How to Get to Coaching Mastery — a 16 minute masterclass with principles & examples

0:02 we have to first understand what coaching is and a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that coaching is giving somebody a set of instructions some people make the mistake of thinking coaching is giving feedback some people make the mistake of thinking that coaching is helping somebody with whatever task they want to do some people make the mistake of thinking coaching is selfless Act of helping further the other person's goals

0:34 whatever they may be and yes there can be aspects of coaching that check some of those boxes but that is not the highest level of coaching so as with anything any human endeavor there are levels of expertise levels of impact and then there is the level of Mastery and what I'm interested in teaching people is mainly the Mastery the Mastery level of coaching is about helping the individual

1:05 understand themselves because if you can be an assistant in helping someone understand themselves you have not only solved the one problem that they may have brought to you at this moment you played a meaningful role in helping them solve pretty much every problem they will ever face in their life business or personal so that is what Mastery level coaching looks like that is what transformative leadership and transformative management

1:36 looks like we have a lot of people say oh in this industry we are lacking transformative managers and we are but a lot of times people are talking about transformation in terms of ooh I want a manager that helps me get straight to director or straight to VP cuz of course I am VP material right that's not transformative if a manager is doing that for you it's most like because either that manager has a low self-esteem or that manager is trying to

2:06 pursue their own agenda and your promotion direct to director or VP is merely a tool that they choose to use in pursuit of that agenda okay so how do you quote somebody if personality is largely innate of course the answer is you help them understand themselves so then of course the next question is well how do you help them understand M elves and you mainly do that in two ways one is you don't give them feedback you make

2:37 observations and you share those observations the second is that you ask them the right questions I'm going to further break those down for you so why not give somebody feedback and why instead make observations there are two reasons why the first reason is that when you give somebody feedback it doesn't matter how open they say they are to feedback how hungry they are for feedback they are going to get defensive that is human nature and most human

3:05 beings cannot combat it they might be saying all the right things they might be expressing all the right body language but inside they're not peaceful about what they're hearing the problem is once you put somebody on the defensive what happens is a lot of their senses shut down in this case partially shut down cuz clearly they're not under a physical attack and the problem now is that if you are coaching you want them to be at the greatest degree of openness that

3:33 they can be so your job as a coach is to First instill that high degree of openness so when you start with feedback you are working against that goal and there's a problem with the language too which is when somebody says give me feedback or you tell them oh let me give you some feedback you will not be able to control sounding judgmental I don't care how good you are at giving feedback you're going to sound like you're

3:58 passing judgment that's another thing you don't want to do because you also don't want to taint your thoughts but instead you can make observations when somebody says give me feedback in this scenario where it's related to personality say well the main feedback is I think you doing a solid job and here are some examples for why you want to make them feel comfortable okay now only do this if it is actually true right so give them that feedback but

4:25 don't spend more than 30 seconds on it and then pivot and say actually we're grown-ups here I I don't think I have feedback for you but could I share a couple of observations with you and notice even though I'm presumably the person in power or who has greater power in this relationship I'm not saying I want to share some observations with you I'm asking them a question could I share some observations with you because you want them to feel empowered of course

4:52 the answer to that question is always yes nobody says no but even though it is a question for which there's only one answer the other individual is now going to feel more empowered and is also going to feel more open because now they're curious ooh what are these observations it's a surprising thing nobody's ever told them this anytime they've asked for feedback people have given them the sandwich so that's what they are expecting and human beings react really

5:16 well to novel situations as long as they're not threatening so now you created a novel situation for them and it's like okay yeah I'm curious and then you share your observations whatever those are so that's the first part then what do you do next now you use questions to help them truly learn more about themselves let's take a specific example here say it's a coaching conversation and it's something about well I'm thinking about what's next for

5:45 me in my career I want to start a company I feel like I was born to do that I also have this job offer and I could also apply for a promotion here now this doesn't have to be a career coach coaching thing it can be pretty much any coaching even like why don't I present as well to execs even though I present really well to non- exacts and to my team or it could be like hey help

6:13 me with this person I can't get along with them and help me figure out how to deal with this it can be any situation so somebody's like okay yeah I want to maybe start a company okay what's going to be my first question why do you want to start a company I'm curious in response to that question most people will embark on this 5 minute monologue which makes very little logical sense but you let them speak right you listen

6:40 the reason I'm asking that question is what is this person's Clarity of thought how clear are they and like I said most people are not at all clear it's some random thing after another oh this domain seems interesting blah blah it's the usual oh I don't want to work for anybody I want to set my own schedule my own hours whatever like I want to make an impact on the world blah blah right I feel like that's my life's Mission

7:02 whatever once they are done let's say they say something like oh I feel like that's the best way I can make an impact on the world then my question will be why is it important to make an impact on the world and now they actually don't know the answer no one knows the answer to that question it is an impossible question to answer and yet because of our ego we feel like we must answer the question so we will embark on some

7:30 answer like I'm really passionate about this cause when I was 11 years old I saw that there were many kids without textbooks and so they had a lot of hardship I want to solve that problem by giving people access to free textbooks free education I want to democratize access to high quality education okay I hear you that's a very commendable intention and it's great I love it I love it why do you want to do it so now

7:59 they're very very confused what do you mean why I just told you why I want to do it like I want all of this stuff right I had these life experiences I feel like I need to give back etc etc maybe in that case I will ask them something like what makes you think that giving back will give you the satisfaction that you told me you seek and so now they will recite some truism around giving back and why human beings

