The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 321 - Uncoachable?

Transcript:

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: Hello, Pete.

Pete: I've got a question for you that I think we could explore and unpack. So the other day, I was sent this article on Substack from a friend of mine who is part of this global coaching Whatsapp group that we have. There's, I think, ten or fifteen of us in there, and we share ideas and ask each other questions and share resources. And there was this one article, the crux of which doesn't matter so much, but the question that came out of it, I really have been noodling on and I want your thoughts on. And the question is: What isn't coachable?

Jen: Oh...oh. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Wow.

Pete: That was my reaction too. Now, I'll share the article in the Box O' Goodies, with also the disclaimer that the resulting list the author came up with, I disagree with, totally disagreed with.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: But it sparked a great conversation in this Whatsapp group, in this community, I mean, around, "What isn't coachable? And if there is something that you disagree with that's not uncoachable, i.e. it is coachable, how might you coach it?" So, it just created this really cool conversation. And I came up with some high level thoughts around one thing in particular, but a couple of things that I think might be difficult to coach. But I totally want to know your thoughts, because you spend all day, every day, coaching some of the most brilliant artists in the world. So undoubtedly, you have some thoughts.

Jen: You know, my knee jerk response is to want to say, "Everything is coachable."

Pete: I know.

Jen: And yet, I know from experience that that is not true.

Pete: Right. So tell me about the experiences then, what did you bump up against?

Jen: I'm trying to think of what the word is to encompass it, and I think the word is "intuition".

Pete: Oh, nice. Tell me more.

Jen: I've experienced this several times when I've done a train the trainer kind of program, for a corporate client. I've witnessed it when I've observed other people sharing their frameworks and tools and techniques in like a conference setting. I've experienced it, sometimes, when working with a director. Like, I can share with someone, "Here are the tools. Here are the techniques. Here are the scripts. Here is the way to read the room. Here is the way to communicate with your body language. Here is the way to read someone else's body language." And all of that is ready to go. And yet, in the moment, the intuition piece of which tool to pull or which script to use or how to read what's going on with the other person has been something I have not been able to teach or coach.

Pete: Mmm. There's some juice there. Firstly, is like, perhaps one path is the distinction between coaching and teaching.

Jen: Which I think we have an episode about...maybe I'll pop that in the Box O' Goodies.

Pete: I think we actually have a song. It was about [singing], "Coaching and teaching. Coaching and teaching."

Jen: [singing], "Coaching and teaching."

Pete: I don't know if that was in the episode or outside the episode, but now it's in.

Jen: I think that was on the cutting room floor, but now it's in.

Pete: That was a little personal joke that is now very public. So I like that because, yes, it raises the question of, "What is the difference between the two," which is one of the threads we ended up in, in the WhatsApp group. And the other I totally agree with, which is...I'll speak for you, having observed you in action...that's part of your genius, is your intuition to know, "Oh, let me try this exercise. Let me try this question. Let me try this framework." How you package that up and help someone have the intuition of Jen Waldman, I have no idea how to do that.

Jen: Not that I would, in any state of sanity, compare myself to Seth Godin...and that's not what I'm trying to do, but I'm using him as an example of someone who I've seen in action. And there is nobody else on planet Earth who thinks like Seth Godin.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: You can prompt someone with the same questions, you can give them all of Seth's books, you could have them be a student or a disciple of Seth, but like in the moment, only Seth would ever say it that way.

Pete: Yeah, or pull that random story about what happened in the 1980s in Papua New Guinea that has some relevance to the marketing question that you have. You're like, "How did you even know that? What is going on?" Okay, that's a really solid answer. I like that, "intuition". I actually hadn't contemplated that. It does bring up for me though, is that a coaching versus teaching moment? And does it change the answer to that question, if it's, "What is not teachable?" I kind of feel like, in this case, I'm still not sure if you can teach the Jen Waldman intuition.

Jen: Can I hit pause for a second, without literally hitting pause? And just say, one of the things we, I think, ended up agreeing on in the Coaching and Teaching episode is that teaching is imparting a skill and coaching is mining all of the possibilities within what already exists.

Pete: Yeah. I'm happy with that.

Jen: I just wanted to say that for clarity, for anyone who's like, "Should I pause this episode and go listen to that one right now?"

Pete: Yeah. Also, great memory and intuition to know how to summarize that episode for us right now. This is an example of something that one can't teach or coach. So is it helpful for me to say out loud, some of the things that came to mind and came up in this group?

Jen: I cannot wait to hear them, yes. My pen is at the ready, to take some notes.

Pete: Okay. My totally oversimplified gut reaction to this...after I got over the like, "Oh, I think everything might be," and then, I was like, "No, no, everything can't be. Everything can't be coachable." My first one was "attitude".

Jen: Oh.

