177: Pivot Method as 4-Stage Coaching Framework [Workshop Replay]

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What's Next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot the only move that Matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

As many of you who subscribe to my weekly Pivot List newsletter know, at the beginning of the year I scheduled a bunch of free sessions on Pivot. Yesterday I shared the Pivot Map what's next for individual session, and in today's episode I'm including the workshop recording from Pivot for managers, mentors and coaches. This one covers how to hold career conversations using the Pivot Method as a conversation framework. Again, I didn't go line by line and edit the audio, so you might hear references to the slides or the screen. If you want to watch this recording with video included, you can go to pivotmethod.com watch. As always, stay safe and sane everybody. Thank you so much for being here.

Hello everybody. Welcome to Pivot as a Coaching Framework. This session will be on using the Pivot Method as a way to guide one on one career conversations with your team. This is also very relevant for mentors, coaches, and certainly for those of you who are managers and working within organizations. My name is Jenny Blake. I wrote a book called the Only Move that Matters is your next one, and I had no idea when I set up these sessions a month ago that we would be pivoting around a pandemic. So it's very interesting I decided to keep these on the books, but of course the nature of what I talk about to sort of shift the approach a little bit. I will be taking you through the typical content here on how I teach Pivot as a coaching framework, but I'll also be speaking to the heightened sense of anxiety and uncertainty during this time because now more than ever, we're seeing leaders communicating with their teams. We're seeing companies communicate with their customers. There's a Lot of communication happening and there's a tremendous amount of fear, anxiety, insecurity and very real questions about where the global economy is heading. Here in the States, I'm in New York City, we're on total shelter at home lockdown and we're all feeling the effects of this. So now, while now may not be the time that people are the most open and available to, let's say long term dreaming and scheming, what we can also say is that this is a time that is changing all of us. This is a time that is calling all of us to rise, show up differently, to lead and more than anything, to listen. If there is one thing I can impart about pivot as a coaching framework, it is to stop solving and start listening. That's really what this is about today that so often even individuals who are looking to plan their next moves, and often earlier in career employees assume that that means they got an angle for a promotion or try to change their role in order to grow, that actually there's nothing to solve. The big secret to pivoting is that it's much more a mindset of being agile, adaptable, small experiments and really figuring out what can you try and how can you allow yourself to explore before you solve. There's no there there. And that is certainly true now in the midst of this global crisis, more than ever none of us has the answers. So how do we listen, guide and coach our teams and even our loved ones during a time like this?

I would love to know from you in the chat. So if you are just getting here, let me know what would you love to walk away with by the end of this se that will help me make sure that I address whatever it is that you came here for. I know many of us are starting to get screen fatigue from all the virtual online meetings and zoom calls and there's so much, there's this beautiful and almost overabundance of webinars, training sessions, meetings and so it's going to be important to get up and stretch. I will be recording this and we will send out the recording if you can't stay for the full time. But let me know what brought you here of everything you have on your plate with all that is going on right now, what would you love to walk away with by the end of this session?

And by the way, this is the first coaching question. I always, always ask this at the start of a coaching session. So I've just to give you a little of my background. I worked at a startup for two years Google for five and a half in coaching, training and career development and now I've been self employed for nine years. I went through coach training through the Coaches Training Institute CTI in 2008 and I took that and applied it to Google. I wanted drop in coaching to be as widely available to Googlers as any other perk that was touted in the media. With a small team that became the drop in coaching program career guru that's still in place today, many years later. It's over a decade now, which is one of my proudest career accomplishments and a program I'm really passionate about. So we've actually already done the session on how to create an internal coaching program within your organization. If you're interested in that, email helloivittmethod.com we'll make sure you get the recording. Today is going to be focused more on the one on one interactions of helping somebody think through what's next. So I always start with this question because this is a coaching question. Each time you ask somebody a question they've never heard before, it creates new neural pathways in their brain. So when you ask, Great, we have 30 minutes together. I would love to know what would you like to walk away with? By the end of our time together, this is already where the person starts coaching themselves. And that way in the moment when you are in this conversation, you can both get clear what are we aiming to do here?

A little background on pivot before we get into the specific coaching aspect of it. Pivot is a mindset and it's a method. Pivot as a mindset is about being open and adaptable to change. And I don't have to tell any of you, now is the time to adopt a pivot mindset because we are pivoting and getting pivoted every single day. So how do we navigate that uncertainty and harness our uncertainty and sometimes anxiety about the future in a productive way? One of my mottos is if change is the only constant, let's get better at it. And as I shared in my private Momentum community earlier today, well, we've just all gotten accelerated onto the black belt track. So now we're all getting black belt training. And if change is the only constant and it's hourly, not even daily, how can we get better at it? What are the mindfulness practices, what are the self awareness practices, and what are some very practical tips and tools to navigate? Because sometimes inspiration isn't enough. And that's certainly what I found when I was inspired to write Pivot. I got the book deal for Pivot in 2014. It came out in the fall of 2016. And I was at one point had kept hitting plateaus every few years and I became angry and I felt that I had read hundreds of business, personal development, coaching, self help books and none of them were getting me through these pivot points or plateaus that I kept experiencing. And at the time, I didn't even have that language. Pivot point or plateau. It just felt like a crisis. So the method, the four stage pivot method that I'm going to share with you is the actual nuts and bolts. How do you help take somebody from confusion to clarity. How do you go from somebody feeling intimidated, overwhelmed, unsure, frozen, even discouraged or bored in their career and move them toward AHA's insights, inspiration and practical action.

When I present this to individuals, I often say pivot is the new plan A. When startups talk about pivoting, it's often plan B. Something has gone wrong and now they need to pivot to stay afloat. I'm even hearing medical practitioners or medical experts around the pandemic saying, this strategy isn't working. We have to pivot our approach. So it's cool hearing pivot more and more out there in the lexicon.

