GA 381 | The Art of Coaching with Kelly Mallery

I'll tell you what, once you rip that band aid off, it becomes so much easier. And I've had those kind of reactions. And again, in that moment, you have to point out the behavior like, hey, I see that you are getting defensive and rationalizing.

Today. I'm excited to welcome Kelly Mallory to the show. Now the topic of the show is all about coaching. So Kelly is a coach at General Electric and their aviation division and she's got a really strong continuous improvement background. And you know, she, she now works as a full time coach there at ge. And so what we just talked about is like, what, what that role looks like and how that works and how she goes about coaching people. And then we sort of dive into coaching just as a topic and talking about, you know, challenges to coaching. And then we've just got into all kinds of cool stuff, got into things like NLP or Neuro linguistic programming and talking about matching and pacing and all kinds of interesting things. And then Kelly shares some of her opinions on what some of the skills are that we need to be good coaches. And then we sort of wrap things up with Kelly telling a really cool story of what she feels is her biggest win so far as a coach. So it's pretty inspiring. So be sure to listen to the end. Now, show notes for this particular episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 381. Again gembapodcast.com and look for episode 381. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Kelly, welcome to the show. How are you?

I'm great. Thanks so much for having me, Ron.

Yeah, my pleasure, my pleasure. I know we've, we've, we've exchanged a few emails back and forth and I'm glad that we're finally able to, to connect on the podcast. So, so. Well, I know you've listened to the show before, Kelly, and we do like to begin all of our episodes as you know, with our guests sharing a quote. So do you have one?

Yeah, I do. So my quote is from Stephen R. Covey and it's most people do not listen with the intent to understand. They listen with the intent to reply.

Exactly. You know, it's funny you wouldn't know it because it hasn't been released yet, but the episode that was released last week for the listeners was with Ed and Peter Schein who wrote Humble Inquiry. I don't know if you familiar with that book, but yeah, we talked all about questions and our answering and, and questioning and all the Rest of it. And boy, it's so easy to. To listen with, just not even hear what they're saying. Just waiting for a pause so you can jump in. Right. It's. That's a really tough tendency to break.

Yeah, yeah, it really is. And I've had some very good practice with that over the last year in my current role.

Got it. All right, well, speaking of your current role, why don't you talk a little bit about your background, maybe how you first got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff, and then tell us what you're up to these days.

Yeah, yeah, sure. So I guess a good place to start in my journey and story is my very first job out of college. I went to college out in New Hampshire. My first job was at a solar startup, mainly just kind of a grunt building, building equipment for them. They focused on heliostats, which are mirror systems that track the sun and reflect it to a central collector. And about a year into my career there, we transitioned from surviving mainly on Department of Energy grants into actually making and selling PV trackers. So when that all started, we kind of talked about team of five engineers that, you know, we. We have no idea how to manufacture anything because we've never done it before. And so I raised my hand because I had an interest in that. And I asked, hey, can I take this on? And so I was able to help them kind of build a manufacturing space. And that's where I was first introduced to Lean from. Actually a person who came from my second company to kind of teach us a little bit. And it just clicked. It made so much sense. So I tried to consume as much knowledge as I could. After that, I read books, I got my Six Sigma black belt, I went to conferences, and that was where it all started. And then from there, I've had a number of engineering roles. And recently I'm working at GE Aviation in Rutland, Vermont, and I've been given the opportunity to be a lean coach, which is one of my passions. So it's really exciting to be, you know, in this kind of role now as opposed to being an engineer.

Got it, got it. Well, let's talk about coaching, because that's a really popular, you know, buzzword, for lack of a better word, especially within the Lean community. And we're all about coaching, kata, improvement, kata, and all this kind of stuff. But that's a big word, coaching. So I'm curious, maybe just tell us a little bit about what that role looks like. Um, you know, are you just kind of coaching, you know, continuous Improvement people, Other people or like, what do you do, like, as a. As a coach?

Yeah. Um, so the way that we're structured in Rutland is I am part of a lean team, a central lean team where we have currently four coaches. Um, and how. How we work is we each take a few different businesses inside of GE Aviation, Rutland as a whole. So we work with those businesses to kind of progress down their transformation journey. As you may have seen, GE has started this lean transformation from Larry Culp, who's from Danaher and Jake Brake and all that connection there. And so we're helping these businesses along their journey, which really means implementing, you know, systems thinking, building a business system, and coaching their middle managers and frontline leaders on behaviors in addition to. Right. That. That lean thinking and tools and methodology.

Talk about behaviors. Like what. How are you guys approaching behaviors? What different types of behaviors?

