Get the best Books about How to Cure…, Click Here
when a client asks for a tool my response is usually something like what are you really after here what’s the real question that needs answering because when we ask for a tool to help us change our Behavior there’s that’s usually a sign that something bigger is going on because you can do a quick search for books and articles and infographics and even videos on Instagram or Tik Tok to help you change Behavior but there’s something behind that question and that’s what coaching is about is about identifying what’s really blocking you so that you can find your way to resolve it and move Beyond it and that kind of work is far bigger and far more effective than a quick hit [Music] tool welcome to wind is it get good I’m zovic Garbin I’m your host and today I want to give you a little Insider sneak peek behind the scenes of what can happen in Executive coaching uh specifically I want to talk about uh the most common type of question that that clients ask when we’re in sessions which are usually howto questions they ask how do I do this do you have a tool or a tip or a trick for how I can do this and asking for tools or how-tos is a very natural place to start when you are looking to change something or do something differently give me a tool so that I don’t uh emotionally react at work give me a tool to help me earn the respect of my people give me a tool to stop procrastinating give me a tool so that I’m not afraid of conflict it’s it’s a very natural place to start um and I find that people are tool collectors we love a good framework we love a good one two3 we love a good pie chart or um uh ven diagram we love books and infographics and contextual models I am a tool collector when I first started coaching I thought well I need tools so I was just always had my eyes and ears open for things that I heard or read or saw in LinkedIn that I could screenshot and I have Post-its and highlighted sections in my books of tools that I think could be useful and I find that out of all of the tools that I have and I have many probably 50 or 60 of them maybe more and they’re very neatly organized in folders on my computer um by types of tool I only use four maybe five of them because what I find that clients are actually asking is not how to do something it’s how do I feel differently so that I can do this how do I feel differently so that I can do this and that’s a very different question because tools are Behavior focused and behavior is the easy thing to change behavior is the easy thing to change when we can detach ourselves from the emotion that prevents us from doing the thing we want to do it’s easy to change our behavior when we can detach ourselves from the emotion that is preventing us from doing the thing that we want to do that’s where we have to put our attention and intention is on the stuff behind the stuff behaviors are the easy part and to be honest paying an executive coach to give you a tool that you could just Google or ask chat GPT for that is not the best time of that is not the best use of your time or your money so I’ll give you an example of how this might look in actual coaching um I’ve had a few people uh ask me how do I stop procrastinating give me a tool a tip some tricks they always like tricks just stop procrastinating or how do I manage my time I don’t know how to manage my time so I wait until the last minute to do things let me tell you uh the there are a million tools for this there are apps upon apps that are developed for just such a problem you could easily also just time block your calendar meaning put blocks of time on your calendar that are dedicated to working on that specific thing and then hold yourself accountable to using that time for that thing you could even make it Fun by color coding the blocks but when you dig in the problem is not that a person doesn’t know how to manage their time these are really smart people the problem is they might feel anxious about doing things right or getting it perfect and it stops them from starting or they feel intimidated by the work in some way so they’re not sure they can get it done and it stops them from starting or they’re totally overwhelmed with a mountain of work because I feel like everybody’s plates are overflowing and they’re juggling many things and they’re either not comfortable or know how to say no and set boundaries so everything gets pushed to the last minute another example of asking how to I had a client who asked me for a tool to help them get better at speaking in front of large groups particularly in uh company All Hands meetings or um situations where they were sharing difficult information about company changes they were a leader and they would often have to disseminate difficult information my tool was well rehearse speak as much as you can to get comfortable being visible and comfortable on your feet and even more comfortable when you don’t have the answers to questions that your audience might ask that was the tool see the thing is is it wasn’t about their ability to speak in front of people what they needed was to address that they feared saying the wrong thing and people possibly getting upset and then they would be seen as a bad leader this person didn’t even have a fear of public speaking it was about how the audience might React to what they were saying that is a very different question then how do I get better at presenting somewhere in the Quest for the solution to procrastination or these other howtos that we’re looking for lies a lingering self-doubt or a lack of self trust or a disconnection with yourself and that’s where we need to be putting our time and attention that’s what we need to address because a tool will not cure your self-doubt in fact there is no cure for self-doubt so if you think that there is Let it go Let Yourself breathe