Engagement Supplemental

Observing and reflecting on the impact of our engagement with others is a powerful coaching strategy. The speaker shares an example of a Starbucks employee who maintained attentive engagement with a customer despite distractions. This employee's ability to prioritize the person in front of them was commendable. In contrast, the speaker witnessed two grocery store cashiers engrossed in a conversation, causing a delay for customers. This highlights the importance of attentively engaging with others and the potential negative consequences if we fail to do so. Now, there are many supplemental coaching things that you can do when it comes to engagement. Yet, I'm going to give you the one that I think has the greatest opportunity. And it's the one that seems to develop the greatest attentiveness to being engaged. I think we don't do this enough as human beings. And it doesn't mean we sit and watch other people and judge them. But we simply observe and reflect and look at something called impact. I want to share with you, when I was doing these videos, I went to a Starbucks. Now, Starbucks is notorious, notorious for great training. Now, I'm not a coffee drinker. I'm a hot chocolate drinker. When I went in there, there was a woman who was a customer who was on the phone. And the woman behind the counter was incredibly patient. So when the woman was on the phone, she was ordering, she said, yeah, yeah, hold on a second. Yeah, I'm going to get a coffee. Yeah, I'll call you in a few minutes. I'm sorry, I'm going to want to skim milk in my coffee. And so she was really having two conversations at once. And I watched this woman behind the counter at Starbucks. She did not stop smiling. She maintained eye contact. She didn't let anybody interrupt her. And she actually had a coworker come behind her and whisper in her ear, we're going to need to order more muffins or something like that. And when the interaction was over, I looked at her and I said, can I share something with you? And she said, sure. I said, your ability to maintain attentive engagement is second to none. And she starts smiling. And I said, have you ever heard that? She said, I have, which kind of surprised me. And I said, where have you heard that? And she said, we practice it. We are constantly, constantly being in the moment, making sure that that person in front of us is the most important person. Now, by this time, the woman who had the conversation on the phone going, she had left and I said, she just was not even hearing you. She had to order almost three different times because she just couldn't hear the person from Starbucks. As I went to a store afterwards, I was at a grocery store and two people were actually having a conversation from their stations. They were checking people out. And one customer just kind of sat there and waited for them to get done. And it was really interesting. He turned around and looked at me and smiled and I said, oh, they'll be done in a second. And we both started laughing. And all of a sudden, this one cashier looked at us and goes and states, I am so sorry, you guys. They just got enthralled in a conversation. We had been waiting almost two minutes. Now, let's be honest. Two minutes is not a lifetime. It's nothing to get upset over. We didn't get upset. Yet, there were two different descriptions of attentive engagement. The person at Starbucks and then the two gals at the grocery store who just kept the conversation going. Now, one would manically have a perception, well, you know, they just didn't care about the customer and they were just going to have their conversation. It's like, you know, we had to wait for them. Can't you hear people doing that? So one of the greatest supplemental coaching strategies you can deploy to your people is to observe people. Were they attentively engaged? And what was the positive or potentially, sadly, what was the detrimental impact on the person they were engaged with?