8:28 are happiest when you be give back some borrowed knowledge right it is at that point where I'll point out like I'm curious where did you hear this it's a leading question where did you read this that giving back is the key to human happiness or satisfaction or whatever it else and so they will probably say yeah I read this somewhere most people have read it in a tweet somewhere but they won't say that they'll try to say oh I

8:51 read it in a book somewhere man search for meaning or whatever else okay have you given back in the past even in small ways yeah yeah I have have I did this ABC volunteered here there whatever okay as a result of giving back in the past are you satisfied right now are you happy right now how happy are you scale of 1 to 10 by the way that is a fake question because happiness you cannot put it on a scale it's a very binary

9:15 thing it's an okay question to ask in the process of coaching okay so how happy are you because you gave back well right now I'm not that happy because that was a while back or right now I have an annoying boss and I don't want that oh okay interesting so just giving back is not enough there are other conditions here like You Want To Be Your Own Boss you don't want to be subject to other people's priorities and other

9:42 people's schedules and other people's directions okay so what else is there what you are trying to do with these questions is you are trying to give this person a glimpse it's just a glimpse okay cuz one conversation will not change anybody's life but what you are trying trying to do with this is you're giving them a glimpse into themselves and at some point after this set line of questioning I will point out to them the big idea which is that ultimately I

10:12 think we can agree that you need to think clearly about what you want all I want to be able to do in this capacity as somebody who's coaching you is to help you remove all the garbage that is getting in your way of being able to think clearly because there's just a bunch there's heaps and heaps of garbage that is blocking your ability to think clearly you actually naturally have the ability to think clearly but there is

10:38 just heaps and heaps of garbage there's one pile of garbage that is all around ooh I need to make an impact on the world there's another pile of garbage oh I need to help others there's another pile of garbage oh I need to manage my own schedule or I need to be My Own Boss these are specific examples here but I'll tell you in any situation you are not able to think clearly because there's all these piles of garbage and

11:04 you think it's not garbage you think it's some Exquisite architecture in your mind you value this garbage and what you have done is you made it part of your identity effectively what you've done is you've said I am a person who loves this big smelly heap of garbage and once you make it part of your identity that's very hard to then think clearly the way this ties back to personality is through these coach conversations you want them to

11:32 understand the aspects of their personality that are perhaps working against their own interests and that is all you can do you can do nothing further than that with another human being with yourself you can do more than that but with another human being that is all you can do you can help them understand why they lack of openness or heap of garbage that is getting in the way of the very goals they seek or why not being conscientious in a specific

12:04 role is a problem so the problem is not that you have a conflict with this other guy gal team Etc the problem is actually very Dee rooted in your personality and this kind of coaching is transformational it takes time like I said it's not one conversation and you're done I've done this with a number of people it hasn't always worked but it does work with a pretty high success rate but it takes months the last tip

12:34 I'll leave you with is you can only make progress in a coaching context once you've dealt with specifically the openness Dimension because without that there is no further progress possible again I'm talking at the Mastery level of coaching there are other levels of coaching below that which can also be effective find the openness is low but now you're going to use some kind of incentive hard carrots to essentially manipulate the person into doing certain

13:06 things that are perhaps good for them good for the team Etc yes that can be done so can personality be changed I am yet to see evidence I don't mean scientific evidence I'm a very creative person you tell me hey Shas I want this conclusion about the effect of Personality on ABC Factor whatever the factor is on wealth on success on happiness on marital longevity whatever it is I can guarantee you I will design a study that stands the scrutiny of

13:35 whatever the scientific standards are and I will draw that conclusion for you 100% I guarantee you so I don't give a about any scientific study all right that is yet another kind of pile of garbage now here's the thing the antithesis principle right I don't give a about scientific studies because I know the truth of what this is but if I need to convince somebody that they ought to pay attention to this sure I might cite a scientific study but I'm

14:04 not going to take them as truth because somebody showed me an N of 100 with this statistical significance and made some nonsense graphs that actually we'll all pretend we understand but none of us do right and wrote a six page long paper because that's what the journal asked for by the way I've written those academic papers this is why I quit the PHD program because I was like this is all it's not about scientific studies say personality can change I

14:32 don't care I can prove to you that personality can change and I can prove to you that personality cannot change you just tell me what conclusions you want I'll design the perfect study the perfect participants the perfect n the perfect mathematical modeling and Analysis and I can show you that so please get rid of all of those don't site for me oh here's a paper from Harvard because then you're not getting this message it is my observation that

14:54 most human beings cannot change their base personality characteristics some human beings can at least play a role play a part they can wear the hat and the most common one is introverts wearing the extroverted hat or vice versa right the vice versa is less common you can do that but the base personality doesn't quite change the only situation where I've found people have gone through some kind of meaningful personality transformation is after some meaningful personal or work

15:26 related trauma and all that trauma the dark period or whatever it is whether it's anxiety depression or job loss and then some emotional turmoil as a result of job loss or you know does not meet review rating or whatever it is right it's not the event that causes the transformation it's the emotional turmoil arising out of that event that can cause the transformation and not everybody has the emotional turmoil after these events again it doesn't mean

15:57 everybody who goes through a trauma atic stressful event will have a transformation but some people do so that's an overall view of what Mastery level coaching looks like and how you might apply it in the context of personality