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Sticky Learning Lunches #11: Use Our G.R.O.W Model to Coach Your People with ‘Way Forward’
Learn How to Coach Your People with the 4 Steps of the G.R.O.W. Model – Part #4: Way Forward. Coach your people with Way Forward- Step 4. Use your time working from home to become the very best version of yourself. This is a Virtual Classroom of 20-minutes, followed by a 10-minute Q&A.
You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:
Nathan Simmonds:
Good afternoon everybody. Again, just a minute early. We’re just waiting for the last participants, the last delegates to arrive into the session. Just gonna give everyone a moment to arrive. So make sure again, as always, setting you up for success before we even get started. So make sure we got drinks ready. You’ve got water, herbal teas, whatever. You’ve got hydration available. You’ve got a fresh page in your book, ready to be filled with kind of ideas, concepts that we’re sharing today.
Nathan Simmonds:
And as you’re setting that page up, title of that page is gonna be keepers. So the aim is to get as many things down from this session that you want to remember, that you want to go back to, so that when you read your notes, that thought comes up and a new thought is formed because of it. So it continues to keep that learning moving. Keeps the learning sticky, which is what we do here at MBL. 30 more seconds.
Nathan Simmonds:
And thirdly, mobile phones gonna put mine on flight mode. ’cause that would be really embarrassing as your trainer today to have my phone going off midway through this. Let’s make sure you’ve zeroed out your distractions. Shut down your mobile phone, get it on flight mode. Close your email so you are not attempting to work while you are listening to it, because maybe you think you can multitask.
Nathan Simmonds:
And it is scientifically proven that you cannot, it’s basically your brain flicking between one thing very quickly and you cannot do that. So let’s remove the distractions down. Let’s get the full focus on you right now, making the investment of your time into your learning in this space.
Nathan Simmonds:
A few more seconds coming in, a few more people, and then we are gonna get cracking. First question from me for all of you there, how is everyone today? How are you feeling? Where are we now? Fourth week or fifth week of, of isolation, of physical distancing for people? How are we feeling in the process at the moment? Do you know what? And I also wanna say Friday, tomorrow.
Nathan Simmonds:
I also wanna say I really appreciate, I’m looking at the list of attendees and people that shown up. I really appreciate the, the regular people, the regular attendees coming in today. And your attention and your engagement is, thank you very much. And I really appreciate the new people coming into this to come and experience this for the first time as well. Phenomenal, super happy with this.
Nathan Simmonds:
Okay, but sometimes feel a bit lost. I am with you because today I was convinced it was Friday. Definitely isn’t really confused. Every now and again. My brain seems to go somewhere else. And do you know what? I think this is totally normal for the situation that we’re in. Not only are we in a, a situation which we’ve never been in before, we’re also in this situation and it’s a crisis.
Nathan Simmonds:
So every and occasionally your brain wants to rewire and do something because it’s not sure if you are in survival mode, you are in, um, you know, in a positive place. Sometimes your brain is still trying to catch up. Maybe you’ve done one too many Zoom calls, one too many conference calls and it’s causing the brain to, to just need a rest. You know, it could be, there’s confusion with that. There’s some other reasons it’s happening, right?
Nathan Simmonds:
We are all here. Let’s go for this. Pens, papers. Ready drinks, zero distractions. Welcome everybody to today’s Sticky learning Lunches with me. Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM making Business Matter, the home of Sticky Learning. We are the provider of leadership development soft skills to the grocery and manufacturing industry.
Nathan Simmonds:
Idea of these sessions is to give you 20 minutes of micro-learning as much as possible through these interesting times that we’re in to help you be the best version of yourself right now. And also preparing you for when you do return to work, whatever that may look like. And whenever that may be. Today we’re covering part four of the grow coaching model and we are in the W’s.
