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Transcript 

0:00 Yeah, it's great to be with everybody today. Thank you all for participating and and being with us on this fall afternoon. And we're excited about this topic that we are going to kind of walk into and and talk about some this afternoon, having to do with coaching. And but first, we would love to just know where you're from. So, if you want to chat, if you look at the bottom of your Zoom window, it says chat, and the very bottom, maybe on the left-hand side, says chat. So, we'd love to know where you're from, city or state, and maybe even what your role is there-public works, police, HR, whatever. So feel free to do that. We like to know kind of where you're from and get to know you. We've got a lot of folks that are regulars with us. We do this workshop about every six weeks, we do a different free workshop for local government leaders, and so we're really glad you're here. This is about coaching. Whether you're wanting to create a coaching program internally or have an external organization like LeaderGov help you with coaching, we we can serve you in both ways, and we would love to do that. But we just want to talk generally about coaching today, and kind of the value and the nuts and bolts behind it. So let us know where you are in the chat. That'd be great. Real quickly, just so you know who we are, I won't bore you with too many details here. But we have been serving local government since 2012, and we only serve local governments, cities, counties, special districts, taxing commissions, that sort of thing. And started in Georgia. We're based in Georgia, but we have customers all across the country, from California to Florida, up to the the the Northeast. So we love what we do, and you know, if we can serve you in some way as we go through this, let us let us know. the The kind of things that we do at LeaderGov are around retreats, strategic planning, professional development, which is you know what we're doing here. That's the red box, and we also have culture and succession planning programs for local government, so we we tend to be in those kind of areas. But we really love helping helping you, joining you to equip your leaders, your supervisors, your directors, so they can lead their teams better. At the end of the day, that's kind of what we enjoy doing the most. So we're going to jump right in. We're really excited to have Gayle eJohnson with us today. Gayle is actually with LeaderGov. Gayle just joined our organization recently. We've been working with Gaylel for I guess a year or two now, and I just want to share a little bit bit of her background, so you get to know her, and then Gayle and I are going to engage in some back and forth question answers about coaching. And along the way, Tim Fenbert is on the Zoom with us as well today. Tim's one of the co-founders of LeaderGov, and he'll be watching the chat. If you have a question, you can chat your question in the chat box, and we'll keep an eye on those. And would love you to participate at the very end, maybe 45 minutes, 50 minutes into this. You know, we'll definitely open up the floor to questions as well. So you can wait till the end, or you can text your chat your questions to us. But Gayle is a really strong organizational development leader coach. I love this motto: an organization is only as good as its staff, and the staff is only as good as its leadership. Wow, that's a very true statement. Gayle's been serving organizations for about 25 years, public and private and nonprofits, really with this focus on emotional intelligence, communication, behavioral tools, self-awareness, self-regulation. She has done a lot of work up in the Pacific Northwest, in the state of Washington, with local governments and in in other areas as well with local governments. But got a specialty in DEI and race and social justice. Gayle attended Spelman College here in Atlanta and has a Bachelor of Arts in Political science from University of Washington, and a certified life coach.

4:44 So yeah, I find this this last comment interesting too, Gayle. But maybe you could speak to it just for a moment. Tell us, you come from an African American pioneer family. Tell us about that. That's got to be a lot of history, right? Yeah. Tell us a little bit. So, well, first of all, hello and welcome. But but tell us about your background a little bit, particularly this your family's history. I think that's fascinating.

5:14 Yeah. Well, my great grandfather came from Mississippi to the Pacific Northwest. He was working with a white doctor in Mississippi, and they the doctor was actually in the Confederate Army. And when he you know when everything was done, he ended up they were living in Mississippi. His boss actually was one of the founders of the KKK. So, and he did not want to join the KKK, but so he knew he needed to get out of Mississippi. So he asked my great great grandfather to drive the coach out to the Pacific Northwest, and that's how my family got there in 1888, and then I always wanted to know what happened to that family, and so did some research, so on and so forth. And 124 years later, the descendants of the that gentleman and the descendants of my family got together at a hotel in Seattle, Washington, and so we were able to kind of just learn about each other, and it was it was it's been a great yeah great experience. So we have a lot of history in Seattle since we've been there since 1888. A lot of

6:32 yeah,

6:32 just a well known family there. 6:35 Yeah, wow, that's very cool. Yeah, I really like that. You know, we we have such diverse backgrounds and histories, and to know a little bit about where we come from and where where our families have come from, I think that's kind of cool.

6:49 Yeah,

6:49 yeah. I did want to ask you, Gayle, if you could kind of help me when we when people registered for the workshop today. Each whenever you all registered, we asked you what was the leadership skill that you were hoping that coaching could address, and I found this really interesting, Gayle. We've got accountability and performance concerns. That was almost 30% That's the blue box, the blue

7:18 part, yeah.

7:19 Confidence and decision making, executive presence-that's the red. That's 14% The other big one, the orange one on the left, there 25% is communication or conflict. What does this tell you, Gayle? What's your kind of read on on this breakdown?

7:36 Yeah, I mean it's interesting because it's one. It's across the board. I mean, that have that's this is something that I find in all organizations. Accountability is a huge thing. Communication is key. At the end of the day, if you if leaders do not know how to communicate well, and they don't understand how they show up, that breaks down everything happens in the in the conversation. And when that doesn't happen in the conversation, then everything breaks down from there, and so communication is critical to understand. And then once you are comfortable knowing how to communicate and knowing how you show up, that's when you're able to hold people accountable. But it takes, but the it really does start with communication, though.

8:20 Yeah, yeah. I find it interesting that only 8.8% of the people said we we really don't have a problem. Yeah. So 92% said yeah we got we got some stuff we need to work on here and no no team is perfect right no city no county is is is perfect and so we need development as as participants on this workshop today. You need development, I need development, and of course the people on your teams need development. So coaching is a very powerful tool, unlike training, that can help you get an edge and and really help your folks develop and be better at what they do so that you can better serve your teams and your community. So, well,

9:06 you know, it's kind of like athletes, right? You know, people may think that coaching is associated with well, they're not doing well. No, you know, coaching is about growth. Coaching is about getting better at what you do. I mean, just like athletes, they all have coaches because they have to get better at what they're doing, and they have somebody who's holding them accountable. There's having somebody who gives them tips on how to get better, and that's really what coaching is all about.

9:31 Yeah, I would love to ask a question for the chat right now. If y'all could just go back to the chat, here's the question: Have you ever been formally coached by someone internal to your organization or an external coach, have you ever had a coaching engagement? You know, two or three month coaching engagement where you were you were the receiver, right? Someone was coaching you on your leadership. Or management skills. I'd love to just hear, at least for the folks that are on the Zoom today, what your experience is with this. You know, we find Tim, Tim, and I don't know, Tim, if you would chime in here. We haven't found a lot of consistency in cities and counties offering mentoring and coaching programs, some do, you know for sure, but the vast majority don't, and we think it's a really big gap that cities and counties just aren't aren't doing at the moment for whatever reason. And so I'm looking over at the answers. We've got a few yeses. Yeah, okay. We've got a few yeses, not formally. Currently going through a program, but we got a fair number of noes as well. So kind of a kind of a mixed bag there in terms of your coaching background, 10:56 Bill. Bill, I would add. You know, I think sometimes it feels a little overwhelming, like to launch a coaching or a mentoring program for an organization. Like, how in the world would we possibly do that? You know, one approach has been for new hires starting a program for your new hires as a place to start, and intentionally aligning those new hires with either coaches or mentoring mentors, maybe outside of their reporting structure, so you know that that's a great way to launch a program like this. Seem to be very effective. It's just a place to start with your perhaps your new hires.

11:32 Yeah, that and

11:34 and emerging leaders as well. Yeah, yeah, great. Yeah, I'm

11:38 gonna. By the way, we're gonna capture all of your chat. We may take some of the names out, but we're going to republish this as a blog later, so you'll have access to a lot of this collective information that we're gathering today here in the next few days. So, yeah, thank you for kind of walking through that, Gayle. I thought these this was interesting.

11:58 Yeah, what

11:58 people wanted to resolve, and so yeah. So we'll just jump into our conversation, Gayle. And you know, I think you know the the first question is like, what is coaching? Kind of a basic question, and and like like how is it different from training? So so tell us what coaching is and kind of how it how it should should work typically.

12:20 Yeah, yeah. So coaching teaches a skill. I mean, training teaches a skill. So that's you know that's really you know you go into a you know go into some type of like we're doing today. You know you're teaching a skill. Mentoring actually is passing along someone else's experience. So they've had experiences in things, and so they give advice through that. Coaching is focused on a partnership, so it really is about helping the leader think more clearly about what they what they want to work on. Think more clearly more clearly about themselves. Coaching also helps with that blind spot, those blind spots that we don't see, right? And then also just owning their own growth to be good leaders really want to, you know, focus on growing, and so they bring on a coach to help them with that. And they coaches actually asks, so we ask questions to help the leaders find those kind of answers within them that fit them, and then what ends up happening is that then they will own those answers, and those answers stick with them more so than if I tell them what to do, right? Yeah, and so that's so the coaching really is about being a partnership, helping them, helping people identify their goals, and then really asking them the questions because some of the it's really about we understand the process, but you really do have the knowledge because we're utilizing what you are, what you're actually experiencing right now, and then we help uncover how you can approach something.

14:07 Yeah, yeah. You know, Gayle, as you know, we have a workshop called Leadership and Management, and in that workshop, we we try to explain the differences between being a leader and being a manager. Right, the different. It's a different idea, and I love the way you kind of framed up mentoring and coaching because I think the two get confused. They do.

14:28 Yeah.

14:28 If I'm a mentor, I'm I'm like sharing. Well, when I was in your position 10 years ago, I did A, B, and C. That's right. Maybe you should do A, B, and C. So it's a little more directional. I think like

14:41 it's

14:42 it's giving more hands-on. Maybe you should go talk to Sam Smith about that. Let me set up an appointment with Sam. That's being a mentor, a guide. But I like I like the way you framed it. Coaching is is a lot about would they helping the person own their own development, largely through questions. You know.

15:00 Questions. It's learning how to ask coaches. Learn how to ask great questions. Yeah, yeah.

15:06 Because you want me to think. You want me to think for myself, right?

15:09 That's right. That's right. Okay. Okay. And we did. And if I'm doing most of the talking, which means that I'm not. I must not be coaching.

15:16 Yeah. Right. That's good. Well, tell us a little bit. Let's shift gears here. Why why does coaching drive certain results when when other other methods typically do not? What what's the unique? How is it able to give a result where other development tools might not?

15:35 Well, coaching is a pro. It's a process. Okay. So and it's an iterative process. So what you end up doing is you meet. We we we meet weeks or months at a time, and we identify maybe some tools or some activities that you can take to practice, and then you come back after practicing that, and then we talk about that. How did it work? Did it, you know, what were you, what were the challenges? And then we tweak that, and then you go back and practice it again. So it's an iterative process where, like, a training, you get the information. It's a one and done type thing, and it's over with, right? Where with coaching, it's a, it's usually an ongoing process, at least for you know some months, some weeks, to help people practice. At the end of the day, you can I can you know train as much as I want to train. At the end of the day, though, you have to practice it because it's because that because you're creating a new behavior. 16:40 Yeah,

16:41 and new behavior is is changed by practice.

16:46 Yeah, in our obviously you know this, but a lot of the folks on the call do not know this. In our training sessions that we do, our workshops, you know, we focus a lot on on accountability and like putting these skills into practice, right? And that's a really good thing, but when you've got 20 people in a training group, right? This large group of 20 people, it's really hard to ensure that people are actually following up, that they're that they're living it out. So, so coaching, I see kind of where you're headed. The coaching, you really can't escape the coach. It's just you and the coach, right? So you're you're kind of you're kind of caught, and I think in a good way, yeah. And and and and you you're probably more accountable, I would think, in that one-on-one setting than a group. You can kind of hide in a group setting sometimes. So

17:40 yeah, yeah. In the in the on the one on one, it's you know it's it is that accountability piece. It's the practice and then and then the accountability and and so and the practice isn't always easy, but they you learn it's a new muscle that you're learning, right? Yeah, especially around communication. You know, a lot of people think they listen well. Well, really, you know, when we actually do some training around that and do some education around that, they realize, oh wow, that's harder than I thought it was.

18:12 Yeah. Well, and I see now the benefit of of multiple sessions because these folks need to to trust you, the coach,

18:20 yes,

18:20 or whoever their coach is, you know they they need to be able to be honest and and not be offended or be defensive, right? And so you can't do that in one one coaching session.

18:34 No, but you know you have to build trust, and you also it's a vulnerability space. It's hard to put them to hold the mirror up. Yeah. But if you want to become a better leader, it is that's basically the first thing you're doing is putting the mirror up. Is where are some of where do I need more growth? It's not about it's not about bad or good or anything like that. It's just how do I grow better so that I can serve my staff better.

19:02 Yeah, yeah. So I wanted to ask you what what what do you think changes for the leader? You know, as they go through this process, what what what happens inside the leader typically that you've observed over the years doing this?

19:14 They clarity. They they they learn how to become more clear with their priorities instead of being so reactionary, so they they be there's more clarity that they they learn how to create within how they're operating on self awareness because you know like you were introducing me emotional intelligence understanding your values understanding how you show up that self awareness is critical because you need to know how to manage your own way of showing up, because and understand your own tone, those type of things. Because how you show up is how you're going to be. You're going to get that reaction back. So, and then also confidence. Once you really are. Kind of grounded in feeling you're clear, you understand how you're showing up. Then you have a stronger confidence in actually delegating more work, actually in having difficult conversations. So it really does help the leader become a more grounded in and more confident in how they're leading.

20:25 Yeah, yeah, I really like this, and I've heard you say this many times. This whole idea of presence, executive presence, they call it right.

20:32 That's right. Like,

20:32 how am I walking into a room?

20:35 That's right.

20:35 Am I walking in confident? Am I walking in doubtful? Am I sour? Do I have a sour look on

20:42 my face, or

20:43 am I am I you know engaging people? Am I aware of the other people in the room and kind of where they are? And that is a you talk about it all the time, and I think it's a wonderful topic of executive presence. How are we being received by other people? What's how are people experiencing us, and are we making eye contact? Are we really listening and asking a follow up question? So, being able to to go through coaching and to grow in this area of self awareness of how you're showing up, I think, is a is a major major benefit for for leaders.

21:21 Yeah, the I've had leaders where they haven't, they didn't know how they were showing up. I had this one leader where it took me eight months to get her to a point with actually realizing, oh, that's my problem.

21:36 Wow!

21:37 And but it took eight months because it's behavior change.

21:41 Yeah, and people people feel that in the room. Yeah, they they they're they're either drawn toward you or they're drawn away from you, probably.

21:50 And the challenge that we have with leaders, whether we like it or not, is that as leaders, we you know we have to be as whether we like it or not, we have to be able to come across in a way that engages staff, and we have to come across in a way that staff feels that we care about them and that we are listening to them and that we that they're being seen, heard, and understood. And and if we that's if we don't do that, and if we're not aware of how we're showing up, and we're and and that that's not gleaning that from them, then we're having a then staff has their own. They go into a whole nother challenge.

22:33 Yeah, yeah. How does all this then? Okay, so I've I've been coached. I'm going through this program. A couple people on our team have been coached. How does that typically then show up in in the organization in terms of the way the organization functions or maybe results? What what what have you observed over the years in in that area?

22:52 One is retention. It helps to retain more staff. Staff leave more because of bad bosses than because of salary, and there's research on that. So the majority of people when they leave an organization is usually because of their boss, and so so it helps with retention because every time you turn somebody over, then it's usually double to triple their salary to bring them back on to to hire somebody new, so retaining individuals engagement just being more engaged with the tim more directional, more clear about roles, more being clear about feedback and also receiving feedback themselves, performance if a leader is gives clear direction, provides role clarity, gives expectations, people know what they need to do. Performance is is great.

23:55 Yeah, 23:56 that increases performance. Succession planning. So, what ends up happening sometimes people don't want to identify somebody to succeed them because they're worried about well, maybe they're going to take my job before I'm ready to go. But actually, a leader who's confident in themselves, they want to identify who's going to succeed them, and they want to mentor them or coach them so that they can, because that also goes back into retention for the organization again. And then when we look at it from change readiness, a leader who is confident, a leader who is good at talking, you know, being clear, they help people move along with the change that's happening in the organization.

24:47 Right.

24:48 They help them come up with the re though they get get they get them involved in the restructure, the new strategies, and they coach them along. The ones who are not really. Happy, they coach those individuals along so that the change can happen. So it's retention, engagement, performance, helps with succession planning and with change readiness.

25:12 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I figure you had seen a lot of results. You know, when you've been doing this 1015, years, a long time. You're you're going to be aware of the impact of coaching, and it is a unique impact beyond traditional training. So I'm glad you're able to share that. I want to remind everybody we got quite a group here today. Actually, if y'all want to chat some questions to Tim, or just chat questions in general for Gale, you're welcome to do that. We're going to keep chatting. Got a few more questions for Gayle, and then we'll open up some time here in you know 10 or 15 minutes or so for group questions. But if you have something on your mind right now and you want to throw it in the chat, we'll certainly ask Gayle to speak to that. I did a couple other questions here, Gayle, so why is it that we often pigeonhole only leaders or executive leaders for coaching? Right. In other words, who should be coached, and why do we often just kind of gravitate to the executive leadership when other people might need coaching, so could you kind of speak to that for a moment?

26:25 Well, I think that I think they because usually leaders are touching more people. So you have you have the independent contributor, the person who's doing their work, and but then you also have individuals, whether they're leads, supervisors, mid-management, whatever, and they're touching more people. Yeah. And the more people you touch, then the more people you need to know how to engage. So then they are engaging. You know, it's it's the cascading effect.

26:57 Yeah.

26:58 So how you show up is going to be important how their how their your directors show up, and then how their directors show up, and then you know that cascading effect. So that's I think that's why there's a lot of focus there. But keep in mind that everybody is basically kind of a leader in their own right in a lot of ways. You know, you have people who are on teams where that might be an individual contributor, but they know how to connect with people. They know how to communicate with individuals. They know how to explain things, and people will go to them, and they can be, you know. So it's kind of like the team has identified who this leader is. Yeah, I think.

27:37 Yeah, I think about. I wanted to ask you about kind of a similar question. It's like we have emerging leaders out there, right? Who are these are people we've identified in organizations that are kind of up and coming. They're they want to grow. Seems like they would be great candidates for coaching. A lot of our we do a lot of supervisory training, public works, all different departments, and seems like your supervisors are right there on the front line with those front line employees, and seems like that's an area. Again, sometimes we focus on executive leadership, but there are people down at supervisory levels and mid manager levels that that that probably need because the problem is I think a lot of folks get promoted because they're good at doing the thing right, they're good at doing the work. Now they're in a people position as a supervisor, and they just hadn't connected the dots yet. So coaching, I think, can be very beneficial for those levels of the organization as well.

28:35 And that's usually that's a lot of why I'm hired is because you're a great performer. You're a great individual contributor, or you may be great on a team. However, when they promote you, you now have been promoted into a position where you have to kind of let the other piece go and become a people manager. And I tell people, if you don't like people, don't go into leadership because you're gonna you're gonna be frustrated, and everyone else underneath you is going to be frustrated. You really do have to want to like people. You're it's really important for you to want to help people grow. It's really important for you to be clear about roles and expectations and those type of things and being really ready to hold people accountable. If you don't like those type of things, it just really hurts the tim.

29:30 Yeah, we have a really good question here in the chat, and it says, "How do you deal with those who don't want to be coached, but you are being pushed to keep coaching them by your superiors. So the person doesn't want the coaching; they're it's given to them. They got they got to take it, but they don't want it. How do? What's that? How do we speak to the coachee, or or maybe the coach? What's that? Because there's obviously some either a lack of trust, or maybe there's a personality conflict with the coach. I don't know what that might be, but have you had situations where people? I imagine you've had situations where people didn't want to be coached. Oh yeah, I've had

30:22 I've had many of the. Matter of fact, I get to a point where if they're if they're if so, there's a couple things that couple things the how in the way I approach this. One is if a supervisor leader you know mid manager is asking me to coach someone and that person doesn't want to be coached, I end up letting that supervisor know that I need to coach the supervisor as well because this individual, the the coachee, is getting coached even though they don't want to get coached. The supervisor isn't, and if the coachy even changes something, if the supervisor isn't being coached, then there's still a disconnect.

31:01 Yeah. The

31:02 other thing is, but a lot of it is that if I that's the first question I ask: Do they want to be coached? Because it's behavior change. If you don't want to be coached, then that means you don't want to change behavior. You're locked into how you want to operate, and you're not going to change. You're just not gonna. You're just not gonna do it. Now I have been able to crack some people. I have been able to get them to actually want to be coached because I allowed them to vent. I allowed them to show up the way they wanted to show up, and through that, I built enough trust where I was able to show them how coaching could be a benefit to them. So, but and that takes time, though.

31:48 Yeah, you know, I think if you were to say to me, you know, Bill, I know this is a difficult process, this coaching thing, Bill. I know you might be uncomfortable, but if we could benefit, if we could get one or two things out of this. What do you think it could be for you, Bill? So having that kind of conversation where you're you're empathizing with me, right? You're you're saying that you know you understand. I don't I don't want to be there. Yeah. Yeah. But it's it's it's it's a very hard conversation to to and and some people don't make it right. They they don't want it. So

32:20 they don't want it, and they they and I and I've told supervisors that they are not interested in being coached, and I'm not going to waste your money trying to trying to bring somebody along because I also let my coachees know this isn't my work, this is your work. So if you truly want to grow, then it's important for you to do the work. 32:38 Yeah, yeah, we have a couple other really good questions here. Yeah, Bill. There's 32:42 almost a corollary question about the generational gap. If that's if that's the challenge, I think it speaks almost to what you were talking about. If if the challenges I've got in this example, a bunch of younger employees who maybe push back against receiving feedback. How can you position coaching perhaps as a way to engage folks who are a different generational situation. Because Gayle the

33:09 Cara said, "How do you bridge a generational gap? I supervise a large number of young young adults who consider feedback as disrespect because they do not agree with

33:21 it, so anything

33:22 I don't agree with is now disrespect. So now you put up this barrier, right? Right. I can't tell you anything,

33:30 right? Right.

33:30 So how do we how do we do that? Because I you're right, Tim. Is this is a with younger folks coming into the workplace, we we need to be able to them to be able to see coaching as as helpful, right? Self illuminating, right?

33:44 Right.

33:44 Thoughts there?

33:45 Yeah. I mean, I think the what I've done with younger staff is one. I first built a relationship with them, meaning knowing who they are about their cat, about their dog. I mean, really, you know, really built relationship with them. Then I held them. I I created expectations how I needed them to show up, and been very. I was very clear about that. And so when they didn't show up that way, and we went through it, we talked about it, we did all of that, and when they didn't show up that way, I was able to use that as a way to give them feedback. You, you, you know, we talked about this. We have gone through this before. We've, you know, all of this, and now, and this still is coming up. So, how are we? So, the expectation is that you're going to operate this way, but you didn't. So how? What happened, and how do we need to change this? Because this is the expectation. So I was very clear about what expectations were, and and would give them that ahead of time for them to actually buy into them.

35:00 Kind of on that point, maybe there's two types of coaching. Like, if these are my direct reports, which is the example that Kara gave, maybe that's one level of coaching, and we think coaching is a leadership skill for sure. But but you're really talking about maybe someone outside that doesn't have a reporting relationship. Does that give you an you or someone else in advance, like if Kara had another director or another manager outside of her department connecting with her employees, could that be an approach for them to build that relationship? Because I'm kind of asking, are there two kinds of coaching?

35:34 You could. The only thing is that you don't want that person to always run to that other person. Kara's the boss, so you don't want you know it to become a triangulation thing, you know. So you don't want to do that. It's it's it's critical. But if if that's a challenge, you can always bring an external person in just to just to have those com just to get them to understand the importance. You have to with that generation relevance is huge. They need to understand the why behind everything, and so you so it's important for for for the leader or a coach or something to explain the why this is happening. When you're when that disconnect is there, they just they they, you know, we have to think about that group of that age group had parents that hovered a little bit. You know, they always everybody got you know an award, all of those things. So that feedback to them is more a you're in trouble type thing, then you know this is going to help you grow. So you have to give them that why. You have to give them that context.

36:50 Good. Yeah, we have another question here, Gayle. That you're very popular today, Gayle. Okay, this is from Carol. She says my city department is working on a career development program that staff can use to grow their careers, and we would like to incorporate a mentoring or coaching component. Any thoughts on how to identify mentors within our department? Great, great question. And Tim and I, we've we've done a little bit of work in this area too. So I may call on you, Tim, to speak into that. What what do you say about that? How do we how do we know if someone's going to make a good mentor and not just sit there and take up all the oxygen in the room? Right.

37:35 I think I think one thing is to identify you know first identify people who have been mentors before, so that they understand what mentorship is. That it isn't it isn't coming in and you know taking up all the air in the room. I think that's that's a that's one thing. Then the second one is to make sure that you understand what the goal of it is. You know what the goal of the person who wants a mentor. You know what's their goal, and identify people in the organization who can who fit in that same area, and then have them interview some individuals because the first mentor may not be someone that they connect with, and then you have two or three people that they interview with, and then identify so that they can identify who they would feel comfortable to to work with to be their mentor. But I think that one thing is really making sure that the person knows what mentorship is, because it can be it can become a whole nother a whole nother thing,

38:40 yeah. But what

38:42 about you guys?

38:43 Well, when Tim Tim Tim said something a long time, you referenced it earlier, Gayle. Tim always says, in a training set, we're facilitators. We don't consider ourselves trainers. We consider ourselves facilitators. So the more we're talking, the worse the situation. In other words, we're just not supposed to talk that much, and it's so you know we're we're so I think accustomed to speaking up and being the leader and taking charge and again taking up all the oxygen in the room. It's just kind of what a lot of folks tend to gravitate to, and so you're right. We got to let them know what's involved. What is a mentor? How does it work? The do's and don'ts.

39:29 That's right.

39:29 But I love your idea of kind of dating. You know, I'll try this mentor once. I'll try this one once, and then I'll go back, lock in on Sarah or or whoever. What do you think, Tim? Any any thoughts in terms of picking and choosing and nominations or whatever?

39:44 Yeah, I think it's a kind of a supply and demand issue, and I think you've got to build a mentor training program first. And to both your points, you've got to define the expectations for your mentors and what their boundaries are and how to do it. Give them. You got to train those folks, and I think that's where you start. You don't start with identifying people that need to be need mentors. You start with getting your your cadre of mentors built up. And as you said, yeah, how many of you have experience? How many you've mentored in the past? Great place to start. But even with those folks, I would be careful to really establish my my standards and guidelines for my our mentoring program, and you know, get those people engaged that way, and then you start to then filter in the the mentories as you've got a cadre of mentors kind of built. Yeah, 40:35 I know. You know, this whole idea of asking questions again is so foreign to so many people, and if I'm a coach, my goal is to get you to think about your challenge and solve your problem your way. As long as we get the expectation, and so even training coaches on you know here are 15 questions you can ask, right? And and here here are some things you should never say, you know, just some of that basic training, and we've we've done some of that training here at LeaderGov. So happy to help if there's a if there's a need there. Let us if y'all want to chat. Any other question? I've got just got one or two more questions for you, Gayle. Then we're going to wrap up maybe a little bit early. I want to go back and ask you. We talked about the different people in the organization that need training. How do you measure whether this coaching is working or not? What's what? What do you think about that?

41:30 Yeah. Well, you know, when measuring when you start off coaching, you identify goals, and then you help. Then you through questioning, you help them identify what would it look like if this goal is actually resolved. What does it look like if you're living in this goal, and then and then you track that. You know how are we doing that because we're remember we're we're either work meeting every week or every month or something like that. So we start tracking that, and then we also I usually talk with their bosses or I talk with their staff to see whether they see any changes because as much as we may think that we're changing you it's through the feedback that you know whether you're changing or not so that that's where the accountability comes in because you're you can say oh yeah I I listen really well and but then the feedback is they still are interrupting me well okay so you're you're trying that's a good thing but we also need to still continue to work on this 42:37 yeah you know it's the follow up it's the follow up, follow up, follow up, follow up.

42:43 Yeah.

42:44 Somebody said it earlier. We had someone from Mississippi, and I paid attention that comment because I'm from Mississippi. It was Jamie. She was talking about a mentoring program that they started in Mississippi with her association, and it was advertised and promoted, but and people ask about it, but they didn't follow up.

43:07 Yeah.

43:07 And so it's just this: whether it's following up to start it or following up to, if if we don't go back and you know inspect what we expected and see did we get the result, it's um it's really not much use, hardly.

43:21 And we do. I mean, just just to let you all know that we we do that that we do that well at LeaderGlove. We may we give context, we give some tools, but then we come back and we have several weeks of following up with people in cohorts. And I give that example just because that follow up is where the the the practice happens, but also where the learning happens. You're not going to learn. I think Bill, you say this. What 90% of what you learn goes away unless you're practicing it or something. In

43:56 30 in 30 days, you forget what you hear. You forget 90% of what you hear. It's it's it's astounding, yeah. So if it's not reinforced and followed up, you know, we just don't know. Crystal, Gayle, I'm telling you, we have more questions this time than we've ever had. So you're you're doing something good here. Let's see. Crystal has a question. She says, "I'm a staffing specialist for a utilities department, as Bill mentioned, many of our blue-collar subject matter experts are being promoted to supervisor, and they're unsure how to coach.