That's only one way to think about pivoting. Pivoting as plan A means there is no problem. And especially when it comes to our careers, it's so important that we impart for our teams and for ourselves this message that a pivot is not a problem nor a personal shortcoming. I wasted so much time beating myself up when I would hit pivot points. For example, two years into my work at Google, I was delivering the same training day after day. I trained over a thousand people in my first year at the company back in 2006. And when I hit a plateau at Google, I remember thinking, what is wrong with me? I must be one of those entitled millennials the media keeps talking about. I put so much shame and blame on myself for not being happy at what should have been my dream job. And all that does is create a state of paralysis and frozen and the other thing that happens. And I had so many of those thousand people that I trained. You know, Google was always looking for the best and the brightest. And at that time they didn't have as many programs for how do you keep them? So I was often the first point of contact in the company where they would come to me and say, jenny, I'm getting kind of bored. I don't know what to do. And as Much as we like to paint this rosy picture, that people are going to immediately go to their manager and just be transparent and own their career and talk about what's on their mind, they're often scared, and they don't want their manager to think they have one foot out the door. So they don't talk about it, and instead they start looking either at internal job boards or external. They start networking, thinking, I've hit a pivot point. I've hit a plateau. Maybe it's time for me to leave. But nobody really wants that. Even of everybody I interviewed for the book Pivot, nobody said that leaving their company was their first choice. It was only when they hit one plateau after the next, and they didn't feel they had the internal support to pivot internally or grow within their role, that they then started to look externally and look to leave.

I love this quote from Heraclitus. And oh boy, is it true. Now more than ever, he says, no person ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and they're not the same person.

The world is changing so quickly around us, even if we don't think were in a pivot or a pivot in the large sense of the word. Because often when I'm teaching this in organizations, I remind people pivots can be very small. It doesn't have to be these massive moves. Quitting your job, starting a business, changing your role, moving to a totally different industry. A lot of pivots, in fact, the most successful pivots, start right where you are, and they are a way to expand within the role that you have. But even, even still, you might not even think that you're pivoting. But every day we wake up, we're a day older, we're a day creakier in our body. Maybe we're more tired or more energized. And we're never stepping in the same river twice. Our teams change, the company changes, the economy changes. And so even if you think you're the same person and you think that you're fine where you are and you don't need to pivot or grow well, you're still not stepping in the same river twice. So every day we're being asked to adapt and respond and be agile. And certainly now that is the case. But again, even hour by hour, things are not staying the same. So how do we find solid footing when it feels like we're never stepping in the same river twice, which is really the truth of our existence?

I talk in the book about how, you know, we know the term high net worth. These are people who have earned a lot of financial resources in their lifetime. But for so many of the people that you manage and coach, and all of you here, certainly I would consider you high net growth. So if you are taking time out of your very busy day during a very stressful time in our, in our history, in our culture, in our society, you are high net growth. If you are watching the recording and you are taking time out of the day to learn and grow and expand, high net growth means you are not just asking, what am I earning? But what am I learning? How am I growing? High net growth Individuals will not be satisfied by money alone. And it's a mistake that companies make thinking that it's just salary and benefits or perks that are going to get their high net growth employees to stay. So the first distinction that we can make here is that if somebody is high net growth, they are willing to make a lateral move, take on an extra project at work, grow a side hustle, bootstrap a business, because they are hungry to know that they are learning and growing and ultimately making an impact. So when their needs for growth are being met, I call them impactors. For short, impactors will say, I also want to know I am making a difference on my team, on the company, on our customers, on our community, on my family, on the world. So if you are high net growth and impact and you start to feel one of those two levers starting to wane, you will likely hit a pivot point and be looking for what is next.

When we think about change, the optimal range for change is in our stretch zone. That is where any next move or next project that you are going to take on feels stretchy but edgy and exciting. Stagnation zone. This goes for you or your team members or those that you're coaching is where their energy flattens. So as coaches, you know that you're supposed to pay attention. What's their body language? How's their tone of their voice? Are they super excited when they talk about learning to cook or learning to podcast? Or are they just thinking, well, I guess I should start a blog? You know, what's the energy around what the person is saying? And if they're currently in their stagnation zone, they're not growing, they're not making an impact. And that can be deeply uncomfortable for a lot of people who are high net growth and genuinely have a desire to serve.

If they go too far out of their stretch zone, the panic Zone is a state of paralysis. Either analysis, paralysis, compare and despair. Any one next move or next project or trying to solve their whole career conundrum all at the same time puts them in a state of panic. Nothing happens. They just feel anxious and overwhelmed. So you want to be noticing. If you're a coach or a manager and you're giving an assignment or a challenge or some homework and the person just is not able to take action or they seem or it even falls under the shoulds. I call it the sea of shiny shoulds. That's kind of the panic zone. And you could name it whatever you want. I've had many different reactions to this graph as I've presented over the years. Some people have asked, one person said, well, Jenny, what if you like your comfort zone, is it okay to stay there? Sure, absolutely. Most likely, if you're in your comfort zone, you will probably get pivoted at some point. And sometimes people need to be in their comfort zone because something is going on. Personally, maybe they're just starting a family, they're moving across the country. There are times where you need to be in a comfort zone at work. Similarly, I've had somebody say, jenny, is the panic zone a little small? Shouldn't that pie chart be a little bigger? Shouldn't the yellow go all the way around? And then on the exact opposite side of the spectrum, one person said to me, I love the panic zone. If I'm not in the panic zone, something's wrong. Okay, great. So you could already see from that array of responses that you want to get clear with the person that you are managing or coaching what next steps are in their stretch zone. Be looking for that juicy, edgy, exciting aliveness and help them notice. Part of my goal with pivot is giving all of us shared language to normalize and talk about change, and specifically career change and mapping what's next in a way that's judgment neutral. There's no judgment here. You're not stagnated, you're just in a stagnation zone. Or this project falls under your stagnation zone. No problem. That's so normal. And in fact.

The more intelligent and growth oriented and talented you are, the more pivot points you're going to hit. This blew my mind that when I was even working at Google, how many of us were just shaming and blaming ourselves, as I mentioned, as the media tends to do. But why couldn't anyone just admit, okay, add a company like Google that aims to hire the top 1% or 5%, the best and the brightest people are going to get bored more often. Why wasn't anybody admitting this and then doing something about it? So that's partly what inspired me to create the Career Guru program, because I wanted to give people a neutral third party that they could talk about and have these conversations. And I genuinely believe that if we can help people see that their pivot points are often a product of their success, that it just means they've outgrown their current career incarnation and their current set of projects, that's a good thing. We should be celebrating these pivot points.

