The Finance Leader Podcast

Bonus Episode 27: Coaching Leads to Better Results

September 28, 2021 Stephen McLain
The Finance Leader Podcast
Bonus Episode 27: Coaching Leads to Better Results
Show Notes Transcript

This week I am sharing an encore episode from Season 6 – Episode 48, Coaching Leads to Better Results. I believe that everyone needs coaching, because great coaching can help us see things in our life and our career that we can’t see and the best coaching happens when the coach guides, but we actually discover the answers ourselves. When we self-discover what’s lacking or where we are falling short, we are more likely to own the solution. This is why coaching is critical.

As mentioned in the episode, please visit the website of science fiction author Cheryl Lawson to learn more about the Rubicon Saga and her new book A Dark Genesis: cheryllawson.net

You can now purchase a course to help you advance your career from financeleaderacademy.com. It's called Advance Your Finance and Accounting Career: Developing a Promotion Strategy that Sets You Apart.

Please join The Finance Leader Podcast Community Facebook Group, where we can talk leadership and the other topics I present here on the podcast. https://www.facebook.com/groups/financeleaderpodcast  This is a good time to jump in and start sharing ideas and thoughts about leadership so we can help each other.

For more resources, please visit stephenmclain.com. On the website, you can download the Leadership Growth Blueprint for Finance and Accounting Managers. You can use this guide to develop your leadership by focusing on communication, and growing and empowering your team.

Please follow me on:

1. Instagram: stephen.mclain
2. Twitter: smclainiii
3. Facebook: stephenmclainconsultant

Stephen McLain:

