Episode 296: The Coaching Habit with Michael Bungay Stanier

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Welcome to The Bottom Line, a new weekly podcast series that we drop every Thursday to complement our weekly Monday podcast interviews with the industry leaders.

These podcasts are going to be designed to give you short, impactful, and value-driven information that you can start using right away in your business.

I value your time and attention and will do my very best not to waste it.

Just get what you need and go.

So with that, let's get into today's episode.

Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. I'm On today's episode, we have Michael Bengay Stainer. He is the author of several different books, one of the which, actually two of which, we're going to go into a deep dive today. But The Coaching Habit is absolutely one of my favorite books around coaching. It's helped me to be a better, uh, business coach. I know many of you are out there leading your teams and you want to be a better coach for your teams. Well, this book is absolutely one that I would recommend, and I really enjoy this conversation. I think you're going to love some of the high-level concepts, but also some of the down to the dirt, in the weeds, tactical things that you can implement right away. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Michael Bungay Staner.

Are you an agency owner looking to grow your revenue, increase your bottom line, and better manage your taxes? Club Capital is here to help. Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agents in the country, providing monthly accounting, tax strategy, and CFO services. Way more than bookkeeping and your everyday run-of-the-mill tax prep, Club Capital is focused on providing financial and tax advisory services that help you plan and forecast your agency's performance. Their financial dashboards and agency forecasting tools help you better understand your agency's historical performance, create and measure future targets, and see how your agency compares to your peers around the country. Imagine what it would be like to understand the impact to your bottom line when deciding to hire a new employee. Or forecast the impact rate changes or commission rates will have on your business. With over $200 million in tracked annual revenue and $140 million in tracked annual expenses, Club Capital has the data and the team to help you make better-informed decisions for your agency. They will help you turn that back-office stress into the backbone of your agency's success by giving you the tools to take your agency and your leadership to the next level. Visit club.capital today to book a solution overview with one of our business consultants. Club Capital, way more than a CPA firm. Ambition is the first step towards success. It's time to level up your agency, and Coach P Consulting will help you do just that by using the same strategies he used to sell over 700 life insurance policies in 2021 alone. Now, this is not your regular one-and-done type coaching. You'll get personalized coaching 2 days a week, every week of the month, and you'll get a live look behind the scenes his team training and an office that's performing at the highest level. There's a reason Coach P Consulting is the fastest growing coaching company for insurance agency owners in the country. Coach P will train your team alongside his own and show you the exact steps they are taking to achieve Chairman's Circle, Exotic Travel, and Multi-Line Presence Club and be one of the few agents to be selected to have a third office. So whether your goal is to be at the top of your local market or amongst the best in the country, this training will give you the strategies and the tactics to get there. For just $250 a month, you'll get high-level coaching each week from someone who is already getting it done at that level. And his strategies work, and it's time to put them to work for you. Sign up at coachpeakconsulting.com and get your first full month for free when you mention the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Michael, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Thanks, Bradley. Happy to be here.

Excited to have you. Well, we always start with background and origin story. I'll share, uh, with our listening audience in just a little bit how I came first across you, but in your work, but why don't you give people a little bit of kind of your own individual background and origin story of how you got to where you are today?

Well, I was bitten by a radioactive spider and since then I realized that with great responsibility, you know, that's, that's somebody else's origin story. Sorry. So I guess really quickly, I'm Australian who now lives in Canada. I'm actually recording this back in Australia. Happy childhood. Won a Rhodes Scholarship when I was at university in Australia, which was one of those helpful crossroad moments where I went left instead of right. Ended up studying at Oxford where I fell in love. It also stopped me becoming a lawyer because I'd done a law degree back in Australia, which hadn't gone well. I mean, I finished my law degree being sued for defamation by one of my law professors. So it was really not that great. But in England, started my career and worked for a while in the world of product development and innovation. So I have played a small role both in inventing stuffed crust pizza for Pizza Hut and inventing a single malt whiskey, which has been declared the worst single malt whiskey ever invented. So for various reasons, I'm like, that's fun, but it's probably not my life's calling. And after some time in a kind of consulting role around how change happens in organizations, I had moved from Oxford to London to Boston. And then in 2001, moved from Boston to Canada to Toronto where I started kind of my more independent career. And that's where I started writing books. And I really found my space and had my moment when I wrote a book called The Coaching Habit. That's 2016, so 7 years ago now. But that book has really taken off. It's sold more than a million copies. It's the bestselling book on coaching this century. And it's not written for coaches. It's written for practical people in life who need to, who understand that being more coach-like, staying curious longer, asking good questions is helpful. But they're like, yeah, but how do I do that? Unweird coaching for me. And that's what The Coaching Habit is about. It's unweirding coaching. So regular people can go, oh, I can see how that's helpful. And since then I've written other books as well. I've written about 8 or 9 in total. So I kind of help people with two main challenges, I guess. One is helping manage humans so that you can build stronger working relationships, ask better questions and help them have more impact and bring out their best. And then the second thing I help people do is help figure out what their next big thing is. Last year I wrote a book called How to Begin, Start Doing Something That Matters. And that's more around the, all right, I'm at that crossroads. Maybe I'm in my 40s or 50s and I'm like, what's the next big thing for me? And I help people with that as well.

