Monthly Archives: November 2013

Coaching Notes: The Genius

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There was a person who needed coaching but he had two things standing in his way. First, he was extremely talented. Second, his ego believed no one was capable of improving him. He was the center of the sales universe and everyone else were satellites circling him in a worshipful orbit.

He actually believed every good idea was his. A company-wide joke went like this: Your idea must be really good, because Joe is telling everyone it was his. Another joke: “What did Neil Armstrong see when he set foot on the moon? Joe’s footsteps, because he had gotten there first.”

Question: How do you coach a genius? Someone who is infinitely smarter than you?

Answer: You can’t coach them directly because, unless you are a certified demigod (think Hercules, or Perseus), your opinion doesn’t really matter. So you must elicit the opinion of someone whose opinion does matter. In Joe’s case, since he was a salesperson, this respected person was his customer.

Why are you even trying to coach someone as good as me?
Why are you even trying to coach someone as good as me?

What was Joe’s problem? One of them was his presentation style. He presented PowerPoint slides that were crammed with text and black and white photos. As I told him, “Your content, the substance of your presentation, is great, but your style is detracting from it. You need fewer words, more color, movement, embedded videos, things that help make your lively presentation more lively.”

My critique changed nothing. It only hurt our relationship. He thought I was incredibly presumptuous to be critiquing him. In short, he hated me for being arrogant enough to challenge an acknowledged superstar.

What was I to do to make this good salesperson better? I did the following. We had an important hospital system coming to our corporate office. I arranged for me to have the first 30 minutes of the presentation, and Joe could have the last hour. I used a presentation rich in graphics, footnoted references to clinical papers, sound, movement, and ideas that strategically addressed problems common to most hospitals. The audience was transfixed. I held them in the palm of my hand. I then turned it over to Joe. Within five minutes they were taking restroom breaks while he was still presenting. After the presentation the key customers came to me and asked, in front of Joe, for copies of my presentation. When I asked why the CIO said, “You’ve made my case for me. You have clear illustrations of benefits, footnoted studies…I can use this internally to sell members within our hospital system on your product.” WOW!

Joe was not a genius–he only thought he was–but he was smart enough to see how the customer had voted on our two presentation styles. Within a week he had adopted the behaviors I had wanted to impart, without me asking him to do so.

Coaching Notes: The Perfectionist

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She was conscientious and flawless in her follow-up. Her customers embraced her as a member of their team, but she had a debilitating problem you could not see. She was a perfectionist, and when things did not go perfectly, and she received feedback that had the slightest tinge of criticism, then she would obsess over that small detail for days, sometimes weeks. It derailed her, demotivated her, and unless you knew the type you could never have guessed what was wrong. And, if you persisted in your criticism, you would have soon received her two-week notice and have lost a valued team member.

So how do you impart success behaviors to someone with this psychological makeup? You might say something like this: “I want to show you something that I’ve seen Joe [the superstar of the team] do, and NO ONE ELSE IS DOING IT. I think it is what is helping him end up first in sales every year and I think you’re the person who can and will compete with him.”

This is a way of making the implied criticism (you don’t possess this behavior) less hurtful. After all, NOBODY is doing this except Joe, who finishes first in sales every year.

If I criticized her I would not achieve what I wanted, therefore, I did not critique her.
If I criticized her I would not achieve what I wanted, therefore, I did not critique her.

Did I ever offer direct, constructive critiques to her? No. There was no need. She was extraordinarily perceptive, and her self-criticisms were accurate and made long before mine could be spoken. To critique her would be to derail her, and she was doing an excellent job. Therefore, my goal was to manage her emotions.

How?

I would welcome her into my office whenever she wanted to talk, even when I was very busy. If she ever appeared at my door I made certain she knew she was my first order of business. Now, if I faced a tight deadline I might postpone our talk by a few hours, unless she just needed to spend a few minutes, but would let her know I wanted to speak to her as soon as possible.

She was like a finely tuned race car. Talking to the boss was maintenance. It made her feel valued (and she was!). But I would never critique her. I would have if she had ever done something egregious that required comment, but nothing close to that ever happened. She was too good, too professional, and too tightly wrapped. However, because I understood how she was wired, and accommodated this, I never failed to receive anything other than 110% from a very talented salesperson.

Coaching Notes: The Wounded Spirit

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The goal of coaching is to impart missing behaviors that produce success and remove those producing failure. If these are coaching’s goals, then why are some people so wary of coaching? There are many reasons, but two major ones are: 1) Some have had bad experiences from coaches who did not know what they were doing. 2) Others have personalities that make coaching a difficult fit for them.

