This week, Pete asks Jen to noodle on how they might help their clients maintain the momentum of their coachings or workshops even after they have left the room.
Specifically, in this episode Jen and Pete talk about:
- How might you encourage clients to reach out to you outside of the coaching time?
- How are stories a motivating factor, as far as illuminating how to action an idea?
- How might a coach turn lessons, teachings, or ideas in to a game?
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Learn more about Pete's work here (https://humanperiscope.com/) and Jen's work here (https://jenwaldman.com/).
-Hey, Jen. -Hello, Peter. -After 300 episodes, I found myself yesterday pondering. What are questions that I've always wanted to ask you that I haven't asked you? -Oh. -Okay. -I was on a four-hour flight. I had a bit of time up my sleeve and I was thinking, "We've got a recording tomorrow. I feel like I need to think about some things I want to ask Jen." I came up with one that I feel like I should have asked you, but I haven't. And it relates to how you think about setting clients up for success after you've coached them/interactive with them/they've been in one of your classes/workshops, which I can obviously explain more about. But that is sort of the premise of what I want to talk to you about today. -Okay. I got a little nervous when you said there was like one question you wanted to ask me. This one sounds like it will actually be fun to answer. This is the long and the short of it. [MUSIC] -As opposed to all my other questions that I usually ask you, which are like not fun at all. Okay. So the premise of this, this is, I don't know if it's a phenomenon, but it's an extremely common experience in my world that I feel like would be in yours, but I don't want to assume anything. Okay. So this was triggered yesterday by a conversation I had with a chief people officer of a very large company down under. And it was a version of a conversation I've had a number of times and is sort of, I guess, a phenomenon or an experience that I'm very aware of and familiar with as the facilitator/leadership development coach/executive coach, whatever you want to call it. And that is, how do you help clients maintain momentum, stay accountable, keep building on the skills they might have learned once you've left the room? And so what I mean by that and where this is really common is, when I'm running a workshop, so I did this two days ago, I ran four workshops in one day and everyone in the room is super engaged, super enthusiastic. But doing breakouts, they're practicing the skills at coaching one another. They're like, Oh my God, I get it. This is why it's so important. I need to make some time and some space to do this in person. And then the day finishes and the workshops conclude and they walk out the door. And then the next day they show up to work. And I know the reality is many of them forget. The learnings they had lose focus and/or don't quite stay accountable to all that energy and momentum that they had. And so the conversation I was having yesterday with this chief people officer was, how might you maintain some of that energy/momentum? How do you keep people accountable to the aha moments to the momentum that they've built in the workshop without you needing to be there, poking them and prodding them and going, Hi, I'm here. And so I was thinking about this on the plane. I was like, I don't think I've ever asked Jen how she thinks about this. This must be something that is common in your world as well. So that is the context. Does that make sense? How do you think about this? Oh, it's such a good question. It's such a good question. And I think it's a very complicated series of answers. Perfect. But I think the purest, simplest answer is. You can't. They have to want to be accountable. They have to want to use the things that I'm sharing with them. So my job is to help them identify the accountability or put it on their calendar or make a date with me or encourage them to stay in touch and actually use the channels that we've set up to talk to each other. But I can't force them, and I'm not suggesting that that's what your question implied, like, how do you force these clients to do this? Totally. But like they have to want it. Yeah, they have to want it. So true. So there are a couple of things here. First of all, Pete, a trend that I see is that when I say to someone and we can go back and forth about this as many times as we need to. Or please use this particular channel to communicate with me over communications, not a possibility, no amount of communications too much for me. I'm happy to answer any questions unless I repeat that many, many, many times. They don't believe me. Yeah. And that is like some big hurdle. I don't believe you as in like, ah, Jen's just being polite. You think that's what it is? No, it's like, well, she says it's not possible to over communicate, but if I'm the one reaching out to her, I'm definitely going to be doing it too much. Mm. And so I find myself repeating this, especially right now, because I'm in my summer coaching program, like every single time I see people, I'm like, there's no amount of messaging me that is too much messaging. Like send me every question, every single thing I want to be in communication. So part of it is like making them feel like they can stay in touch and that they're not a burden. Yeah. So that's one piece. I like that. Yeah. I mean, it's shocking. I mean, I've done this with this same group. I've been working with the same group for three months now. And there's 120 of them. And