Well, we're gonna focus this conversation on both two of those books, The Coaching Habit. I think I wanna get everybody introduced to that.

Great.

It is truly, and, and I'm not kidding when I say this, our team, we were curating some of my favorite books into a list and we're putting it into a Notion document. Actually, my EA is working on that as we speak. And one of those books is that book, your, your book. Um, uh, The Coaching Habit. That actually just came up today. I remember, I, I don't recall where I first heard about the book, but it was something about, you know, say less, ask more, and change the way I lead that really just made me say, I need to shut up and I need to be able to learn how to ask more questions. Because I told you that before we recorded, I've heard that before. Like, I'd heard that, but nobody ever showed me how to do that. Like, what does that actually mean to ask better questions? It would just always stop right there. and your book does a fantastic job with that. But here's— so here's— I will shut up now and ask this question. How do you define coaching from maybe some other terms that get intertwined with coaching, training, development, leadership, et cetera? I'd love for us to start there.

So I tend to think of coaching as a behavior that contributes to all of those other things. So the behavior that for me is about being coach-like, because there's lots of people who are like, I don't really want to be a coach. And I'm like, that's fine, but be more coach-like. And the behavior is simply, can you stay curious a little bit longer? Can you rush to action and advice giving a little bit more slowly? And you'll find that whether you are, what you're doing, you're framing as teaching or whether you're framing it as leadership, whether you're framing it as mentoring. You know, these are all kind of labels that are a bit fluid and they kind of connect to each other. But if you are showing up in the way you show up with people in an attempt to bring out their best, in an attempt to help them focus on what matters, just staying curious a little bit longer, rushing to action and advice a little bit more slowly is really helpful. And it's helpful for a number of reasons, which is, first of all, it stops you feeling like you have to rescue everybody and do it all and be the person who has all the answers. That is exhausting and impossible. It's also diminishing for the other person because they're like, if you are the person who feels they have to have all the answers, you're saying to them, you don't have all the answers. You know, there's a TEDx talk I gave called How to Tame Your Advice Monster. And One of the things you might not realize is if you're in advice-giving mode, you're actually saying to the other person, I am better and smarter and faster and wiser and more experienced and better looking than you are. So there's a way that you tip the balance and not in a good way. So curiosity helps with teaching. Curiosity helps with sales and working with somebody you're trying to get to buy your financial product or whatever it might be. Curiosity helps with mentoring. You know, people think mentoring is like, I've got to sit down and tell you my life story. I'm like, that's helpful, but why don't you ask some questions first? It's not never give advice. Bradley, that's really important for people to hear. Sometimes coaching shows up with the, oh, you should never give advice. And I'm like, of course you should give advice. That's how civilization works. You pass knowledge on, but wait a little bit. Slow down the rush. Don't make it your default response, but just stay curious a little bit longer. And of course, on the Coaching Habit, I'm like, here are 7 good questions that might help.

Yeah, I think the stay curious a little longer means 1 or 2 extra additional questions before you just jump into it. And I was thinking to myself as I was preparing for this, Maybe we can even contextualize a couple of things that we could share with people around maybe their weekly one-to-ones with their direct reports, what that would look like. And then maybe even in a team environment, whether it's on remote over Zoom or maybe it's in person with your team, what that actually looks like. Because I think the framing of those is one of them is literally one-to-one and one of them is one to where I'm coaching the entire team or multiple people at one time. So what, why don't you, I'll let you take it from there.