In the previous post we looked at those who have an unteachable spirit, who reject changing in any way. Such people cannot be coached. Then, next to them, are people who are so crippled by insecurity that the constructive critique that is coaching makes them feel threatened to the point of panic.

communicationPeople who are possessed by this degree of insecurity have a wounded spirit, and it expresses itself in countless ways. For example, I knew a person who never finished college, and who was surrounded by co-workers and customers who all had degrees. To protect his ego he used the most pompous, pretentious language I’ve ever come across to show the world that he had a large vocabulary and, therefore, was really smart.

People who are this insecure have built up defenses to protect their fragile ego that are virtually impregnable. Their reflex response is to fend off any critique, even when it is softly stated and would benefit them greatly. They are capable of being coached, but the process takes much longer than it should.

What was sad about the insecure person (referred to above) was the way coaching activated the primitive parts of his brain associated with fight or flight. Coaching was perceived to be a threat. So, whenever I would work with him he would always perform far more poorly than he would while I was away. He could not focus on the task at hand. His fears would not let him.

So what can we do? Keep demonstrating the success behaviors and reinforcing their adoption by the spoken and written word. Insecurity slows down the learning process, but it doesn’t make it impossible.

 

Coaching Notes: A Teachable Spirit

Business, Coaching, , , , ,

When you start to coach a person you should have high hopes, because you can receive one of life’s most rewarding feelings when you turn someone’s career around. It isn’t often you get the chance to change someone’s life for the better, possibly forever, and coaching can provide this opportunity.

communication

However, understand this, there are some people who have unteachable spirits, who cannot be coached. Take your time before you categorize someone in this way, but if they have an unteachable spirit and do not want to learn, then they won’t, and your valuable coaching time is being wasted.

I once tried to coach someone whose soul was–and still is–set in concrete. He is the type who stubbornly resists all attempts from the world, reality, coaches, and anyone and anything else, from changing him. He offers this defense, “Hey, I’m comfortable in my own skin. If you feel the need to change, then do so. Me? I’m doing pretty damn good just the way I am.”

Depending on when you catch this person in their narrative, they may be doing just fine…for the moment. In his case it took about five years before his average skill level nose-dived into mediocrity; he refused to adapt in the face of technological change, customer change, etc. The company then matched his now, low-level skills with a suitable challenge. He was given all of the smallest accounts in the country and went from being a sales manager to being a customer service agent in all but name.

Here is the point. It is simple and important. You can’t coach everyone. It requires a teachable spirit. If you are coaching someone without one, then you might as well be pumping the Great Lakes into the Pacific Ocean to try and make it a fresh water pond.

Communication Breakdowns

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After entering a blog post on strategic decisions an interesting and odd discussion ensued on LinkedIn. A man who was extremely proud of his PhD launched into a rambling diatribe about how consulting was for fools because the statistics showed how most strategic implementations failed, etc.

I then pointed out how he was confusing strategic implementations with decisions, and how some decisions require no implementation. His prolix replies later revealed how was once a consultant and was glad he left the business–this was code for, “I failed as a consultant.” But after several attempts by me to explain my post, he still seemed to be unable to grasp its simple message.

What had happened? Why was my communication so obviously misread?

This entertaining episode underscores how complex communication can be. The proud PhD, who had failed as a consultant, read my post and saw nothing other than consulting and his anger over failing at it. It oozed out of his skin like it was a boil that had finally been lanced. This phenomenon is often described as pushing someone’s button and, after accidentally pushing his, a tape, continually looping in his head, began to play. No amount of explaining ever made the idea in the blog post clear to him, nor could it, since it was such an emotionally hot topic.

The lesson: Someone will never hear what you are saying when they do not want to; therefore, unless you have a working or personal relationship with them, silently wish them godspeed and move on. If you have a relationship to maintain, and understanding what you are saying is not essential to the relationship or business, then let the subject mercifully die.

Strategic Decisions

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Strategic decisions are those courses of action that impact an entire enterprise, and according to Myers-Briggs some of us, including me, may be wired to make bad strategic decisions.

mbti-5-facetsIn Myers-Briggs you have the judging-perceiving dichotomy. Judgers tend to make decisions more quickly, because they are energized by finishing tasks. Perceivers tend to lolly-gag–at least they do in the minds of judgers–because they are energized by the pressure of the dead line. I am a judger, but when it comes to making strategic decisions I consciously delay making them quickly.

