I was having coffee with Norma Delgado last year here in Bratislava.

Back then, Norma managed a team of two hundred and seventy payroll professionals, and their job was to ensure that around two hundred and fifty thousand employees working in Europe, Middle East, and Africa for one of the largest corporations in the world got paid on time every month.

So Norma and her managers know a thing or two about how to get stuff done.

And at one point, as we’re sipping on coffee, Norma says, Petra, my managers know how to deliver results.

What I need them to know, in addition, is how to take care of their people.

And I almost choke on my coffee because there, in one sentence, Norma articulated what is my professional mission, and that is to inspire and teach managers how to lead in a way that their people feel heard, understood, and supported.

What if I told you that the old way of relating to people at work, relating to your team, is dead?

What if I told you that people are tired of leaders that micromanage, leaders that constantly tell them what to do?

What if I told you that managers themselves are tired of micromanaging?

They’re tired of telling people again and again what to do and feeling like a general in a battle most of the time.

What if I told you there is another way?

Would you like to know more?

Hi.

My name is Petra Holic. I’m a leadership coach. And for more than twenty years, my professional mission has been to help leaders be the best they can be at what they do. My mission today, though, is to inspire you to think about management differently and to leave you with enough tips that you will want to try with your team tomorrow.

Here is what we’re going to do together.

First, I’ll burst the bubble of what many people still believe good leadership is about.

Then I’ll flip it around and tell you about a different way of how to relate to people at work.

And finally, I promise to give you enough tips that you will want to try with your team tomorrow.

I said I will give you three minutes, and I will. I have a working title for these three minutes, and it goes like this.

How to kill your team in three easy steps.

Repeat these steps every day for three to six months, and you will kill your team. Results guaranteed.

Let’s look at myth number one.

I have to be the smartest person in a room. Many leaders still believe that it’s their job. It’s their responsibility to be the smartest person in a room. I mean, that’s what they pay me, the big bucks. Right?

I got to where I am by being smart. No one is taking that away from me.

I gotta show how smart I am in my one to ones, in my team meetings, in front of the client.

Do you know a manager like this?

Show me. Let me know.

Okay. Myth number two, I always have to tell them what to do.

Many leaders still believe that telling people what to do is delegation.

I mean, how else are going to how else are people going to know what to do? How else are they going to learn? I gotta tell them what to do. I gotta tell them when to do it, and I have to tell them how to do it.

I’m the queen of delegation, and you know it.

Do you know a manager like this?

Alright. I see a few few nos.

Myth number three, I must tell them what I think of them.

Many leaders still believe that telling people what they think of them and their work is feedback.

You want feedback? No problem. I will tell you what I think, and I don’t sugarcoat things. Take it or leave it, honey.

Feedback on myself?

No need.

I’ve earned the right to be right.

These are the three myths of good leadership that many managers still believe in and practice.

Hands up, wave, send me a reaction.

If you’ve ever had a manager who practice one, two, or, god forbid, all three of these leadership myths, How did it make you feel to work with someone like this?

Go to the chat section and feel free to send us a comment.

Give us a reaction. How did it feel for you to work with someone like this? Are we seeing any interesting comments, Grant?

Yeah. I think that, Francesco is coming back and saying worthless. That seems, you know, not being valued, Many in the public sector, which is an interesting comment.

No decision making power and no autonomy.

Mhmm.

Out of there, under constant control, unengaged and disempowered, which is a nice one.

Stullifying, I’ve never heard that word. Something new, and not realising, their potential as well. So, yeah, all, all very similar to what you’ve been saying.

Mhmm.

Yeah. The micromanagement doesn’t work these days. That sort of level of detail and pointing doesn’t work.

Mhmm.

Thank you for commenting. Thank you for, letting us know.

And the answers are always very similar.

Here are just a few words, that really sum up well, how we feel when we work for bad managers.

The thing is, the effect doesn’t stay with us just at work. It follows us home.

It adds to the stress we feel inside, and it compromises our well-being.

The question is, where do we pick up these habits, these dysfunctional habits?

It goes way back.

It first starts in our childhood when we start observing our parents and other adults, the way they parent us, the way they relate to us.

And then it continues in our schools when we observe how our teachers and professors relate to us, teach us, treat us and each other.