Nathan Simmonds:
For everyone here? What does the w in grow mean to you? Because for some people it’s different. Now that everything has been identified, what are we going to, um, to do about it? Collaborate everything in order to achieve the identified goals. Yes, way forward. Willingness. Any other answers on our Ws, on our, on our dubs as the kids like to call it. I don’t even know why I did that. I’m really sorry. I apologize Now. How will I get there? Absolutely. Good. Your W stands for two, sorry, three things. One
Nathan Simmonds:
Is your way forward. We started looking at this yesterday. So our way forward is what are the actions we’re gonna include? So when we looked at our options and making sure that we have more than one, what we’re doing is we’re making, or we’re putting in place a list of the appropriate actions that we want to take. We’re putting them in chronological order, we’re checking that we can see where we are going, and as I talked about yesterday and in the previous session, to make sure mitigating those excuses.
Nathan Simmonds:
So maybe the way forward is over the shark infested waters, but as the leader, as the person going in that direction, okay, how do I get there? Mitigate the obstacles and the excuses so that I can then overcome that and come up with new solutions that do keep me moving forward. See the obstacles, and then help to clear the way.
Nathan Simmonds:
When we check this, we’re simply asking people, okay, so what is the one action that you need to take right now that’s gonna move you towards that goal? What series of actions do you need to put in place in order to bring this to life? In the previous session I asked you, uh, what’s the one smallest action you can take right now for the biggest possible impact? And again, bringing this focus on these individual options and starting to put them in an order. And as Ivan put here, is putting the puzzle together.
Nathan Simmonds:
It’s doing exactly this. It’s, we’re seeing where we want to get to. We’ve put the destination in the postcode of where we want to get to. We know where we are. We can start to see the route. Maybe we want to go via this service station. Maybe we want to go via this city. Maybe we wanna stop here on the road. We can see that. Can we see that the, the, the road works or an accident on the motorways on the way we’re getting there. So this enables us to bring that into focus and then start to make that plan and then start to execute on it.
Nathan Simmonds:
Number two is your will, your willingness to make this happen. Ah, someone’s just pointed out that I forgot to come off there. There we go. Get me on full screen. Nathan, en large the will is understanding, okay, we’ve got the option to make the goal happen, but do we truly want to make it happen? Are we actually committed to bringing this to life question that I learned very early in my coaching training and I didn’t really like it before.
Nathan Simmonds:
I didn’t really see the, the, the benefit of it when I applied it to this stage though, it really made a difference. And this is using your, your one to 10 scales. So you may realize over the course of these training sessions, these sticky lunchtime learnings I’ve been asking you at the end of the session, okay, on a scale of one to 10, how would you rate this one being terrible, 10 being fantastic, and getting a sense of where you are on that continuum and where you are in this situation when we do this for ourselves or with other people.
Nathan Simmonds:
On a scale of one to 10, how committed are you to making this happen? How committed are you to taking this action in pursuit of this goal on a scale of one to 10? So there was a few people yesterday, you wrote down some actions that you wanted or some options that you wanted to put into play in order to move you towards one of your goals. And you may have that action available.
Nathan Simmonds:
You may have one in your head right now. So let’s ask yourself the question and let’s see these answers. On a scale of one to 10, one being not at all, 10 being fully committed, how committed are you to taking and making that action in pursuit of the goal that you have? One, not at all. 10, absolutely. I’ve got one 10 come up already. 10 absolutely committed, six interest. And we can dig into that in a minute.
Nathan Simmonds:
How committed are you to taking the actions that you want to take or you need to take in order to get your goal? Nine’s good. So when we start to get a sense of this through this scale of one to 10 and making sure that we, we highlight and title, which way these scales run so people have this clear in their heads, we can start to see where people are in relation to this.
Nathan Simmonds:
Because 8, 9, 10 means we are pretty committed, if not fully committed to making this happen. When we start to get into the seven sixes and fives, we start to feel a little bit of friction. And we need to then question what is it about this option? What is it about this golden that is reducing the, the commitment, what’s causing this, this, this tension or this resistance, excuse me, this resistance to making this happen?