Yeah, that is a very challenging, I'm sure, as, you know, thing to kind of work with people on. So what we're really focusing on is how do we change from, like, commanded control leadership and dictatorial leadership behaviors more to servant leadership and coaching, for example. So we're really looking for, hey, are you showing respect? Are you being transparent? What is humility and looking for those things? And part of. Part of our role is to actively correct those behaviors when we see them in the moment.

Talk about humility, because that's a big one, right? If so, you're speaking with some big, huge boss, you know, and, you know, there's. They're paid to know the answers and all the rest of it. Right. I mean, I'm not generalizing. Not everybody's like that, but some of them are, right. Some folks are. So, like, how do you approach that with a very powerful leader of people that might not be exhibiting human. Like, what do you do? Hey, be more humble. You know, it's like, what's. What's your style? What's your strategy there?

Yeah, yeah, good question. So I actually, I do have a couple of leaders who have kind of come, you know, grown up and learned from those more traditional, you know, do what I say, don't ask questions, just listen kind of managers. And so my approach with these leaders is really. Just be candid with them first. You've got to build, you know, build that relationship and that trust and understanding that, hey, in my. In my role, part of this is I'm going to give you honest feedback and making sure that, you know, the style in which I give that is well received and that we've got a good rapport to be able to have those frank conversations. And so when we talk about humility, you know, we. We talk a lot about, are you looking for consensus as a leader? You know, are you the one asking questions instead of coming up with those solutions and supporting your team and empowering your own team to kind of learn by coming up with their own solutions and failing and. And all of that, all that good stuff. And so a lot of the time after a meeting, I'll have to kind of pull a leader aside, go into a room and say, hey, so how did you think that went? And kind of ask questions to help lead them to that reflection period so that they can see it themselves. But if that doesn't work, then I will give pretty frank feedback like, hey, this is the behavior I saw. Here's how you could correct it to be a better servant leader.

So I'm sure you've seen and experienced all types of reactions to that. If you did have to ask the more blunt question, what do you do in a situation like that? If you. If it's. If your question isn't received? Well, you know, because I think that's the biggest fear, right, for a coach is, oh, boy, what if they blow up on me or they disagree? Like, has that ever happened?

Yes, that has, unfortunately. And I'll admit, when I first started coaching, that was a big concern of mine. You know, well, what happens if this happens or if they don't take it? And honestly, that. That had kind of inhibited me from being able to give some of that honest feedback initially. But I'll tell you what, once you rip that band aid off, it becomes so much easier. And I've had those kind of reactions. And again, in that moment, you have to point out the behavior like, hey, I see that you are getting defensive and rationalizing, and that's an accountability model that we've taught here. And so I can pull that up and say, hey, where are you? Where are you on this loop? Are you owning this or are you rationalizing? Are you defending? Are you hiding? What are you doing? And being able to kind of point that out in a language and with terminology that they've seen before is helpful. And having that relationship built where in that moment I can say, no list, look, you're not doing the right kind of thing. I can show you. I can talk about that. We can see it because it just happened.

Yeah. No, that's awesome. That's awesome. That's great feedback. I love the idea just ripping off the band aid because honestly, sometimes you just Got to jump in and. And experience. Run the experiment, as we say. Right. And see what, see what you learn and then adjust accordingly.

Yeah, absolutely. And that. That's a really hard thing to do sometimes.

Yep, it sure is. It sure is. So talk about some of the challenges that you. That you experienced or maybe, I don't know, one of your bigger challenges as you transitioned into. Into that role. The coaching role.

Yeah. One of, one of the biggest hu. Things that I had a hard time with was switching over from, you know, making improvements because I was a manufacturing engineer, so I was very hands on with people on the floor physically making improvements to. My role now is much more about influencing improvement via behavioral coaching. And that, that was hard because I came into this role and, you know, I'd. I'd played sports, I'd had coaches and coach sports, but it's not quite the same. And I'll admit I had no idea how to even begin to try to coach people out of old behaviors and into new ones and into new ways of thinking. And when I first started, I spent a lot of time really analyzing and overanalyzing exactly what I was going to say. And in conversations, I was so concerned with making sure that I didn't give somebody the answer or that I was going to ask the right question, that I found out I wasn't actually listening to the other person. And that really inhibited my ability to have a fruitful relationship with the people I was coaching. So I ended up actually asking a peer who I admire and I've kind of observed, I think does a really good job with coaching these behavioral issues. And I asked her, hey, what do you. How do you know what to do? Because it just always seemed like she, she knew, she had such grace and knew exactly what to say or ask in certain situations. And she laughed and I think verbatim said, are you kidding me? Everything I do is an experiment.

Yeah.