And we also observe this in our society, media, and politics when we observe how we treat each other in our communities.

And then we bring it to work.

It’s a big love that we bring to work.

And then we become managers and think this is how to treat each other, treat people at work.

Listen. No one is born a great manager.

And companies generally are not very good and not very thoughtful in their decisions about whom to promote. Check this out.

These are the top two reasons people get promoted.

No wonder people are not ready to lead when when they’re promoted. Typically, this is how it goes. You’re promoted, and then someone takes a magic wand and says, now go. Be a great manager.

Inspire them.

Lead them.

Take care of them. Grow them. And, of course, at the same time, manage the budget, manage the deadlines, manage the tasks, deliver team results. Go and do it now.

If this was a fairy tale, this is where the big, bad, scary wolf comes in.

Here you are freshly promoted, all these expectations on you, and what do you get?

Training, mentoring, coaching? What do you actually get to deliver on the expectations put on you?

The truth is not much.

And the truth is scary.

Eighty two percent scary.

Eighty two percent of managers, this is UK data, get no formal training as they’re promoted to being a manager. And they call them accidental managers.

Let that say let that crazy number sink in.

So let’s summarize this. You get into management with a big load of assumptions when they become managers.

And when they become managers.

But listen, I don’t want this to be a hate fest against the managers in our lives and in our organizations because there is good news.

There is another way.

It’s not rocket science, but it does require you to put away, get rid of the old fashioned myths that sometimes we still believe about leadership.

And it also requires your willingness to grow and learn as a person and as a manager. So here is what we’re going to do now. We will take those three leadership myths that I’ve talked about, and we’ll switch them around. We’ll flip them around and look at them through the lens of the coaching mindset.

We’ll take what the best professional coaches do every day, and will apply to what leaders do every day.

So here we go.

Remember this? Remember this myth?

How about instead of being the smartest person in a room, you try what the former CEO of Best Buy, Hubert Jolley, recommends doing.

And I gotta read this for you. If you believe your role as a leader is to be the smartest one in a room and to make sure that everybody knows how smart you are, you’re wrong.

If you believe that your role as a manager is to create an environment where others can be successful, then you’re on the right track.

Are you willing to play a different role on your team?

Are you willing to step back and focus on others instead of shining so brightly yourself all the time?

If yes, then I offer you simple questions.

And by the way, you don’t have to take a picture. You don’t have to screenshot this. You don’t have to madly write them down. You will get everything, all these slides and all these questions, later on so that you can really use them. These are simple questions, and they’re adapted from one of the best books out there about coaching and business by sir John Whitmore.

They’re simply they’re so effective. You can ask these questions in your one to ones, in your team meetings, in your project meetings.

Why questions?

Questions are the most fundamental currency of the coaching mindset.

When you ask questions, this activates the brain of the person in front of you.

When you talk at people and show them how smart you are, this pacifies the brain of the person in front of you. That’s why questions are so powerful. When you ask these questions, you’re showing that you’re interested in their opinion.

You’re interested in their ideas.

You want to hear their point of view, and you’re not just assuming that you always know the best.

Let’s go to myth number two.

Do you remember this one?

Telling people what to do all the time is not delegation. It’s poor management.

Are you willing to shift to a different role on your team? Instead of telling people what to do, are you willing to ask them about what they think needs to get done?

And whether they’re willing and competent to do what you’re asking them to do? If yes, then I offer you four simple questions courtesy of Marshall Goldsmith, one of the top executive coaches in the world.

They’re so simple, and they’re so effective. Managers tell me all the time that they love working these with these. Question number one. Look how simple. Instead of assuming that you know the best what everyone needs to do and what you need to delegate, you’re asking them, hey. Tell me.

What are the areas where I need to let go? Delegate more to you. Ask them.

Question number two, equally simple, but it’s flipping delegation around.

What are the areas where I need to get more involved and provide more help to you? And that’s because delegation is not always the correct leadership style to use. Sometimes, people are not ready to be delegated. They actually need your help.

Wouldn’t it be great to know what those areas where they need help from you are? Ask them.

Question number three is great.

Managers tell me when they ask this, they get ideas from their people, peers, colleagues about areas that they’ve never knew that they could let go. Ask the people around you.