Another thing that I'll mention right now, given the state of the world and the pandemic that we're all living through, this once in a lifetime, I mean, hopefully once in a lifetime, but certainly the most serious global event that, that so many of us have had in our lifetimes already on a day to day basis, people are no longer in their comfort zone. So this is something that's going to be really important. As you have conversations with team members over the coming days and weeks, there is a baseline level of anxiety and uncertainty that if the volume was at a 4 or 5 before has been cranked up to an 8, 9 or 10, people are afraid for their health, they're afraid for their family's health, they're afraid for their job, they're afraid for their company. Now we're all learning how to be more resilient during times like this. And there's incredible resilience, creativity, innovation, collaboration that's happening right now. But be aware and be open that people are less likely to want to take certain risks right now because they're already out of their comfort zone in such a dramatic way. And people are going to learn how to manage.

This pandemic and self isolation and self quarantine and shelter at home and all of the things that certainly we're feeling in New York and will continue across the rest of the country. We actually most likely right now need to help people.

Tick down from their panic zone. So if people are feeling panicked and overwhelmed, it's about saying, how can we make your next steps smaller? What's something small that we can do or something small that we can try?

I define a career pivot as a methodical shift in a new related direction based on a foundation of your strengths and what is already working now. So important for me to reiterate here, this does not have to mean role change or a promotion. This is about saying what is working. So often when we vent to family and friends, you come home after A long day at work. Well, look, we are already all at home, so we are already working at home. Our family is probably right in the next room, if any, where it's that we're too distracted. But what we tend to do is focus on what went wrong, what's not working, what we're frustrated about, what we need to vent about. And it's so rare that our family responds by saying, oh, well, what do you want? What does success look like? It's easy to just pile on. Yeah. And here's how my day went. So the whole point of pivoting in a career sense is about saying what's working and what's something new and related that I could try, even if it's within your current role and same for the people that you're coaching. So a lot of times people assume that when they hit a pivot point, well, they must need to change their role in order to grow or must need to get promoted or start looking on internal job boards. They actually, there's some education needed here about you can grow right where you are. But we do need to think about our careers a little differently.

The fourth stage of the pivot method. This is since the book even came out in 2016, but I've really boiled it down to these four questions. What's working? What does success look like? What's out there? What can I try? That's it. At the end of the day, the whole goal of the pivot method, as a manager, mentor or coach, or if you're going through this for yourself, what can I try? There's no solving here. This is not about having the answers. And I don't have to tell you right now, none of us have the answers. People are scrambling to navigate this crisis and this pandemic. So the best we can do as organizations, as leaders, as managers, mentors and coaches is to help our team members and help our coaches understand who, what is working? What are your strengths? What can you double down on during this time to get you through.

When I usually teach pivot method, when we are not pivoting around a pandemic, I encourage people to ask, what does success look like one year from now? And the joke is always, ha, ha ha. Isn't the five year question out of date? Where do you see yourself five years from now? And now it's almost funny to say, what does success look like one year from now? In a way for people, depending what stage of response they're at, around the pandemic, that's out of the question. There are people who are being laid off. There are businesses that are completely frozen and shut down. It's impossible to ask, what does success look like a year from now? Not for everyone. For some people, they may find that very motivating. Okay, if we get through this and we're stronger than ever on the other side, we what does success look like? But maybe right now you want to have conversations with people about what does success look like a week from now, a month from now, three months from now, six months from now? So you throttle that. And by the way, as a coach, sometimes I'll ask the person that I'm speaking with, I'll say, you tell me what would be most helpful. Do you want to look at what success would look like six months from now? Or. Or do you want to do shorter timeframe or longer? What works best for you? And that way you get a sense for where they're at as well. Because, for example, with so many companies and so many people pivoting toward working from home now, you know, I've been working from home for nine years, but maybe this is somebody's first week working from home, so you're going to coach them around it, and you just want to know, a month from now, what does success look like? Talk to me about your daily routines. How do you wake up? Where are you working in the home? What's your day like? How does it feel? How do you feel when you start to wind down at the end of the day? And so you're helping them work through a timeframe that makes sense given the scope of the pivot and how recently it's all happening or how soon now it'll be happening.

Only when a person is grounded in what's working and what success looks like, then you keep moving. And the biggest mistake most pivoters make, and by the way, most managers and coaches, to jump straight to scanning. So imagine in this working from home example, managers doing coaching with a team member, and they say, and a team member, they say, what would you like to talk about today? Oh, working from home and the challenges. Okay, we have 30 minutes together. What's your ideal outcome from this conversation? I'd really like some strategies for how to work from home with my kids in the other room and stay sane and focused and productive right away. Usually a lot of managers who are very good at problem solving, and that's how they got into that role of manager will go, okay, so you want to stay focused and productive. Have you tried writing? And there it is. Have you tried and they go right into problem solving. So. Oh, oh, I heard the problem. Okay, now let's brainstorm. And they skip what's working and what does success look like? And that is the juiciest part of the coaching conversation, because only until you've spent half of your time together exploring those two things, then can you give the really resonant targeted brainstorming later in the process. If you want a great book on this subject. One of my friends, Michael Bungay Stanier, just came out with a book called the Advice Trap, and he says we all need to tame our inner advice monster who we let out way too early in these conversations.

What can I try as it relates to the pivot method? And certainly as managers and coaches, your job is not to solve anything in a career conversation. And I think that sounds quite counterintuitive for a lot of people because managers often put pressure on themselves. Well, I have to know. I have to know what to tell my team member about whatever they're hoping to do in their career. I'm the manager. I need to be able to provide the answers and the resources and the coaching to get them there. But if you take off the solving hat, you also model for your team member or your coachee, they don't have to solve this either. You just need to come up with some resonant pilots and next steps, and then those pilots will start to gain momentum of their own.

