Coaching a Direct On Relationship Development - Part 1

0:00Welcome to Manager Tools. This is Sarah. And I'm Mark. Today's podcast, Coaching a Direct on Relationship Development, Part 1 of 2.

0:09Michael Auzenne: As always, our content has been crafted by humans, and we are now certified by Proudly Human. The questions this cast answers are, how can I coach a direct on building relationships? Can I coach one of my better performers? How much time and energy does it take to coach one of my directs? If you want answers to these questions and more, keep listening.

0:36Michael Auzenne: Hi, everyone. Allie Ozan here with the Manager Tools team. Most professionals never get honest access to how senior executives think, what they're measuring, what keeps them up at night, and what they actually want from the managers below them. The M Conference puts accomplished executives from banking, technology, aerospace, healthcare, and consulting in the same room as serious managers for two days of unfiltered conversations. We look forward to seeing you in Los Angeles October 6th and 7th. For more information, visit manager-tools.com forward slash mconference. We talk about the Manager Tools Trinity one-on-ones, feedback, coaching, delegation often.

1:24And we know, I mean, coaching is the least used of all the manager Trinity tools. Yeah. And I mean, it's really too bad because it only takes 10 minutes a week, maximum five to 10 minutes a week. In fact, for those of you that we've talked to about the coaching model in our public conferences, you'll know that the model itself is designed to be modular so that you don't have to carve out a chunk of time. rather, you can do it in five minutes here and there at the end of your one-on-one while there's still time and keep your eyes on that goal in that short but often kind of way. Yeah.

2:04Michael Auzenne: And I'll tell you, we're essentially fighting against the common wisdom. And of course, wisdom isn't common that in order to coach somebody, you have to be their trainer, which is wrong. You can use other resources. It shouldn't be you in the vast majority of cases. and also that you have to come up with a six-month plan. You have to write out a six-month plan. In fact, I used to joke that when I saw dusty folders at the back of someone's desk, I assumed it was a coaching plan that they had intended to create and kept looking at it at 5 o 'clock in the afternoon and never did. So this guidance is about coaching one of your directs on building relationships.

2:42Michael Auzenne: and part of the reason we're putting this out now is in the last couple of years, I have had so many more conversations than I remember. My memory is pretty good about topics and what people ask about regarding relationships. Certainly, if you don't have good relationships, particularly external to your firm, when there's a discontinuity in your career, that's a very nice way of putting a layoff or getting fired or whatever, you're going to regret it. And I am now talking to a lot of executives and I'm trying to help them expand their external relationships. Now, obviously in this case, you wouldn't coach an executive on expanding their external relationships, but I want managers, we want managers to start learning to do this, particularly for those directs who are high performers, but maybe don't have good relationships and they need them because as they get promoted into management, we're going to start having politics entering into the equation.

3:38And that's often the case, right? Those top performers are top performers because they're killers because they get the work done, but not because people love them. Yeah.

3:47Michael Auzenne: Now you can coach a direct on building relationships, even if they're struggling with the basics, but it's probably far more likely it's going to be a top performer and needing some help to get to the next level. But relationship skills or relationship building skills, sorry, whether you're a natural relationship person or not, it's not that complicated. And whether you're naturally good at relationships or not doesn't really matter. As you'll see from this example, we're going to take you through. You can follow this guidance to get your direct to wherever they need to be in their relationships.

4:23Yeah, that's exactly it. So folks, we're going to start by going over our outline. We're going to begin by going over a brief review of the Manager Tools coaching model, just to prep you. If you've not listened to those podcasts in a while, then you'll at least have a reminder of it. For those of you that are unfamiliar, it won't give you enough to be able to replicate it, but it'll be the beginning of that. Then we're going to go through the four steps of the coaching model as it pertains to this activity that we're looking to accomplish today. So step number one is going to be collaborate to set a goal for relationships.

4:58Two will be collaborate to brainstorm resources. Three will be collaborate to create a plan. And then ultimately your direct acts and reports until your goal is accomplished.

