Coaching to Confront (Summit)

Coaching to Confront is about teaching others how to handle conflict or confrontations. The speaker emphasizes the importance of knowledge, skill, and behavior when asking someone to do something. He explains that people often avoid conflict until it builds up, leading to explosive conversations. The key to confronting someone is to approach them with permission and without assumptions. The speaker recommends practicing and using a methodology to improve confidence in difficult conversations. Now the title of this audio is Coaching to Confront. Now the reason I say that so carefully is Coaching to Confront indicates we're going to coach other people to handle conversations of conflict or to confront someone where there's discord or disagreement. Let me go back to some very simple techniques. Now foundationally, anytime we ask someone to do something, I always go back to something we teach called the tiers of learning. Knowledge, do they know what to do? Skill, have they practiced it? Behavioral, can they do it with confidence and conviction, void of fear or anxiety? Now let's come back to this thing called conflict or confronting. It doesn't give you a warm, fuzzy feeling. It isn't something that most people look forward to. So what we typically do, to use a baseball analogy, is we give people free passes. We ignore it. And then we wait until the 7th, 8th, or maybe even the 9th inning, and then we have to have the conversation. And that sometimes can be combustible because we let it build up, we let it get to the 8th or 9th inning, then we have to have it, and then we lead with comments such as, well, Charlie, I've got to tell you, I'm really frustrated. And the minute they hear your emotion, they go into a defensive posture. They don't hear the message. They go into a mental spiral of, am I being written up? Am I going on a plan? Am I in trouble? Am I being fired? And so confronting is nothing more than the following. Confronting is the ability of someone to approach somebody where they have an opportunity to improve, specific to a difficult situation that most people dare not go. So let's talk about some suggested techniques. Permission plus the sword. Let's take our character Charlie. We could approach Charlie and say, Charlie, would you mind if I shared with you an opportunity where we could engage better as teammates? And the last thing I want to do is assume where you're coming from, and I'd love to hear from you as well. Would that be okay? So the front part is, would you mind if I shared with you? The back part is, I don't want to make assumptions. The last thing I want to do is assume what you know or you don't know or what you're aware of. Would that be okay? Permission is trust. Now, it doesn't mean they hug you. It doesn't mean they love you for doing it. Yet when they invite that feedback, they become a little bit less defensive. The sword puts the onus on you. I don't want to assume where you're coming from, and I'd love to just share my feedback with you and then have you share with me from your perspective. Now you've positioned it to be a conversation, and the key to coaching to confront as a manager to one of your subordinates or your individual contributors or someone you're coaching is to practice stuff like that. Now, you can get books like Crucial Conversations. They have fantastic techniques. The fact of the matter is, knowledge. If they don't know what to do, they're not going to do it. And if they do it, they're not going to do it as successfully as they could. Most of the time, people will lead with emotions. And if emotions don't calm other people's emotions down, they typically get them charged up. Number two, once we have the knowledge, we have to practice these conversations. You cannot arbitrarily improve what you don't practice, especially when there's a behavioral component of fear or anxiety that most people have with this thing called a difficult conversation. Now remember, confidence comes from two things, practice and positive reinforcement. When you're coaching to confront, have a methodology. It doesn't have to be ours. Have a methodology. Make sure they understand the steps, the building blocks of having that difficult conversation, and then facilitate practice. Then their willingness to do it thoughtfully and professionally becomes a lot more plausible.