Why? Because strategic decisions require examining all of the possible paths you might take and systematically ruling out all of them but one, the best one, and then focusing on this most important path until its course ends in the achievement of your aim.

For example, if I am confronted by three possible courses of action at the outset of making a decision, it is possible that all three are very inferior to what is ultimately the best path, the path that I am unaware of at that moment. Of the three available options, I am confident I would pick the best path. But had I waited and explored other options, seeking feedback from colleagues, journals, customers, and so on, I might have discovered a far superior way to invest my time and energy.

three-roads-wallpaper-for-1920x1200-widescreen-11-184By focusing on the best of the immediately available three options I would probably have produced favorable results. And this becomes a win-lose, because this small win would reinforce my faulty problem-solving approach. When it comes to strategic decisions the goal is not to hit singles, but home runs, because singles may keep you in the game for a time, but homers eventually lead to market dominance. And market dominance requires maximizing the results produced by the expenditure of your precious store of energy and time.

The problem-solving model that I follow is simple and can be summed up in three words: Simplify. Focus. Achieve. Or, to flesh this out a bit: Seek all options, invite them, then test and reduce them to the best option. Once the best course of action is discovered, focus all available energy on this option. After all, if it is the best possible option, then what better way is there of spending your time? Finally, achieve your goal. Don’t give up. It may take time, years even, but if it is the best possible option, then make it happen. However, if you determine you made a mistake in choosing this option, then you are back to square one and must test all available choices until the best choice is left standing.

A Culture of Appreciation

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A group of executives were called into a meeting to discuss budget cuts. Everyone was wary, fearful the cuts might include staff, bonuses, the ending of promising projects, things that hit close to home. The mood was dark and almost surly. It was the sort of atmosphere that was not conducive to achieving tough goals, but it was perfect for producing conflict, heightened tension and demotivation.

A tuning fork.
A tuning fork.

The CEO brought in a consultant to start the meeting. He said something like this, “The first thing I’d like to do is have every one of you tell us about something that went exceptionally well during the past week. It might not have occurred in your department, but you heard about it and you observed its impact.”

They looked around at each other wondering what this was about, and then somebody offered something. He was commended for sharing. Someone else offered another example of something that went well in his department. He was thanked for his contribution. Soon everyone was sharing and the mood changed dramatically. The focus was now on what was going right, the positive and not the negative. And it offered an opportunity to not only share examples of the contributions people were making, but to express appreciation to those who were making the contribution.

The work ahead was still going to be hard. Tough decisions would have to be made. But now the positive focus turned the threat into an opportunity to discover efficiencies, become nimbler, and possibly develop new processes and procedures that righted a ship that was listing.

Humans are emotional tuning forks. When a tuning fork is vibrating, other tuning forks pick up this vibration when they come into its proximity. Consultants can help change the tune of an organization, and the impact of this can be dramatic. A relentlessly negative outlook, fear, an inward focus concerned primarily about oneself, rarely produces the results an organization seeks and sometimes desperately needs.

[The above story comes from Professor Dalton Kehoe, York University, in his Effective Communication course found in The Great Courses.]

Differentiation: The Most Powerful Sales Tool

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I’ve used differentiation to sell multi-million dollar systems. And once, when we did not receive the right to participate in a $4 million opportunity, differentiation was used to secure that right. One year later, after numerous presentations, plant tours, visits to reference accounts, we won that contract. I’ve also used differentiation in job interviews that resulted in me winning the job against much more accomplished individuals, and in coaching jobseekers in the art of interviewing.

The reason why I focus so much attention on it is because the process is so powerful. Why? Because, when it is applied in the right way, you are allowed to promote your product at the expense of the competitive product, and the customer will allow you to do so even when they favor the competitor. But the key is doing it the right way or this most powerful sales tool can blow up in your face.

I am currently working with a European salesforce to develop their differentiation message and, as with U.S. sales forces, they were initially skeptical about using this approach. But once it was nuanced so as not to offend, and the facts were checked to make sure everything I was saying was 100% factual and accurate, they began to see what a powerful weapon they had to fend off new competitors.

The format is simple: You begin with a differentiation statement. This states a fundamental difference between the two products in a way that favors your product. Then, you tell a brief story that illustrates this difference, then you conclude with an expanded version of the previous differentiation statement. The repeated message sticks, the inherently memorable story sticks, and when the competitor comes pitching their product the customer does not buy what they are selling because a key difference, in the forefront or back of their mind, prevents them from doing so.

[If you are interested in learning more about this complex subject, please visit tompayne.com and click on “The Causes of Sales Success” tab in the navigation bar.]