5:09Michael Auzenne: Yeah, that's it. So let's start with a brief review of the coaching model, right? Yes. Folks, the MT coaching model is built around four simple steps. And you've already, Sarah's essentially added it out. set a goal, brainstorm resources, create a plan, and then implement the plan and iterate on implementing the plan. And you continue to do so until you've accomplished your goal. We're going to go over them at a high level now. And then we're going to dig into each one of them as we walk you through how to coach someone. We're going to apply it to the issue of, I need to help my direct. I need to coach my direct on developing relationship skills.

5:47And folks, it's important to note that the first three steps, that is set a goal, brainstorm resources, and create a plan are really collaborative. You and your direct meet to discuss and decide how you're going to proceed on the goal, the resources, and the plan. Don't attempt to create a coaching plan for one of your directs by yourself without their input. No, definitely not.

6:09Michael Auzenne: That's the dusty folder at the back of the desk. It doesn't work. That's exactly it. Now, folks, that doesn't mean it might not work in exceptionally rare, very difficult cases where you're using the coaching model for systemic coaching or performance improvement plan-esque type activities. What we would call late stage coaching, right? Yeah, exactly. But in a case like this, just helping them be better at relationships, no. You want to collaborate on the plan because what you need from them is that they engage in the behavioral change you're asking for. And if you've created the plan, they're not going to be engaged.

6:49They're going to be, instead of collaborating with you, just doing what you tell them to do. And that's a very different place to begin your learning engagement.

6:58Michael Auzenne: It doesn't lead to growth. It doesn't. It leads to following. And it's just not good. Exactly. That's exactly it. They're not leading. They're following. And that's the mindset we want to change in this case. Yeah. Okay. So the first step is you agree on a behavioral goal. And again, we're going to tell you how to do that next. It's not hard. You and a direct are going to brainstorm resources to help them get there. Notice it's helped them. And by the way, you don't have to be a resource. I often tell the story of I'm a fairly skilled public speaker and I've trained people and coach people on public speaking.

7:35Michael Auzenne: I've written speeches and coached presidents and senators and congresspeople and governors and CEOs and executives on their speaking skills and rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed with them over and over and over again. But when Wendy asked, hey, can you make me a competent, professional, you know, effective speaker, I said yes. She assumed that I was going to be her coach slash trainer. And I told her, no, I'll coach you, but I won't train you because the value to the company of me, an hour of time spent being her trainer is not as valuable as it would be in terms of me developing new relationships, getting new clients.

8:19Michael Auzenne: delivering for clients and so on. And so we don't want you to think that your job is going to be a trainer. You're just going to be the coach. Yeah. I think about it. Sometimes the analogy I use for that, Mark, is you're an accountability buddy. That's what you are. Oh, you're just helping steer the ship. I've not heard that before. I've never heard. Okay. Yeah. You're there to give the guardrails. You're there to make sure that they're doing what they say they'll do. You're there so that they can report to you. But really, they're the ones in control of this path toward learning a new activity, you're just their sounding board.

8:53Michael Auzenne: Yeah. So again, you're going to agree on a goal. We'll explain it in a minute. And then you're going to brainstorm resources. The resources might be a class they attend. It might be reading. It might be podcasts. It might be company training that exists. It might be an external training or something like that. The point of brainstorming resources is to come up with a list of things that your direct can use to learn and practice the skill that we, they, and you want to improve. Exactly. And then, folks, once you've got your goal laid out together, you're going to plan out the first weeks of actions.

9:28Now, this plan is just a list of tasks, ideally tasks listed as deliverables, that your direct agrees to accomplish. You don't want to plan out any longer than one week, maybe two weeks for a top performer. So much is going to change. I mean, if you're a fast moving organization, I mean, every day we're getting new, different work to do. And if you plan too far out, you're going to want to stick to your plan. It'll become OBE, overcome by events. And then you've spent all this time on your plan and you're going to feel like you failed and you're going to quit. Whereas if you're just responding week to week, what we can handle now is just it's it's you're creating the plan live time and it's more likely to get accomplished ultimately because you didn't spend all this time planning something that immediately became irrelevant.