I say to them, like they have my email address and like email me any question. Disagreement, thought, idea, email me a funny gift if you really want to keep in touch. And I think I've had two emails. Right. Last three months. And so this is what's prompting me to have this conversation with you is like, I absolutely agree with you that the unfortunate reality is we can't force it obviously, because they need to choose to step into it, practice the skill, ask the question, whatever themselves. And I guess my question is coming from a place of like, am I missing something? Is there a way to frame it? Like to your point, is it that I'm not repeating it often enough? Or is there a way to approach this that I hadn't thought about before? And you're always so good at coming up with ideas for these kinds of things that I hadn't thought about before. Well, I have a couple other thoughts about this that may or may not be helpful. We shall see. Right. So one of the things I do when I'm setting up some of these frameworks or concepts or ideas that I want them to be applying in their life is I will share, and I'm sure you do too, stories about other clients who I have taught these things to, who have applied them and the successes that they've had. Because it's one thing, if I'm like, you know, eat your spinach, it's good for you. And it's another thing, if I'm like, this other person hated spinach. And then they ate it and suddenly they were able to sprint. Have you heard of papa? Yeah. Right. So I find having stories as evidence is a real motivating factor, not only because they can see the success at the end, but they can actually envision the practical application of the idea in a real life scenario. Love that idea. Yeah. I think part of the tension I observe is whilst it is true that the people that I'm working with absolutely smart enough and capable enough to translate the learning into an action for themselves, they're also incredibly busy people who have a bunch of other things on their mind. So to give them a literal example of this is how person X has taken this and ran with it. And these are the results. It gives them an easy like, oh, I could do that same thing. I could copy that. So it's trying to make it easier for them to grasp onto. I love that. And stories are such a good way to connect. Yeah. Stories are really our best teaching tools, period. Truly. Yeah. Truly. Full stop. Okay. Here's something I've been doing for the last several months that has proven much more effective than I had expected Pete in my career collective, which is a community of actors in an online space who are all working on career strategy together. Every month, I introduce a new topic or theme and share some ideas and frameworks I'd like them to implement. Several months ago, I started creating games or contests. Here we go. And there's a prize. If you enter the contest, you don't have to. You can take the frameworks and do it on your own and you don't have to show anyone your work. But if you want to participate in the gamification, I'll lay out what the game is. And then they have a month to play with the strategy or the framework. And then if they share their work with the group, they enter the contests. And it's so delightful. I'm laughing because I can't believe how much joy it brings. Everyone who has entered their, whatever the game is, I enter their names into a spinning wheel. And then I record myself spinning the wheel. This is great. And then it lands on someone and then like digital confetti bursts. And it's like, congratulations. So and so you're the winner. And then they actually get to win some one-on-one private time with me. Cool. And it's a motivating factor in that there's actually a real prize. But also for people who have that competitive spirit, they're like, Oh, it's a game. Get me in there. Yeah. And I can win. Yeah. I can win. And so to enter the game, you just need to have proven that you've put the framework into action in some way. And then you get an entry. It doesn't mean you don't judge like who's put it into practice the best. Correct. It's just random, spinny wheel based on the fact that you showed your work. Yes. But every month I design a different game for it. So that also is forcing me to be creative. Oh my God. This is good. You're so good at this gamify. I love this. So if I'm hearing correctly, what you've said is step one or ID one over communicate, which is tell the people that you are serving in whatever capacity, workshop, coaching, whatever, you can't over communicate with me. Send me as many emails as you want. And like say that, repeat yourself over and over and over again. I think repetition is something perhaps I could get better at. Second one you mentioned is stories. Stories of those that have put this into action and have had some success with it. And or maybe even stories of people who haven't and then get to the next session and go, Oh, I forgot to do anything about it. And you don't want to be one of those people. So stories and then the third one, this is fine. It's gamify. This one I feel like is a missing link in my thinking about workshops and keeping folks accountable, which is our might I add some creative gamification to keeping people accountable to the thing they said they were going to do. These are the one of the ways I do this, right? One of the theories I have is if you put yourself on the hook out loud, you're more likely to stay accountable to it. So at the end of every single workshop, trying to think of an exception, but I'm pretty sure at the moment every single workshop I run. I say some version