build up over time. and if you have that belief, [00:15:00] you'll be more willing to invest time and things that are important to you, I think. J.R. Flatter: Yeah. You've just reminded me of, I use this word all the time, self-efficacy. when someone says something like that to you, like this bold statement, this journey is going to change the course of your personal and professional life, you have no evidence upon which to base that. and another metaphor that we use all the time in our teaching is jump off the tower. We talk about a 10 meter tower, which is the Olympic diving level. It's a little over 33 feet. It takes gravity about a second and a half to pull you into the water once you hop off. But once you do, you have the efficacy that, okay, I've done that. Now I can do it again. And coaching is the same way. And I was just in a lecture and one of the students said, you've been telling me for the last couple of days. And I said, you know, thank you for listening and thank you [00:16:00] for your appreciation that you've tried to put what you've heard into action, but until you actually believe it and you've created change in another person's life, then you'll start to really be on this coaching journey. You're not doing it because someone told you, Professor JR told you, you're not you're not doing it because your job requires it, but you've actually. seen it, seen it work, and now you have the self efficacy that you need to jump off that tower again and again and again, and change people's lives, change your own life. Another requirement, To get started on this journey, to become a coach, have an open heart, have an open mind, and actually participate in whatever learning program you join. lot of different places that one could go to become a coach, a lot of different ways one could learn to become a coach. And you don't really need anybody's uh, uh, approval to go out into the [00:17:00] world and call yourself a coach. And so, In some ways, just start getting reps, start jumping off the tower, but really an open heart and an open mind. We're well into the 21st century, as you and I talk about a lot, and coaching is becoming more and more fundamental to leadership. So, having an open mind, so much involved in coming into a learning environment and having an open mind. And it's probably evident that when I'm talking about something, the most recent example of when I've talked about it keeps coming into the next conversation, but having just had this conversation a couple of hours ago, about what it means to have an open mind coming into a training session or a training program, it really is, initially anyway, taking other people's word for something until such time that you've seen it either work or not work on your own behalf. And so. [00:18:00] Whether it's guitar, or Spanish, or algebra, go into it with an open mind, that there are a lot of things you don't know, and there are a lot of things that you can learn. but secondly, go into it with an open heart. This is probably, for most people, the harder of the two, an open mind. Okay, I can do that, but we're not as comfortable in practice talking about having an open heart, depending on what, where you grew up and what kind of culture you had in your family and what kind of culture is at the organization you work. In your own belief system, can you learn to, and there's many definitions of love, can you learn to love the people that you work with and love your family and love yourself? I strongly think if you have an open mind. and you open your heart, you can. I was teaching a particular group of folks a few weeks ago, and they were commiserating a bit. And for me, in [00:19:00] my coaching mind, the idea that they were having such a struggle with this particular demographic was, they had not yet accepted that there was an opportunity to love them. Not like you'd love a child or you'd love a life partner, but there are other ways to open your heart to other people. I think the further and further we get into the 21st century, the more and more important that that's going to become. What are your thoughts? Lucas Flatter: yeah, I mean, I think humans in general have this, cognitive bias towards information that you've heard or, you know, you believe that you believe in. Almost that abstracted thought that I know, I know what I'm talking about and I know what I'm doing, so, Like you might just initially reject a new idea without consciously thinking about it and we talk about echo chambers online where you're part of a community that believes the same thing so then maybe you're not comfortable [00:20:00] hearing different perspectives or you know I think about banned books like you are so uncomfortable with an idea that you don't even want to engage with it at all or have anybody else engage with it. So I guess we're kind of fighting against the default and like the natural tendency there. So I think it's important to start with that. Yeah. J.R. Flatter: Yeah, that's great insight. And again, you're coaching me again. we talk about inter generations all the time, and you and I teach sessions on inter generations, and it is generational, but it's also so many other things involved that it's to o oversimplifies it to point all of the challenges between the different generations simply at the generation. Age, time in the world, ethnicity, gender, preference, I mean so many other things [00:21:00] are involved in addition to generation that it just sub optimizes the conversation to point it at generations and generations alone. But to even open your heart to that idea that perhaps it isn't a generational thing or perhaps it even is a generational thing and to not have this, we call it, Fixed mindset instead of a growth mindset. I guess part of what we're saying when we say have an open mind and an open heart, is to have a growth mindset, that perhaps you don't know anything or everything. You know, you and I were getting ready to have this session talking about this guest. We had a few sessions ago, the interplanetary physicists. It just blows my mind every time I think about it, but it also reminds me how little I know and how much more I have to learn, and that's what the open heart and the open mind is all about. In my humble opinion, as people often say, [00:22:00]