Pete: Now, we have an episode called Attitude, which I can put in the Box O' Goodies, where we kind of made this argument that attitude is a skill (which I still stand by and still agree with) and a choice, i.e. I get to choose the attitude and the posture of which I'm going to show up.

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: And the reason I had this as uncoachable, or very difficult to coach, is essentially because it's really really difficult to coach someone who doesn't want to be coached.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: If the attitude is, "I have no interest in being coached. You have nothing to teach me by asking me questions. I have a fixed mindset. And I'm a closed book. And I'm not going to give you anything," well, it's pretty difficult to coach around that. So my gut response was, "attitude". You need to have a certain baseline attitude, in order to then be coachable. What do you think?

Jen: I agree so wholeheartedly, that you really will find it challenging to coach someone who is not open to coaching.

Pete: Trust me, I've tried. It's not fun. It doesn't work.

Jen: I will tell you, I have one tiny little hack for this.

Pete: Okay.

Jen: Which is, you know, I record everything I do with my clients, or I ask them to record everything we do. And sometimes, the ones who are closed, a couple days later, will go back and listen.

Pete: Oh, interesting.

Jen: And say, "Oh, I re-listened to our session. And I now, hindsight, I see what you're saying. Or I'm willing to try this, even though I said I wasn't."

Pete: The ol' recording, I like that.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: There's something in their attitude to go back and listen though, which I quite like, around, there's some sort of positive trait that's coachable in there somewhere.

Jen: Yeah. So "attitude", I agree with you.

Pete: Yeah. That was my gut reaction, was like...one of the things in his list that I'm still wrestling with was "self-awareness", the author deemed that to be uncoachable. And I was kind of like, "Wait a minute. Isn't that the one thing, the main thing that one gets through coaching, is self-awareness? To know what your blind spots might be, or what your gifts might be, what your superpowers might be?" So, I butted up against that one quite a lot. And the tension I now feel is, I also know a bunch of leaders that I've come across in my many travels across many organizations around the world, that have the right attitude, are totally open to coaching, and are, for whatever reason, unable to catch what you're throwing. They have a perception of themselves that is totally different to the perception of the one you are receiving and/or their peers might be receiving.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And you're trying to coach them to see that, and they're open to coaching, but they kind of can't see that the way they show up might be perceived in a certain way.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: So, I'm grappling with this. I feel like self-awareness can be coached, but I also know examples where people have struggled to open that door and turn on that light for somebody.

Jen: Huh, this is so interesting. My initial response is, "Of course, self-awareness can be coached. Isn't that the point of coaching?"

Pete: Right. That was my reaction too, yeah.

Jen: In my experience, twenty years as a coach and longer than that in other positions that sometimes might have been called leadership positions, I have yet to meet someone whose self-awareness cannot be coached, even to a very small degree. I've met people who don't like receiving a different perspective about what they're putting out there, and who are very defensive about it. But I can't think of a single person I've met who actually hasn't learned more about themself.

Pete: Yeah. I feel like, to your point, that's kind of the point. I mean, I just pulled up the blog, and there's a couple in this final list that I just know will rile you up. Including, wait for it, "creativity" as being a skill that is not coachable. Which I totally disagree with, and I have a feeling that you might too, based on that look that you just gave me.

Jen: Well, it depends what you think creativity is.

Pete: Huh. Say more?

Jen: Sometimes, creativity requires intuition.

Pete: Right.

Jen: But right after we get off this call, Pete, I'm about to go run a session called Create, where I have a group of people who, many of whom, at the beginning of the session, are like, "There's no way, by the end of this hour, I will have made something." And I give them the coaching, and they make something. Everybody makes something. Now, whether or not it's "good" is another story, but I think everybody is capable of being coached on their creativity. So, I'm going to push back against that one.

Pete: Good, let's push back. I am happy to push back. That's why I brought this up. Okay, the other strand that I've been noodling on is something that's been mentioned at various points throughout this podcast journey, is this idea of, "Don't steal the revelation." This is a phrase and a posture and a philosophy of coaching that I learned from the incredible Paul Jun, and became a really core part of our approach to coaching when I was the head coach of the altMBA. And essentially, what that sort of philosophy posits is, "When it comes to coaching, don't take away the revelation, the gift of the realization, the aha moment, from the person you're coaching. Let them get there themselves, by asking probing questions, and holding up a mirror, and hopefully increasing their self-awareness, and having them realize the thing themselves." And I don't know what the percentage is, call it 2%, I don't know, 5%, whatever it is. Every now and then, we would come across somebody where no amount of questions, and reflecting back, and mirror seemed to get them to see what or catch what you were throwing, or see what you were trying to help them see. And so, we kind of got to the point where we were like, "Maybe, sometimes, you have to steal the revelation. Maybe, sometimes, the gift is actually to say to someone, 'Here is the thing that you're not seeing,' and just lay it out for them." Which may not be, you know, a by-the-textbook coaching approach, and this is back to our point around straddling the teaching versus coaching idea, but it helps them get where they need to go. So I share that because I think the risk that one has as a coach (and I've seen this risk play out, I'm happy to share some more stories) is we think that everything is coachable, and so we always coach, we always ask a question. We're constantly doing the same thing, even though it doesn't always work, depending on the situation.