What are the things that you shouldn’t be doing anymore? You will be surprised. I promise.

And final questions, ask them for their input about how to do this. How can I let go? People are very creative. They will tell you.

Ask these questions. I hope they will work for you.

Myth number three, I must tell them what I think of them. Do you remember this one?

Telling people what you think of them is not feedback.

It’s your opinion.

One of the saddest trends in leadership development that I see today is the obsession to train managers how to push feedback on their people.

Where I believe a leader should start first asking for feedback on himself or herself.

Are you ready to switch to a different mode on your team and ask for more feedback on how you perceive them as as a leader and how you can help your people to be more successful.

If yes, then I offer you, what else, more questions.

When you ask people questions, this activates their brain. When you tell people what you think of them and their work, their learning receptors shut down. They stop listening, and it pacifies their brain. These are questions you can start using tomorrow. You can ask them in your one to one meetings. You can ask them in your project meetings, in your team meetings.

You can ask them ahead of a key presentation or key meeting or afterwards to get feedback.

Asking these questions shows that you’re interested in point of view, that you want to get better, that you want to find out how to be the leader that can really help them be successful.

Asking these questions creates better products, better solutions, and it creates better relationships.

I told you I think I told you at the beginning that I will give you a bonus tip, and here it is.

There is one question, I think it’s the most important question, that you can ask yourself this time.

And that question is, how does my personality affect my leadership style?

Your leadership style is driven by your personality.

It’s driven by your strengths, your superpowers, your talents, things that bring you bring to work that really show you at your best.

And look, I’m not here to sell you facet five, but it is the psychometric tool, my favorite psychometric tool that I use with leaders in one to one coaching and in my program, leader as coach. In my program, before we go anywhere, before we go into the content, start watching videos and reading, content and practicing new leadership skills. Before we do any of that, we take a look at the leader’s personality to explore how that affects and drives his or her leadership style.

Key qualities are a key component, and I’d like to show you now an image of how FacetFive displays, articulates my key qualities.

All of these key qualities I bring to work, they affect so much. They affect how I create and nurture relationships with my team, how I show up in one to one meetings, in team meetings, how I promote my ideas, my decisions with my team, how I give or don’t give feedback, how I process feedback, how I delegate or how I don’t delegate. All of this as a leader is affected by my key qualities.

Wouldn’t you want to know what those are?

I showed you my key qualities, and I would love it if you think about what is your top key quality, your top talent, your top superpower that you’re most proud of when you bring it to work?

Please let us know in the chat section your top key superpower you are most proud of.

And I’ll open the chat box to see what is coming in. Empathy. Empathy. Second time. That’s great.

Communication skills.

Sensitive, helping others, optimism, open minded, adaptability, people oriented, collaborative. These are great. You know your soul well. You know your qualities, your strengths. Well, empathy again. That’s great. Lot of this is a very empathetic crowd to today, Grant.

Yeah. It’s it’s interesting, Yosanna, because we do value empathy as a probably as a community more than other attributes. And I’m wondering if that’s the community that we have. Oh. That’s representative of of leaders.

Do they value given your conversation, do they value other more outcome focused, quality, goal focused, determination, for example, those practical outputs? Because we Yeah.

This is making sense. This is making sense what you’re saying. And we have people again.

Okay?

Great.

Thank you for sharing.

Key qualities, our talents, our super strengths are one component of our personality that we bring to work that affects the way we lead at work.

The second component, equally important, are blind spots.

These are the things that we may or may not just very easily know about ourselves. So an example of my blind spot would be I interrupt people.

I jump into conversations where I feel I have something very, very important to add. I know this about myself. It’s a blind spot. I will always, always work on this. It will probably never go away.

But there may be other blind spots that are not as obvious to me, that may be hidden to me.

And I think it’s important that we explore these.

And it’s very important for leaders to explore these, work with them, and as appropriate, learn to manage them in how they show up at work. So I’d like to show you my own blind spots.

Again, as articulated, as written in my own FacetFive report.

These are things.

These are my blind spots that I may not be aware of. I may not be aware of of the fact that some people that I interact with, whether that’s a client or my team or my boss or my peers, my stakeholders, these are things that are important because this is how they may perceive me. And it’s important that I know, and I look for situations where I can work with these, manage these, if that is important to me.

