176 Steve and Jason - How to Coach Your People Where They Are

Do you want to provide effective support for your team members during challenging circumstances? Are you seeking a solution to help them navigate their specific situations? Steve and Jason will be sharing an approach that allows you to coach individuals where they are, tailoring your support based on their unique circumstances. By doing so, you can ensure that your team members receive the guidance they need to thrive and succeed, regardless of the obstacles they may face.

In this episode, Steve and Jason discuss:

• Identifying and Bridging Emotional Intelligence Gaps
• The Power of Personalized Coaching
• Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
• Five Audibles for Leaders
• Focus on What You Can Control

Key Takeaways:

• Discover the power of personalized coaching and its impact on individual growth
• Uncover the hidden keys to identifying and bridging emotional intelligence gaps
• Gain insight into effective tactics for uplifting those wrestling with challenges
• Delve into the necessity of understanding and empathizing with another's adversity
• Recognize the crucial role of leaders to foster and apply coaching methodologies

“Coaching exists because of gaps. If everybody was achieving everything they wanted, we wouldn't be in this vocation.”

-Steve Scanlon

Connect with Steve and Jason:

• LinkedIn: Jason or Steve
• Website Rewire, Inc.: Transformed Thinking
• Email: grow@rewireinc.com

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Listen to the podcast here

Steve and Jason- How to Coach Your People Where They Are

Hello and welcome, everybody, to this live episode of The Insight Interviews- Powered by REWIRE. Steve, what's going on?

We're live, and I think that's great. You told me to get a lot closer to my microphone so people could actually hear me.

What did you say?      
  

I could swallow. No, but yeah, here we are, live.

We are live and in person. Good to be on LinkedIn Live, everybody. We've got a topic today that we're going to use for this purpose, and also, we'll drop this on our podcast platform, The Insight Interviews. God, I don't know, we're getting close to a couple of hundred episodes or, I don't know, 160, 170 episodes or something like that, so that's kind of fun. But Steve, we're your host, Jason Abel, president of Rewire Coaching, and Steve, you're the CEO and founder of Rewire Coaching and we've got a topic today, that just like a lot of our topics has come up recently within Coaching over and over again, and so, we just got together and said, okay, well, why don't we bring this out to the wider public? And Steve, what's the topic?

Oh, you're asking me to not bury the lead. Just say it out loud, right?

And what is it?        

Well, the topic, Jason, really has to do with coaching people where they are, you know? And as I got prepped for this, to be honest with you, it sort of reminded me of when we – we do a lot of work in the field of emotional intelligence, and I know a lot of our listeners out there know about emotional intelligence, and there's so many resources on this wonderful field of study, but the truth of the matter is, oftentimes emotional intelligence is expressed and taught from a position of where people have low emotional intelligence. I think if the whole world had high emotional intelligence and you and I did all the time, maybe it wouldn't even be a field of study, right? It exists because, really, we all have low EQ from time to time. And so this topic today is similar to that, in that when we say coaching people where they are, Jason, you know this because you're an experienced coach and you've been trained and certified in what we do, coaching exists because of gaps. I mean, right? If everybody was achieving everything they always wanted or hitting every goal, I don't think you and I would be in this vocation.

Well, there's the gap of- there's two gaps that we help people close, and we actually don't close any of the gaps for them. They do the work, but we kind of walk alongside them. And the one gap is, well, I'm here, and I want to go over there, and there's a gap there, but there's also the here, and I need to get away from that, right? It's either we're helping to close the gap towards something, or we're helping to increase the gap of something that's currently doing that they want to get away from. And oftentimes, boy, there's a range of emotions there. There's a range of what's happening in the economy, in the politics, in the world, in climate, and not only that, the season of what's going on in the world, but what's going on with you in particular in the world, and ripping off a prescription and going, oh, you need to make more sales. Well, here's the prescription for better sales scripts. Or, oh, you need to lose weight. Well, here's that prescription. I don't know, eat less, exercise more. How about that?        
            

Oh, hang on, I got to write that down.

Yeah. What if- my health coach wife will give me a hard time about the fact that I just said that because of the topic that we're talking about, which is not one size fits all- it just depends on where specifically you are in order to receive the information that's coming through you, because one prescription does not fit all ailments or close all gaps.        
            

