How do you create new outcomes around relationship problems in the workplace? Start by rebranding people, experiences and stories.
Imagine you have an employee who harbors the following belief: “My boss is uncoachable and not open to feedback.”
How do you facilitate a conversation and create new outcomes around this issue? How do you rebrand people, situations, experiences and, ultimately, the stories you and this individual have created about themselves and others, along with the ones you both want to create yourselves?
In the spirit of believing that you’ve “tried everything,” consider a few coaching questions and do an honest, self-assessment when asking yourself, “Have I actually asked these specific questions, in this specific order, and in this specific way, using this exact wording?”
There’s no “maybe” here. There’s no “I do something similar.” That’s the point—execution and precision in the language of coaching and leadership is everything. The quality of the answers you get is based on the quality of the questions you ask.
The intention of these questions is to make your employee comfortable sharing what they’re feeling, as well as their experiences surrounding those feelings and assumptions. You’re not just seeking out the facts but also what surrounds the facts—the feelings that exist which have created the positive or negative experience.
In the example above, use these questions to facilitate a new kind of conversation:
- “What’s going on?”
- “Why do you feel this way? What feelings come up around this?”
- “Are the things you’re sharing with me all happening and factual?”
- “Do you believe it’s true?”
- “How do you know it’s true?”
- “What possible assumptions are being made around this specific situation, without the evidence to support them?”
- “What if it weren’t true? What would that mean to you?”
- “What else could be true?”
- “Ideally, what would you want to be true? How would you want it to be?”
Here’s the coaching moment: Ask the person to reverse their statement, observation or truth. For example, if you consider the other possibilities surrounding the “my boss is uncoachable” statement, you may discover there’s more than one way to interpret it:
- “My boss is coachable and open to feedback.”
- “My boss is uncoachable and open to feedback.”
- “My boss is coachable and not open to feedback.”
- “My boss is coachable and not open to my feedback.”
- “My boss would be coachable if I did a better job resetting expectations with them.”
- “My boss is coachable and open to my feedback.”
- “My boss is coachable and I am not open to their feedback.”
- “I am coachable and open to my boss’s feedback.”
- “I am not coachable nor open to feedback because of past experiences.”
- “I am coachable but not open to my boss’s feedback because I’m unsure what their intentions really are.”
Interesting line of various truths that could be possible here. The question is, which one do you want to create? Your objective here is to help the individual expand their peripheral view, remove any blinders they’ve developed, challenge these assumptions and create a new outcome.
This approach is your opportunity to reinvent the relationships you have with those you’ve misbranded as well. Imagine applying this one strategy to the people who you may struggle with. What if you became insatiably curious for a moment and authentically cared enough to want to arrive at a deeper understanding of their point of view around any situation?
If they agree with this line of thinking, you have already taken the first step toward creating the type of relationship you ideally want, rather than continuing to walk into every conversation believing that you already know what the outcome will be.
What we focus on manifests in our lives. The consequence is often making decisions based on assumptions and judgments we’ve created ourselves.
The role of a transformational coach is to create space for new possibilities to emerge for every leader, including those “difficult” people you may have initially misbranded. Rebranding means resetting your relationships and expectations with each person, one conversation at a time.
Keith Rosen, CEO of Coachquest, has written several best-sellers, including “Own Your Day” and “Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions,” winner of five International Best Book awards and the No. 1 best-selling sales management coaching book on Amazon.