Nathan Simmonds:
What goal or what action would you be fully committed to making right now if you’ve just set yourself an action to that goal? How committed, how, how much is that? How important is that goal to you then on a scale of one to 10, and then all of a sudden if that becomes anything less than a six, maybe that’s not the goal you need to be looking at what goal do you need to be, um, working towards? If the, if you are not happy, if the goal is still a 10, but the actions a six, what action can you take? That is a 10.
Nathan Simmonds:
What’s the one thing you can do right now that you are fully committed on, committed to do that will move you forward, that will enable you then to make that gut, that action. You, you said you were a six to, to make that an eight or a nine. What can you put in front of that that makes that happen? So we can start to ask some different questions to think about this. So if you’ve marked yourself a seven, six, or five on your commitment to making that action happen, what action can you take that you are fully committed to?
Nathan Simmonds:
What action comes before this one that will move you towards that? Because what we have to start to think about, you know, is it your goal? Is it actually where you want to go to? Is it pulling you forward? Is it engaging you? ’cause if it isn’t, you’re not gonna commit to it. It’s not gonna interest you. And it’s about making sure that actually where I’m going is pulling me forward. It is magnetizing me. It’s mentally, you know, it is mentally stimulating, physically challenging, all those things that a goal needs to be.
Nathan Simmonds:
The other element we need to be looking at, is it fear? Is it the fear of not enough? I’m not intelligent enough to do that. I’m not, um, rich enough to do that. I’m not qualified enough to do that. Again, I said this in previous sessions right now, when you were 20 or younger, you weren’t qualified to do the job that you are doing now. You would probably laugh or um, think it was fantasy to think you would be earning the amount of money that you are earning now 15 years ago.
Nathan Simmonds:
But all of a sudden you developed as an individual, you develop skill sets, you learn to move yourself forward. You know, it is like a, a baby learning to walk when you’re doing these sorts of things. You fall down enough times, but you always made sure you stood up so that you could learn the skills so you could develop the, the, the intelligence so you could attain the qualification to get you where you are right now. So if you set an action there and you’re concerned about that commitment, is there a fear that’s holding you back?
Nathan Simmonds:
Number one is the fear of not enough. Talked about this before. Number two is the fear of losing love, respect, um, acknowledgement from people. Maybe if I do that and, and I get it wrong, maybe people think less of me. Maybe I’ll get it right and people think less of me. So we hold ourselves back, being busy thinking what are other people thinking of us rather than taking the action that moves us forward.
Nathan Simmonds:
And I will say it a million times and you know, again and again and again, no one is thinking anything about you ’cause they’re too busy thinking. What are you thinking about them to actually worry? So if it’s fear that’s holding you back from that action, all you need to understand is that you need to put one foot in front of the other and that might just be the smallest step that gives you enough momentum to take the next one.
Nathan Simmonds:
And it doesn’t have to be a series, yes, you’ll have more than option. It doesn’t have to be a series of perfect steps. It doesn’t have to be the full plan laid out because nothing in nature is certain. We just need to know how I put the next foot in front of the next foot. Which leads me to where I’m going.
Nathan Simmonds:
Imagine the analogy that’s often used. It’s imagine you’re driving across the country in the middle of the night, you’re in the uk, you are in Dover and you want to get to, um, somewhere in Cornwall and actually you have to drive across the country in the middle of the night. Do you worry about where Cornwall is? No. All you can see, you know, in the middle of the night is the next 20 feet in front of you. So all you worry about is, or, um, concern yourself with is putting your next foot, making the next step and making that 20 foot move another 20 foot.
Nathan Simmonds:
And wherever that road takes you, you will get to where you need to be because you know it’s always gonna be there. You don’t have to worry about how the, the place you’re getting to, you just make sure that you keep the actions and keep moving. Action creates traction. Traction creates action. So if we are concerned about that fear of what we’re doing, check is it, ’cause I don’t think I’m enough of something or have enough of something.
Nathan Simmonds:
How do you make that, how do you, how do you mitigate that if you think it’s a fear of losing love then being more, you know, think more about actually what is it you’re bringing to the world as a result of taking this action? Who does it impact if I don’t do this? The two questions I often ask in this space, when we’re looking at the actions, whatever actions you’ve got written down, two questions. What’s the cost?