And you and I oftentimes, we've talked about this for so long. It would be great if it did, let's be honest.

Easier. Well, you wouldn't need us at that point, but yeah, it'd be easier.

And I've told quite a few clients that, like, if there was a prescription, I'm a compassionate enough person. I'd give it to you, I promise, and I'd take it myself, for the record. But I suspect the human experience and who we are as leaders, who we are as just people in the world, it's just so varied that it's not and so meeting people where they are, I think, Jason, is there's like this crossover between that's what we do in coaching, but we also recognize that there are people out there listening to us going, well, I'm not a coach. I know, but if you're out there listening and you're a leader and you have direct reports or you're leading people around you, there's a crossover here.

Big time. And I will say this because I know what we're going to talk about and how this story ends. If you're a leader or an HR director, you need this whether you get it from us or not. Trust me, you need this. Because first of all, I'm seeing the need out there when I'm coaching the people that I have the privilege of coaching, but also, when I'm talking to our coaches around the country, I see the need out there. So, I can confidently say and I know that I need this from time to time, you're going to want to listen to this. This is a- if you hear this, not just like listen to it, but if you hear this, it will dawn on you, oh, that's how I can best help Pat. Oh, that's what Jane was talking about. Oh, man. Okay. I need to make that phone call to this person because I think I might be able to handle this better and lead this person better. So, I'm excited about for where we're going today.        

Pat and Jane, that was just -

I don't know. Why not, dude? Joe? Daniel?

I don't know who is protecting identities. I think you know someone named Pat and Jane that you probably shouldn’t-

And their last name is Smith, but don't tell them. Or maybe it's Jones. You started to tell me a story the other day.  
      

Well, yeah, dude, I want to get to that story. Absolutely. But in the spirit of not wanting to bury the lead. And I talked a little bit about emotional intelligence, and I didn't want that to be a non sequitur, because today when we talk about coaching people where they are, the story that I'm going to tell you just again, in the spirit of going, hey, here's what you're going to hear today. How do we coach people who are really, really struggling? That's what we're going to talk about today. And when I say struggling, we're going to talk about Maslow’s, hierarchy of needs and blah, blah, blah. I mean, people who are in a really difficult place. Now, we might next week do a live event. We're talking people that are actually in a really good place, and how do you work with those people? Or people are in different spots, and that's the whole point, is that it'd be kind of tough to come in and talk about all of them today. We're going to hone in on- because you and I are coaching on all of our coaches right now, we got quite a few coaches around the country, we happen to be in a handful of industries where people are struggling.


Yep, yep, yep.

And that's what has come up. And in fact, the story that I'll quickly tell you so that we can get the listeners to understand, Steve Longan and I, who was our head of research and development here and who was also an incredibly gifted coach in his own right, he and I were basically teaching a class, and the class we were teaching was on coaching. Very meta. Right? We're coaches teaching classes on coaching.

Sure.

And basically, we were working with an organization who had some really wonderful leaders, and this leadership group was trying to and they wanted to elevate their game as coaches. So Longan and I and you and most of our team, we spent quite a few months assembling what I think to be some really amazing material on how we effectively bring some of the best of the best of what we learned through the institute of coaching and the international coaching federation and the neuro leadership institute, because a lot of people know we take a mindset based approach to this, and we came up with this curriculum, and we're going through this curriculum, and one of the key leaders in this organization reached out to me through email and was very complimentary. Like, we love this stuff. We're learning so much. And they were like, but Steve, our people are drowning. Is there any way, like, not all their people, but many people, both on the forward-facing client side and even in operations, and a lot of places, just the economics people are really, really struggling. And they basically said, would you mind if in our class we took a detour and addressed how do you coach people who come into your office and are, like, struggling at that level?

That's right.        

And true to what we do in coaching, even though we were in a class and our class is dialed and tight, and we know the curriculum, we know the modules we're teaching.

Sure.

                                                                                                             
"Like, you and I have to do this all the time. We might come into a coaching call, and we've been working on something with somebody, and they bring in a situation. And as coaches, we learn to adapt to that."


Yep.

We listen to that. And so, Steve and I quickly put together five ways that we do actually coach people when they're in really trying times.