Hi, this is Stephen McLain of the finance leader podcast. This is bonus episode number 27. How is your team doing this week? If you lead a team? Have you been conducting your one on one sessions, I believe in the one on ones, especially weekly if you can, but at least every other week, the one on ones are a time and people investment that pays off significantly, so schedule them invest that focused time with each team member, it will improve communication and performance. It gives an opportunity for your team member to address issues and ask for help on specific tasks. This should be an event that your team member looks forward to. So please build it and develop the sessions that greatly benefits them. I don't usually mention much of what I enjoy doing in my personal time. But I did want to share that I do love science fiction, especially the classics like Star Wars, and Star Trek, the original series of course. But I also wanted to tell you of a science fiction author whose books that I enjoy. Her name is Cheryl Lawson. She lives in Canada and she wrote the we are Mars trilogy, known as the Rubicon saga. She also recently released another book called a dark Genesis. If you are into sci fi, check out these books. We are Mars and a dark Genesis. I'll share the link in the show notes. And that's Cheryl Lawson dotnet. So please enjoy and get these books. And by the way, I don't get any compensation for this just sharing a great recommendation. This week, I am sharing an encore episode from season six, which is Episode 48. Coaching leads to better results. I believe that everyone needs coaching because great coaching can help us see things in our life and our career that we can't see. And the best coaching happens when the coach guides but we actually discover the answers ourselves. When we self discover what's lacking or where we are falling short, we are more likely to own the solution. And this is why coaching is critical season eight will debut on October 12. And it's all about the role of Chief Financial Officer. That first episode will be about the CFO mindset and about a C suite level leader I can't wait to share. Please enjoy this encore episode about how coaching can lead to better results for your life and your career. Thank you Please enjoy. This week I am talking about the importance of coaching for yourself and for your team. A coach can help you see areas of your leadership and performance that must improve. The best coaching sessions are when we discover for ourselves what we need to change. If you desire to achieve positive results in your job performance career in life, then you need to know what to change regarding your thought processes, and how you organize your life. Please enjoy the episode. Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host Stephen McLain. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. This is episode number 48. And I'll be talking about coaching and we'll highlight the following topics. Number one, we all need career and personal coaching. Number two, the right questions lead to better personal discovery. Number three, achieve results for your career in life. And for you can become a great coach for your team. Legendary basketball coach Pat Summitt said, most people get excited about games. But I've got to be excited about practice because that's my classroom. Now before I begin today's topic, I want to tell you about something I heard on the radio this morning before recording this episode. I'm a sports fan and I often watch sports center on ESPN or listen to ESPN Radio. So this morning on ESPN Radio, I was listening to the keyshawn Jay will and zubeen show keyshawn Johnson was a professional football player and first round draft pick from USC who played for several National Football League teams. Well, this morning keyshawn said something that stirred up a lot of comments and thoughts from his colleagues and callers. There was a discussion around jersey numbers. He said that certain numbers on your jersey make you look a certain way, not the number itself. But how the number looks. Now this all started because the NFL came up with a new rule for next season to allow certain position players to use the numbers one through nine, which is normally used for quarterbacks, kickers and punters, so it stirred up a lot around the fans and players and everybody else who really like football who would participate in football. Now, I've never heard anyone in sports say this before about a number on your jersey, you looking a certain way. keyshawn said that the younger people like players with more lower numbers, like one or two or seven, his number in college was three. But in the NFL and keyshawn was a wide receiver. So wide receivers are limited to having numbers in the 80s, or between 10 and 19. And he took 19, he couldn't see himself having a number in the 80s because it wasn't his look. And he revealed how he viewed other players by their numbers. What's got me thinking about bias. I have talked about bias, and it comes in many forms. Now keyshawn was judging players by their numbers and how they looked with them. So what else do we get judged by in the workplace that we don't realize? Now, people are often judged, or there is bias based on the big categories, like gender and sex, race, orientation, rich versus poor, and other categories, like where we went to school, how we dress hairstyle, what car we drive. Now key, Shawn's admission tells us that you never know how bias is being used against you. And you know, ultimately, who really cares about jersey numbers? Is there really something that can be hurtful about judging someone, an athlete based on the number that they have? Probably not. But we're talking about the workplace, and we're talking about you and me and everyone else, and the people that we lead in the workplace. And there's bias, we have to deal with it all the time. Now, there are other things that can be used against you, for example, the coffee mug that you're using, how you tilt your head, how you hold your hands, and many other ways. And this is why I asked you as leaders to check your bias, we should only be placing any judgment on people only in areas like the content of one's character, our work ethic, level of motivation, our productivity, the quality of our work this morning was another reminder for me about ensuring that we understand any bias we have. So we don't miss apply it to people. So ultimately, we are fair and every action that we take. unconscious bias is very real. And now we can move on to the main topic of the episode today. Again, this season of the podcast is about leading your team and setting your team up for success. I talked about things like filling the spots on your team, to what values are important, and how we communicate how we want our team to perform and act every day. becoming a leader is investing in ourselves. So we know how to invest in our team to make them better with every action and every task we complete as a team couple weeks ago in Episode 45 that was about recruiting and hiring new team members. In Episode 46. I talked about team culture, which influences how the team performs together, and how everyone respects each other. Last week on episode 47, I talked about setting expectations. When you have clear communication about what you expect. It helps your team members understand the baseline of what you want them to do. And it starts that beginning and understanding of what you expect from them. Now this week, I'm talking about coaching, we all need coaching. Coaching is about unlocking our potential so we can achieve our goals. Receiving coaching around our mindset is a great way to start working on unlocking our potential. Our mindset is the gateway to improving our thinking process, and how we see ourselves. Our mindset determines how we overcome adversity and challenges that we face every day. mindset shifts, while in coaching can really positively affect your ability to accomplish your long term goal. It's well worth it to get coaching. We all face obstacles and mindset issues or have difficulty overcoming adversity. We also may be dealing with not having clarity for our career. And we don't know what direction to go in or even know where to start. We may have a long term goal and let's say to become a CFO one day is that goal. Well, where do you start? What actions do I need to do today and tomorrow to improve my chance to