So let's get into now the actual framework as it results. As it relates to career conversations. I'd love for you to recall. Just take a moment or two.

What is one of the most memorable career conversations that someone has ever had with you?

What made it great?

What did the coach or manager do? Well.

What powerful questions did they ask?

And what did it empower you to do?

I would love to hear from you in the chat, especially, what powerful questions did they ask?

Sometimes I do this exercise and people will say, I can't remember a memorable career conversation or I love coaching my team and I love coaching other people. I can't remember the last time someone did this with me. My hope, especially in organizations, is that we change that. There's no reason that somebody shouldn't be asked powerful questions like what do you really want? How would you feel a year from now if nothing had changed?

What is your highest purpose? And I can't wait to hear what some of your powerful questions are, either that your favorite go tos or that people have asked you. So why isn't this happening? What gets in the way of career Conversations.

For one thing, I mentioned it earlier. Fear. Sometimes people are afraid. Managers are afraid. If I bring this up, people are going to start to want things that I can't give. Or oh, if I just bring up the conversation, they're going to want to pivot out of the team or out of the role or individuals think. My manager will think I'm not committed if I say I'm at a pivot point. If I let them know how I'm really feeling, they're going to look at me differently.

Time. Sometimes both say I have too much on my plate. So managers are really busy managing the team. Employees are busy with their workload. Neither one thinks that this is all that important in the moment. Metrics. In some cases, it's not what's measured or rewarded.

Sometimes it's a role issue. Clarity. Managers will say, oh, it's not my responsibility. Employees need to own their career. And employees will say, gosh, my manager never asks me what my goals are. I wish they would. I wish they would ask. And they don't know how to bring it up. Sometimes both are unsure that even with the best of intentions, they don't really know what is a career conversation. And I will say too, I think this is relatively new, at least in the way that I teach it so often. Career conversations, at least say 10 years ago, used to be really lumped in with performance reviews that at the same time a manager was sort of reviewing an employee's performance for the year, they would say, okay, and what does the success look like for the next year? And what are your goals? And it's all very serious. And employees are quite nervous when they're getting a performance review. Some organizations are changing the performance management system altogether and they're not doing this one annual conversation. Career conversations can be more informal and certainly more exploratory. It's better that they don't happen at the same time as performance reviews.

It's also important to know that we all have a role. So we want employees to own their career, but we need to give them the resources to do that and the tools to do that, even with the best of intentions. And I consider myself a relatively self aware person. I've been reading self development books since I was 20 years old and I was still so confused every time I would hit those pivot points or plateaus. At Google, we used to have 15 different performance sorry, personal development plan templates. PDP templates. The templates were not the problem. I remember delivering PDP workshops when I was at Google and This was right around the time just before we started Career Guru. And I remember thinking, the template is not the problem. It's that people don't know how to get fuzzy ideas in their mind from their head and onto the page. They need a process for that. And that is why I created the Pivot method. Managers can do very simple steps that launch career conversations with their team. So yes, we want employees to own their career. We want employees to grow their self awareness. And it's so simple for managers to write to their team and say, hey team, I'd love to have some informal career conversations with each of you. Please find 30 or 45 minutes on my calendar sometime in the next month. And by the way, we can do these as walk and talks or over coffee or over lunch. They don't have to be in the office. Great. That's it. That's all the manager has to do. I've had people, managers sometimes say to me, well, I don't schedule these because I have to do so much work. I'm busy enough as it is. I prepare hours and hours for each person. I review all their one on one notes. That is a manager who is putting too much work on their own shoulders. You don't need to prepare because you don't need to have the answers. This is a time to listen, ask questions, explore and brainstorm. For HR's part, HR can be helpful in giving the framework, so giving tools for managers and employees that empower people to have these conversations. And my goal with Pivot is have shared language to talk about it that's transparent on all sides. So another thing I found was that a lot of coaching frameworks and management trainings are obscured to the person sitting in front of you. So whether you're learning a coaching model like CTI or, or let's say a manager goes to manager training and then they're sitting with their teammate and they're like racking their brain of like, is this person norming, storming or forming, you know, or like T grow? Okay, let me work, work my way through this T grow coaching model. Wow, this person's sitting there and they're so not able to be present. So part of the goal with Pivot is shared language to look together and say, okay, great, okay, you're at a Pivot point. Let's look at what's working and what does success look like a year from now. And that it's a parallel process that they can do together or separately on their own.

70% of a career conversation in my personal Opinion is listening. That's it. 20% asking simple, powerful questions and 10% recapping. Notice I did not put on here giving advice. That can happen at the very, very end. And in fact, sometimes coaches or employees, there's a trick question, they'll sit down and they'll say, I would just really love to know what you think about xyz. I'd love to know what you think I should do. And my answer to that is always, I'm happy to share, but you first. First, I would love to hear what your goals are, what's most important to you, and what success looks like. And then I'm happy to weigh in at the end.

Okay, so going through the four stages of the pivot method, let's look at practical, simple, powerful questions that you can ask. And I will share the recording. So you don't need to write this all down. But I will also say you don't need to be too creative as a manager or a coach. The super smart creative questions is not the goal. It's actually to have your questions, like a good interviewer, news anchor, journalist, podcast host, is that you're almost invisible. The questions are so simple as to be invisible. So again, just as we started this workshop, I always ask, what's your ideal outcome? So maybe just before this, what would you like to discuss in this case, today, we're talking about a career conversation.

And then what's your ideal outcome? So let's say, yeah, I want to talk about. We'll use the working from home example. Or maybe it's burnout. So they say the topic is, I'm feeling really burnt out and I'm overwhelmed and I don't know what to do. Okay, with our 30 minutes together, what's your ideal outcome? What would you love to walk away with? I'd love to have some strategies for.