And it just, it blew my mind. And I really thought about that. I was like, oh, wow, huh? Yeah, I'm being way too rigid and it's making my approach not authentic and I'm not really connecting with the people that I'm trying to work with. And so it took a bit, but I kind of threw out all of my anxiety or I tried to on doing the right thing and instead just really focused on listening and trying stuff. Like you said, just experimenting.

Yeah, yeah. Don't have the stress of always having the answer. Right. Like, let's go find the answer. Because nobody really knows until we, until we go out and try some stuff. So, hey, I'm curious. So, you know, talking about, like, coaching sports and different things like that. So I'm wondering, like, when we're coaching in a corporate world, in a business world, is there ever a time to where. So your manufacturing background and engineer, you probably look at something and be like, I know you should do A, B and C, and the problem's going to go away. Obviously, you don't want to go and just say that because that person's not going to grow, that person's not going to learn. But is there ever a time to where you hint about abc or should you just let it be and keep your opinions to yourself as a coach?

You know, I do think that there is a time to give a little more of either a hint or a piece of the answer as opposed to just asking questions. Especially when you see somebody really struggling and you continue to ask questions. I actually did have an instance where I was coaching a frontline leader about pull and visual management and fifo. All those. All those good things. They were really frustrated, and I kept asking questions and they were like, this is not helpful. And they blew up at me a little bit. And I reflected on that moment. I was like, you know, I probably could have given a little more and not asking these kind of vague, ominous questions to try to get her there. And I think that's another really big, important part of coaching is when you're in those conversations, being able to read the other person and understand what are their limits, how are they thinking, Just kind of where are they in that moment, in that conversation? Because sometimes you could, you know, do the best coaching of your life, but if that person isn't in the right frame of mind to take it, it's not going to work and it's not going to be effective and get them where they need to be. So being really mindful of that other person. And I think part of that is sometimes you need to see, all right, I need to give a little bit of an answer so I can say, you know, I think this is maybe an approach you would take. I won't tell you exactly how to do it or how to get there or what it might look like, but I can at least give you a little more guidance so you know where to start.

Yeah, no, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's a delicate balance, right? It's a delicate balance. So what about skills needed to be a good coach? Are there any that are more important than the others, in your opinion?

You know, I think there are. There are so many. But I think there are probably two that at least I have considered to be my most valuable skills that I've kind of gained over, over this period of being able to coach. And I think one of them is self reflection. So the ability to really reflect on interactions and the outcome of that and then learning from that and being able to actually change your approach from that learning. And I think the other one is kind of like I mentioned before, the ability to really understand where people are and being able to meet them where they are and kind of help. Mac, we, we use a term match pace lead here that I learned from a previous leader. So I think those two really being able to match pace lead who you're working with and that ability afterwards to then reflect on how that conversation went and learn from it.

Match pace lead. So is that sort of like, does that have ties to like nlp, like neural linguistic programming? I can never say it.

Yes, it does. Yep, that is exactly where, where it comes from.

Yeah. So talk a little bit about matching and pacing because that's, it's, it's very interesting to me how these things work.

Yeah, yeah. So I have done a little bit of research, I'll admit, not too much, but what I understand when you are matching, right. This is a, a system that athletes have used to gain higher performance and it's been kind of spread through research I believe at University of California, Santa Cruz in like the 70s. And it's a way to help change someone's thinking pattern. So matching is all about understanding their view and way of thinking. Said another way, that's the seek to understand portion. So really making sure that you are understanding their needs and their actual problem and not projecting any of that. You want to match body language and speech patterns if you can, so that they kind of gain that comfort with you showing genuine interest. So this is that really, really listening and then right. Asking those open ended questions like tell me more about that. Why is that? Help me understand. So this is all just kind of the interview step, getting more information, really making sure that you fully grasp the problem that they're trying to solve.

Right, right.

And then. Yeah, and then when you step into pace. So this is where you want to demonstrate that you understand the value that they have right. From that problem and their values. You want to share the value, but then introduce an alternate, an alternate view with respect to that value. So for an example you might say, well that's really interesting. That's an interesting way to think about it. Another way to see it is this Or I used to see it that way, and now I see this. So make any kind of connection to any tool or improvement effort. Right. And first you want to understand their problem deeply, and then you want to recognize what they're going through and the problem and the struggle and what they see as value, and then introduce this new concept or tool or way of thinking.

