592: Ed Batista - How To Give Useful Feedback, What Great Leaders Do, and Why We All Need An Executive Coach
Jul 21, 2024
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Ed Batista, an executive coach, discusses the commonalities of excellent coaches, the importance of feedback in leadership, and the characteristics of great leaders. He emphasizes the significance of coaching as a combination of telling and asking, the impact of writing in clarifying thinking, and the critical skill of adaptive capacity in overcoming adversity. Batista also touches on the misconceptions of feedback as a gift, the pitfalls of the compliment sandwich approach, and the qualities of effective coaching through evocative questions and ensuring the other person feels supported.
Accepting critical feedback without defensiveness is vital for sustainable excellence in leadership.
Self-guided learning is essential for maintaining excellence as formal learning structures become limited.
Feedback should be viewed as data, distinguishing between signal and noise to extract valuable insights.
Deep dives
Building Sustainable Excellence
A key factor in sustainable excellence highlighted in the podcast is non-defensiveness in response to critical feedback. Great leaders are characterized by their ability to accept feedback without defensiveness, whether from others or from life's challenges. This trait allows them to learn from setbacks and improve continuously. The discussion emphasized the importance of being open to critical feedback and using it as a tool for growth and development.
Continuous Learning and Self-Development
Another essential aspect of sustainable excellence discussed in the podcast is the ability to learn independently. The podcast emphasized that while structured learning programs may provide a foundation, true sustainable excellence requires individuals, especially leaders, to become adept at self-guided learning. This skill becomes vital as individuals progress in their careers and find themselves in positions where formal learning structures are limited. The ability to self-structure learning programs and adapt to changing contexts is crucial for maintaining excellence over time.
Initiating a Coaching Practice
The podcast also delved into the journey of initiating an executive coaching practice, highlighting the importance of personal transformations and learning in leadership roles. It featured a narrative where the speaker's coaching journey began as a client before transitioning into a coaching role. The discussion touched on the impact of mentors, self-imposed learning, and the pivotal shift in leadership mindset from championing personal ideas to fostering collaborative stewardship. The speaker shared insights into the coaching process, distinguishing it from therapy and emphasizing the value of empathetic listening and relevant advice in coaching sessions.
Feedback is Data, Not a Gift
Feedback is portrayed as data rather than a gift, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing between signal and noise in feedback. Recognition of the distortions from both the sender's and recipient's perspectives is crucial in interpreting feedback effectively. Being non-defensive involves managing emotions and uncovering valuable insights amidst the noise. Moreover, the significance of positive feedback is highlighted to counterbalance the emphasis on negative feedback and encourage sincere appreciation and acknowledgment of positive feedback.
Initial Conditions and Support-Challenge Integration in Coaching
Emphasis is placed on the initial conditions of coaching relationships, stressing the need for agency and choice to ensure a strong start. The integration of support and challenge in coaching is discussed, with empathetic listening serving as a foundation complemented by necessary challenges. Striking a balance between providing support and offering constructive challenges is essential in fostering effective coaching relationships, requiring intuition honed through experience and practice.
This episode is supported by Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing company dedicated to empowering people. Please CLICK HERE for premier staffing and talent.
Notes:
Commonalities of excellent coaches:
Not defensive
Respond well to feedback
Ability to learn
"Leadership can't be taught but it can be learned."
Coaching is not therapy, but it can be therapy-adjacent.
It's not telling people what to do and it's not just asking questions. It's a combination of all of them.
There is ample research on the benefits of writing. It clarifies your thinking.
The questions to ask someone who might need an executive coach:
Why do you want a coach?
Why now?
What do you hope to get out of it?
What do great leaders do?
First, do no harm.
Walk the talk.
Be an embodiment of the culture.
Have high standards
Take risks
Coach people up
Train people
"Coaching is accomplishment through others."
"Feedback is not a gift."
Feedback is data. Signal and noise.
Signal - Important and good.
Noise - Byproduct of someone's distorted lens.
"Praise, Criticism, Praise (PCP) is terrible." Don't give the compliment sandwich. It's disingenuous.
How leaders best overcome adversity – The most critical skill is "adaptive capacity..." It’s composed of two primary qualities: the ability to grasp context, and hardiness.
Coaching - Asking evocative questions, ensuring the other person feels heard, and actively conveying empathy remain the foundations of coaching.
Connect: Establish and renew the interpersonal connection, followed by an open-ended question.
Reflect: Having elicited a response, reflect back the essence of the other person's comments.
Direct: Focus their attention on a particular aspect of their response that invites further exploration.
Support and Challenge - A client once said, “It feels like you’re always in my corner, but you never hesitate to challenge me.”
Master the Playbook, Throw it Away - Coaching involves a continuous and cyclical process of learning, unlearning, and relearning.
Power Dynamics - The longer I coach, the more I appreciate and value the work of Jeff Pfeffer, a leading scholar on power. philosopher Ernest Becker: "If you are wrong about power, you don't get a chance to be right about anything else."
"Meaningful coaching is always an emotionally intimate experience, no matter what’s being discussed. In part this is a function of the context: two people talking directly to each other with no distractions... Intimacy in a coaching relationship also results from a willingness to 'make the private public'--to share with another person the thoughts and feelings that we usually keep to ourselves... And yet an essential factor that makes such intimacy possible is a clear set of boundaries defining the relationship, which creates an inevitable and necessary sense of distance..."
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