Managing my anxiety and managing my workload so that I'm not so exhausted every day or every week. Okay, so if. If burnout is, let's say one is totally burnt out and 10 is completely energized and recharged, where would you rate yourself currently? So by asking them, how would you rate this area from 1 to 10? You're putting this first marker on the map, this pivot point. So they say, I'm feeling two. I'm almost completely fried. Okay, now you know where you're starting. And then the vision is, what does a 10 look like? If they're at a 2, maybe you want to ask, what is the 7? And then what is a 10? Because sometimes people, if you say what does a 10 look like? They'll say, I don't know, I'm just so tired every day and I'm fried and I'm anxious and I'm not getting my work done. Well, they can't go that far. To get to the vision by asking these two simple questions. How would you rate this area 1 to 10 and what does a 10 look like now? Together you've set the brackets of where you are now and really you could spend an hour on what does a 10 look like? So ask a lot of follow up questions, what does a 10 look like? Well, I would wake up feeling energized. What else? I would have a nice flow of morning routines, say more. What is important to you about that? Well, I would have an hour to myself before anyone else wakes up. What's important to you about that? So you can ask those two magic questions, what else? And what's important to you about that? Over and over and over. And you'll get deeper and deeper to what I call the roots of the topic tree, that whatever the first thing the person says when you ask what does the 10 look like? That is just 5% of their vision. And the more time you spend on vision, more resonant and impactful and powerful the rest of the coaching will be.

Part of the plant stage is also about saying what is working. So in the burnout conversation, somebody could vent for an hour about what burnout feels like. And in a way, sometimes I'll say, as the coach or the manager, I trust you know what it feels like to be at a two and actually we can stay there, we can keep talking about that, or we could shift toward what you do want and think back to a time when you did feel really energized, what ingredients were present? So we are starting to investigate what is working or what has worked in the past and what are your true strengths. So in the burnout conversation, this might not be the best example. But typically when we think about strengths, because pivot is a very strengths based approach, we think of competencies, things that people are good at.

What they're recognized for, whether it's in their upbringing, their education or at work. But that's very different. Or it can be very different from what actually energizes that person. Because all of you could think, just because you're good at something, it doesn't mean that it energizes you. And sometimes these activities shift. So true strengths are at the intersection of things that we are good at. And that energize us, that intrinsic internal motivation. And this comes from a company called Healios that I partner with. They have an assessment that I love. It's called Strength Scope. It's a little different than cliftonstrengths in that it will create a report about the top seven energizer activities. So it doesn't measure what your strengths are, but it measures energy. What types of activities give you the most energy. So for somebody, collaboration is a big energizer. For others, it's a big drainer. For some, project management, big energizer. For others, huge drainer. So by having a conversation around energy, it also removes the judgment. It doesn't mean a person is bad at something. It just means that kind of activity does not energize them. So it is really important in the coaching to explore what are your strengths within a given day, within energy management, within working from home, what is working and what are your strengths? What can you lean on to help you shift toward that vision of what a 10 looks like?

The second stage of the pivot method is scan. Scanning is for three things based on the plant stage. Together you're going to start scanning for people skills and projects and I call that bridging the gap. Think about plugging in a destination in Google Maps. You are here, you want to get here. Now scanning. Only once we have those two points can we say, okay, what are all the different modes of transportation? How long will they take? What are the roadblocks or the potential barriers?

Again, I like to spend half of the coaching conversation on vision alone and the plant stage. Then I'll say to the person in front of me, okay, we're at a fork in the road. We could spend more time building out your vision and what's working or we could shift toward brainstorming and start coming up with pilots and experiments. What would be most helpful? I always love giving my coachee the fork in the road choice because it empowers them. If you are a manager and you are having a career conversation, there is no rush. And sometimes managers or coaches think, oh, we are not getting done fast enough. Oh, our hours almost up. Oh, we are having, we are only one stage in how are we going to finish this? Or the manager will think, oh, we better shift into the next part now. But that's you owning this again. If you ask, you might spend the rest of the time on vision and then later in a follow up session or one on one, you can add the brainstorming piece. So there's no rule that says it all has to happen at the same time. Just spending an hour or half an hour on vision alone strengths and what does success look like is such a gift. That is the part we are all good at, brainstorming. Your teams, your coaching clients are so resourceful. People are usually not short on ideas. They are short on the resonant vision that is going to get them out of bed every day. So that is the part we want to focus on. That is where the gold is. And then it is much easier to brainstorm next steps and small experiments once they have a real connection to their strengths, what's working and what success looks like.

So if they say they'll take this fork in the road toward brainstorming, now we go for quantity, not quality. So again, we're scanning for people skills and projects.

And I'm kind of combining Scan and Pilot because Pilot is all about small experiments. Instead of trying to solve the whole career question up front, even trying to solve a topic as big as burnout or working from home, it's what are some small pilots, small experiments that you could do?

We'll get there in a second. As you start to brainstorm, I want to share one more framework that I find quite helpful. And this is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's flow state. Basically, these are the two dimensions, the two axes of a flow state. That state of almost ecstatic bliss when you're so engaged and almost enraptured by that thing that you're doing that time passes and you don't even realize time passing. He does describe a flow state as almost ecstatic bliss. And executives report being five times more productive when they are working in a state of flow than when they are not. So how do we help our team members or our coaches find a flow state? A flow state is that sweet spot where we have just enough skill and just enough challenge. If somebody on your team or who you are coaching has too much skill and not enough challenge, they are going to be bored. And that's where you get to that stagnation zone. On the other hand, if they have too much challenge and not enough skill to meet that challenge or that project, they will tip into anxiety and worry. What's happening right now is that because of the situation with the pandemic, the dial on challenge has gone all the way up. So for so many people, they're automatically, no matter how work has shifted or not, they are automatically in a state of arousal and anxiety and worry. Because who of us has the Skills to navigate a global pandemic. I've never done it. Who of us has the skills to shelter at home and work from home and be with your whole family and not be able to go to any cultural events outside of the house and be worried about the especially elderly members of your family? Most of us have never done this before. So our level of skill is going to grow. But the challenge is way up right now.

