A coach pauses a numbers conversation to ask about one word a client used to describe his feelings. Drilling into that emotional cue reveals what's really driving the client, which matters more than the spreadsheet.
In both sales and management, emotion comes first. I do coaching for entrepreneurs and, you know, I remember having one coaching session where we were 10 minutes into it, sort of going over the numbers the previous week, and I heard him say a word, sort of describing how he'd been feeling in the previous week. And I just kind of stopped the session to focus, drill down on that word. Being able to detect, you know, that there is something going on with the other party is such an important part of connection. And connection is such an important part of helping them make progress. Like, if you are in sales and you're hearing what the person on the other end is talking about, hearing where they're coming from, being able to connect into it more, that allows you to get to a deeper point where you can really understand the causes, the whys of how they behave and what they really value. And when you do that and you can understand their motivators, that's how you can really help them make progress.