Do I have no. That’s it. Alright. So I totally unveil my blind spots here in front of you. I feel very vulnerable right now, especially the one that I make sure that you see, which is you may be seen as disorganized and undisciplined, constantly challenging the rules. Yes. This is me.

I think it’s a strength, but hey, some people may think it’s a blind spot.

And I see this. This theme has been with me all my life. People seeing me as disorganized, and people telling me to change. Now I know that it may be a blind spot, and I know so much better how to manage this so people don’t feel tripped by me.

I’d like to ask you now, if you’re brave, just like I’ve been with you, what is the number one blind spot that you feel is important enough so that you want to be careful about it at work? What’s the one thing that you know may trip up people when working with you?

Now open the chat box.

Overly trusting, being determined and pushy.

Ah, interesting. Okay.

I was, I’m great at overcommitting myself and other people. My team will say that. Lots of ideas, lots of ambition, not always kind of like you, Petra, not always the structure there, to put them all into place.

Mhmm. Thanks for sharing.

Yeah. Introversion seen as aloof and arrogant. That’s a really that’s a really interesting one because that comes across so often, doesn’t it? You know, people who are a little bit more considered, a little bit more reserved, don’t always naturally participate or feel the need to participate.

So get sense of, okay. They’re they’re just a bit arrogant. They don’t really care. They don’t wanna be involved.

Mhmm.

Yeah. Not supporting others who I think are hopeless.

That’s great. Yeah.

Similar to Petra, disorganized and undisciplined. I like to call it my butterfly brain. Greater times, not at other times or or for other people.

Yeah.

And Francesco being quiet, listening, oh, it’s just disappeared on screen, and asking questions, it may be a strength overplay.

Mhmm.

Oh, overly trusting. Too nice and accommodating. Naive. Yes. Interesting. You’re very, very, very self aware. That’s wonderful.

That’s great. Tanya Padonka is saying, you know, disorganized and too confrontational when when passionate, really stepping into that space. I’m very lucky to work with, Tanya, and I think we’re two p’s in a pod. So you put us both in the same room, We’ll go round and round in a million different directions and have amazing conversation to go, are we supposed to do something with this information? What are we gonna do now?

And this is, I love this because I don’t know if I am right in this assessment, but when I ask these two questions of of the leaders that I work with, most people find more blind spots about themselves that they’re willing to share then the strengths. For some reason, we’re still not totally comfortable articulating what we’re proud of in terms of our strengths, and we’re so readily able to share our blind spots. So, this is very common. I see this again and again.

Yeah. I think it I think you’re absolutely right. I think we are born into the world of work, and we think about development as fixing gaps, as fixing risks and things like that, and looking at the at that negative state or those, areas that we need to improve as opposed to kind of celebrating and accepting who we are and how then we consciously flex into those areas and what skill and support that that we need, particularly as managers, as you were saying earlier on.

Yes. And some managers, they’re very quantitative detail oriented. They ask me, so okay. So my energy, if I have a finite amount of energy, let’s say it’s hundred percent, how much energy should I focus on building upon my natural key qualities, my natural talents versus fixing and closing those gaps and those blind spots? And I’ve learned I I don’t like giving numbers and percentages, but I had to because I have clients like this. And so now this is my official answer that I will share with you. I say now, spend eighty percent of your energy developing, using, perfecting your strengths, your key qualities, those natural talents that you already have because they the return on investment will be great.

And spend twenty percent on exploring, learning how to work with, and and and and, managing your blind spots. Don’t obsess about your blind spots. The return on investment will not be as good as if you focus most of your energy on utilizing and perfecting your strengths. Does this make sense to you, eighty twenty? Grant, what do you think?

Yeah. I would agree. I mean, again, you know, I’ve got a whole master class on strengths coming up as well. So, yeah, you’ve kind of laid the groundwork. It’s exactly the exactly the same. I think understand where we’re at, what, what motivates us, what energizes us, and then we understand the context, which then becomes very important around how that strength is enabled or can tune up or not for that matter.

We then get the ability to consciously flex our style into the demands of our role, into the demands of different relationships. But we have to stay we have to know where we start from. Otherwise, where where are we flexing from and where are we flexing to as well? So, yeah, that eighty twenty rules, it’s a really nice, kinda grounded number for me.