Yeah, sure. So the one-to-one is a great place to start because honestly, most people's weekly one-to-ones are excruciatingly tedious. I mean, I might be overselling it a little bit, but, you know, often it's a little bit performative. The, the, the less senior person comes in and they're like, okay, let me report out on all the stuff I'm doing. And the person who's the boss or the manager or kind of in that other position is like, okay, I'm gonna have to listen to this and nod my head and be encouraging and being enthusiastic. I tend to think that if you go to one-to-one, it is really precious time. How do you make the most of that time? So I can give you a script that could be helpful. I'm like, Bradley, it's a one-to-one. I'm excited about it. I want to be as helpful as I can for you. So tell me, Bradley, what's on your mind? And what's on your mind is the kickstart question from The Coaching Habit. And what's useful about it is it accelerates the conversation. It's like there's a place for small talk, but if you've got a one-to-one and you've got 30 minutes or maybe a little bit longer, you're like, let's make the most of it. So, you know, what's on your mind says, you tell me how I can be of best service. Why don't you tell me what you're worried about or anxious about or nervous about or excited about or overwhelmed by? Let's go where I can be most helpful for you. So what's on your mind? And like Brad is like, oh man, the thing. I'm like, oh, the thing. I get it. And of course, as soon as Bradley says the thing, because I'm in the same industry and I know what the thing's about and I'm 3 years older than Bradley and I've had a little more professional experience, I'm like, ah, I had that as well. I've got scars, I've got stories, I've got tactics, I've got tools and your advice monster immediately shows up and you're like, okay, great. Let me solve this for you because I'm trying to be helpful here. Yep. But here's the challenge. At the moment, you don't really know what the real challenge is. You've just heard the first explanation and it's a fair bet that the first challenge is never the real challenge. It's just their first attempt to articulate it. And secondly, I mean, you don't know the problem and your advice is not as good as you think it is. That's a really helpful mantra. Your advice is just not as good as you think it is. So now you're bringing not very good advice to solve the wrong problem unless you stay curious a little bit longer. You're like, okay, so the thing I know a bit about this because I've done this before, but I'm curious. Really helpful phrase. I'm curious. It reminds you and them that you're being curious. I'm curious. What's the real challenge here for you with this? And what's the real challenge here for you is such a powerful question. It's called the focus question in The Coaching Habit. Because it's like, it says, it says that you're interested in trying to get to the heart of the challenge, but not in a kind of theoretical, high-level, abstract, objective way. It's like, but Bradley, for you, what's the real challenge here for you? So it recognizes that the other person is part of what's hard about it at the moment. So, you know, Bradley's come to me and he's gone, ah, I haven't hit my sales targets. And I'm like, okay, I get that. What's the real challenge here for you on that? Or actually somebody on my team hasn't hit their sales target. I'm like, great. And I'm like, I've got 40 years of teaching people how to hit sales targets. I've got 1000 tactics in my head, but I go, but what's the real challenge for you in helping Joanne hit her sales targets? And I'm like, I'm not back. I don't know how to give her the feedback. I'm like, oh, it's not about sales targets. It's about you having that hard conversation and you go, great. So what's the challenge for you in giving feedback, right? What's the real challenge for you in asking for what you want? Oh, what's the real challenge for you in setting accountability? And the conversation goes to the heart of what the issue is, not what the not what you made up to be the problem. All of this is getting really specific to say, use your one-to-ones not to have a report out on all the stuff that's happened because you can get that in an email or by reading a dashboard or by saying, leave me an updated Loom and I will watch it at 2x so I can kind of get a sense of what's going on. Let's use our time together to do one of two things, celebrate success or figure out how to fix problems. And there's a great place to, I mean, one of the questions that I tend to start all of my one-to-ones in is like, what are we celebrating? What's going well? It's just really nice because, you know, so often we are, we're wired to go to where the problem is and it's like, let's, bed in the energy, which is like, let's celebrate success. And then I go, and how can I be most helpful? What's the real challenge? What's on your mind? What's the real challenge here for you? And then you're off onto a coach-like conversation.

That is such a great specific thing that people could just immediately take that. And I think to me, what really resonates to me whenever you're sharing that is why The Coaching Habit resonated with me so much is that it does become a habit. And I wrote down, circled it, underlined it, which is don't assume. Don't assume. I just immediately jumped into, oh, you're not hitting your sales targets. Okay, well, I know exactly what it is. Let's fix that. We jump into it. It's like, whoa, wait a minute. I'm curious. What's the real challenge for you? Because sometimes I just look what's obvious what the challenge is. So why do I need to ask that question? To me, it all comes back to assumptions versus, wait a minute, I'm going to slow down. Slow down. I mean, I'm going to develop this habit to stay curious just a little bit longer, which means you're not just going to continue to pepper 17 questions to say, well, I'm just staying curious. It's like, okay, at some point the thing flips a little bit. And for some of us, this literally gets down into asking one or two extra questions in our one-to-ones. Is that fair?

