Progress Questions

Progress can be unpredictable. Giving feedback with "but" negates the positive and demotivates. Asking specific questions about progress is effective. Example of coaching someone struggling with public speaking. Manager's approach was counterproductive. Asking positive questions about progress helps people think positively. Asking negative questions about nervousness or fear reinforces negativity. Progress is powerful and motivates people to continue improving. Now, progress is something that can be very, very fickle. So when you are giving someone feedback and you're saying, John, you did a pretty good job but, but erases all the good stuff and puts people into a psychological state of demotivation, non-happiness, it just doesn't work. So when you ask questions and you raise people's awareness of where they're progressing, powerful things happen. So in this section on progress, we're going to talk about progress very nebulously, yet you want to ask questions specific to where people need to progress or they want to progress. Let me give you an example. I was coaching someone who was really struggling with public speaking. And public speaking for people, I think there were studies actually done that said that people actually feared public speaking more than death itself. That's how much it's terrifying to people. And when the manager said she has to get up and speak, and I asked the manager, I said, well, how are you managing her progress? How are you monitoring that? How are you rewarding that? How are you nurturing that? And he looked at me dumb and he said, well, she needs to get ready. I'm really nervous. I said, have you shared that with her? He goes, oh yeah, I've shared it with her. And I said, so you shared that you were nervous about public speaking to someone who's already nervous. What was your intention? And he started with a big smile and he said, uh-oh. We started laughing. I said, do you want her to get there? He said, yes. I want to give you a concept. And I want you to think about it and tell me how you're going to represent this concept. Help her feel good about getting better. And he wrote it down. So when you are progressing and you're asking questions, what are you doing well? What's becoming more comfortable? What are you learning about yourself, knowing you're going to give a great presentation? What do you think this preparation is doing for your presentation? What do you want that presentation to look like? What are you going to do to position yourself to have that presentation executed flawlessly? What are you going to do when you maybe have a little bit of a hiccup in your presentation and you're going to professionally and thoughtfully and calmly rebound from it? When you ask questions around progress, people think positively. Now if I go up to somebody and say, oh, by the way, are you nervous? What would that do? It would get the person thinking about nervousness. I remember years ago, I did a keynote speech in front of 5,000 people and a guy literally came up to me two minutes before going on stage and he said, man, I give you a lot of credit for doing this. I could never do this. I said, what do you mean? He said, oh, man, there's a lot of people out there. I said, how many? He goes, oh, about 5,000. I said, oh my gosh, I can't do this. And the guy that I reported to broke out laughing because he gets my humor. Why would you go up to someone two minutes before you go on stage and do that? Progress is powerful. When you're asking questions around your progressing, you're actualizing, yeah, you know what? I am progressing. People when they feel good about getting better will want to continue to get better.