10:21Michael Auzenne: Yeah. Now, look, folks, we've been training people on the coaching model for 30 years. OK. And so it may surprise you when Sarah says we're only going to do a week at a time. Um, but that's in fact, the, the, the model of the coaching model that we have settled upon after trying many different other models and figuring out it didn't work. And there's another surprise here. The first three steps, which is set a goal, brainstorm resources, and come up with your first week of plan. Uh, you can accomplish those three steps of the only four step coaching model with your direct in a one-on-one in a five to 10 minute meeting during your one-on-one.

11:09That's the money shot. Exactly.

11:11Michael Auzenne: Yeah. Most managers don't believe this. They think they have to come up with a six-month training plan or a syllabus or something like that. But we tried that, guys. We tried it for years and people wouldn't do it. We would check in with them every three weeks like, hey, how's that coaching plan coming? Yeah, I'm working on it. Yeah. It's like, okay, Look, that doesn't work. There might be some academic who tells you, yeah, that's technically the way to do it. I'm like, I don't care whether it's the way to do it. Nobody does it. And if somebody's going to ask you to do something and you've got other stuff to do and you look at your priorities and you say, yeah, you know, that's going to take an hour at the end of the day for four or five weeks.

11:50Michael Auzenne: I don't know many managers going to say, yeah, we've tested this model and that old way, it never works. So we're really only putting our toes in the water in this first meeting, okay? We're not worried at the start that we can't see clearly all the steps and actions our direct is going to take in this four to six or seven month process. Don't worry about that. Just get started. And can I tell them about the Yellow Brick Road? Oh, yeah. Sure. Yeah, do it. So I use the example of the yellow brick road in the movie, The Wizard of Oz. In the movie, of course, the road to Oz has already been built.

12:33Michael Auzenne: If you remember when Dorothy ends up in Munchkinland and they do that, there's a, you know, welcome to Munchkinland and the Wicked Witch is dead and so on. The yellow brick road actually starts as sort of a circle, an unwinding circle. I don't know what that's called in geometry, but anyway, it starts and they go around in a circle. And then they show you this yellow brick road leading off in the distance. And in the way distance, you can see the Emerald City, which is where the wizard is, which is where they say Dorothy should go to be able to get back to Kansas, okay? Most managers think that they have to build a yellow brick road, the entire thing, get all the way to Oz, then come back upon it and say, okay, no, right.

13:21Michael Auzenne: Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, that's a whole nother kettle of fish right there. Or actually even better to quote the movie, that's a horse of a different color. It's too daunting and managers don't do it. And that's why we don't teach it. But the most effective coaching processes that we've discovered is more like building the yellow brick road with only 10 bricks. Now, this is an analogy, folks, so don't beat me up about it. If you want to write me, you can write me mark at manager-jules.com. I'll be happy to respond. But just to be clear, 10 bricks. You take your 10 bricks, okay? You throw down five of them in the direction you want to go, the general direction of what you think it is.

14:02Michael Auzenne: It doesn't have to be perfect. It's not a straight line. We're not, we don't have a laser from Munchkin land. That's exactly a compass, right? We don't have a laser from Munchkin land to the Emerald City. You throw down five in the direction you want to go. You walk forward on those five and you throw the next five out in front of you while also going back and picking up the previous five you laid down because you're five bricks in, right? And then you walk to the end of those second five bricks and in your hand are the previous five bricks and you throw those out in front of you. And then you pick up the ones that you just walked over.

14:40Michael Auzenne: and you might think well it's not as straight you're right you're going to be a little bit off track every once in a while every couple of weeks you're going to try something that's going to be like yeah that didn't work but you've made progress you i've you've learned something that doesn't work and you look up and go we're off track let's try something different i often tell people the joke is everybody in toronto wants their first step in february let's say they're being trained in February is to go to a training in Orlando, Florida in February. Well, because it's warm, right? It's reasonable.

15:12Michael Auzenne: Maybe that training works. Maybe it doesn't. Although I wouldn't recommend putting training first because training costs money. It costs money. You got to get a budget now that adds to your planning. Yeah. But basically this coaching model is nothing harder than planning out a week in advance, checking in at the end of that week in your next one-on-one, and then figuring out what the next week is. In some cases, your director is going to be shanghaied by a bunch of stuff that you know about, and they're not going to get anywhere. And you should avoid punishing them. Say, okay, we'll move all those things forward to this week.