become a CFO? And that's why coaching is so important. Now coaching differs from training and mentoring and I have talked about both of those. We often hear the combination of coaching, teaching and mentoring. All three are important in our professional lives. We need to receive all three at certain times. And as leaders we need to provide this also to our team Coaching teaching and mentoring are three different relationships, three different approaches, and three different outcomes that should contribute ultimately to better results, meaning greater work performance, and achieving your goals. With training, you are learning a skill or a process. With mentoring, you're learning how to navigate your career, or a complex work situation, from a more experienced leader. With coaching, the intent is to overcome obstacles, and to gain more knowledge and situational awareness about yourself. It's a deep dive into understanding ourselves better. So we overcome those obstacles, and we move on and we go after our goal. Great coaching helps us achieve great results, as long as we do the hard work of self discovery, and being open to acknowledging some difficult issues that might be in our thought process, or something that is holding us back. It's about admitting to ourselves Finally, that we need to overcome in how we think and how we view the world, and how we see ourselves in the world. Coaching can help us navigate this issues, so we can focus better on our goals in our life, you can become a coach too for your team, which is what I envisioned for all leaders. One of our most important responsibilities that we have, is to make the people around us better. When we do that, it opens up the entire team, to performing better and also to be more coordinated, we can help everyone reach for a higher level of excellence, and help our team members achieve their goals. Now let's talk about coaching for a few moments. Number one, we all need career and life coaching. Coaching can open us up for a better understanding of ourselves, some of the topics to explore what is holding us back, what is preventing us from achieving success, and really anything that is related to our mindset. When we understand ourselves, we can start to eliminate bad habits, bad processes, and negative ways on how we view ourselves, we can begin to overcome thoughts and habits that may be holding us back. Coaching can literally help anyone succeed if they are willing to do the hard work to explore their thinking and habits. at a deeper level is what you are doing contributing to your goal achievement, and the daily pursuit of excellence or are you stumbling every day. That's why we all need career in life coaching, we can focus on our career. And we can also focus on various aspects of our life to improve. Number two, the right questions lead to better personal discovery. the right questions force us to explore ourselves, our thinking, overcoming adversity, our goal setting our skills and many others. These questions should not be binary like yes or no questions or questions that require one word answers. The question should force us to deep dive, how we think about tough subjects, such as how do you feel? And what is your process, when you receive a complex task, it has a very close due date for completion. Another would be how to describe how organized you are, what tools do you use to stay organized? And how are your processes helping you to stay focused on your goals? And then with those questions and those answers, you follow up with deeper questions. As a coach, you want to focus on that answer. And then whatever comes up as the stumbling block or the obstacle focused on that, and have the person you're coaching or you're the one being coached to really talk about deeper about what that obstacle means to you. Why is it stopping you. And they come up with a solution on their own, as they're talking it through so that they can overcome it so that they own it. They own that process, and they own that solution and apply it to themselves. They're doing a self discovery around these questions that force them to look at things that are troubling them or stopping them. Number three, achieve results for your career in life. The point of the right questions is to point you in the direction so you can achieve results. Effective coaching requires deep thinking introspective questions that require us to address critical internal issues, or processes we are using. So we become more organized in our thinking and in the application of effective tools, which then leads to better results over time. That's the goal. And invested coach will stir you up to ask tough questions, so you can more easily see your own solution through your words. And as you become more self aware, you can apply these insights to change your thinking, changing your mindset and Then improve your results not only in your career, but also in your life. Number four, you can become a great coach for your team, or your team members coachable. That's the first question to ask. We talked a few weeks ago about recruiting and hiring new team members in Episode 45. And this should be an area that you should try to notice. Do your people accept coaching? Or are they stubborn about their ways of doing things? I recommend that you work to become a great coach to your team members, you can ask the right questions during the one on ones and during team meetings. And when you talk about improving performance, think about framing the questions. So that takes more than a few words to answer. So for an easy one today, what I would like for you to do is to find a really good career or life coach who can help you with obstacles or adversity that you may be facing, and also to perform a review of your goals. If you participate in coaching, and you can communicate that to your team, it helps to show your team members to be more open to coaching. Additionally, you should be able to easily adopt the same coaching experiences and skills, so you can coach your team members to improve their performance. I have a free guide for you. It's called the leadership growth blueprint for finance and accounting managers. In the guide I talked about three leadership areas communication, team growth, and empowerment. Plus a few recommendations around challenges with the systems you are probably using to complete your work. The link to the guide is in the episode description. Or you can go to Stephen McLain calm. Please use it to help you with a few leadership wins today. Thank you. This episode is sponsored by my course through finance leader Academy is called Advanced your finance and accounting career developing a promotion strategy that will set you apart. To advance your career you must set yourself apart from your peers, finance and accounting professionals are already expected to be technically competent. This course helps you establish your professional Foundation, and how you can set yourself apart from your peers. by growing your leadership skills and developing your executive presence. You can go to Stephen McLain calm for more details on this career advancement course. The link is also in the show notes with this episode. Thank you. Today I talked about the importance of getting coaching and highlighted the following points. Number one, we all need career and personal coaching. Number two, the right questions lead to better personal discovery. Number three achieve results for your career in life. And for you can become a great coach for your team. Hiring a life or career coach is a great move for you to help you improve your performance. And it usually starts with your mindset. You then can become a great coach for your team by asking the right questions that elicit responses that seek to help your team self discover their solutions, and improved performance and also goal setting. In the end, you can all improve and that's the goal. Next week, I will be talking about performance reviews and determining potential. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader Podcast. I am dedicated to helping you grow your leadership because it is leadership that will set you apart from your peers. You can get this episode wherever you find podcasts. Until next time, you can check out more resources at Stephen McLain calm and sign up for my updates and so you don't miss an episode of the show. And now go lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you