Nathan Simmonds:
If you don’t do this, whatever actions you’ve got down in pursuit of the goals that you wish to attain and the impact that you wanna create in this, in your job, in your business, in this country, on this planet, what is the cost of not taking that action? If you wish to share, you’re more than welcome to. You do not take that action that’s gonna move you forward. What’s the cost to you, to the other people that it impacts?
Nathan Simmonds:
On the other side of this though, what’s the benefit? If you do that action that you’ve written down, that you are you, you you’ve put down and you said you’re gonna commit to or you want to commit to in the pursuit of this big goal, this huge goal that you wanna be working on it and getting to what’s the benefit if you do do it, what’s the impact on, on you, on your family, on your business, and on all the people that you work with or that you may come into contact with on a daily basis? What would be the benefit to them?
Nathan Simmonds:
So we can start to give ourselves a bit of a viewpoint on that cost benefit ratio. And you may have some, some things written down in response to these answers. And in response to these questions, sorry. So right now the question is what would you prefer to do? Out of those two lists of responses that you’ve written down, what would you like to do? What action is gonna create the most positive sensation for you? Hope this is helping Justina response.
Nathan Simmonds:
Moving closer to the goals you’ve established and teaching success in the home and work environment. Absolutely. It’s all about the impact that we create as a result of the contributions we’re making you. It’s it’s creating success in home and at work. And one isn’t mutually exclusive for the other. You are role modeling behaviors. You are creating better environments for people. And if you remember the the model, when we’re in that reality, we are looking at the big goal and we can see the chasm of despair and doubt.
Nathan Simmonds:
We’re thinking, ah, why me? Why not inspire others? Create clarity. Absolutely this is the benefit of doing what we’re doing When we have absolute focus on who we are, when we’re at our fundamental best. Sometimes it is hard. I’m not disputing that we have a choice in any given moment to bring the best possible version of ourselves so that we can help them be the best version of themselves. And in the pursuit of these sorts of goals, that is often the benefit. Where are we going to next?
Nathan Simmonds:
The wrap up. Three W’s way forward will. And the final one is wrap up. Whenever you are working with an individual, it’s about making sure that as you go through this model, when you get to here, that you are capturing all the key elements that you’ve gone through. That you have a record of that. So when you get to the end of the conversation, you can then take that person back through.
Nathan Simmonds:
You said you wanted to do this and these are the elements you wanted to include in it. When you got to you this part, this is where you said you are fantastic and these are the things you’ve learned, you’ve tried, these are your options, this is the one that you said that you would like to take forth. These are the obstacles that um, you believe you may have to circumvent and, and mitigate.
Nathan Simmonds:
You said that’s gonna happen in the next 24 hours. We are gonna get together in the next seven days, 14 days, 30 days, whatever it is. If you need any support or you have any questions that come through, just email me. Let me know if you have any questions. I’ll bounce another question back to you. That concludes our session for today. Not this one. I’m talking about the wrap up in here.
Nathan Simmonds:
What’s also beneficial in the wrap up, it’s not just doing it when you, you’re in the W but do it at the end of the G. Do it at the end of your r do it at the end of your r wrap up each section so that you have a check-in and you can tell people what you’ve heard and make sure that that stuff is correct and that you have, you’ve taken on board everything that they’ve said in their words, not your words.
Nathan Simmonds:
And by doing this what it will do is it helps to embed the thinking and the memory. It helps you to improve your conversation dynamics as you are working your way through the grow coaching model. Over an hour over, you know six sec, six sessions spread across six weeks, it starts to reed the key elements. You start to hold onto the little bullet points here and there. And then as you are talking to the person, the person will then start to feel more valued and valuable because they feel as if you are hearing them and remembering and not just referring to your notes.