Okay. Good. I’m glad I’m glad that this resonates, for you too.

Okay.

The title of this, keynote is leading with a coaching mindset. And at the very beginning, I promised that I will do three things.

I said that I will show you the three minutes that I still see again and again that many people still believe in and, do at work all the time.

And then I told you that I will flip this around and show you a different way of relating to people at work.

So asking for people’s opinions, for their input, for their ideas instead of focusing being the smartest one and always having the smartest opinions.

And then asking delegation questions, actually asking people what they think should get done, what they want to be delegated or not, instead of telling people what to do and making those assumptions that you know the best.

And then also asking for feedback on how you are as a leader, how you can create an environment so that people feel successful and are successful. Instead of or before, pushing feedback on them all the time.

And then I offered questions, actual specific questions you can start using as of tomorrow if you’d like.

Because and I said this a few times, and I will say it again. When you ask a question that activates the brain of the person in front of you, When you talk at people, when you tell them what to do, when you tell them what you think of their of them and their work, this pacifies the brain of the person in front of you. And so if there is one thing, just one thing, one tip that I hope that you will take away from this presentation today is this, ask more questions.

I wish you the best of luck in asking more questions at work, so that you become a leader whose people feel that they are heard, understood, and supported by you.

I wonder, granted, how much time we have and whether there is time for a discussion, questions.

There are always My formal presentation, is done with this.

But if we have time, maybe we can open it up.

Yeah. Perfect. So if you would, have a question for Patrick on the on the topic that we’ve had here or her experience, particularly, you know, you’re working with big companies like Google in your, coaching programs and things like that. So you can either ask the question via the chat or, unmute yourself and, ask a question. Put your hand up. We’d love to hear any questions so we can have that discussion and learn from each other.

Antonia.

Yes. I definitely have a question, if I may.

Yeah.

How would you push back your natural reaction, especially in tense situations when you need to, fix something, for example, or take a quick question. And my natural reaction is, not to ask the question, but tell the guidance to the people. Mhmm.

I’m sure if you if you if you I do understand.

And you just you just articulated, Antonia, the biggest dilemma that I find managers have in my program.

And much of the program, what we’re working on, is slowing down their instincts to jump in and answer the question, to jump in and fix the problem for them, to jump in and solve everything, to put down all the fires. Much of the time, we’re practicing and we’re talking about how to slow down this instinct that managers do to go and fix and save and control and put down all the fires.

And I don’t have one answer that would save it all will answer it all because every leader’s, answer or maybe strategy of how to do that will probably be, different.

Some leaders tell me they come to three before before they actually start answering.

Some have, one one leader told me the other day that she has this, elastic band on her hand, and she just kind of flips it to remind herself to ask more questions.

What do you think? What would you do? How would you go about this? If I was not here, how would you how would you fix this? What do you think? So she she flips the Band Aid, or or or an elastic to remind herself to do that, ask questions instead of just going straight into answering or fixing the problem. So I don’t know if I answered your question, but, what you ask is is, is asked by many, many managers that I work with.

Yeah. Well, thank you for the answer. So at least I know that it’s not just my thinking. No.

No. And you know why it is? Because we get into management, and my slide showed it. We get into management for two reasons.

I’m a great individual contributor, or I’ve been there for a long time. So we are used to becoming recognized for being the experts, for always knowing the answer. We’re proud of it. People come to us. We we feel smart. We feel like we can help.

But when this becomes the autopilot, when this becomes my only mode of operation, that’s when we become the leader who has to be the smartest, who always has to have the answers, and we don’t let others the opportunity to shine as well.

I have another question for you from Diane. What suggestions do you have for coaching people with a very low emotionality who are complacent with themselves or about themselves?

Coaching people with low emotionality, and they’re complacent.

Interesting.

There’s one particular client that comes to mind. He was he was in my program, and at the very beginning, he said, I know you will be telling me to have more empathy. And, Petra, honestly, I don’t have time for empathy. I need to get stuff done.

And to be honest with you, I love clients like this because at least they’re telling me at the beginning what their starting point is. They’re they’re telling me what they believe in and what they don’t.

And I work with it. I don’t try to argue. I don’t try to push them to be more empathetic.