In regular sort of day to day work, this can be two very helpful levers of conversation. So if somebody's bored, we need to help them up their challenge. What is the next step or a next project that would bring a stretch zone challenge? And if they're feeling anxiety or burnt out or worried, well, how do they need to grow their skills? So that's a big part of the scan stage, is also scanning for not just people skills and projects, but within skills. How do you need to grow? Anytime we are pivoting, even within your current role or we are coaching someone to pivot, there is a skill gap and that is what is exciting for high net growth individuals. So right now for all of us, we are being called to grow as leaders, as change navigators. So we are all learning skills to manage anxiety, mindfulness.

Cooperation. So it can be helpful to have a more direct conversation about these two things rather than have boredom or anxiety be these taboo subjects that we don't talk about or we don't know how to talk about.

In the pivot method framework, launch is that you've reduced risk by piloting and you can go all in on a new direction. But I also think about a little L launch and certainly in a coaching conversation, a little L launch is about narrowing down to next steps. So as you reach the end of your time to say what are some of your biggest AHAs from today's conversation? Just as what is your ideal outcome? A coaching question all on its own. So is this when you ask the the coaching, the coachee or your team member, what are some of your biggest AHAs? They do the work of synthesis. If they didn't know they had an aha, sometimes it's obvious. You see the light bulb light up and you see their whole body language brighten and you see it. You see, I call them like idea balloons and you just see them sort of completely animate. But if barring that, complete and total revelation. And I teach a separate workshop on accelerating AHA moments. Barring that, when you ask what are some of your biggest takeaways, they do the synthesis, they think, what am I Taking away from this. And that creates another coaching moment.

I also like to ask them first, what next small steps resonate most of everything we have talked about together? You tell me what small next steps resonate most. Notice again, we are not solving anything. I know I sound like a broken record, but I see this all the time, over and over and over. Managers and coaches have this bad habit of trying to solve things and it creates a lot of stress and pressure that doesn't need to be there. So instead you're asking them what small next steps resonate the most. Again, you are modeling that the person in front of you is the expert on their life and their work. Because if you just assign, okay, great. So based on everything we talked about, I would suggest that the action items here are X, Y and Z. You are simply modeling. And same thing with giving advice. You are modeling that you're the expert, you're the manager, you're the coach. And they are not empowered. They clearly don't know the answers and all that does is create dependency where they think, well, I better come back to you next time I'm confused. Instead of teaching them you have the answers within you. Tune in. What does your gut say? That's one of my all time favorite coaching questions. What does your gut say? Get really quiet and listen for that answer. And then what next small steps resonate Only then once they've shared their small steps. You may also, as their manager or coach, have some challenges for them. You may have seen a little idea balloon or a little something that they said where their voice lit up or their eyes lit up and you want to say, and I'm going to challenge you. Will you reach out to so and so and schedule a 20 minute virtual coffee chat in the next week? And then they might go, oh, I'm nervous, I don't know. And good. That means you've gotten something in their stretch zone. Similarly, if any of the homework sounds like a should call it out, ditch it, revise it. So if the person is saying, well, I guess I should sign up for that class.

I just call it out. I'll say, that doesn't sound like it's resonating with you.

What would really light you up or what would really challenge you here in an exciting way? So keep looking until you find that resonant next step. And of course, a lot of this boils down to accountability of what will you do by when and how will I know? And I say of course because if you've been through any manager training or any coach Training it. Often there's this emphasis on nail it down, you know, hold people accountable, that people really want to be held accountable. So I like to ask this, what will you do by when? Maybe it's already going to be clear. Sometimes I'll even say, let's set up a calendar invite for a week from now and I'll have an email reminder attached to it and just hit reply to the email and send me an update. But however it is, it can be helpful if they have that exciting challenge to report back and let you know how it went. If you're a direct line manager and this is someone on your team, you can say, add this to our next one on one agenda. I'd love to hear how it goes, or I'd love to continue the conversation. So we haven't solved anything we haven't fixed, by the way. Sometimes as their manager, you can't solve it. The ways that they want to stretch and grow and be challenged, you might not have a project for them right away, but you're going to know so much more clearly who on your team will be most interested in which projects down the road. So even if it's a month from now, three months from now, you will have a much better sense of how people are excited to grow and what their strengths are so that you can start to be that really effective traffic director of incoming work and get it to the right people who will resonate most.

Some of the biggest pitfalls. And then we'll wrap up and open it up for Q and A. Some of the biggest pitfalls. Giving advice we've talked about jumping to scan too early. You've got to resist the itch to problem solve and to go straight to brainstorming. Getting caught up in the story. Sometimes people are just so focused on what's not working and ultimately that's not going to be as enlightening, uplifting or helpful of a conversation. So sometimes I'll ask, would it be helpful to just vent about this? And we set a timer. Do you want to just vent for five minutes? Or I'll say, I get the sense that you, you know what isn't working. Would it be more helpful? Would it be helpful to stay there or to focus on what you do want? Sometimes people also think you need to know the whole backstory, but you don't. And on the flip side, I see sometimes a lot of managers start the third degree like, well, tell me, well, when did you try this? And they go into detective mode and they're asking so many specific Questions, they're not coaching questions. In a way, they're selfish because it's about the manager's need to know, not in service of the employee or coachee, exploring their biggest values, vision and dreams. So getting caught in the backstory and the details is a problem solving mode and it's ultimately not that productive.

Sometimes I'll deliver this training and managers. I'll watch them squirming and saying they'll ask a question like, well, don't you think it would be a good idea to sign up for XYZ class? Okay, that's a leading question. That's not a coaching question. It might have. Might technically have a question mark at the end. But what about trying? This is not a coaching question. That's your agenda as the manager or the coach and you're imposing it on this person. If you have something so brilliant that you must blurt it out, do that. But don't try to subtly lead your coachee or team member toward the answer that you think is best for them by these subtle coaching tactics. It feels so uncomfortable when you're on the receiving end of that. And by the way, whenever I blurt something, there's I like to give a caveat. Call me crazy, but. So I'll say call me crazy, but I get the sense that you don't want to be doing this project at all. And if that's the intuition that I get in the moment, I'll just blurt it out. Martha Beck uses the language tell me where I'm wrong. I get the sense you don't want to be doing this. Tell me where I'm wrong. So you're giving the person permission. Yes. You have a thought, you have an insight or an intuitive hit or an idea. You'd say, call me crazy. Or this could be totally off, off track, but what about xyz? Just give them permission. Because especially the power dynamics with a manager and a team member is that they will inherently often defer to you if you say it. It must be what you want them to do or it must be right in quotes. So I really like to caveat when you are going to give it input or advice or chime in, just give them permission to disagree.