Yeah. You know, NLP is tricky because, you know, there's a lot of critics out there of it because, you know, I suppose it can be sort of a dark art. Right. You can use it to manipulate people and trick them almost. Right. If you're not being genuine, if you're not being authentic. But I do feel like if you use it in the right spirit and with the right, you know, intention behind it, it can be very respectful because, you know, it's even like our. Our folks here at Gemba Academy, we talk to people on the phone a lot, and if somebody picks up the phone and they're very, you know, low energy and. Or, you know, they're just. Maybe they're tired or something that day, you don't know why, but the fact of the matter is they're not. They don't have a lot of energy today. You don't want to necessarily be like, hey, how's it going, Kelly? It's great to see you. You know, you know, it's just sort of match them, you know, maybe bring your. Bring it down a little bit, you know, and try to meet them where they're at. And to me, that's. It's a form of respect in a way, you know, that you're just. You're recognizing and acknowledging where that person is and you're trying to meet them at that same place. So what do you think about that? I mean, have you seen, like, NLP used for bad in bad ways, or what do you think?

I. Gosh, I don't think I have in person. I think, like, I've probably seen it in film, like Inception. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what they did, a lot of that. But no, I totally agree. I've had a lot of instances where either I was a lot more de. Energized or more energized and another person approached me and didn't match. And it was just a very uncomfortable conversation and situation. And I agree. I think it is really about respect because you are really focusing on understanding that other person deeply. Not just, hey, what's your problem right now? But who are you as an individual? How does your brain work? How do you think, how. How do you make decisions? And I think that really taking the time to understand your peers and colleagues and those you work with and people in your life is one of the most fundamental ways to show respect.

Yeah. Yep, for sure. For sure. I think another point, Ed Schein actually made this last in our last week's podcast. Just, you know, you need to be just genuinely curious about the other person, right? Like you should. You should be inquiring or coaching in a way to learn more about what's going on either with that process or. And that person's, you know, particular situation, whatever. So if curiosity kind of goes along with it and you don't pretend that you know all the answers, everything seems to work much, much better.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

So let's talk about, you know, time to maybe look back on some of the. The coaching activities that you've done. Is there any particular win that. That you're really maybe proud of or that you're, you know, glad that you accomplished?

Um, yeah, so one. One really comes to mind. And it's not anything that, like, yeah, I coached this person to implement pull, and it worked really well or anything like that. I had the experience of coaching one individual for six or nine months, and there were some. Some hiccups and, you know, some of those moments where you give feedback and it doesn't go well. But what ended up happening about nine months into, into this relationship was one day they pulled me aside on the floor, they purposely came to find me, and they said, hey, Kelly, I have to tell you something, I just coach somebody about this. And. And they were. They lit up and they were so excited. And it. It was actually an instance where as a frontline leader coaching their business manager, and they were just so pumped about the approach they took and the. The calm tact and being able to really make the other person understand their perspective and also listening and understanding their leaders. Gaps in understanding with a particular tool that they were implementing. And that was definitely the win, was the fact that they wanted to come share with me that they tried to coach. And it was wonderful.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. Helping people help other people. That's extremely gratifying, Right, because that's how we change the world, right? I mean, you and I are just two people and we can do some good. But if you can. It's a multiplier effect, right? If you can go out kind of like pyramid scheme in a good way, right? Like, you go get three people and they get three people, and boy, if you get all these folks improving and trying to help one another. Well, we will change the world. Right? And so I feel that's the call of everybody listening right now is go out and find a few more folks and coach them up and encourage them to make things better. That's how we'll change the world. We can't do it as individuals, but we can, you know, we can, we can get. Make a nice start as an individual and to get others to go along.

Yeah, it's that snowball effect.

Yep, absolutely. So, hey, to wrap things up, Kelly, I'm wondering, let's say somebody's listening to this right now and perhaps they coach people or they're, they're kind of getting into that, that role. What advice do you have for them right now? Like, is there, are there any specific things that you want to say to that person?

Yeah, I would say, you know, don't be afraid to just try something. Even if, even if it's terrifying, even if you're afraid of what the outcome might be, just try it. There's no failure except to not try or to not learn. So that's, that's the biggest thing. Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty, so to speak, and rip that band aid off.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I love it. All right, Kelly, what's the best way for folks to connect with you?

So, best way is probably either my email, my work email is kelly.mallorye.com and I'm also on LinkedIn. I'm happy to connect and chat with people about coaching or anything. Continuous improvement or lean.

Great. And Mallory's M A L L E R Y. Correct.

Correct.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, good stuff. Well, thanks for coming on and maybe we'll have you on again down the road and we can talk more about, you know, GE specific continuous improvement, because that's a super interesting company. You know, I mean, it's, it's always evolving and changing, you know, from the days of Jack Welch to, to today. And it's a fascinating case study to me.

Yeah, that would be great.

Yep. Awesome. All right, well, thanks again, Kelly. Take care and keep up the great work.

Thanks, Ron. Thanks so much for having me.

Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years or perhaps you're just getting started, Gemba Academy is here to support you. And while, while we're best known for our more than 1500 Lean and Six Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos, we also have a team of experienced Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one on one coaching as well as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy.com.