I don’t think it’s going to work. We have discussions about when is your mindset and this attitude of yours, when is it helpful, useful? When is it working for you?

And when is it a blind spot? And you know what they tell me. They know exactly how not being empathetic is viewed by their team members, that they’re being viewed as cold and distant and not caring and not being supported. They know exactly.

And and most of the time, they want to work on it. But I make sure that they understand that I don’t want them to change. I don’t need them to change their persona. I don’t need them to change their character.

I just hope that we have good quality conversations when they realize that bringing more empathy into the the way they lead is going to actually be helpful to them and be helpful, to how they feel at work. So this is how I work with leaders that actually tell me very honestly, I I I don’t wanna be empathetic. I don’t, you know, I don’t have the time for it.

Great. Thank you very much.

Diane, did that help? That was a I think a really great response. I think, you know, making it not so much about them, but also helping them understand how do they stretch themselves. And there was some great comments here about have they already achieved the best version of themselves.

What would that look like?

And And, Grant, this this particular client, this was crazy.

He didn’t want to be on camera. So we had coaching sessions and programs, but he wasn’t on the camera. Petra, I don’t believe it. I don’t want to. And then, actually, it was crazy. I I think it was session number five.

He said it as a goal for himself.

He said, I need to be on camera when I have one to ones with my t people. He had people all over the world. I really think it would help, and it would show that I care, and it would show that I’m there for them.

And the last session that we have together, I think session number ten, was the first time I saw his face. It was the first time I saw him in camera. He felt comfortable enough, and he saw the benefit of showing his face and appearing as a human being in front of me. And, hopefully, he continued with his team.

Isn’t that amazing that it took so long?

It took so long. Mhmm.

Yeah. Which with a leader, who, located themselves in a different part of the building to his team, which I found really interesting.

And they call it the call Yeah. Call it the long walk.

So if you had a problem, very low energy, very low emotionality, but his way of leading was that if you made it all the way across the office to his desk, and he was there, then it’s a serious enough problem for him to deal with. He, he felt that you could have dealt with it. By the time you walked there, you probably solved the problem.

Oh.

So yeah. Interesting.

Quarters and courses. That’s for sure. Very good. We have another Yeah.

Brent, you had asked about the the the answer that Paige gave, and I I thought it was a great answer, especially about developing empathy, which can often happen with coachees that we have to help them to develop this this trait. It’s the the the big question I have is when you have the low empathy and you have maybe a low emotionality, the person is very sure that the the way that they’d be going about doing things is the right way, and they they’re quite complacent and happy with themselves.

That’s when, and then some people in the chat just spoke about doing a three sixty. I do agree on this, although, it’s always still tough time sometimes getting to the shift to working on themselves.

But, I also agree with what you said earlier, Petra, about, working on strengths. So, we’re always focusing on choosing a strength to leverage, because it’s not and it it doesn’t help to be just focusing on the things that we have to improve, and it takes a lot of effort.

But, certainly, yeah, it was the issue about when somebody is really complacent. They think that they’re just great the way they are, and there’s no need to change.

That was, yeah, the the focus of it.

That was the focus of it.

You gave about the empathy, I thought was really good. Yeah.

Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you.

We have another you, Diane.

Another question from Rachel. Petra, have you got examples of when leaders should jump in? Even in COVID, we had examples of how teams could be left to manage themselves. So what’s how do you encourage those when they when actually do need to be more supportive, when they do need to be more directive, I assume, is the question from Rachel.

Yeah.

So the question is oh, here we are.

There’s Rachel. Yeah. Hi.

Yeah. Absolutely. I work a lot with, flatter organizations.

And, like I say, evening COVID, one particular example, massive amounts of risk because it was in health and social care.

Mhmm.

But the organization did not jump in. They did not go to that managerial, sort of instructional way. They kept their ethos, which was amazing.

So for me, I was wondering if if there are examples where it is the right time to jump in. I suppose it’s around risk, but, yeah, that was it was the question.

I’m not sure I understand that question. So if it’s if there’s ever the right time to jump in for the manager?

Yes. To to take that more not micromanaging, but certainly a far more directive approach.

Oh. Oh, this is a great question. This is a great question, Rachel, because what I say, my program is called leader as coach, but I tell them at the very beginning, coaching is not a magic pill. Coaching will not fix all your problems with all your people.