Yeah. I mean, I reckon if you want, if you're willing to take this on, the more you do it, the more you realize how rare it is that you actually know what the real problem is. But even if it's 100% guarantee that you know what the problem is, sometimes it's still the best leadership move not to give them the answer. Because it's like them figuring this out at 80% is a bigger win than you giving them the answer at 100%. Because what you want as a leader is smarter, more confident, more competent, more self-sufficient, more autonomous people. At least you, that's what I think you should want. You may have a different opinion, but if you want people who don't require your micromanaging, who are flourishing without you, who have a sense of ambition and who want to be the best version of themselves, who you want to step up to be the best they can be in service of them and also in service of your small business, well, then you need to give them autonomy. And asking questions is one of the great acts of empowerment around that. And you're right, you're like, you don't have to stay curious for a week. I'm like, if you can make it for 2 extra minutes, that is a great start. And even when it comes down to, okay, we've got, okay, enough with the questions. Let's get some solutions. There's a way of asking about that as well. You're like, great. I think we know what the real challenge is. The real challenge is this. And the other person goes, exactly. Oh my goodness, I can feel it. And often if you get to that point, they don't actually need your opinions or ideas or advice. They're like, now I know what the problem is. I know exactly what to do. But sometimes they don't. Sometimes they're like, I could do with some ideas on how to solve this. I'm like, fantastic. I've got some ideas. I'm excited to share them with you. But before I share them with you, let me ask you this. What ideas do you already have? Because they'll have some ideas and then you go, great. What else? What else could you do? Right. What else could you do? Okay. What else could you do? This is fantastic, Bradley. I love this. What else? Is there anything else you could do? And then when Bradley's kind of tapped out, it's like, these are all my ideas. I'm like, I love all of these. Let me give you one or two extra ideas that I've got as well. So you see how I'm still sharing my advice. I'm just slowing it down, letting them do the work. One of the counterintuitive principles about being more coach-like is be lazy because it's your, if you're a small business owner, you've probably had the success you've had because you work hard and you grind and you're like, I'm putting in the hours and you're like, this is how I prove my value, which is like I work hard. If you wanna be an effective leader, you've gotta learn how to be lazy so that you don't fill other people's space. You let them do the work that's theirs to do. So help, let them figure this stuff out. Let them do this work. Your job is to hold the space encourage them, support them, make them smarter, and then encourage them to take the action that derives from that.

Let me ask you a question. There's a framework that I have heard from my coach, and you tell me what— I want your honest opinion, okay, of like how it takes what you just mentioned, and it's called the 1-3-1. Now, this is not in a one-to-one. This is more whenever someone's coming to you with a problem real time during the week and they want your advice. Hey, there's this thing that's going on. There's this issue. What do you want us to do?

Yeah.

And so we have the 1-3-1. And so it's a very— one is what's the real clear problem that we're trying to solve? Yeah. What are three solutions that you've, that you have that you think that we could choose? And then what's the one that if I was not here that you would actually go with? And so then it's making them, and so now if that happens, I'll say, well, what's the 1-3-1 on that? I'll say, well, 3 is I would do, I would do this and do this and do this. And then honestly, I'd probably do this one. And I've noticed more times than not, the one that they choose is actually, I was like, yeah, that's actually what I would do.

Yeah. Fantastic. So I have a rule of thumb. All models are wrong and some are useful. So if that's useful, great, you should use it. And if it's not working, then stop using it. The one thing that I'd be curious about is the first one in the 1-3-1, okay? Which is, it's really helpful to have somebody else ask you, what do you think the real challenge is? And what else? And what else? So what do you think the real challenge is? Because what they think the real challenge is just might not be the real challenge. So it doesn't matter if they've got 3 ideas on how to solve it and they pick the one that you think they should do, it still might be solutions to the thing that isn't the real problem. So I think a fundamental shift in understanding where you add value is the ideas that are the relative, are the easy bit. The hard bit is figuring out what the real problem is. If you can build a reputation as I will help you figure out what the real problem is, then create real impact in how you are as a leader and the difference you make in the way you communicate with people because you're like, I keep pointing you and helping you get to the stuff that makes the real difference. And then you can have ideas. I can have ideas. There are ideas everywhere and then there's execution. That's a whole nother thing. But most people are working way too hard on the stuff that doesn't really matter that much.

Yeah, we're working to solve the problem that is, not the problem that isn't. I appreciate you pushing, giving a little bit extra context is to say on the first part, dig deeper, be more curious on the first part, help somebody solve what the actual problem is, which then will frame the better 3 because you're giving 3 to the actual right problem or challenge that they're facing, not the one that they actually initially came with.

That's great. Because I'd be like, now you know your one because I've helped you with the one. Now give me your three because then like the three that they came with, that might not be good ideas anymore because you've actually, the problem has shifted.

Yeah, that's good. Alright, let's shift to, let's shift to, let's go to maybe one to a group setting. So a team. And so we've got a team of, we've got a team of 12 sitting in a, in our conference room, we're having our weekly team meeting on a Monday. And so what would that look like in that context?

