592: Ed Batista - How To Give Useful Feedback, What Great Leaders Do, and Why We All Need An Executive Coach

<p dir="ltr">Read our book, The Score That Matters <a href= "https://amzn.to/3XxHi7p">https://amzn.to/3XxHi7p</a></p> <p dir="ltr">Full show notes at <a href= "https://www.learningleader.com">www.LearningLeader.com</a> </p> <p dir="ltr">This episode is supported by <a href= "https://bit.ly/insightglobalhawk">Insight Global</a>. Insight Global is a staffing company dedicated to empowering people. Please <a href="https://bit.ly/insightglobalhawk">CLICK HERE</a> for premier staffing and talent.</p> <p>Notes:</p> <ul> <li aria-level="1">Commonalities of excellent coaches: <ul> <li aria-level="1">Not defensive</li> <li aria-level="1">Respond well to feedback</li> <li aria-level="1">Ability to learn</li> </ul> </li> <li>"Leadership can't be taught but it can be learned."</li> <li>Coaching is not therapy, but it can be therapy-adjacent. <ul> <li>It's not telling people what to do and it's not just asking questions. It's a combination of all of them.</li> </ul> </li> <li>There is ample research on the benefits of writing. It clarifies your thinking.</li> <li>The questions to ask someone who might need an executive coach: <ul> <li>Why do you want a coach?</li> <li>Why now?</li> <li>What do you hope to get out of it?</li> </ul> </li> <li>What do great leaders do? <ul> <li>First, do no harm.</li> <li>Walk the talk.</li> <li>Be an embodiment of the culture.</li> <li>Have high standards <ul> <li>Take risks</li> <li>Coach people up</li> <li>Train people</li> </ul> </li> <li>"Coaching is accomplishment through others."</li> </ul> </li> <li>"Feedback is not a gift." <ul> <li>Feedback is data. Signal and noise. <ul> <li>Signal - Important and good.</li> <li>Noise - Byproduct of someone's distorted lens.</li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> <li>"Praise, Criticism, Praise (PCP) is terrible." Don't give the compliment sandwich. It's disingenuous.</li> <li aria-level="1">How leaders best overcome adversity – The most critical skill is "adaptive capacity..." It's composed of two primary qualities: the ability to grasp context, and hardiness.</li> <li>Coaching - Asking evocative questions, ensuring the other person feels heard, and actively conveying empathy remain the foundations of coaching. <ul> <li><em>Connect:</em> Establish and renew the interpersonal connection, followed by an open-ended question.</li> <li><em>Reflect:</em> Having elicited a response, reflect back the essence of the other person's comments.</li> <li><em>Direct:</em> Focus their attention on a particular aspect of their response that invites further exploration.</li> </ul> </li> <li>Support and Challenge - A client once said, "It feels like you're always in my corner, but you never hesitate to challenge me."</li> <li>Master the Playbook, Throw it Away - Coaching involves a continuous and cyclical process of learning, unlearning, and relearning.</li> <li>Power Dynamics - The longer I coach, the more I appreciate and value the work of Jeff Pfeffer, a leading scholar on power. philosopher Ernest Becker: <em>"If you are wrong about power, you don't get a chance to be right about anything else."</em></li> <li><em>"Meaningful coaching is always an emotionally intimate experience, no matter what's being discussed. In part this is a function of the context: two people talking directly to each other with no distractions... Intimacy in a coaching relationship also results from a willingness to 'make the private public'--to share with another person the thoughts and feelings that we usually keep to ourselves... And yet an essential factor that makes such intimacy possible is a clear set of boundaries defining the relationship, which creates an inevitable and necessary sense of distance..."</em></li> </ul>