Coaching is not the right approach, the leadership style, to use in every situations. There are situations, just like you mentioned, Rachel, where put away coaching. People so new hires, they don’t know. They just started asking them, how would you go about?

What would you do? Where do you think you should set? It doesn’t make sense. They don’t know.

What they need from you is to be a trainer or an instructor or a guide or a mentor or a teacher. They are there to absorb what they need to absorb. So put away coaching.

Or if you have an employee who lacks the will and the competency to do a task or to do anything, coaching is not going to work. You’re asking person who lacks will, motivation, perhaps the competency to do that task.

Asking them, what do you need? And how can I it’s probably not going to help? And in that situation, I wouldn’t suggest you coach. I would suggest you take on a bit more directive role. And with a person like this, you probably need to set very clear boundaries of what needs to get done by when and how. This is not going to be great.

And, ideally, this doesn’t last for too long. Because if this continues, this person is not in the right job. They’re gonna be not happy, and you’re going to be not happy. So it’s a great question because coaching is so popular now. It’s definitely not the one and only leadership style that leaders have at their disposal.

Perfect. Thank you.

Other questions from the group?

Observations?

I think you’re right. I think we have found a rise in in a coaching mindset in particular, in organisations, but they do often see that as a sometimes, it’s a way of either transferring the responsibility to the coach or to the leader without the actual skill to manage and direct. Because there are still lots of people who like to come to work. They like to be a bit more transactional in the way that they engage, in the workplace. They still like to be valued, still like to be engaged, but they don’t necessarily need to be part of that community. They like to come in, do their job, do it really well, and go home again because they have different drivers, that might them for work. Yeah.

Yes. Absolutely.

And the best leaders know when is the right time to use coaching versus other leadership styles? They know they they they have that, maturity, and they also can, assess whether coaching right now in this situation is the right way to go, or do I need to be different? Do I need to act differently? Do I need to use a different leadership style, be more directive, or be actually even more supportive and teach and guide versus coach? So that’s the beauty. That’s the art of leadership.

Tanya’s come back and said she’s going to use some of these questions and techniques in her other leadership role with her teenage children.

Yeah. Yeah.

Good luck. If you, if you find that works, we’d all like to know, how you go with that because you may be in a billion dollar industry instantly.

Oh, such a big industry.

Yeah.

I Well, I definitely I definitely know I’m not the smartest person in the room for sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, one thing about, coaching your kids, coaching your teens, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Just like I wouldn’t recommend coaching your spouse, because we have a different role to play there. And, that role usually overshadows our, neutrality, that we should have as a coach. So although my kid, I have I have a twenty year old son, and he he does say, mom, you’re coaching me again. I’m like, no.

No. No. I wasn’t meant you know, I just it was just a question. But he knows.

He knows that when I ask that weird question that that that, you know, I’m I’m I’m I’m slipping into the coaching mode, and I gotta be careful, about that.

Perfect.

So we don’t have any other questions or anyone like to make, you know, come on screen and ask a question. You’re more than welcome to. We will let you head off in.

I have one question, Graham. At the very end, I would love if you as a as a parting, gesture and feedback to me, if you pick one word that for you is the word or a sentiment or feeling, whatever it is, that you’re taking away, now at the end of this presentation, what would that be? One word. And if you can please put it in a chat box, one word that you either taking away or that, you want to part with as we’re ending this presentation.

That’s great. So Diane’s put power of questions, staying curious, Francesco sharing, brain refreshed.

One word equals questions. Question, from Melena.

Always inspired always of questions.

Not practice.

Yeah. Absolutely.

It is such a a thing to do, isn’t it, Rachel? It’s you know, when you go down there and you’re busy, you’ve got a million things going on, and you think, damn. I missed that opportunity to ask a question yet again.

That’s the part to start the process. Of course, David. I mean, that’s a given.

Yeah. But thank you. Strengths. Yeah. Absolutely. Focusing on strengths is amazing.

These are so amazing. Thank you so much for so quickly jumping in and sharing your thoughts and your feedback and what you’re taking away from this presentation. It makes, me thrilled. It makes me very thankful.

Thank you so much for your time, your energy to be here with us. I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.