Well, I'm trying to do a few things. I'm trying to push responsibility and accountability to the appropriate level in the team. Responsibility and accountability has a way of getting stuck at the next level up because people who are in that next level up, maybe the people listening here, they're like, I like it. I like it. Good sense of control. So it depends on what the purpose of the meeting is about. But with 12 people, I'm like, it is impossible to run a meeting of 12 people where everybody gets a chance to say something because if everybody has spoken for 4 minutes, You're at 48 minutes down in your meeting. So just 4 minutes airtime per person and you've used up your hour, you know, you're done. So you, you gotta do parallel processing. So I'm like, great, let's break into groups of 3. I particularly like groups of 3, 4 groups of 3. Here's the question for you, which is like, we're trying to figure out what our next 6 weeks are like, you know, we've got your one-to-ones, which is great. But in my teams, we tend to work in 6-week cycles. They're like, you know, half a 90-day cycle. 6 weeks is, if you, if you get really focused, it's a kind of agile principle. If you get really focused on what you can do in 6 weeks, you can make real progress. And if you've been working on the wrong thing or if it doesn't work, it's only 6 weeks. It's, it's like, 12% of the year. So I'm like, great. So break into your groups of 3 and have a conversation about what's the real challenge for you in the next 6 weeks. What are you working with around that? I find, and this is my own bias, Bradley, I find most meetings tedious. They're slow. I'm sitting there. I'm like, I'm not sure why I'm here. I'm not adding value. I'm not gaining value. So a big part of what I think about when I'm structuring a larger group meeting is what's the thing we're trying to solve in this meeting? Because I do believe that if you're getting people together, you need to be solving something or you need to be celebrating something. And how do I design it in a way that most people are involved most of the time? And what that quite often means is don't have one person at the head of the table monologuing for an extended period of time, which is how a lot of meetings happen. So I'm like, great, don't take them through your PowerPoint deck, give them your PowerPoint deck and say, spend the first 10 minutes reading this and then go, great, on these Post-it notes, Write your top 5 questions you want me to answer about this PowerPoint deck. Now let's collect those questions together. Oh, this 8 of you, 8 out of 12 of you have a question kind of related to this. Brilliant. I've got an answer to that. But before I give you my answer, what do you think collectively? What do we think the answer might be around this? And I'm just, I mean, I'm just making stuff up as I go here, Bradley, but what I'm trying to role model is all the ways you can just disrupt the usual hierarchy of a conversation, which is I'm the senior person, I will run the meeting, it will be mostly me talking, you'll mostly be in passive receipt mode. And I'm not that curious as to what are we trying to solve? Whereas I'm like, how do I use this collective brainpower? I've got 12 people for an hour. I've got 12 human hours to solve a problem. That's a lot. I need to design this in a way that brings, makes the most of the smartness I have in the room with me around that. Now, here's what's challenging. If you're the boss, it means that now you're not entirely sure what's going on all the time because when you break people into 4 groups of 3, You're like, I don't know what they're talking about. I don't know if they're coming up with good ideas. I don't know what's being said. I don't know if they're gonna come up with something that completely challenges what I was saying in the PowerPoint. So it is a shift in power. It is a giving up of control. But there's a facilitation mantra, which is there's a spectrum, like the more control you give up, the greater the engagement in the group. So every choice you make around how much control do I keep and how much control do I give is a choice and every choice has prizes and punishments. So what choices are you making around that?

Today I made—

What landed for you in all of that? Because it was a bit scattergun, but what felt useful, if anything?

I'm gonna share with you the thing that's landed with me the most and what was going through my head as I was sharing. By the way, thank you for that question. It's a good— it's why—

it's a coaching question. Yeah. Yeah.

So once again, uh, solve and celebrate. We're here to solve problems and to celebrate, which has really made me challenge one thing that I have found to be important in meetings. But I, and I, and I'm not, I'm not saying I don't think we should do it, but I'm looking at how to— admittedly, my brain was going to how could we do this faster? And it was the updating and reporting out of our scoreboards and our dashboards. Okay. So I was thinking to myself this morning, how long do, how long was that scoreboard and dashboard review? I think it was about 12 minutes. And I thought to myself, huh, if we recorded those on Loom videos, took the Loom videos, embedded them into the meeting, and those had to be due by X amount of time, and I could, I could listen to that as I was like, whatever, getting ready in the morning, and be like, okay, cool, yeah, we got it. Now we could go in and I say, wait a minute, this number is off target, it's a red, it's been red 2 weeks in a row. Now we're solving that problem versus we spent 10 to 12 minutes or so actually just reporting of the number. So like, that's, that's, that's what's standing in my mind and my brain right now is like, okay, wait a minute, if we're going to get together, let's solve or celebrate, which We do start all of our meetings with wins and progress. We do start that. So I feel like we actually do a really good job with that. It's the solving of problems versus the updating of data. That's what's really landing with me about this with Teams.

Yeah, there are so many ways of getting the information in people's hands and the least efficient way of communicating data is somebody presenting it. It's like people can read faster than you can talk, right? People can watch videos at 2x, you know, faster than you can talk. So accelerate, find other ways of getting people to consume the data, even if it's just sit and read this for 5 minutes and then let's get into it. Like if rather than them reporting it out, it's like, Here's the dashboard, you read it and you go, great, I've seen the dashboard. Where should we go? What's the real challenge? What's on your mind when you look at this dashboard? It's not even you saying, it's like, ask them what's on your mind when you see this. Where should we go? What's the real challenge here? They're like, it's the two red numbers. You're like, that's what I thought too. So what's the real challenge here for you around that metric that's been red for two weeks in a row? And what else is a challenge? And what else is a challenge? So what's the real challenge for you in figuring this out. Now you're into a coaching conversation in 4 minutes.

