We began this coaching series with the idea that anyone can be a coach, and we’ll end this series by reflecting on the lasting legacy of coaches and Star Wars A New Hope. 

I’m assuming most of us have seen Star Wars: A New Hope.  If not, spoiler alert (for a 40 year old movie).  Throughout the film, Luke (our hero) has a mentor/coach named Obi-Wan Kenobi.  Eventually, Obi-Wan sacrifices himself and is killed by Darth Vader (villain) in a light saber battle.  Fast forward to the climatic end of the movie, and Luke is flying in an X-wing (think jet) and needs to shoot a missile into an exhaust port of the Death Star to blow it up and save the galaxy.  Luke is nervous, doesn’t know if he can do it, and all of a sudden a voice appears in the back of Luke’s mind telling him to use the force.  This voice is the force ghost of Obi-Wan, Luke’s deceased mentor/coach.  Luke listens to his former coach, trusts the force, shoots the missiles, and blows up the Death Star. 

So you’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with work or coaching.  I’d say that average coaches are the ones who can help you when they are physically with you.  I’d argue that the best coaches are like Obi-Wan.  Obi-Wan’s presence is so strong that he gives Luke encouragement even when he is not there.  Obi-Wan is like a force ghost coach.  (How cool is that phrase?)  Do you have any coaches in your life, where you can still “hear” them or “feel” their impact even if they aren’t physically there?  I do.  I’ll be working on stuff sometimes and say, “Susie would probably ask me to consider X.  Bob would ask me if I knew Z before I got started.”  Although that person may not physically be there, I still benefit from what they have instilled in me throughout our time together

I started this series saying that anybody could be a coach.  With that said, what do you think YOUR lingering impact is on people?  Do they hear your voice or feel your presence when you aren’t around?  Ihope they would for me.  For example, if someone I’ve worked with is facing a problem, I hope that they would hear my voice in the back of their brain saying, “What do you need people to think, feel, and/or do?  Let that guide you.” And then I hope they would hear me giving them some kind of encouragement like, “You are a boss and I got a lot of love for you.  Go beast mode and slay dragons.  You got this.”  I hope they would hear that just as clearly as Luke heard, “Trust the force.”

The challenge: Are you having a lasting impact on people?  What is the “force ghost” version of you saying to the people you have coached when you aren’t around?

Bonus: Drop one of your “Force ghost” coaches a line and tell them thank you and what you can hear them still telling you.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Last week was about understanding the situation before providing feedback.  This week is about focusing and giving feedback on things that matter.  A little while ago I saw someone give a presentation.  After they were done I dropped them a line telling them I felt they did a good job because they got the main idea across in a clear, concise, and engaging manner.  That should be the goal for any presentation, right?  Later on the person saw me, said thanks, and then said, “Feel free to give me constructive feedback too on what I should have done better.”  This caused me to pause and ask myself, “At what point should I give constructive criticism and at what point should I just leave well enough alone?” 

In the this example, I didn’t feel I had anything of substantial value to add on the constructive front, because she had accomplished the goal of getting the main idea across in a clear, concise, and engaging manner.  If I would have been pushed I could have found flaws to talk about regarding her presentation.  The person’s body language wasn’t perfect, the slides could have been better, and there were a few places that could have been smoothed over.  However, I don’t know if fixing these things would have really elevated things that much.  The bottom line is that this person accomplished their goals with the presentation and communicated a clear message.  If the presentation was an 8 out of 10 before, maybe fixing that stuff would have made it an 8.3.  Most of the audience wouldn’t have even known the difference. 

Your next question might be, “Well, shouldn’t the person shoot for a 10?”  Not necessarily.  A 10 presentation requires a lot of additional effort and work.  Most of the time you just need a solid 8, so it is clear enough to move an audience.  Now, if the person would have delivered a 3 or 4, then the person would have missed their objective of getting their point across.  At this point, the issue would have been large enough to talk about.  At this point, the gaps would have been substantial enough that I would talk to them about filling them.  It’s kind of like working on a road.  You fill giant potholes before you think of filling surface level cracks in concrete.  See the picture to the upper right of a small crack with a circle around it.  Are you going to fill that crack or are you going to focus on fixing the hole at the bottom of this email?