Yes.

And I'm going to go through all five today.

Yeah. I want to ask you what's number one, right? I want to get right to it.

We don't have a lot of time. We probably do have to get to number one.

But tell you had an analogy or a story that, I don't know, be good to hear about.

Yeah, I think you're referring to the whole boat and Maslow’s thing and all of that. Yeah. Abraham Maslow's, pretty famous guy, a lot of people on the call, if you're a leader, you probably know about Abraham Maslow, and he created what is famously known as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. You can pull it up. It's the quickest Google of all time. You'll get a pyramid looking thing, and it's interesting. A lot of people over the years have put different language to it because it's a pretty fundamental way to look at human beings and how they are. And so, Steve and I recognized is that as you fall lower on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Jason, in other words, the lowest level is stuff like safety, breathing, food and shelter and this kind of thing. And even though I don't know that the people that we coach are necessarily at that level, I can tell you, and this gets back to emotional intelligence, right? Sometimes when people are really struggling, that's what it feels like to them, right? They might not be there, but that's the difference. And heck, you and I can do a whole show just on that about the difference between what is real and actual and what we feel like. And we've all heard that saying, well, perception is-

Yeah, it's reality. I mean, I think what you're saying is if somebody is having a really hard time at work, it might feel like they can't breathe or that their safety is -

And for some people, sometimes literally.

Yeah.

And the compassionate part of us, we could look at that and go, oh, come on. Like, no. As coaches, we look at that and go, whoa. And so, what it caused us to think about, and we were just trying to come up with - I don't know why we had to come up with another metaphor, but it would be like somebody in a boat, maybe a bigger boat, and there's kind of a hole in the bottom, we could carry that metaphor out, and they're feeling like what they're doing is using a bucket to bucket water out. So, if we come in as coaches and start to ask questions like, hey, what's your vision for the future?

Ain't going to happen.

Right! And it's not like asking people about vision know, we're such big fans of Simon Sinek's work and all that he's done around the concept of why and there's this higher-level thinking why and future and stuff. It's probably wrong placement to do that with people who feel like they're just at the bottom of a boat trying to get free or trying to survive, or at least that's their perspective. And so, rather than sort of shoehorn in and come in and go, oh, coaching is always about these great questions and vision and actually, Steve and I both recognize when you're actually with people who are there, there's some other types of questions and some other ways that we recognized might be better modalities to work with people in that space. And those are the five things that we came up.

You're making me think of a story, and when we talked about this ahead of time, I don't know why I didn't think of this story, but it was 2008. In 2008, I managed a bunch of people in the mortgage industry. Well, in 2008 wasn't like exactly the right time to be in the mortgage industry.

I remember a little glitch in the system.      

Yeah, I remember we used to run high level sales meetings. Like we would get together and we would be doing practice sales sessions with one another. We had an agenda. We were pretty tight. This group was like-they were an elite team. And when we got together, it wasn't to talk about the weather. We were rocking and rolling on things. And I remember just being the leader of that band at the time and coming in as the market is crumbling around. You know, me, Mr. Positive, I'm like, no, we're going to stick to the plan. We're going to have these Elite meetings and whatever. And I could just see on my people's faces week after week, like it was just getting worse and worse and worse. And finally, I remember, and it wasn't me having any epiphanies, one of my guys was like, Jason, there's no way that we can concentrate on this right now. Like, not even a way. And we called a quick audible. We ended up going over to my house that day in the basement of my house. There weren't any loans to do that day. And so, we went to the base of my house. We literally just got together. We ordered in some lunch, and we're like, how are you guys doing? What's going on? And one by one by one, they were able to get some things off their chest. Had nothing to do with sales, by the way, or the Elite sales script or what was going to happen with the numbers or the whatever. It was just people talking. And, you know, what happened after that? We were able to get back on the horse. Now, it took a long time and whatever, but I didn't see it. I needed one of my guys to say, dude, we can't do this right now. We need to do something else. We went to the lower rungs of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which we needed to be there, and then we were able to get on the ladder and start climbing back up.      
  

Yeah. And even this week- thank you for that. When I was working with Steve this week, Jason, it's so interesting that Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and again, there are people who study organizational psychology and that are really smart folks that can probably define what those needs are in great detail, but the things that I noticed is we all fall down there from time to time.