15:46Michael Auzenne: And then when we get to the end of the second week, we'll come up with the things we're going to do in the third week, which should have happened in the second week. But that's okay. We're going to be forgiving as we take our direct, as we are an accountability buddy for our direct on their journey to the Emerald City. That's exactly it. So then, folks, the last step is really the direct taking action toward accomplishing the deliverables that we've now set up, which, to be clear, happens separately from the meeting where we're talking about the first three steps. They're going to take their first week's list of deliverables, work on those deliverables, accomplish those deliverables, report to you the status of those deliverables or the completion of them.

16:30Yeah. And all the while, you're going to remember coaching is about your direct improving their skills. You don't have to do anything other than read or listen to their status reports and adjust your aim as they progress. You, swinging a golf club, doesn't improve their swing. They have to do it themselves. And that's kind of the idea here, right? They are the one doing the work. If adjustments need to be made, they're the one making the adjustments. You're really just there to help with that plan. Yeah.

17:05Michael Auzenne: I have never had a golf lesson in my life. And I like golf and I play a lot of golf when I can. Not as much lately, it seems. But I was told by a very highly regarded golf instructor, a golf pro, that he can tell in five seconds, watching a student and a golf professional teach that student, He can tell in five seconds in the first meeting, the first session, first lesson, whether or not that golf professional who's teaching, that beginner, let's say, that learner, whether or not the coach, the professional, the teacher is any good. and the standard he applies is, okay, the golf pro's standing there saying, welcome, we're going to do something.

17:50Michael Auzenne: And he says, if within five seconds, literally five seconds, the first meeting they have, the first lesson this amateur has, does the pro hand the learner the club and ask them to swing it? And the whole point of that is it doesn't matter how many times the golf pro shows the swing and talks about weight distribution or throwing the head at the ball or the magic move is coming down from the top straight down to the ground like you're pulling on a balloon to get it back to you from this a helium balloon or whatever you could do all that you want but it's all theoretical until the person swings the darn club themselves And so you're not going to make your people better by talking about the things they're supposed to do.

18:42Michael Auzenne: They're going to get better when they start doing them. And that's why we've made the coaching model so modular, so weakly, and actually so small. It's like, you know, if there are 10 ,000 bricks on the road to Oz, it's just one brick at a time. And, you know, you could say, well, I'd rather have the 10 ,000 bricks built. Okay. Sure. But you go ahead and build the 10 ,000 brick road. And I'm going to stand over here and me and my buddy, we're going to throw one brick, one or two or three or four or five bricks down. And we're going to walk forward. And we're going to be in about 30 seconds further along than you are.

19:18Michael Auzenne: So they have to do it themselves. They have to do it themselves. Exactly. Your natural communication style works for about 25 % of the managers on your team. The other 75 % need you to communicate differently. And they're not going to tell you that because you don't have the framework to explain it. The Effective Communicator Conference teaches you to read behavioral cues and adapt in real time so every conversation with every member of your team actually lands. For individual managers and full leadership teams, for more information, please visit manager-tools.com forward slash ECC. So folks, that was our really high level overview of the coaching model.

20:07Now we're going to get into the process with examples for, again, specifically coaching a direct on how to improve their relationships.

20:16Michael Auzenne: So step one is, as Sarah said, collaborate to set a goal for relationships. Now, Now, first, we should probably say there's, hypothetically anyway, a step zero, which is letting your direct know you're wanting to coach them and asking them to come to your next one-on-one, having thought about being coached on relationship development skills. In other words, if you suddenly surprise them and say, okay, I'm going to start coaching your relationship skills, your direct's going to go, okay, and they're not going to have any creative thoughts, any opinions, any impressions, any ideas about how they'd like to learn and so on.

