One of the world’s leading executive coaches, Dr Marshall Goldsmith, brings us his latest book, “Triggers”.
Dr Goldsmith is a true master in his field. His previous books, “What got you here won’t get you there” and “Mojo” were rich additions to the executive coach’s reading list and following on from these two seminal works,“Triggers” does not disappoint.
Dr Goldsmith’s definition of a trigger is ‘any stimulus that reshapes our thoughts and actions.’ The premise of the book is that by understanding our own triggers, we can act in the most appropriate way to circumstances and more importantly, help our coachees to do the same.
Since reading the book,(three times!) I have begun to introduce Dr Goldsmith’s new theories into my client coaching engagements.
There are far too many rich nuggets contained within the book for me to mention here in this review, however I do want to mention a few of his ideas which I think will be particularly useful to practicing coaches.
We are all aware of Kolb’s Learning Cycle and how helpful this can be as a framework to pinpoint insights and accelerate learning and new actions for our coachees. Dr Goldsmith puts a new angle on this by talking about a feedback loop using the four stages of:
- Evidence
- Relevance
- Consequence
- Action
I have followed Dr Goldsmith’s feedback loop framework to great effect with my coachees by spending time with my coachees in each of these stages and helping them to pinpoint where they currently are, how relevant it is to their situation, what consequences are being manifested by this and what actions need to be taken to correct a situation or leverage an advantage.
Dr Goldsmith talks at length about change. Let’s be honest; however our coachees initially present to us, they come to us because they want change. Typically they know this and have worthy intentions to change. The challenge, always, is to start the change process and sustain it. Despite knowing this, the fear of loss in most human beings outweighs the positive benefits that will be gained through change. Evolution has hard-wired us in this way.To address this,Dr Goldsmith uses a four stage framework as follows which has the coachee look at what to:
- Create
- Preserve
- Eliminate
- Change
Coachees are often defensive in conversations around change and will come up with a barrage of justifications why change is not possible at the current time in their unique context. By using Dr Goldsmith’s framework, I have found it to be a great way of allowing your coachee to take a calm and objective look at what to create, preserve, eliminate and change. Spend plenty of time under each heading with your coachee and you will find that the investment is really worthwhile in creating genuine impetus for change. I recommend you take a minimum of one whole session on these four stages and by doing so, you have a real chance of creating a genuine commitment to change in your coachee.
Much of the second half of the book is focussed on the use of active, open-ended, powerful questions. Stay with me here…I know as coaches we talk the whole time about powerful questions underpinning the whole coaching approach; however Dr Goldsmith opens up a new angle on this, and this angle works incredibly well with coachees.
The idea is that his questions focus his coachees on what they can do to make a positive difference in the world rather than on what the world can do to make a positive difference for them. Trust me…ask the questions in this way and the coachee is compelled to think more deeply about whether they are trying their very best rather than giving you a standard answer from behind their calm exterior veneer, for which the majority of our coachees have had a life time of practise.
Dr Goldsmith recommends the following six questions as the standard questions from which to personalise and align more closely to your coachee’s specific context:
- Did I do my best to set clear goals today?
- Did I do my best to make progress towards my goals today?
- Did I do my best to find meaning today?
- Did I do my best to be happy today?
- Did I do my best to build positive relationships today?
- Did I do my best to be fully engaged today?
Dr Goldsmith surmises that active self-questioning can trigger a new way of interacting with our world. As we all know, it takes 21 days to form a new habit. If your coachees are serious about creating long-term sustainable change, you will be able to convince them to complete these six questions every day and score themselves on a scale of 0-10 where 0 stands for no effort and 10 stands for maximum effort. I have been completing the questionnaire myself every single day since reading the book and I can vouch for the major impact that these questions have on your own attitude towards goal setting and creating change.
The last two standout parts of the book for me were around self-management and people management.
Around self-management, Dr Goldsmith has created an acronym called AIWATT. The concept of AIWATT is to understand the importance of using the delaying mechanism in the interval between trigger and behaviour… or in simple terms, it is a build on the concept of ‘When triggered, don’t’.
AIWATT stands for:’Am I willing at this time to make the investment required to make a positive difference on this topic?’
So, if you are not going to say anything positive, just pause,reflect and keep the ego at bay. I have been subscribing to AIWATT for the last month. It really works. If you can share this acronym with your coachees and have them put this principle into practice, it can pay major dividends with their interpersonal relationships and save them engaging in energy draining battles that rarely have useful outcomes.
Around people management, I wanted to mention Dr Goldsmith’s relationship with the legendary Alan Mulally who had a glittering career at Boeing and then went on to revive the fortunes of Ford Motor company after its disastrous period,post 2008 global meltdown. Alan Mulally is an engineer and at heart, believes in planning, structure and process but above all in simplicity and consistency and in supporting each of your fellow team members at all costs. Every week, without fail at Ford, he would have a meeting with all of his key managers which was compulsory to attend wherever they were in the world and had to be attended by them ‘in person’, not through a deputy.
The format and structure of the meeting was always the same and simply required the attendees (including Alan Mulally himself who would open the meeting) to answer the following six questions.
- Where are we going?
- Where are you going?
- What is going well?
- Where can we improve?
- How can I help you?
- How can you help me?
Just sharing this simple model with your coachees will invariably spark a good discussion and ensure that they are accountable to you and you are accountable to them; surely one of the bedrocks of a solid and meaningful coaching relationship.
There are a lot of other great tips and tools in the book, which used wisely, can be a great coaching aid for you. Check out his chapter on Belief Triggers. These alone will crystallize many self insights and rich coachee discussions, aiding your coachees to start piecing together their own jigsaw and connecting some of the dots that might have been eluding them. Many other equally stimulating chapters await…
Dr Goldsmith has an excellent blog and can be followed at:
http://www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com