More work connections.  It’s easy to give feedback about every little flaw, mistake, and area that could be improved.  However, just because something is a flaw or it could be improved doesn’t mean that it SHOULD be improved.  For example, how many times in meetings have you been trying to get thoughts on an idea and people start talking to you about the font and colors on the slide you are showing instead of the key message you are trying to communicate?  I don’t know about you, but I see this happen far more than I’d care to admit.  #sadbuttrue  How many times have you received feedback on stuff that really doesn’t matter?  I feel when we give feedback on every small little thing, we actually give feedback on nothing, because we’ve given them so many things to think about they can’t take action.  Additionally, every ounce of energy a person puts forward to fix a “meaningless” issue is an ounce of energy they are unable to put toward making meaningful change.  Instead of giving feedback on every little thing, can we work on doing a better job of focusing on the things that will truly move the needle with each other?

The challenge: Are you focused on giving/seeking feedback that will truly make a difference?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Last week was about making your intentions known before providing feedback.  This week we are going to focus on understanding the situation before giving feedback. 

Pretend for a moment that you are a coach for a football team.  The kicker just missed a field goal.  You saw it hit the uprights and the crossbar.  What coaching do you give the kicker?  Maybe you would give the kicker coaching on kicking the ball harder, changing footwork, etc.  What I would hope you’d do is first ask the kicker what they think happened.  I hope you’d say, “From here it looked like X happened.  What was going on for you?”  The reason this is important is because the kicker’s response will influence what you talk about.  Maybe the kicker didn’t take the wind into consideration.  Maybe he slipped.  Maybe he was trying to kick too high to get it over the linemen.  Maybe everything was fine until someone from the other team partially blocked it.  These are all different problems with different root causes that require different coaching interventions and different solutions.

Connections to work.  How often do we seek to understand the situation before we give feedback?  How often do we find the root cause of the problem, before we offer to solve it?  If we don’t know the root cause, it’s likely we will attempt to solve the wrong problem.

Have you ever had someone give you feedback on something that ended up being really off base, because they didn’t actually understand the situation?  How did it make you feel when they did that?  I’ve had that happen to me before, and I’ve felt frustrated that the person wasn’t even trying to understand the situation before blindly giving me coaching.  This led me to wondering if the person even wanted to understand my perspective in the situation, which led me to wonder if I really wanted to work for someone who didn’t even want to attempt to understand me.  On the flip side, have you ever had people take the time to understand the situation before providing feedback?  I’ve had this happen, and when it does I’m always appreciative of the fact that they took time to understand the situation and I’m more prone to take the feedback to heart.

The challenge: Are you understanding the situation before you give feedback?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Last week we started a series on coaching, and one of the most important aspects of being a coach is giving feedback.  This week I want us to think about communicating our intentions as we share feedback.  I’d like to do this by sharing an Andrew Embry failure story.

Embry failure story.  I mentioned before that a couple of summers ago I had an intern that I coached named Kristine.  She was a few weeks into her internship and she had hit a little snag in her project.  We had a 1 on 1 and she asked me what I thought she should do.  Rather than give her an answer I started asking her questions.  “What do you think the problem is?  Why do you think the problem exists?  What do you think you should do?  Why do you think you should do that?  What other angles are you thinking about?  Who else should you talk to?”  I’m on a complete roll and notice that she is starting to have the “deer trapped in headlights” look.  That’s when I realize that she now thinks she’s stuck in some kind of FBI investigation.

I stop asking her questions and I say, “Whoa, that’s a lot of questions.  It probably feels like I’m interrogating you.  My bad and my apologies.  I want you to know that I don’t expect you to have answers to most of the questions I ask you during your time here.  My goal for this summer is to help you become a better thinker, and the only way I know how is to ask you questions to stretch your thinking.  I’m going to ask you a barrage of questions until you either solve the problem or we figure out what you need to know to solve the problem.  Then after we figure out what you need to know, we can talk about how you might get that information and I’ll be more than happy to give you more direct guidance as you need it.”  After I said all that, I could see the switch her in body language.  Now that she understood my intent, she was okay with me asking away.