20:56So maybe in week zero, the week before you start the coaching model, you tell

21:01Michael Auzenne: them, hey, you know, next week, we're going to start some coaching for you on developing relationships or anything else for that matter. Yeah, that's exactly it. And folks, don't worry that you have a lot to do before your first coaching session. For your first meeting, It's probably going to take all of your portion of your one-on-one with your direct. So what is that, 10 to 15 minutes? Yeah. But it's going to go faster if you reread or relisten to our guidance on coaching. We've got tons of podcasts on it. And also, if you don't just listen to or refresh yourself on them yourselves, share them with your direct as well.

21:39So that in that first week, before you're actually doing the coaching, they can listen to them. They can maybe learn it for the first time or refresh themselves. And remember, if you're a licensee, you can share the show notes with your direct for them to read. These very show notes, if you're coaching them on collaborating to build relationships, share these exact show notes.

22:02Michael Auzenne: Yeah, at the absolute minimum, you would share the MT coaching model, which is linked to on this in the show notes if you're a licensee. Or you can go to that web page and you can listen or you can tell them to listen. Or again, if you're a licensee, you can share the show notes with them as part of our license to you. You can't share everything you get with everybody. That's a violation of our IP. But still, we arranged our license with you so that you could share it with your directs so that they could learn faster by reading. Or if they prefer to listen, that's fine. Now, the first step is, of course, collaborating.

22:40Michael Auzenne: You're doing this together. Ideally, in a one-on-one. If you want to set up a separate meeting, that's fine. You can. We don't recommend it, but it wouldn't be terrible if you did. And the first step is, as we said, really simple. Once we've decided what our direct is going to get better at, and in this case, it's developing relationships, we sit down with the direct and we collaborate to set a goal. So here are some examples, some good examples, of goals you could use for your relationship coaching with this direct. And by the way, we're going to give some dates in here. We don't mean them to be relative to when you're listening to this.

23:22Michael Auzenne: The first one says by one December. Well, if you're coaching them in the middle of November, that's not a good goal. So we ask you to use your common sense here. By one December, you will have 10 new relationships where you have contact with the relationship every two weeks. or by 30 October, you will have had 15 coffees or lunches with no less than five of your colleagues. Okay. And by the way, these are both fine. They're different, but they're both fine. Or by one January, you will have built a relationship map, an online spreadsheet with 10 important contacts and be able to show me biweekly interaction with them.

24:08Michael Auzenne: Now, you might say, Mark, Sarah, that doesn't mean they're great at relationships. We know that, okay? Maybe what you do is they go through this process. They've started to learn. They're sort of knocking the rust off of their ability to interact with other people. And you'll say, okay, you did it. Well done. Congratulations. And let's take that to the next level. And because they're used to the coaching process, you would then take them through another three or four months and say, let's identify specific people. Let's have the goal be a little bit more specific about which people and about what you hope for them to achieve in those relationships.

24:49Michael Auzenne: Exactly. Now, folks, if you go back and listen to those again, you're going to note for each of our example goals, the outcome is not that you've made your direct into a consummate relationship professional, the life of the party with friends everywhere and 10 ,000 followers on social media idea. That's not the goal here. That's never the outcome of coaching. The outcome of successful coaching effort is your direct having the skills they need to do their job well or do their job well enough to be considered for the next role. But it's completely normal that you would coach them through one phase of their important improvement effort.

25:32And then based on how they do choose to focus on another part of their skill, development. Yeah.

25:41Michael Auzenne: For instance, suppose you wanted this direct whom you're coaching to get promoted, but she has limited to no relationships outside of your team. You're probably thinking, I can't just turn it loose on a bunch of exacts or broader peers, and you'd be right. And that's okay. Exactly. Exactly, which is why in all these examples, we're focusing on one part of her relationship building. In the first, all we're asking her to do is start some relationships with a measure of staying in touch every two weeks. That's it. And the second one is similar. And the third one is similar, but adds a tracking system.

26:19Again, we're not asking her to be the life of the party. No. Just to be better at building relationships. Influencer. Exactly. I'm going to move into sales.

26:29Michael Auzenne: I got taught how to do the relationships. I'm moving into sales now. No, that's probably not it. Yeah. And you can be happy with a 10 to 15 to 20 % improvement in your direct relationship building skills. That's fine. But if it's not enough for a top performer, because he or she isn't, they started at less than zero, perhaps, maybe you get them just above zero, and then you run it through again. But the second time you run it through, the model will kind of disappear because there's a cadence, there's a structure. They'll know the structure. And they'll be like, yeah, I can do that. I can take bite-sized things every week.