Well, somebody's listening to this, I know, and they're hearing that and they're saying, man, see, I always take it and think to myself, it's my responsibility to come up with the answer to why that number is red. And here's our game plan and here's what we're going to do to fix it and all these kind of things. And so that's how I'm going to solve the problems. I'm just going to tell everybody what we're going to do versus actually starting to say, well, what do you think? What are your thoughts around that? Those numbers, that is a, that's a fundamental shift.

That is a fundamental shift, which is like, whose job is it to solve this? And it is your job to ensure that it is solved. That is different from it's your job to solve it.

Yeah. Okay. So with that then is, okay, so let's, let's take this example then. Where on the scoreboards and dashboards, which is a typical thing, right? Whatever you want to call them. Yeah, that, that's, that's pretty typical. You— I like the idea that people— somebody owns the number. Okay. And owning the number doesn't necessarily mean that you're responsible for reporting it, although that, that, that has its aspect, which we've already covered. It's more than being able to go to and say, well, Ellie on the team. What is your thoughts around whenever you see that number? Yeah, that's a different thing versus I'm gonna tell you what you're going to do to fix that number, which may come, but it needs to come after I've been genuinely curious, slowed down just a little bit.

Stay curious a little bit longer, be lazy, rush to action and advice giving a little more slowly where you're like, Ellie, I like how you're thinking about this, but I'm gonna tighten the screws a bit because I need this solved a little bit faster. So if you had to get this solved in the next 2 weeks, how would you solve it? If you got, if you, if I've got some ideas, what if you added this, this and this? Would that be helpful in terms of taking this forward? What's useful in those ideas that I just gave you? So there's a place for you to bring your wisdom and your experience and your stories and your scars into that. But let them do the work first because you're helping them get smarter. You're helping them get better. And they do that not by listening to your advice, but by wrestling with the problem and trying to figure some stuff out themselves. That's how the new neural pathways get formed in their brain.

Okay. So this is actually a good segue. I didn't know that we would be able to segue this way. But, and it may not be perfect, but I'm thinking to myself that there may be some folks that we have on our team that we're like, ah, I mean, they're on the team, but I don't know about asking them for their advice. And I'm transitioning to how to work with almost anyone. Now this could go for clients, et cetera, but I'm thinking to myself that there's somebody that's going to have this and say, I mean, I don't, they don't have, they just don't have the skillset to be answering those type things and being able to pull that out of them. So. So help me kind of pivot over into what that may look like if somebody has a hangup of somebody on their, somebody they may have on their team.

So do you want them to stay at a level where they suck or do you want to give them a chance to get better?

Yeah, let's get them better.

Well, exactly. I mean, it's like if they can't solve it now, unless you do something differently, they're never going to solve it later. So, help them get better or help them fail to get better so that you can then fire them or move them to a different role or do something differently with them. When they come up with their own ideas, that doesn't mean you have to say, okay, go and do that. If you're like, that's a terrible idea. That is literally the worst idea I've ever heard. You don't want to say that out loud, but you're like, okay, Here's what do you think the challenge is? I think it might be this. You're like, okay, that's interesting. What else do you think a challenge might be? Okay, maybe this. You're like, okay, also interesting. I like how you're thinking, but I'm going to say that from where I stand, the challenge is this. And they're like, oh, okay, got it. And you're like, okay, so if this is the challenge, if that's the real challenge for you, what are some ways you could tackle that? Well, A and B and C. And you're like, oh my In your head, you're like, oh my goodness, that's okay. They're pretty underwhelming ideas. And you're like, okay, anything else? And they're like, nope, that's all I got. And you're like, okay, well, let's just test that. If you were to try and do B, what do you think the impact of that might be? It's like help them see that their ideas aren't good. See if you can teach them and then add some of your own ideas into the mix and go, so here's what I want you to do. And then go, what was most useful or valuable for you in this conversation? Help them learn from the conversation, give them that space to actually get better. And one or two things is gonna happen. They're gonna get better, smarter, more autonomous, cleverer, better able to come up with ideas, or they're not. And either way, you've now got some choices as to how you wanna manage that.

Yeah. So with that, I was thinking to myself, so it wasn't a scenario And I won't get too much detail around this, but there was a scenario where someone was elevated or given— I say elevated— given an entire new responsibility that they never had before.

Okay.

So it was like, hey, we're going to push you into being able to kind of manage this whole thing. And it didn't go well. Now, this wasn't somebody— this is like somebody who had been— has been on the team for a while, still is on the team, has done exceptional work, incredibly valuable. But whenever they were given the new responsibility, it was like, oh, they're way out over their ski— skis with that. So it wasn't a firing relationship. So sometimes people may say, oh, wait a minute, we shifted or added responsibilities or roles, and it just didn't— it just didn't work. And the relationship actually kind of got strained for a period of time with that person. Yeah.