Jen: Yes. And this is where I think the coach needs a good sense of intuition.

Pete: Right, ironically. Yeah, good point.

Jen: If we think about coaching as being a way to help someone realize existing potential, using existing knowledge and existing skills, if the person doesn't have the knowledge or the skill, no amount of coaching is going to help them have it, so you've got to teach it.

Pete: Right, beautifully said. I mean, I often share the example in workshops I run, where we, to a fault, are probably drilled in this idea of, "Don't steal the revelation, and ask questions, and hold space. Let the person get there." And there was one example, way back when, where there was a student who lost their login to get onto the platform. And we asked them a coaching question, which was essentially like, "Where might you find your login? Or how might you reset your password?" And the person was so...I mean, I can laugh at this too, because I was part of the team. But the person was so infuriated and frustrated by that response, understandably.

Jen: I would be too.

Pete: Because we took it too far. It's like, don't coach someone in a moment where they just need some direction. Give them the freaking direction. Give them the login. Give them the password. You don't need to always be adopting that posture.

Jen: Right.

Pete: So maybe, as I'm sharing that story, the reason this blog resonated with me...I'm like coaching myself, I guess. The reason I like it is because it's provocative, in the sense that it suggests that not everything is coachable. And sometimes, in certain circles that I've been a part of, I mean, like our default response was, "No, wait. I think we can coach everything." But I think what I like about this is it sort of suggests that there is a time and a place, which I tend to agree with,

Jen: This is just making me think of what it's like to be a parent.

Pete: Oh, say more. I'm taking notes.

Jen: And you're like constantly moving from teacher to coach, teacher to coach, teacher to coach. Like, okay, I live in New York City. At some point, I wanted my daughter to learn how to navigate the subway system,

Pete: Right.

Jen: So did I plop her on a subway platform and say, "Where do you think you would find the directions to where you're going?" No. I say, "Here's the subway map. This is where the different lines go. This is what the stations look like. This is what this symbol means. This is north. This is south." Okay, so we've taught that. And then, the next time when she goes, "I don't really know where to go," I say, "Well, where might you find that information?" "Oh right, the subway map." "Right." So like, you have to teach it first. And so, now that I'm looking at my page and I see, "What isn't coachable," written down with a thousand circles around it, I go, "Oh, what isn't coachable is lack of skill."

Pete: Yeah, base knowledge.

Jen: Like, lack of knowledge and lack of skill is not coachable. There is no reason for me, Jen Waldman, to have a pole vaulting coach. You know why? I'm not coachable in that, because I don't know how to pole vault.

Pete: Oh my god, what a fun visual though...tiny Jen Waldman with this giant pole, charging towards the mat. That is so funny.

Jen: But I can be coached on my push-ups, finally.

Pete: Yes, you can.

Jen: Because after many many failed attempts to do good solid push-ups, I'm finally doing them. And now, someone can come over and coach me to get better at them.

Pete: Yeah. So, I wrote down "base knowledge". I feel like there is a base knowledge that is required of any given field, whether it's how to read the subway, whether it's how to do a push-up, whether it's how to do a pole vault, whether it's how to lead a team.

Jen: Make good decisions. Yeah. Listen.

Pete: Right. There's a base level of knowledge that (I totally agree with, to your point) we, as coaches, need to have the intuition to know, "Have they got the base level of knowledge?"

Jen: Right.

Pete: Because if the answer to that question is no, no amount of asking questions or coaching is going to work. So, perhaps that is our answer to this question of what isn't coachable. Hmm. Provocative, no?

Jen: So provocative. I feel like this question is going to haunt me all week, and I'm just going to be looking at every single conversation through this lens. So thanks for that, Pete.

Pete: You're very welcome. It actually reminds me, in a way, of your acronym W.A.I.T.: Why am I talking?

Jen: Yeah. Well, I didn't make that up. I stole it. But yes.

Pete: Well, I attribute it to you, because you taught it to me. And I relate it to that because it applies, for me, it applies in almost every conversation. Can you be intentional about when you're talking and why you're talking? Can you be intentional about whether you're asking a question or whether you're giving a thought or giving advice or sharing a story? To me, that's like the straddling the tension of, and you get clear on, when you're coaching, when there's base knowledge. Are you teaching? Are you listening? What are you doing? Why are you talking? Why are you coaching? I guess, is another version of that question.

Jen: Well, Pete, it sounds like, with that, you totally debunked the idea that self-awareness can't be coached, because that was one of the most self-aware coaching monologues I think I've heard.

Pete: Ah, yep. It's all very meta. That is The Long and The Short Of It.