out because it’s just just it doesn’t happen what I think happens though is that we get better and faster at moving through the doubt but to feel doubt that’s part of human existence the other thing about this is that when we have these tools we don’t use them I have more people with empty journals and books they haven’t read than I have people who have read all the books and are applying all the information and that’s natural too I got a bunch of books and I’ll tell you I don’t read them all back front to back I look for the information that I feel is relevant and that’s what I earmark and that’s what I highlight and sometimes I go back if the tool is particularly meaningful or the why behind the tool is particularly meaningful but for the most part I have books with a lot of Post-its that I read once and that was that what needs to what needs to be addressed is the thing behind the thing so if I were to give somebody um a tool like let’s say the SBI model for giving feedback so that’s situation Behavior impact SBI it’s a really great tool it’s a really great approach to giving critical feedback you tell someone the situation you tell them what their behavior was and then you share with them the impact of their behavior and then hopefully you coope create some steps to move forward to have that thing not happen again or to do it differently next time it’s a very clean easy to follow process for delivering critical feedback if I were to give that to someone they probably won’t use it why because that tool does not solve for the anxiety they have when facing what they perceive as conflict and many many people perceive giving critical feedback as conflict what instead what need needs to be addressed or resolved is your relationship to conflict so that you can effectively use that tool or let’s Envision you as a confident and comfortable person within conflict how could that look and then we explore that or let’s have some fun with this and develop some kind of conflict Alter Ego that goes into giving feedback powerfully you can even play with it and make it fun none of those are how-tos those are all sort of directional focused exploration like where do you want to go where do you want to be how does that look for you because what we’re addressing is the thing behind the thing it’s the anxiety or the relationship to the conflict that prevents the person from having that kind of conversation so when I first started coaching I had a coach I hired that I was because I was stuck I didn’t know how to get clients and I didn’t know how to talk about myself as a coach and what I expected was for her to give me some marketing tactics or formulas for how to get clients now if you don’t know about this about me the first 15 years of my career were in marketing marketing was not my issue it was the emotional stuff that was preventing me from doing the marketing the real issues I had were that I wasn’t buying my own story as a coach and because of that I wasn’t able to talk about what I did easily I felt like people wouldn’t take me seriously ly that I was just another dime a dozen coach oh she’s a coach didn’t you know there’re there there’s a million of them you can find them anywhere I felt guilty charging money and I felt uncomfortable talking about it that was the stuff that I needed to get at it was not about what downloadable PDFs should I have on my website and to build my marketing list so if you are someone who’s wondering how to do things how do I get better at this how what are some steps or tactics some tactical tools that I can use to get better in conflict or presenting or procrastination or fill in the blank um if you’re using if you if you think that you can use tools to get at some of the bigger questions of your life I beg you beg you to pause and think about what having those tools will actually give you and if you would actually use them and perhaps is there a bigger question to look at that if you were to address or resolve that question that the how part of it sort of solves itself and when you are looking for those tools are you spending your energy and time looking at the right stuff if I have a client ask me for a tool for this or that I am not going to immediately go into my folders to search for a tool and then say yeah I have this and I have this and I have this which do you want because they will likely want them all they will like not use any of them and I would feel like I am devaluing my clients true abilities by distilling their challenges down to a three-step hack now that I’ve said all of this and I know it sounds like I have poo poo tools um I want to also say that tools can be very useful there are absolutely times when we need a tactical approach to something and yes sometimes we can just apply that tactical approach and get it done my point of all of this is to say that if we think that that tools will solve the bigger questions of Our Lives I think we have some more thinking and some more work to do but in the meantime while you’re doing that thinking and work I want to share with you a few tools that I do use out of the handful that I mentioned they are not how-tos they are exploratory tools um that I can provide a great deal of foundation and connection to ourselves so that when you are faced with a challenge of how to do something you can be less stuck in the emotional garbage that keeps you at that threshold the first one is a values Discovery perhaps you’ve done this some clients have done this the way that I do it I learned how to do it in a really in uh unique and interesting and challenging way um but understanding and being able to name your values gives you the big picture of yourself there is less of a disconnect between you and your behaviors when you understand your values when you understand and can name your values you are then more able to make choices