Of course.

It's not some progressional thing where you get to, I think his top is self-transformation or self-actualization. You can’t live there. Wait till something else in life happens to you.

Yeah. Which it will, right?     
   

Yeah. And that's why I think this adaptive approach to what we're doing in coaching and so, again, we might do a session, you and I, on, hey, how do you coach people who are at the highest level of because we do that quite a bit, too. But today there was just enough people, not just in financial services because clearly, we work a lot in mortgage and other things, but retail spaces. We're working a lot with some retail places, some international companies. We're getting involved more and more with healthcare. I'm working with some companies, as are you. There are supply chain issues that are still existing across the globe. There are people that are still deeply impacted by the war in Ukraine and they're having operating - like there's some people that are struggling. And so, we just thought we'd dedicate. And so here we are. We only have a few minutes left and we haven't even gotten to the five.

No, let's do it.

How do we work with people if someone's going to come into your office and you as a leader need to call an audible? Yeah. Here are five audibles that you can think to. They're not in progression. One's not more important. These were just five ways that you can work with people who are in that stage of life. Ready?

Yeah. What I like to say to people when you get to like, what are the keys? What's the steps? What's the whatever. Take what you want, leave the rest. This is not a like you do with this, what you will. One might be a wrench, one might be a screwdriver, one might be a drill. You just pick the one that works for you or the two that works for you and roll with it.

Well, here we go. Ready? Number one. Redefine what success is. Redefine what success is. So many people, if you keep holding on to, we got to hit those targets and those but - I get that we have targets and we have goals and we whatever, but if you're at Maslow's lower hierarchy of needs, maybe success looks like just a few more bucketful’s for you. Maybe success looks like getting up and going for a walk, right? Redefining what that looks like can be one of the things that helps us get back on the path, and if we hold on to sometimes these larger goals, bigger than life things or whatever, we're good. And by the way, they'll be good again. But in this season, it is really wise to redefine what success is. How can we take some tiny steps out of it? By the way, tiny steps. that was Charles Duhigg's work in the power of Habits and whatever. How do we redefine that would be number one.

So that particular one makes me think of, there was a time where I was having just time in life where I was really struggling. We had a particular situation that was happening. It just wasn't good. And I remember sitting down to lunch with my oldest brother and I was lamenting this particular situation. And one of the things I said at the time, because I'm always about growth and positivity again, you sense a theme in my stories, right? I was like, man, this thing feels like it's just holding me back from the growth that I planned this year. And he looked at me and he's like, dude, you are growing. You're just not growing in the way that you thought you were going to be growing. And it did exactly what you're talking - it shifted my perception of what success looked like in that moment. And then I was like-

Well, and that's so good, Jason, I don't want to belabor the point, but you're in the bottom of the boat and imagine some coach coming to you and going, we got to get to those big things, and whatever. That would have been so unhelpful and, frankly, inconsiderate, and such a lack of awareness. So, what your brother did is to help you redefine success.

So, if you're a leader listening to this, gosh think about your people. And yes, you need to hit the goals and do the vision and do all the things. Maybe there needs to be a little micro redefining of success for one or two of your people.

Absolutely. Number two, you and I, we've beat this one to the bloody pulp. But just because we have doesn't meet that important, though. Self-care ends up being crucial. So, when you're at the bottom of the boat or if you're just having that struggle, actually asking some questions around, how are you doing physically? Are you able to get any sleep? What's that look like? How is exercise? How is your nutrition? If their own spiritual walk is important to them, how is that? It's funny how some of those things take a backseat. And so, coaching people to help bring that to the front seat when they're down there is really, really important.

There's a direct measurable line from how well you are yourself to how well you're able to lead and take care of others. And it is- it's just the things that you said. It is sleep, it is nutrition, it is hydration, it is exercise, it is your relationships.

And all things that people know.

I know. But knowing and doing is two different things.

Yeah. And all that knowing, especially when you're at that lower level of need, having someone have the willingness to just help you see the fundamentals again there with self-care is really important.  

Number three.

