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Podcast Transcript

Heather Wright:

Welcome to this Advance Performance podcast. I’m Heather Wright, and today with me in the studio is John Bullock.

John Bullock:

Hi there.

Heather:

And we’re going to be talking about coaching, but specifically coaching in business. So, John, kick us off with this one. Coaching seems a bit like a trendy fad that people have been talking about for maybe about 10 years. Is it going to die out? Is it just trend?

John:

I think that’s a really good question. I think if coaching, as always, I probably won’t give you a straight answer. I think coaching done well will never die out. I think people that use the word as a bit of a buzzword sometimes that we’re doing this and we’re trying to show that we’re doing this, sometimes people don’t really understand what coaching is. And depending on what type of coaching you’re doing, I think coaching is, I kind of go off the premise that coaching is about facilitating somebody else’s thinking. So, what you’re trying to do is the intent is always good.

Heather:

You.

John:

You’re trying to help them move forward. And I think if that’s the case, I think we’ve been doing it for years and years and years. We just maybe have not labeled it coaching. And obviously, you have to look at what coaching is. A lot of people think it might be the football coach, the person that’s shouting at the sideline. And actually, in business, we have less of that and more of somebody that’s just there to try and help you and ask you some great questions. So I think coaching in itself is not a buzz, but I think the hype around it can be okay.

Heather:

Do you think it’s a word that’s become trendy and some people are going to be listening to this going well? Oh, if that’s what it is, I’ve been doing this.

John:

Yeah, 100%, absolutely. I think sometimes it depends on the culture of the business, actually. I’ve been in a few businesses where coaching is a great thing, and I’ve been in a few businesses where if you’re told you’re going to be coached, then you start getting worried. So, it all depends. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And again, if you go back to the definition that I like to use, which is just. Just to facilitate somebody else’s thinking, to help somebody move forward or past a blocker or achieve a goal or whatever it may be, then I think the intent is good. And generally, you know, there are a lot of people already doing this that may not label it as coaching.

Heather:

Okay. But I want to pick you up on something. You said there it’s facilitating somebody else’s thinking. Now, when I was growing up, I knew a lot of people who facilitated my thinking and they didn’t call it coaching. Mostly there were teachers who were telling me stuff, okay, and they would say, I’m facilitating your thinking. They wouldn’t use those words, but wouldn’t they think that’s if I tell you what to think, if I tell you what to do, am I therefore not coaching? Am I facilitating you thinking?

John:

Well, you can look at coaching in two ways. You can look at it from a directive point of view and you can look at it from a non-directive point of view. If you’re being a directive coach, then you are giving some information, albeit it wouldn’t be a direct instruction, it would be information the person would consider and then choose what to do with. Whereas a non-directive coach, you would simply in most cases just ask some questions, some effective questions, so the coachee can work stuff out in their head that maybe they haven’t thought that way before.

Heather:

Okay, so this question thing sounds important and I know that we’re going to be doing a webcast on that in a little while, so maybe we haven’t got time in this little podcast to talk about that, but maybe we should talk about the why we would want to do that, because it sounds to me like it takes quite a long time. Coaching always takes a long time and I’m quite an impatient person and surely if I just kind of say, listen, do this, this, this, and that’s a lot quicker.

John:

Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And it comes back to what most people perceive coaching to be. And you’re absolutely right. The question bit is very important and we will obviously be going through more of this in that 30 minute session that we have with the webcast. But to answer this question for you now, this picture that we perceive as coaching is often either football coach shouting at somebody or two people sitting in a room across a table for 30, 40, 50 minutes an hour at a time. Whereas in reality, if you can get the techniques of coaching and break it down and use an effective system, you can take any part of that system at any point, whether you’re sitting in a room with somebody or whether you’re walking down the corridor with somebody and you have two minutes with them or 30 seconds with them, if they’ve got a problem or they need some help, you can choose the right question at the right area of the system, ask the question, or give a bit of coaching direction and they walk away in a better place than they were 30 seconds beforehand.

Heather:

Okay, great. Well, all right, then. We’ve got one more thing then. Because we haven’t got very long. There’s one more thing, and I may be being a bit mean. I’m just going to drop you in this. If I was going to say a coaching session was a success.

John:

Yes.

Heather:

That was a successful coaching session, albeit very short.

John:

Yes.

Heather:

How would you define success in a coaching session?

John:

I would define success in a coaching session for the coachee. That is the person that’s needed the help coming away going, that was useful. I’ve got some new actions to be able to apply that I hadn’t thought of before.

Heather:

What about from a coach? How would I feel that I’d succeeded as a coach?

John:

It’s always a great. It’s a great thing. If coaches tend to feel sometimes that they have to ask lots and lots of questions, and sometimes it’s not. It’s the design of the question. And actually, if you’ve ever been in a room and you’ve asked somebody a question and the coachee or the person that you’re talking to has turned around and gone, oh, good question. That’s success. Because the coach has designed a question that has made the other person think differently. And for me, if you can do that in a room, then you’re a successful coach.

Heather:

Brilliant. Well, thanks for that. And I hope that when we have a half an hour webcast in a couple of weeks that people tune into that to learn a little bit more about learning to ask the right questions.

John:

Absolutely.

Heather:

Okay. This has been Advanced Performance Podcast. Thank you very much for tuning in.

John:

Thanks.