and decisions that are congruent and aligned with who you are meaning you don’t suddenly end up in a relationship that is completely disconnected with your core values around relationships or you don’t suddenly end up working for a company that is completely disconnected from what you think is important in this world my top five values and by the way when we do this values exercise we end up with a top five so I’m going to give you my top five my values in order of importance to me are one fun intimacy cander Integrity self-mastery fun is my a number one top top cream of the crop value because if I am not enjoying myself I don’t want to do it period And I know that that might sound frivolous to some and I get why but my definition of fun is n all about frivolous behavior my definition of fun is that I’m being intellectually stimulated that there is some lightness and some buoyancy to what I’m doing I like to laugh laughter especially in coaching is really valuable laughter in anything it just opens up your mind stops you from judging and it um it fuels creativity I like uh energy and I like um I like to move quickly and play with things and throw ideas against the wall and I like to try and come at my coaching from different Ang Les all of that is fun for me I like to make the things I do fun even my exercise look I’m getting older and exercise hurts sometimes and my body aches in ways that it didn’t before so I really got to find things that are fun for me spin is fun for me riding a bike in a dark room going nowhere to really loud music that’s fun I feel like I’m dancing on a bike and I don’t even notice that I’m working so fun is an um a total driver for me and it has to be in my relationships uh my marriage my friendships any relationships that I have I need to be able to enjoy myself while I’m there fun is top and then there’s intimacy and for me intimacy is the ability to be seen that I allow myself and feel comfortable being seen by the person I’m with seen for all the cracks in the foundation for the imperfections and for the greatness that people see my greatness and I want to be able to see the cracks and the foundation and the vulnerability ities and I want to see their greatness that’s intimacy to me if I don’t have that or I don’t feel that that’s possible in a relationship the relationship dies quickly it dies quickly or I sort of keep it at arms length like it’s not it’s not there’s no point and then there’s cander give it to me straight if you some of my listeners have known me a long time but if you don’t know me just give it to me straight be kind don’t be flip and don’t be careless with your words but but give it to me straight some things you just got to get right to the point and I value the ability to speak up and speak from a place of what’s true for you now you can’t always be speaking your truth all the time you can’t always share candidly in every situation and sometimes being candid means I have to stop and think about how I want to say what I want to say and that might take me some time it could take me a few days could take me a couple months to figure out how I want to say what I want to say but when I do I want to say it so that it’s true and I expect and hope that people do that with me then there’s Integrity Integrity is just do what you said you were going to do for the love of God just do it and if you can’t do it tell me and I will tell you hey I know we agreed to this I can’t do it here’s the reason so let’s make a new agreement be consistent be reliable I want to be consistent and reliable I want to be trusted Integrity to me means trust people trust that when I agree to something I commit I show up for it that’s very important to me so I’m not late ever in fact I’m always early and when I’m less than 15 minutes early I feel like I’m late and uh you’re always going to know where I am what I’m thinking and uh what I need integrity and the last one is self-mastery and this is just my ability to make conscious choices about how I behave how I think how I feel um so that I’m not just sort of at blowing in the wind of my moods or you know the ups and downs of my emotions because they can go up and down a million times in a day I want to have self-mastery around myself I want to know myself and understand myself so that I show up present and collected and cohesive that to me is self-mastery those are my values think about what your values are when you understand your values it makes making decisions easier if this isn’t going to be fun I don’t want it if I don’t feel like like I can have intimacy here this probably isn’t the relationship I want to spend my time in if there’s no cander something ain’t right I don’t know that I can communicate this is how I calibrate myself through these values and then the next tool that I use another Discovery tool it’s the essence Discovery so I have done a lot of work and studied under a coach by the name of Robert Ellis he has a body of work called coaching from Essence there’s also a book called coaching from Essence I will put it in the show notes but Essence as he defined it is your natural way of showing up in the world that adds value without you having to try your natural way of showing up in the world that adds value without you having to try this is very different very different from your personality type from your Meers Briggs or your strength finder or your anagram this is different than your passion this is different than what motivates you this is different than your coping mechanisms or the the behaviors that you’ve developed to get through this life your essence is so natural to you you don’t often even know it’s there but it moves with you throughout life and it doesn’t matter what work you do where you live who you hang out with your essence is simply there and it is it adds value to the world meaning when