So I've got a new book called How to Work with Almost Anyone. And here's the key idea in this book. Before you start getting into the work that needs to be done, have a conversation about how you will work together to make sure that the relationship is safe and vital and repairable. Because what you're pointing to is a really common thing, which is like, oh, new role. Everybody's like, get into the work. And the person you've promoted is like, I prove myself by trying to do this work and it goes well or it doesn't go well. In this case, it didn't go well. And as you said, I think you said the relationship got a little rocky. And it's like, that's sad, right? Because this is a person who's performed well, add to the culture. They've got a good track record. And now the relationship's rocky, their reputation's a bit damaged. They're worried, you're worried. It's the potential loss of somebody who's a valuable contributor to your organization. Yes.

Yes.

So the idea is within the How to Work with Almost Anyone book, you're trying to build the best possible relationship with that person. And the key tactic is to have a keystone conversation. So a keystone conversation at its heart. How will we work together so that we can do our best, avoid the weak spots, figure out the hard moments together? And the Keystone Conversation, there are 5 core questions that you ask in the Keystone Conversation and you ask and you answer. It's got to be a give and take. You know, the first one is like, what's your best? You know, how do we, when do you shine and when do you flow? And that already gets into an interesting conversation about, so what's that gonna look like in this new role? You know, how will you at your best actually kind of illuminate and be at your very best in this role? The second is what the steady question, which is what are your practices and preferences? So it's the kind of the mechanics of how you work. You might already know that with this person because they've been working with you for a while. Then there's the good date and the bad date questions, which is like, what can we learn from successful past working relationships and what can we learn from frustrating past working relationships? In other words, in this new role with a reset of our working relationship, what can we learn in terms of both of us bringing out the best in each other and both of us avoiding the worst in each other? And then the fifth question is, how will we fix it when things go wrong? The repair question. Now, here's my bet. You didn't have a conversation about how will we fix it when things go wrong. When things went wrong, you're both quietly panicking. They're panicking. You're panicking. It's not entirely sure how to go about it. You double down on worrying about the work. Rather than looking Bradley in the eye and going, all right, Bradley, things are going to hell. This isn't working at all well. I don't know how you're feeling about it, but from where I'm sitting, this is not great. What do we need to do to fix us so that we get you the best chance to fix the work?

Well, that's good. That's good. That is timely. That's timely. And I think one thing that stands out to me is the way that even that question is phrased. How will we fix it when things go wrong? Which is an assumption there that this is not gonna just be a complete home run. It's gonna go off without a hitch as much as we would love for it to.

We know that— In other words, reality, because every working relationship goes off the rails at some stage. Sometimes it's a catastrophe or an explosion or the boat sinks, but more likely it's a slow deterioration. Something cracks, something bends, there's a misunderstood word or a broken promise that nobody even realized was a promise in the first time, you know, something happens and most of the time we're like, ah, I don't know how we fix this. So we carry on, but things are just a little worse than they were. But, you know, there's an opportunity where you go, let's actually reset this, let's actually repair this. And quite often that takes the working relationship back to being better than it was because you've both showed a commitment to figuring it out, fixing it, amplifying the best of each other and kind of helping to navigate the hard times.

Well, I wanna be honest, I had not gotten this book and read this book yet, but the timeliness If you actually knew the conversation I just came out of, which is the forming, effectively forming of a new partnership, this is so timely. I'm going to go get this. I'm going to read it. I'm going to go back to him and I'm going to say, okay, wait a minute. Hey, we got 5 questions we've got to answer. We're going to go back and forth on this because it's really important that we get this laid out. I'm dead serious about this too. I think this is fantastic. So, well, I mean, I could go on and ask so many different questions. This has been an absolutely enlightening enlightening conversation. Clearly, hopefully you can see my genuine curiosity about— because I think leaders want to be better. Like, they really genuinely want to be better. But a lot of times we need somebody just to not just say, I just ask better questions. Well, what questions do I ask? How do I be better? And you've given such great, um, I call it high level to eye level. Like, you've given us some, like, all right, philosophical things, but, like, some specific things that we can do that feel actually very approachable, and we can start building, um, building them as habits. People want to connect with you. Where on, out on social, where should they connect? And then if they want to obviously learn more about your work, where would you point them to? Yeah.

So if either of the two books I've talked about are interesting, there's free resources supporting all of that. You don't even need the book really. So thecoachinghabit.com for information about The Coaching Habit and Best Possible Relationship. For information about how to work with almost anyone. You can download the 5 questions. There's actually a video of me having a keystone conversation with somebody so you can sort of see what that looks like in role play. And then the kind of the umbrella website is mbs.works. And then on social, I take my handle tends to be @mbs_works.