                                                                                                                 
"Number three, take action in line with your values. When we're taking action, we really came up with this one, it's important for people, if you're in the bucket and you're in the bottom of the boat, to start to really remember what you value in life."

And so, we created an exercise. It's not that hard to do. People could do it right here, right now. Let's say you're going through a difficult season. Well, and Jason, by the way, episode 153 of our podcast is you interviewing a gentleman who- I'll let people go to that if they want to. He spoke about this, about he even had a name for it., but we call it a projection exercise. Let's just say it's a year from now.


Ah, future back. I know future back.

Yeah. Let's just say it's a year from now, if you're in the bottom of the boat, let's just project it's a year from now and things are more stable. I sometimes tell people, magic wand, just play with me for a second.

That's right.

It's more stable. It's better. Which, by the way, is already a torch state exercise for some people, helpful to the bottom of the boat.

Yep.

But I ask, what would make you look back and feel proud about how you were in the bottom of the boat? What would make you feel proud about that?

Like, one of my favorite exercises.

Dude, I look back at the COVID thing and the whole world was so it's not just us, right? My wife and I, like, our kids were scattered, and we didn't know what to do, and there was no one driving the whole thing, right?

Yeah.

And we were some of those people that you know what? Let's get a puzzle. Let's listen to podcasts. And we actually grew closer. And I look back at that season, and I'm like, I guess we could have done a whole bunch of stuff, and instead we chose to do some things, and I'm proud of that.

Yeah.        

Right? So that was what I value. I value those things. And so, it's helping people take action, align. So, if you're a leader helping someone see what those people value, and then maybe we can take some actions, ask about some actions in line with those values.                    

Even if it's back to Duhigg's example, even if it's tiny, tiny steps, like a half a step in that direction. Well, that works because that's a lot more closer than you were before. So yeah. Take action, number four.

Yeah, we're getting close here, right? This one we can go quick on. Although I find it to be incredibly profound, I don't know that we need to spend a lot of time on it. Ready? Focus on what you can control.

Yeah. It makes me think of the Serenity Prayer, right? Like, help me control the things that I can control and really be mature enough to figure out what is it that I can control? What is it that I can't control? And let me know the difference and focus only on what I can control. So much easier said than done.

Especially when you're at the bottom of the boat.        

Right.

Like, it's that the difference piece. I have found in coaching people who are at the bottom of the boat sometimes is when you get to some of the things that are making them feel down there, and what they worry about or fret about or fear about when you really start to help them see, like, some of that stuff is not within your control anyway.

Yeah. Right.        

So, what is? Let's dedicate positive energy to the stuff you can control.

And again, it's like the self-care deal. Like, we all know that, but, man, being reminded of that. And there's so many things that we can't control, but there are some that you can. And when you focus on those and take those tiny steps, it makes it -



Well, and then, just so you know- worry, concern, fret, fear, I have often found that those are emotions tied to giving our brain some illusion that we're controlling something. But that's for another live event.

And then the last one, last one, wrap it up.

Don't isolate. Congregate. Now, this one was kind of funny because we don't like to end with don't anything because that's not a very toured state anything. But we did notice that when you're down there and if you're working with people who have fallen on the hierarchy of needs, the capacity maybe even proclivity towards isolation is pretty high.

Yeah.        

So where can we help people? Congregate. Let's come back together, which we all have known this and the emotional toll that isolation took specifically on specific groups of people, teenagers and this kind of stuff, because isolation, as it turns out, again, another thing that falls under the category of things that make people go duh, isolation, as it turns out, no bueno.

And by the way, if you're watching this or listening to this right now, you're doing that. You're in community with us, with one another. And so, kudos. But yeah, verbalizing things, getting on the phone with someone, going to grab a coffee with someone, being in community. The example that I gave in 2008 when we got together in the basement of my house, we were together. We didn't even know what we were going to do, but we were together. And that matters.

Congregate. Congregate. Helping someone get there when they're down there can be incredibly fruitful. So those are the five, Jason.

So, Steve, we're going to end with that. We're going to end this LinkedIn live. We're going to end this The Insight Interviews- Powered by REWIRE podcast episode. So, thanks for being with us, Steve. It's always good to talk about topics like this with you, my friend. Thank you so much and we'll see you next time.        

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