Master Class #2: Coaching Recipes That Actually Work: Using DISc To Break Down Silos

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Hi, everybody. It's Tim Hagen from Progress Coaching, and this is going to be our masterclass number two for coaching recipes. Now, recently I started to work with an organization who is very heavily embedded into Disk. And DISC is a behavioral assessment. I happen to be certified in disk. And I'm going to go back to the fundamentals of what a really good coaching recipe is. The reason we put this together is one size does not fit all. And this is why we created the coaching school. So when you think about a coaching recipe, there are

Masterclass Goal And DISC Context

SPEAKER_00 1:13

three components. There are ingredients. The ingredients are broken out into two parts: techniques and types. Techniques could be here are the questions to use, here's an activity you could use. And those tech techniques, questions, activities, learning projects will fold underneath this thing called coaching types, which is one-on-one coaching, or I want to apply group coaching, or I'm going to use peer-to-peer coaching, or I'm going to use self-coaching. So remember, the ingredients are techniques and types. The second is the recipe.

Ingredients Recipe And Secret Sauce

SPEAKER_00 1:45

How do I mix this together? Typically, what I encourage is to use maybe two types of coaching. You don't want to overcoach because it can be tough, you know, it can become too much. And then the third is the secret sauce. And I'm going to give you some secret sauces as it relates to this case study I'm going to present. So we have two departments that do not work well together at all. And they wanted to use disk as an apparatus to build greater collaboration, greater cooperation, greater teamwork between the departments. And they would use, not me, they would use the term silos. And I said, okay, why disk? And they said, well, it just gives us a really good understanding. It's embedded in our workplace. We believe in disk. I said, great, phenomenal. And so what we did is something different.

Case Study Two Departments At Odds

SPEAKER_00 2:41

And so what I'm going to give you, I'm going to go to the ingredients first. We started off with group coaching, peer-to-peer coaching, and I added a third self-coaching. Let me start with group. So we got the groups together and we had them share. Now I'm going to get into that. And then we broke them into outside the group coaching, into peer-to-peer, where we scheduled time where peers had to get together. Okay. But we did something a little bit different. I'm going to get to the secret sauce. And the recipe was group, we're going to set the foundation, peer-to-peer, we're going to start to apply. We're going to start to break down those bricks and those silos that they talked about. And then we did even some self-coaching and really got the ability to accelerate. And then the secret sauce I'll give you here in a second. So let me go back to the group coaching. We got the groups together and we did not get into disk. I had latitude from my client, and I said, I don't want to get into disk. Disc is going to be a distraction from simple conversation. Here's my first secret sauce. So we teach something called the four C's of teamwork: connect, commonality, collaboration, conflict. If you and I are working together and we do not have a connection or context of each other, we probably aren't going to find out what we have in common. And then we have to collaborate together. It's a little clumsy. And then

Four Cs And Social Conversation

SPEAKER_00 4:10

when conflict occurs, it gets really accentuated. It really gets elevated when it doesn't need to. So what we had everybody do is get together and get with a partner. And we did it with people from other departments. This is our group activity. And you had to introduce your partner, what you had in common or what you learned about them and what you had in common with them. And then your partner had to get up and introduce you. 15 minutes of just simple discussion. You were not allowed at all to discuss disc, discuss anything with work. It had to be a social conversation. And so we're in the room and it's lively. And people are talking, they're laughing, and it always cracks me up when people get together. You know, we talk about stuff all the time. We always want to tactically solve something. There is tremendous value in simple conversation. So then that was our group coaching. That was our first session. The second one is we then assign them to come back and find out what they had in addition to what they already shared, other things they had in common. See, if you and I share a love of volleyball, or if you share a love of Door County, Wisconsin, or Disney, like I have with many of my clients that love Disney and I love Disney. What happens when you have connection and commonality? It starts to lend itself to collaboration pretty well. But the other question we had was how do you like to work and communicate with people as part of that, part of that peer-to-peer? So we started with the group, then we started with the peer-to-peer. And we came back for our second group session. The room was lively. My client looks at me, she said, She said, wow, it's like they already know each other. I go, of course they know each other. And then in the second group session, you had to bring your disk assessment and you had to share what you learned about yourself and what you had to navigate, what you had to adjust, what you had to look for to effectively

Peer Coaching Then DISC Reflection

SPEAKER_00 6:13

work with other people. Not just the other department, just other people in general. So peers got together and these were different peers. Guess what we started with? Get to know each other. What do you have in common? Now share your disk profile. So we did this over the course of six sessions. I'm gonna say it. The results were amazing. The results were amazing. So again, our types of coaching were group outside the group session. We assigned people peer-to-peer outside the sessions. Then when we brought them back in, we got them in groups of two, which were peer-to-peer within this group setting. Here was the secret sauce. We didn't just throw the tactical disc solution at them. We didn't throw at them, we got to break down barriers and solve this dreaded problem. We facilitated context, commonality. We started to foster collaboration. Then in one of the sessions, and again, I'm not going in a great order here, but give me a little latitude. What we did in one of the sessions, we said, what's your relationship with conflict? And people would say, Well, what do you mean relationship? I said, Do