Nathan Simmonds:
So it’s super, you know, it’s super beneficial to do this, which is why at the end of the each of these sessions, through the course of the week, I’ve talked about, you know, I’ve told you what I’m gonna tell you, I’ve told you what I said I would tell you. And then at the end of it I’ve then told you what I’ve told you by going back through the three points from each element and then referring a little bit back to it, then coming back and then building up through the dynamic of the training sessions, through the sticky learning experience and through this week.
Nathan Simmonds:
So what have we covered? We talked about w the way forward, getting the commitment and the action through the will and then making sure that we’re closing up each section and closing up the full conversation so that the person can hear that we’ve heard them and they feel heard and they feel listened to. ’cause this creates an emotional response in them. Confirmation, time binding next conversation. And it is great to build the memory when you’re doing this. Once I’m conscious of time we’re on the mark, what has been useful from today’s conversation? What’s been useful for you?
Nathan Simmonds:
Tell me in the questions or chat box, whatever works. A willingness score, absolutely super helpful when we’re doing this. And we can then just use that to go back and recalibrate where we are in relation to it. Is it my inner critic that’s telling me this or you know, is it something genuine that I can then put an action in place and keep me moving forward reflection and tell them what you told ’em? Absolutely will. And link back to the commitment to the option and to the outcomes of and the obstacles. Absolutely. The impact of not doing huge.
Nathan Simmonds:
The only difference between a small idea and a big idea. This is for everyone, not just the person that put this on here. The only difference between a small idea and a big idea is the limit to which you apply in your own brain. That’s it. Um, when I talk about this with people and setting big goals and making and creating big ideas, you think that um, the sock a pair of socks at some point in history, somebody knitted a pair of socks.
Nathan Simmonds:
This one idea, however many hundreds of years this happened ago, you think about scaling that idea to now how many pairs of socks are being made on a daily basis. How many pairs of socks are being put on on a daily basis? So you think it’s the same idea, it was the same um, energy and process that created one pair of socks as it has done to create all those socks. So whatever idea you have, whatever goal you have, there’s a capacity to take that goal, to take that action and scale it up to a global level if you so desire.
Nathan Simmonds:
And when you are looking at big goals like this that do impact and help people, there is an even bigger impact. There is an even bigger responsibility to make sure that you are following through on these things. ’cause it’s not about you, it’s about everyone else. And that’s when work becomes purposeful, not just meaningful. Your statement. Fear is overcoming as you continue to move forward.
Nathan Simmonds:
Yeah, you know, you, you as you move forward to it, you know, I don’t think the fear goes away. It is just for me without uncertainty and fear or the indicators that you are going in the right direction. ’cause if it felt easy, if it felt comfortable, if it felt normal, that’s because it is normal. That’s because it is comfortable. And when you do those things continually, it is just the same as yesterday. Nothing knowing new experience is coming from this fear is healthy and it’s normal.
Nathan Simmonds:
You know, you don’t, like I’ve said before, you don’t stand there and count the teeth and the tiger. When the tiger turns up to eat, you, you run. When you’re doing something new or going for a job interview, your fear is coming up ’cause it’s a new experience. Your fear is coming up because actually there’s something about this which is important to you. Your fear is coming up because that’s what you’ve been educated to believe that you need to feel because of your parents, ’cause of your grandparents, ’cause of other people’s experiences.
Nathan Simmonds:
But your fear is the reminder that when you move through that on the other side of that is something extraordinary, a new version of you. If you have not thrown yourself out of an airplane, try it. It’s amazing. Okay? Then you start to understand what fear truly is of 15,000 feet and people’s houses.
Nathan Simmonds:
Actually they should be on a monopoly board when you fall out of the airplane an hour later. That sense of calm that comes with that is mind blowing and I highly recommend it. Go and get a charity organization, go and do a tandem parachute jump. You will thoroughly love it when you wanna look at fear and how you interact with fear. Questions, questions for today as you’re writing the questions down, um, as you’re typing any questions in, in for me for today?
Nathan Simmonds:
Remember we have the sticky learning lunches Monday next week, Monday to Friday we’re gonna run next week. We are doing PDP, personal development planning. Make sure that you sign up for that because the stuff that we’ve covered this week is the foundation to really make some of that stuff sing at a whole new level. Okay?