Connections to work.  How many times have you been like me in that situation?  How many times have you been like Kristine in a situation?  How did it feel?  I remember being in a situation with the roles reversed once.  This person was asking me all kinds of questions and my thought process was, “This person believes I am entirely incompetent,” so I was worried every time I spoke.  Then one day the person was like, “Yeah, I like to ask a lot of questions so I’m up to speed on everything and can talk about work and connect dots as appropriate.”  That one simple sentence completely changed the way I viewed and experienced our conversations.  As a coach/colleague/leader, one of the most important things we can do is share and demonstrate our intentions.  Demonstrating the right intentions goes a long way to building trust and enabling you to give meaningful feedback.

The challenge: Are you demonstrating your intentions when communicating with individuals?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Last week was about giving meaningful feedback.  This week is about showing yourself the same level of coaching compassion as you do others.  What you are about ready to read is a true story.  The names have been changed to protect the innocent. 

A few months ago, Bob and I were talking.  Bob is brand new to his role and feeling overwhelmed.  He’s used to being in a role where he was competent and knew what he was doing, and now he’s playing an entirely different ball game.  Bob is concerned, anxious, excited, feeling incompetent, full of doubt, etc.  When I talk to Bob, I listen to him, try to understand him, and show empathy.  Then, I say something along the lines of, “I have a lot of love for you Bob.  You’re brand new.  Everything you’re feeling is exactly what you should be feeling right now.  You’re not going to get good overnight.  It’s going to take a few months.  In fact, I’m proud of you, because I’ve seen that you have already started to pick up on a few things.  You’re making great progress and are already starting to make an impact.  If you want to continue to grow, here are a few things to think about.  In the meantime, keep being you and adding value where you can, because that’s what this team needs you to do right now.”  From there I share a few other thoughts and considerations with Bob, and I can tell that he appreciates the conversation. 

A few weeks ago, Joe and I were talking.  Joe is brand new to his role, and was in a very similar situation to Bob with similar feelings and everything.  I didn’t really make an effort to understand Joe or empathize with him.  Instead, when I talked to Joe I said something along the lines of, “You’re kind of behind aren’t you?  Shouldn’t you have started picking up on this stuff by now?  What value are you even bringing to the team?  Are you sure you can do this stuff?  People told you that you’d be good at this role, so shouldn’t you be good by now?”  This conversation doesn’t help Joe much.

At this point you’re probably saying, “Why were you so good to Bob and so bad to Joe?”  It’s quite simple.  Joe’s real name is Andrew Embry and Bob isn’t Andrew Embry.  I’ve found throughout my career that when it comes to helping others I’m filled with patience, compassion, and a willingness to help.  When it comes to helping others, I usually find some kind of perspective that is valuable to the person I’m assisting.  I’ve found when it comes to myself, I lose this perspective and fall down the rabbit hole of self-doubt and having ridiculously high expectations.  Do any of you do the same thing?  Do any of you treat Bob better than “Joe” (aka yourself)?

With all that said, I’m making a concentrated effort to approach myself differently, by approaching myself like I would approach any other person.  When I start to find myself stuck, frustrated, frozen, and filled with self-doubt, I ask myself, “What would I tell someone else who came to me with that problem?  If ‘Pat’ came to me, what would I say?  What would I ask?  How would I empathize with them?”  It’s amazing how much better perspective and how much more grace I give myself if I pretend I’m talking to someone else.  As a result of all of this, I’m trying to take the advice I’m giving to other people.  If I’m being entirely honest with myself, I’m not entirely competent right now in my newer role, and that’s okay.  It’s okay for me to admit this and own this, because this is where I am right now.  At the same time, while I may not be entirely competent in all of the technical ways I will need to be, there are still ways for me to add value, and that’s what I need to focus on while I continue to settle in and find where I belong on this team.

The challenge: Treat yourself as well as you’d treat others.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry