3. 3 Strengths AND 1 opportunity When addressing an area of concern or opportunity to improve, start off with strengths. The Gallup organization reports when we lead with strengths, people engage eight times more. Sadly, for most people, when their boss or leader calls them into the office, typically they ask what they did wrong. Why? Because we as a leadership society have bred that expectation. This model starts off with two or three strengths and then inserts the word and to address the area of opportunity to improve. Here is a brief example: “John, one of the things I love about working with you is you understand our products, you’re very easy to work with, your teammates love your mentoring and guidance, and I think about time management also becoming one of those strengths as well. When you hear that, what do you think you need to do to position time management to become one of those strengths?” This seems very soft and almost conflict avoidant, yet this is a great way to start a conversation to ascertain how this person sees time management openly and honestly. If a leader were to be on the attack saying the person’s time management was terrible, where would that conversation constructively really go? 4. State and Ask This model starts off with a statement and then typically a ‘what’ question afterwards. Here’s a brief example of someone who has an opportunity to develop more thoughtful interactions with their teammates: “John, I think we have an opportunity with everybody to really improve our arbitrary helpfulness to one another as great teammates, per our definition. Hearing that, what do you think you need to do personally to accelerate that, and what can I do to assist you?” The phrase after the statement is “Hearing that…” and then you start off with a ‘what’ question. 5. State, Ask, and Reflect This technique is much like state and ask but is devoted to people who have demonstrated prior resistance during the coaching relationship. This is typically reserved as a last-ditch effort or something later in the coaching relationship when all other techniques have exhausted themselves. Here’s an example using the prior example of more thoughtful teamwork: “John, we’ve been chatting for a while about going above and beyond the call of duty as a great teammate per our definition, and I think we have an opportunity to accelerate that and quite frankly need to do so. I’m going to provide you a question and I’d like you to do something a little different. Instead of answering right away, I want to give you time to truly think about it as I’ve given this conversation time and I want to be fair to you. Knowing that we have to
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