27:04Michael Auzenne: And it only takes me maybe a half an hour or 45 minutes a week. I can figure out how to do that. Now, we've been talking about people who might be high performers. But the low performer who needs to get to a certain level, maybe not in relationship skills, but in something else, you can say to them, it's only going to take you 30 to 45 minutes a week. And that allows you to continue doing your job and doing it hopefully reasonably well, or at least to the standard you've been doing it up till now, if it's not quite good enough, and we're going to help you build those skills. We made these examples to only address potentially part of whatever our direct in this situation might need.

27:41Michael Auzenne: We don't want to unnecessarily try to create something we don't know how to do or measure. And we recognize that there might be several facets to a larger behavioral change. And you might have to go through two or three or four coaching engagements to get them there. But this coaching engagement is not something you need to prepare weeks for or spend hours before every one-on-one get ready for. It is far better to bite out something small, to get your coaching skills warmed up, and to get your direct use to the model and do a couple of iterations rather than trying to figure out the entirety all in one fell swoop.

28:20Michael Auzenne: And I'll just say one more thing. What's more, if you struggle with any of these steps, please just reach out to us at customerserviceatmanagertools.com, and we can help you with any of the four steps. I've been saying for years when I deliver the Effective Manager Conference, and by the way, if you've not been to an Effective Manager Conference, we encourage you to come. We talk. I think we spend two, two and a half hours on coaching. Yeah. And I always tell them, if you're coaching somebody in something you're not super strong in, that's okay, by the way. You don't need to be an expert on the topic in order to coach somebody.

28:54Michael Auzenne: You need to be an expert to train them, but you don't need to be an expert to coach them because you're going to use other resources. If you're not an expert, email us. I still have records of everyone I ever coached, and I have some of the actual detailed deliverables that I gave them. And we'll send you an example of how to get started for the first two, three, four weeks so you can feel comfortable and sort of gradually work up to taking it over on your own. Yeah, that's exactly it. So folks, the Manager Tools coaching model uses a goal structure called DBQ, Deadline Behavior Quality. We start with the deadline portion because deadlines drive behavior.

29:37And we usually don't set deadlines of less than four months away when it comes to a coaching engagement. because, I mean, if someone can change their behavior in less than four months, the person probably just needs a lot of feedback and we don't need a coaching plan, which, to our point earlier, is a very simple, low effort way of doing this education, if you will. But it's certainly more effort-filled than just give them a lot of feedback. You could do that 30 seconds a bite.

30:09Michael Auzenne: Yeah. So what Sarah is saying is when you set your deadline, that's the first thing. Every manager tools, coaching model goal is DBQ, deadline behavior quality. The deadline should be not less than four months away. And in fact, I often tell people, if you're thinking four months, double it. And the reason why is some of you might think it's cynical. I think it's very optimistic. And that is this. If I think they can be done in four months, but I was wrong, let's say I can magically predict the future, and I thought it was four, but in fact it was five. When we get to four, they failed. And now that's a negative.

30:50Michael Auzenne: So I say, if you think it's going to take four, give them eight. If they only take five, that's a huge win. And what's funny about the one that you set a goal of four, but it takes them five, and there's a failure at four? What's funny about that is we focus on the failure of not achieving the goal when in fact they've been doing stuff to get better. Yeah. They're actually better off than when they started. But nobody thinks that way. Oh, you missed the goal. So four months is the minimum. And I would recommend in the beginning, give them eight, let them win in five and feel like, wow, I thought it was going to take eight, but you did it in five.