Conflict Comfort As A Team Skill

SPEAKER_00 7:26

you love it? Do you look forward to it? Are you comfortable with it? Are you uncomfortable? And what happens with conflict is magical. Because if you share with me, I hate conflict. I get very nervous. And I would say to myself, wow, if this person feels this way, I've got to be sensitive because I'm very comfortable with conflict. And so what happens is that allows us to have conversations, but also build up a repertoire of who's who and who's comfortable, who's not comfortable. We haven't even dove into disk yet. And so when you get in there, we had a series of six group sessions. Outside those six sessions, we had assigned peer-to-peer. When we came back in, the peer-to-peer started off the group sessions. But the secret sauce is we were following that methodology of team collaboration, that team cooperation, the four C's, context, commonality, collaboration, and conflict. By the fourth or fifth session, you didn't know who was from which department. Here was the secret sauce. When you are coaching, you don't have to change everything. You don't have to tactically address everything. What we did is we facilitated the desired outcome. Because my client said to me, I want them to collaborate and work effectively together and not throw email bombs over the wall and maybe walk down the hall and talk to each other. I said, Why don't they do that now? He said, Oh, I just don't know. I said, Well, I can tell you why they don't know each other. So we were throwing a tactical solution called disk at a problem. And it was a real problem. There was. The emails were brutal. They were not friendly. They were, they were brutal. And so I sat there and I go, well, what happens when there's conflict? Well, they start emailing each other back and forth. And then the BCC starts. And then we start carbon copying each other. And I said, they don't even know each other. And he said, What do you mean? I go, do they ever sit and have lunch together? He's well, I don't know. And so when you bring people together and you're building up a coaching recipe, so let me review again the types. I started with a group. We used disk as an apparatus. I then use peer-to-peer coaching inside and outside. Now, the third one I haven't talked about that everybody had to do is we created a digital cohort. So I use a really cool tool called ClarityFlow. And every week you had to put into this group almost like chat. It's not really a chat. You can put text, audio, or video. And you had to compliment somebody from another department of the other department, saying what they did really well in terms of their communication. And everybody saw it, which does what? Neutralizes the negativity

Digital Cohort Compliments With ClarityFlow

SPEAKER_00 10:13

often associated with silos. And what was amazing about it, in all due respect to my client, was it was very, very simple. And so again, we started with the types group, peer-to-peer outside the group, assigned, like 10-minute conversations, and then peer-to-peer inside the group, and then self-coaching. Every week they had to do an observation of someone from the other department that was really positive in terms of how they attempted to communicate. The techniques were we would ask questions, we had activities, we broke them up into peer-to-peer discussions, we use self-coaching, and then the secret sauce with those four C's. And we facilitated the desired outcome versus taught or demanded the desired outcome. Now, my client didn't give me permission to do this video, so I'm not going to use company names or his name, but he said later, you know, what's really amazing is at first I didn't know what you were getting at. And I said, look, what do we do when we have somebody with a negative attitude? What do we do? We address it. Oh, I got to address that. Sometimes when we address it, we create countering measures. We create, I would even say, uh countering outcomes. If I come to you and say, you have a negative attitude, you got to cut it out. Your first response isn't, you know what? You're right. The first response is one of defensiveness, right? So when you are coaching, think about how do I, as a coach, facilitate the desired outcome. So give me your feedback. So the three types are group, peer-to-peer, self-coaching, really a form of best practice sharing. The techniques we used were discussion activities, a lot of questions. Okay. And then the secret sauce is we went through the stages of what it takes to build a team. And though, and then what we did is we never once used the word silo. We never once used the word difficulty. We never once used, you know,

Facilitate Outcomes Without Forcing Change

SPEAKER_00 12:19

email bombs, which is where their term, not ours. And so a lot of times when we facilitate and we put together a coaching recipe, choose the right ingredients. What are the right types based on the situation? What are the techniques you're going to use within those types? Then how do I bring that together? Typically, I don't recommend more than two to three types, typically two types. Then the secret sauce was how do I do this? And I thought, oh, I teach this four C's of teamwork. I'm going to embed that into the group. But here's the funny thing: we never addressed the problem. Now you're going to sit there and go, wait a minute, you didn't solve it. Yes, we did. And the problem was they weren't collaborating. They weren't working through difficult conversations. There was not a relationship in place. We had silos. We didn't even get together. We would email. We'd spend so much time deciphering emails. Guess what happened? People started having lunch together. People started having meetings proactively together. It worked. Are there still hiccups and bumps? Of course there are. It's people. Yet at the same time, over time, what that had taught us was you can facilitate the desired outcome without ever addressing the problem. That's the cool thing about putting a coaching recipe together. What are your thoughts? Give me your feedback. Let me know if you like it, dislike it, it's cool with me.