you are your essence the situation is net positive you are giving and contributing to that person that circumstance that situation and it is something you don’t have have to try to do meaning it is effortless it just happens Essence enables you a very foundational understanding of yourself so that when you are challenged either by a person or by a circumstance you don’t crumble for me my Essence is being a door cracker I crack the door open I crack the door open for my clients I crack the door open for myself I just crack the door open on things because I just have this visual of in in just in my life of when a door is cracked you can see what’s behind it and you can see how much expansiveness is back there and all of those things are back there and then it’s up to the person to discover what’s behind that door but if we can just get it cracked imagine what’s possible and I’ve had some amazing door crackers for me in my life and I’ve been cracking doors and lighting these little fires since I was a kid asking questions that were inconvenient kind of pushing back on things all the time or challenging um people’s beliefs including my own beliefs about myself it’s always been a door cracker so think about what your essence is that natural way that you are without any effort and the last tool that I have just started uh using because I have just learned about it in a course that I just completed called coaching with the power of metaphor it’s led by an incredible Master coach named Lissa deart I will also put this um book it’s a it’s a book as well I’ll put the book in the show notes but this tool is called the embodied grounded goal it’s a tool that helps create some shape to a person’s coaching so when we coach every session typically has a goal of some sort an aim a place we’re going but the coaching overall like if we start and then we finish six months a year where is it you want to be who do you want to be it’s about the embody grounded goal is about what you really want and it’s not I want to be be a CMO or get promoted by this time it’s not I want to buy a house by this time it’s those are tactical goals and they’re very worthwhile goals but those are tactical goals that if you really gave it some thought don’t need a lot of coaching because there’s there are clear steps to becoming a CMO if you are a senior director of marketing the next step is probably a CMO you’re probably already doing some of that work and you just got to find the right opportunity and meet the right people when we set tactical goals like that we know what we need to do to get there you know what you need to do to buy a house there’s a savings plan talk to a financial advisor like there’s things you can do but the embodied grounded goal is more of a quest it requires a little more experimentation it’s a grounding statement it’s a big overarching goal that has life it lives it breathes um my embody grounded goal right now is how do I be the ultimate door cracker that is it’s in me to do that so how do I do that I want to crack doors open both for myself and for my clients and really as many people as I can so how do I be that that’s my embody grounded goal when we discover that then and we name that then all of the choices and behaviors that we do just sort of lad up to that it makes making choices easier you can sift through like oh that’s not for me because it’s not aligned with my egg my egg so those are three tools that I use that are not tactical but enable you a deeper understanding and connection to yourself so that when you get to Tactical problems you have less stuckness you’re less stuck at the threshold between where you are and where you want to go the how becomes less um there’s less friction in the how you have less hesitance about the how because you are clearer about who you are and what you bring the the value that you add to the world not just to your team not just to your family to the world because people listen you are here for a reason way bigger than your job you are not your job you are not just the roles you play in your life you are bigger and more expansive and so that’s why when I I hear questions like like how to how to and by by the way people I ask these questions too how do I how do I how do I I’m I’m with you but but I know that when we’re asking those questions they’re smaller than what we can actually give they’re smaller than who we are there’s more there for us than just the howto there’s the why there’s the who am I being that’s the stuff that drives you forward that’s the stuff that helps you break through the how and get Courageous about experimenting and just trying things instead of going I got to know all the steps I got to know all the steps before I can take I can make a move okay that’s my Ted Talk on that um so I come back to the idea that a tool while useful cannot cure self-doubt we are human beings we are always in evolution there is no getting there because there’s always a new there to go toward but what you can do is notice your evolution notice that the doubt or the anxiety or the worry or the fear as you evolve comes with less frequency and when it comes it’s less intense and it is shorter in duration that is how we know we are changing because the things that used to stress us out come less frequently they are less intense and they have shorter duration that’s where we should be checking that’s how we know things are changing that’s how we know we are growing in expanding so that’s all for now uh I hope that you found some value in this um as always I love sharing about coaching with all of you and uh if you are interested you can always always email me and ask me questions I’m always down to talk but uh we will have another episode in another two weeks and um until then I hope you take good care of yourselves lots of love and big energy bye for now [Music] …