of it's really easy for us to sit around here for half a day, or for two hours or for 90 minutes. Have a great conversation. Come up with some great ideas and some aha moments and then do nothing with it. And I think that's a waste of your time. So what I want you to do is put yourself on the hook by saying out loud to the person next to you. What's one thing you're going to do based on everything we learned today? And I have some success with that, but I think there's a next layer of that, which is to your point, adding some gamification to it. But also I like the idea of proving it, like show your work. Not just when we come back next time, go, yeah, I did it. I did my homework, but actually like, where's the proof? So I have a couple of other things that are coming to mind. One is when I have a client who successfully puts something in play, like I just did this today, actually. I say to them, can you please share that in the group? You know, we're all on a communication platform together. I say, because I can share it with them and they'll read it if it's coming from me. But it'll be more powerful if it comes from you when you say, hey, guys, I just tried this. And this is the result I got. Or here's what I learned. So having them share with each other instead of me being the only sharer is pretty impactful. And in fact, Pete, I stole something from you a couple of years ago when you told me about your win wall. Yeah, I've got it right here. So we have win wall Wednesday. Oh, my God. What? Yeah. Amazing. And so every other Wednesday in the career collective, a post goes up that says, it's win wall Wednesday, share the wins. Love it. And it's been really, really meaningful. And then in my coaching program, the win wall is open 24/7. So people are posting on it anytime. There's a little win or a gigantic win. People are sharing it. This is great. I love that you're just sending me back an idea that actually came from Tracy that I still have in my personal life. I'm looking at it on your wall. Right. But I haven't thought to integrate that into client world. Interesting. And then I have one more thing which I think is going to be pretty interesting to hear you translate into your world. I could see there's a challenge there that makes this a little easier on my end in that I have my finger on the pulse of what is happening within our shared industry. And so I'm able to track the scenarios that people could be using these frameworks in. Oh. And you likely have less access to that information unless you specifically ask for it. Like, you know, like, what are the meetings coming up this week? But on my end, I know what auditions are coming up. I know what things are opening. I know what season it is within the theater industry. So I'm sort of able to help connect the dots to some real life things that are happening. And I wonder how could you gain more access to that kind of information on your end? This is so good. This is like the obvious thing that was right in front of me that I hadn't thought of because I do have access to some versions of this in certain clients. And that is that a lot of leadership teams or executives that I'm working with have really consistent ways of working or operating rhythms. And what that looks like is they often have a one-on-one with their direct reports, for example, that is that a weekly or a fortnightly or sometimes a monthly cadence. That is a forum that I know exists for pretty much any senior leader that has a team. They also have team meetings, which is really common. Frequency can differ again. But the fact that they all get together as a team and talk about priorities is definitely a reality for almost anyone. And then there's other things like performance review season that usually happens every six to 12 months where you review your teams, but also your own performance based on what you said you were going to do. There's goal setting, which is also part of that. So I actually know some of these things that are consistent, regardless of which organization you're in, the thing that would change is when they might happen, depending on the organization or the team. But I know some of this already. So this is the moment where I'm like, oh, you idiot Peter, it's right there in front of you. Why did you not think of this earlier, you know? Like tying it into, yeah, maybe next time I think about the timing of my workshop, I go, oh, performance review season is in three weeks. This would be a beautiful way to tie that into how could you bring this to your performance review? And it feels like we have to return to the very first point, which is we can't make people change. They have to want to change. We can't make people get better or stronger or more resilient or more risky or more creative. They have to want that for themselves. My thought is that at least in my workshops and classes, they wouldn't be there if they didn't want it. So sometimes I just need to get them to say out loud that they want it. That's so good. I love that. Yeah. I mean, you're sorry. People don't change because we tell them to. Right. Yeah. Yeah. They change when they get excited about or they can see the benefit of some something that you're helping to teach them because that will benefit them in the future in some way. Great reminder. Great reminder and a little call app for Pete to try and stop controlling every single outcome of people who take part in his workshops, trust the process, create the conditions for the learning to happen and let go of the fact that you can't control the outcome. And that is the long and the short of it.