Well, there's a lot that stands out to me. The obvious is just to be able— I mean, the key, almost central theme of this is developing the coaching habit. But it really is staying curious a little longer, staying curious a little longer. I also loved the questions at the very end whenever he was going through, like, how to work with almost anyone. I genuinely had just gotten off a conversation of kind of a developing of a new partnership that I think is going to be incredibly beneficial. I'm so excited about what it's going to be moving forward. And this is a great way for us to frame what that's going to look like, because we know whether they're going to have some bumps along the way. And then also, it just has really resonated with me. It's made me almost think around our own templates that we have for one-to-ones and weekly team meetings to be able to say, let's stay focused on solving problems and celebrating. And I think that just the fact that we always start one-to-ones and weekly teams and quarterlies with wins from, you know, last week, this quarter, this month, this year, etc., I think we do a pretty good job of that. But how do you, how do in the one-to-ones and the team meetings, stay focused on solving problems. That has really resonated with me, and obviously you could kind of hear that in the conversation that I had there with Michael. Also, he mentioned it pretty casually, but, um, I would just share that we have also started to tilt over into this idea of 6-week cycles. Many of you know, for a long time that I've been very focused on quarterly rhythms to the, the work and setting quarterly targets, but then actually breaking it down to the execution aspect of it, of running 6-week cycles. And I wish I could give credit to the very— to the book that helped me with that the most, but it was, uh, I think it's called Rework, actually. Rework. And I need to try to get them on the podcast, actually. Was the first place that I saw the 6-week cycles. And I've seen it come up from even some of my mentors and other people around— not, not the setting of the targets or the goals, if you use that, but the actual— the work itself, the execution of it, of setting the 6 weeks has been beneficial. We just started that. I, at this point, don't have enough information to be able to share with you how beneficial it has been or hasn't been. Uh, sometimes I use the own companies as like research and development for our clients. But pick up the book, The Coaching Habit. Go and check out the resources. We make sure we put those in the show notes for you as well. Thanks to our podcast partners, Club Capital, Coach P, Autopilot Recruiting, and Today App Pro. You know, if you're wanting to be a better coach and wanting to develop and wanting to, you know, as you're working to to coach and develop your team, you want to be able to get access to some of the very best practices that are out there, especially if you're an insurance agency owner. Coach P gives you that. You get behind the scenes twice a week working with him and his team about the things that are working real time, because some of the things that worked a couple years ago are not necessarily working today because the market has shifted. Go to coachpconsulting.com. Coach P Consulting. One of the very best things that really came out of a lot of pain was me being able to have a much better control over my financials and making better decisions because I had cleaner financials. But I first had to understand the language of money. And I don't know if I've ever shared this before, but I really was— embarrassingly did not know what some basic accounting and finance terms meant. And I heard heard Warren Buffett say, well, you know, the language of money is accounting. And I thought, man, the class I hated the most in school when I was at UNA in Auburn was accounting. Um, yet I realized that, well, I could continue to make that as an excuse, or I could see it as a skill. And if it's a skill, then it's one that I can learn. And so I started to lean into it as opposed to leaning out. That's kind of similar to AI right now. I mean, you either lean into it or you lean out. And if I lean out, then, um, we kind of know what happens with that. But you kind of lean into it. And so if you're somebody that just has never really leaned into financials, maybe you're actually doing really well, you're making money, or you've got cash in the bank, etc., you could really supercharge your success if you leaned into your financials. Go to Club Capital, go to Club capital and book a no-obligation demo with somebody on the team and kind of see exactly why they have been so successful and people have stuck around for such a long time, helping them to be able to get a really much better understanding and become a better business owner by making better decisions with their financials. You know, another skill that I just never saw as a skill was the skill of actually recruiting and finding A players to be on the team. I mean, I'll just ask you now, think about it, how many problems in your business would just absolutely just go away, cease to exist, if you had true A players on your team? Well, maybe you didn't even need, need to take the time to consider what is an A player, what does an A player actually look like depending on the role. Once you have that, then you can work with a partner like Autopilot Recruiting that can go about helping you to find A-players in your organization. I have referred many people over to Autopilot Recruiting, and about a month into it, they all say, I cannot believe it took me this long to actually do this. This has been such a no-brainer for me in my business. It's helped me to be able to find better quality candidates. They're doing the part that I don't really love to do so that we could actually just get on with the conversation and do the that we know we want to do, which is to be able to grow our business with quality people. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com. And lastly, kind of while I'm on this idea of habits and skills, uh, I'll tell you, the ability to have clean insights and to take some of the word tracks and the playbooks that you use, the actual plays you run when you're having a sales conversation with someone, as an example, put it right where the work is And to be able to have clear insights into that is absolutely invaluable, but you want to do it in a way and with a software that's easy to use, um, a software that is obviously corporate approved. It works with your CRM, CRM system seamlessly. Well, that's exactly what TodayApp Pro does. It's going to give you insights, but it's also going to be really easy to use. For your team. It's beautiful, has a beautiful UI, UX, user experience for you, and is going to really be able to help not only you but also your team, sales team, your service team, to have insights into the work that they're doing on a day-to-day basis. Go to that today— sorry, go to todayapppro.com. TodayAppPro.com. Arthur Boyne, till next episode, lead well.