Nathan Simmonds:
Using the, the the questions and the mindset approaches to what we’ve just covered in these four sessions is gonna really layer a, a strong foundation for next week’s personal development, planning, training. Make sure you’re booked into this. Gonna be a great week, no questions day, but thank you for the grow week. It was informative and packed to punch. Really appreciate it. Thank you.
Nathan Simmonds:
Also, if you want more questions, go and get the grow coaching cards. Go and get the MBM coaching cards that are gonna help you. Um, ask yourself more questions. You can use these on your own and your own terms. You can use ’em with other people. Wearing the gray model is the most common failure point.
Nathan Simmonds:
The most common failure point, and I think I covered part of this, is that is ’cause people want to run forward. People think they can, um, miss out a bit. People think they can just, oh, you wanna go there? Oh, that’s where you are. That’s what you can do. Now it doesn’t work like that. People need to have a depth. They stay at this surface level. It’s like shining a spotlight. They stay at this surface level. Um, and then they forget. They have to go down another level and then they wanna ask some more questions so they can go down another level.
Nathan Simmonds:
So we want to go have four or five levels down so we can really shine a spotlight on that thing that needs to be looked at. But a lot of leaders and a lot of new coaches don’t want to go to that depth. They stay at this kind of, they stay in the shallows, they’re paddling around. They maybe go and look at a rock pool rather than go scuba diving for the pearls and gold. So this is the one of the common mistakes,
Nathan Simmonds:
One of the other interesting failure points and normal mistakes is they go back to telling. So rather than asking questions, they just tell people what to do. So as leaders and business people, we go and learn these coaching skills of asking questions and, and helping people think for themselves. And we just go back to work and say, well if you do this, this, and this and this, and we forget the point ’cause we think it’s easier and quicker just to tell them what to do.
Nathan Simmonds:
But when you look at that time that’s taken over that length of, of, of, of a career, that person coming back to keep being told the same thing has actually swallowed up a huge or even larger amount of your time than if you actually took the 10 minutes to coach them properly so they didn’t come back to you again ever in the best possible way. Any more questions? It’s a great close question from me. If you had any questions, what would they be? I have one more question for you.
Nathan Simmonds:
Who here in the people that are the, the people that have attended day would like to have a coaching session with me for free? Who here today would like to have a coaching session with me for free? Yes. Or nos in the comments? Good. I would love it. Anyone else holding back for any reason? Anyone feeling that kind of resistance to not come forward And just ask for a free coaching session if you’re feeling that type in. Yes. And we will get in contact with you,
Nathan Simmonds:
Yes, but already booked in. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Anyone else here would like a free coaching session with me? Because you are very welcome to. You have engaged this week, you have attended today. I am thankful for this. If you would like to have a coaching session with me asking you some of these questions to help you build whatever it is that you are designing doing. So yes, and we will make that happen. We are at the half hour mark, Julie, absolutely, fully in.
Nathan Simmonds:
Amazing please. Yep, we’re in good booked. Thank you very much. Last thing from me. There’s always so much to talk about, so much to share and then it’s only have half an hour. If this has been useful, if you would like to take your learning to a whole new level, if you would like to expand your leadership coaching skills, whatever it is you’re doing to help improve the impact that you are having on the world in the business that you work, whatever that is, we have our virtual classrooms available.
Nathan Simmonds:
The link is in the chat box if you wanna go and have a look at those, go through, have a look at them, they’re there to help you. Be the best possible version of you preparing you to go back to Covid nine, um, work after COVID-19 developing you right now so that you can be that person. Click through to the link, have a look, see what’s useful, and have a conversation with the team so we can bring this to life.
Nathan Simmonds:
Thank you very much for this week. So very appreciated. Had a lot of fun doing this and I’m looking forward to seeing you all on Monday next week for personal development planning PDP week. Gonna be a good one. Thank you very much everyone. Have a great rest of the day.
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