Thinking too hard. I gave you some very simple questions. What's working? What does success look like? What's out there? What can you try? And the two magic ones, what else? And what's important to you about that? That's it. You don't have to invent another single question unless you have one that Naturally pops to mind. Don't work too hard trying to ask smart questions. And one smart, good coaching question after the next, you're not going to be present. Think about and now everyone listens to podcasts. You know, I used to mention, let's say watching Oprah or something. But the best podcast hosts are very in the moment with our guests and then the podcasts that just feel flat. The host is so focused on the next question they're going to ask, they're not even present to what was just said. And it's usually pretty obvious. They just have a list in their mind. They're following the list, they don't give it too. They just don't care what the guest just said. And sometimes the guests will say very profound or powerful things, but the host is already on to the next question and that's usually the more inexperienced. So.

Same for managers and coaches. Be present. Don't have your next question in mind, just be present. Stay really simple, really present. And.

If you feel yourself thinking too hard or for me, when I first started coaching at Google Back in 2009, I used to get sick to my stomach before one on one calls. And some of my coaching I did as walk and talks around the Baylands in Mountain View. And I had a mentor say to me, if you are getting that nervous because I thought what does this mean? Is this not my calling? Because I feel like I want to throw up every time I have a coaching call. He said I was owning the sessions like I was putting too much pressure on myself to be able to deliver the most amazing coaching this person has ever received. And so when I could let go of that and trust the process and stop thinking so hard and stop owning it and stop trying to be this brilliant coach just to be a vehicle to be a facilitator, it is such a privilege to be a facilitator of someone else's thinking. Thinking. It's such a beautiful, powerful and intimate role that you get to play in a person's life. So drop the need to be right, drop the need to solve, be present and trust that in half an hour, in an hour, magical things will happen. You just don't know what they are. And by the way, they said to this to us at coach training and I will say it to you, if all you do is listen, you don't say a word for half an hour. That is probably the most time that person will even have had that week where they got to just talk and focus on themselves for half an hour or an Hour. So just know that you can't go wrong. The more listening you do, the more of a gift it really is.

Giving up on a question too soon, filling silence. So I told you one of my favorite questions. What does your gut say or what do you want? Sometimes, especially earlier in career employees, they're so focused on getting an A for the proverbial A from their parents, from their manager, from society that they don't even know what they want. So let's say a question, what do you really want? And the person might get this shocked look or get uncomfortable and a lot of newer coaches will stumble right into that silence and they'll say, oh, okay, sorry, sorry. I know that's a tough question. I know. Okay, yeah, it's a little personal. Move on. And they just, they just. Their awkwardness about the silence means that they give up too soon. So when I ask a question like what does your gut say, by the way? Sometimes people will go, I don't know, I mean, blah, blah, blah. And you just hear them right back at the beehive of their brain. No, no, no, stop. I'm just going to ask you to pause. You're back in your head again. What does your gut say or what does your heart want?

And I let it be silent.

And inevitably that is where the ahas start to happen. Just past the silence, just past. When you think it's so awkward, you better step in and say something. So I encourage you as managers and coaches to play with this balance. Play with asking somebody a question, a powerful question, and letting there be just a little more silence than you are comfortable with and see what happens.

A quick note on notes.

It's so tempting as a manager, as a coach, to be taking furious notes while the person is speaking to you.

Unless note taking is your superpower, which I do, consider it mine. I can type verbatim while listening and coaching. And it's something I've done since I was a little kid. I was paid to take lecture notes in college. I just. Note taking is something I do and I do well and it's a part of my offering to clients. But for most people, note taking is a missed opportunity. And here's why. If you're in person taking notes, models that you have the answers, you're the expert. It's almost like the relationship of a therapist. It's like, oh, you're the trained person and you're taking notes. 2. It's also kind of that self serving thing. Well, I need to take notes because I want to remember what's being said so that I can be a brilliant coach or manager. It's not necessary. Note taking will take you out of the moment by nature. If you or your coachee are taking notes, you are transcribing. You are not creatively, expansively thinking. You just can't do them both at once. So you're either transcribing or you're in a super expansive creative state. So I also ask the person sitting across from me, I'll say, I'm going to ask you not to take notes while we're talking and let's just both be really present in the moment and then at the end, we'll save five minutes so you can capture everything and just trust you'll remember what's most important. Also, if you're taking notes, you're breaking eye contact over and over again. If you're in person, so you don't want somebody staring at the top of your head while you're furiously taking notes, you want to be present again in the moment, eye contact and just present. Even as a coach, I've had this happen where someone was coaching me and where I was coaching them. I know every single time they're taking notes, there's extra silence. They kind of forget the last thing I was saying. In fact, I take notes for my clients so they don't have to. And I know every single time I'll say, are you taking notes over there? And they'll go, yeah, yeah, you caught me. I'll say, I just want you to relax. Get up, go look out a window, go sit outside. Set your mind free. It is so rare that we let our mind roam without that left brain mode of trying to capture it all and the content that comes out when you allow the person to do that and to be fully relaxed, it's just so much more powerful. So as uncomfortable as this might be, I highly encourage you to practice, get into your stretch zone and drop the need for note taking. Trust you'll both remember what's most important at the end of the session and drop the need for notes because you don't need them. If you stay present, you will know exactly what to ask the moment you need to ask it. And if you get stuck, by the way, if you are coaching and you get stuck, you could just say, all right, what would be most helpful for here? Or I'm not quite sure what to ask you next. What would be most helpful? Or, well, let's circle back to what you wanted to walk away with by the end of this session. How are we doing so far? Where should we go from here? We have about 10 minutes left. You don't have to own it all. Collaborate. That's what this is about. Especially now when none of us as leaders, none of us have the answers. So this is an ongoing collaboration. What do you need? I love what Joy wrote in the chat. What do you need from me? How can I be helpful right now? And I have been encouraging my community to ask how can I serve?