31:29Michael Auzenne: Let's go to the next level. And they're going to be like, yeah, this is actually not hard. I can fit this into my existing work and it's going to be okay. Yeah, that's the biggest fear, right? I mean, it's that, okay, fine, sure, I'm going to do this learning thing, but holy, whoa, I don't think I have time for that. They don't realize what we're talking about when we're talking about coaching. They're expecting a big thing that's going to be laborious and time-consuming, and that's not what it's going to be. And for the direct who maybe needs coaching because they're facing a performance improvement plan, I mean, they're performing below the standards, giving them something they can do that's tolerable and tenable as opposed to untenable and intolerable will reinforce, hey, I'm not going to give you such an enormous goal and such a short deadline that you'll begin to think I'm just trying to get rid of you.

32:24Michael Auzenne: No, we're going to take it week by week. We're going to come up with stuff that you can do. We're going to adjust as we go because the purpose is get you to a better place, not to just gather data to prove that you're not good enough. We don't want to do that. You start doing that, you might as well be a hatchet man. So Sarah shared the deadline and it goes by blank. So you give them a deadline by October 1st, by January 15th, whatever you want. Okay. Not less than four months. And ideally eight is a good number to start with. The behavior portion, D, B, Q, deadline, behavior, quality. The behavior portion is what we want the direct to do.

33:00Michael Auzenne: The actual behavior we want to improve. Okay. And then the quality portion is how we're going to measure the behavior. For instance, we can't just say that we're going to have a direct run a meeting. In other words, by January 1 or January 15th, you probably wouldn't set a goal. You wouldn't set a deadline of January 1, would you? No, that's really hurtful over Christmas holidays. Yeah, exactly. Welcome back from Christmas. You failed. Right. So by January 15th, you will run a meeting. Okay. Let's say that's what we're coaching, running a meeting. Sure. Under that criterion, the direct could run a meeting and it could be the worst meeting in the history of meetings.

33:45Michael Auzenne: Run it right into the ground. Right. So we not only have to say the behavior, you're going to run a meeting, but then we have to define the quality standards for what we consider success in that meeting. And it needs to be measurable. So let's talk a little bit about the nature of this measurable goal. A key part of the goal is that it describes behavior or results that demonstrate the skill as being coached. This is key. Sometimes managers are going to say that your coaching goal is to read some books on, again, say running meetings. But that's not a coaching goal. To know and not to do is worthless for professionals.

34:28Book learning isn't valuable in business unless you take that learning and you do something with that learning. That is, you behave upon it. So to prepare a report on meetings or to go to a class on meetings, again, they're not coaching goals. But let's be clear, though, those could be tasks. Yes, absolutely.

34:50Michael Auzenne: In step three, right? Step three that they'll have to implement in step four, but they're not the end goal. Exactly. The coaching goal is the actual behavior being improved upon. So running in effective meeting, raising a million dollars, delivering a 30-minute presentation. Those are goals. Those are behaviors. Yeah. Now, you might be thinking right now, okay, fine, but I have no idea how to get from here to there. Don't we need a detailed plan, right? And the answer is no, not yet. You don't need a detailed plan. If every manager had to have a detailed coaching plan that lasted for six months, again, none of us would do it.

35:28Michael Auzenne: For now, we just have to set the end state. So, for example, it might be, well, the examples we gave you, I'll just reread the examples because I think people will, just to go back to the goals that we said, right? By 1 December, you will have 10 new relationships where you have contact every two weeks. By 30 October, you will have had 15 coffees or lunches with no less than five of your colleagues. Now, you may disagree with details of that, but we're just trying to be clear with you about the structure of by a certain date deadline, there's a behavior, and there's a standard so that the behavior is not just doing something that's ineffective or inefficient.

36:13Michael Auzenne: Or by 1 January, you will have built a relationship map, an online spreadsheet with 10 important contacts, and show biweekly interaction with them. By the way, I don't even care if one of those 10 ends up in bad interactions because my direct is getting reps. Yes, exactly. And we'll talk about that and we'll say, okay, that person you're not going to have a great relationship with. Let's take them off the list. You're not going to win them all. Right. Because the idea that we have to have great relationships with everybody, just not going to happen in my lifetime anyway. So, yeah, that's it. Thanks so much for joining us, folks.

36:52Join us again next week as we continue this topic. Now, help us help others and tell your friends. And of course, follow, rate, and review our podcast. And remember, five stars only, please.

37:03Michael Auzenne: Five stars only, please.