I see that Bonnie wrote validating and sharing where I shine and obstacles I have overcome. That is such a gift as a manager or coach, if you can acknowledge the person for what you see in them and that really goes to what's working. It's like where do you see them shine and light up and excel and in your mind, what are their biggest gifts and superpowers and how have you seen them grow? That reflection is so, so powerful.

So as we start to wrap up and then open it up for questions, I would love to hear from you. You can see it says circle the five items. That's if you took notes on paper. But really I would just love to ask what's one aha or insight that stands out from this conversation today? And I'm including these three things here because this is what I like to ask as coaching questions at the end of any workshop I deliver or even in one on ones. What one small step can you take in the next week and what one next step would make the biggest impact? So you can see how the whole pivot method, the whole framework boils down to one or two next steps and my team, we're even doing just what's one experiment you can set up this month. That's it. What's one experiment? So I'd love to hear from you in the chat and then feel free to come off of mute or add a question in the chat. I would love to open it up now. You can also share your insight or an aha either in chat or you can come off of mute to share. But I'd love to know because especially in a group setting, by sharing Your insights or AHA's, it also helps other people crystallize what they've learned as well and get ideas from whatever next steps or actions you're going to try.

So Joy says, I love the experiment question. Kathy. I appreciate all the simple, powerful question examples. Wonderful. Bonnie says, I love the insight around notes. I think this strategy will be most helpful for my coachee to be more present. Amazing.

A couple additional resources you can go to pivotmethod.com companies if you're interested in bringing even virtual pivot programs to your organization. And then there are more specific resources for managers@pivotmethod.com lead. And again, we'll also send this recording. Kathy said, I like the strengths Energizer assessment you mentioned. Yes, that's called Strength Scope, and it's a great. It's a great tool.

Hi, everybody. This is Joy.

Hi, Joy.

One thing that's just coming up for me as we are wrapping down, I like this idea of, you know.

Just identifying specifics because I think sometimes I know for myself when I get gridlocked, I need to, like, commit to an action to get me unstuck and make sure that the barrier to entry is low enough that I'm just going to do it. And I think as we are all in the midst of the pivot process and wading through all of this, and I think it's so easy right now just to get bogged down by emotion and just so paralyzed. But I think this, now more than ever, we need community.

We need to creatively use relationships. And I think I've always really believed that.

Business is about relationships and businesses that thrive, leaders that thrive, like, get that. At least the ones I like to work closely with. So I think, especially in this time of so much change, I like this idea of, in this next week asking the question, who, who can I reach out to? Who can I send a handwritten letter to? I did that this last week and it was so, so powerful. Just, it was a podcast host and I just really appreciated the content and it wasn't like asking for anything. But then that created a memorable experience and exchange. That was actually a powerful catalyst for some things. So I think if we can look at who can I connect with? And it doesn't have to be with an agenda, but I think there's real power in that. And then we just, that's how we get more support and we can't have too much of that right now. So I think that's kind of what's on my heart as we're wrapping up.

Thank you so much, Joy. I love that. I love that you sent a handwritten note. And it is those small things, as you said, that can be such a catalyst and that moment of joy as well, just creating that for another person. I saw Winnie also wrote, Winnie said, I like your insights around notes. I sometimes take notes for my coaches, too, but I will never do it again. I would say, Winnie, just try it. Just see how you are as a coach when you're not taking notes and then see how your coaches are when you ask them not to take notes. And if it makes you both feel better, you can record the session just so that you have that as a backup. I use Uber Conference. You can also see how it goes. So pilot, as the whole pivot method would say, just pilot with that. And. And then you can always jot down notes after the conversation so you're no longer trying to be present in the moment. But afterward, it's quite powerful to say now, what's my overall impression? So I have one friend who is a coach. She does send quite a detailed summary to her clients afterward. And I don't know, I actually haven't asked her how detailed, how thorough she is during the call. But I've had coaches reflect very powerful things to me after the fact. But I could tell they were super present with me in the. The session itself. And then afterward they'd say, I really saw you stretching. And here is what I acknowledge in you, and here is what you said you are going to work on. And here is what this is in service of. And these are the values that you are honoring. And that is so powerful. I have saved some of those communications from coaches over the years, and I cherish them so much because it is such a gift to see and be seen. And that's what we really have an opportunity to do as coaches and managers.

Bonnie said, I love the what does your heart want? I think it goes deeper than what do you want? And in a workplace may have been difficult to build the trust. Yeah. But truly is the beginning of building an authentic relationship. There's an exercise I mentioned in pivot. Head, heart, gut. So if you're a little hesitant to go straight for the what does your heart want? Question, you could say, let's do an exercise. It's called head, heart, gut. What does your head say? What does your heart want? What does your gut say? And the head is often the shoulds. The heart is really that hard, that soul center. What do they want? And the gut is often the referee between the two. Or the gut knows the truth. Truth with a capital T.

Kathy says, I love your perspective that you don't have to solve anything. That's a very powerful insight. I'm so glad, Kathy. Yes. See how it works. Just see how your energy changes when you enter these conversations as a facilitator and not a solver.

Are there any other questions before we wrap up?

Well, then you all have the gift of 20 extra minutes because I've locked off extra time just so that we had time for Q and A. But but I have to say I'm going to do a podcast soon. I've been podcasting daily around the Pandemic and I see my doctor Michael Kinselos is here. He's been my co host for several of those. That's@pivotmethod.com podcast and I'm going to do an upcoming episode on Screen Fatigue. So I hope that you Enjoy this extra 20 minutes, do something for you, maybe go away from the screen and just pause or journal on some of these questions because this session was aimed at you as a manager or you as a coach. But I find them very helpful to just even look with so much changing one day to the next to just go through those four questions. What's working? What does success look like even for this day, for this week? What's out there? People, skills, projects, and what can you try? Thank you so much everybody.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.