44:33 Yeah,

44:34 it's out of their comfort zone. Coaching is a new concept introduced in the past few years. What do you recommend executive leadership do to encourage and express this expectation? What do you do when the supervisors supervisors don't emphasize the importance of okay? Wow, this is a great question. Yeah. So we got it. All starts at the top, doesn't it, Gayle?

44:59 Starts at. The top senior leaders have to be a part of this. They have to buy into this. They have to, and and they have to be a part of helping them. You know, they have to demonstrate.

45:11 Yeah.

45:12 One thing about leaders is, you know, all of us. It's important that we we're asking staff to do a certain operate a certain way. We have to demonstrate that people don't always know how to do that, and so if you have if that's what's going on, and you're and a lot of people or you're seeing that several blue collar workers are being promoted, you may want to think about putting a coaching program together because they're not as much as you can give them a directive

45:42 to

45:43 coach. They don't know how to do it, and so if anything, you're going to have resistance. It's not going to happen. It's going to be frustrating, ongoing frustration because they just don't know how to do it. Leadership and coaching; those are skills that can be learned. Yes, you do have. You know, there are some people who are just natural born leaders, but most of the time you have to learn that skill set. Yeah, I tell people when I was 12 years, I was managing agendas and in leadership positions since I was 12. Well, so I had many, many, many, many years to perfect my leadership, and even at that time, I still needed help. So,

46:26 well, you know what's interesting? I think about to kind of to crystal's point. We have a customer. We have New York City is a customer of ours. We we work with a small agency in New York City, and we did some training. Right? It was it was like an eight month program, and some of it was on Zoom, some of it was in person, and then we had a follow up program, like where we meet every quarter calendar quarter, we talk about the skills we learned, and guess who is at all of those follow up meetings?

46:58 Senior Lou,

46:59 the boss of the entire organization, and I respect that guy so much because I'm sure he has a lot of other things he could be doing than being on our little Zoom coaching these skills that we learned nine months ago. But he's there and he's engaged. He's asked. He is modeling. And to your point, Crystal, though you know, if if the very top leadership doesn't participate, model it, emphasize it, and if it's not kind of pushed down or highly emphasized, it's it's it usually doesn't work. Honestly, just to be honest with you.

47:40 Hey, Bill, how about getting a couple of these senior leaders coaches so they could experience it? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Just test it, beta test it with a couple of your senior leaders. Let them go through a coaching program, and then they might be a real advocate of it if they could experience it firsthand. Yeah. And and

47:57 some sometimes you have to hear that from an outside source that you know, this is kind of the way it it needs to be. We have a program called Teamwork Summit. It's a video-based training program around local government teams, and the cities and counties that use that program the best are the ones that use it at the senior leadership level first.

48:19 Yeah, yeah.

48:20 And then the senior leaders get their directors to use it. The directors get their managers to use it. The managers, I mean, but if I'm bought in at the top, it's probably going to work.

48:31 Yeah.

48:31 So well, and

48:33 and that's because those those leaders believe in the investment in in their employees. Right.

48:38 That's right. And they

48:39 and they believe the growth. They understand that an organization is only as good as its leaders, right? Yeah.

48:44 Yeah. They

48:45 make sure that that they are demonstrating as a leader. I'm participating, and and I want you all to participate like I am. So they're demonstrating how they want things. They're they're creating the expectation.

49:00 And Gayle, perhaps this is kind of an insurance policy, right? Maybe this is a very inexpensive insurance policy. You know, I've invested in this big leadership development program, and you know, I'm going to overlay a coaching program, not for the whole organization, but for selected individuals, as a way to kind of increase the likelihood of success of my leadership program, right? Because it's kind of all about. You said coaching is all about accountability. So, if I could follow up my leadership program with a with a coaching initiative, it might help cement some of the concepts that my team learned in their leadership program.

49:34 That's correct. Very much so.

49:36 Thank you, Gayle, for your wisdom and your expertise here. This is awesome. You can I can tell you've been doing this for a long time, and you're a little bit you're a little bit passionate about it too, which is yeah a

49:47 little bit.

49:50 Now I am the salesperson at LeaderGov. Tim would not want to have this conversation, but I'll go ahead and have it if we do offer coaching. We also offer a program to help you establish a coaching program. Okay, so we can coach your individual leaders, no problem, happy to do it, would love to do it, or we can help you establish a mentoring and coaching program of your own. So if you are interested in either of those two things, just email Gayle or me. It's very simple. It's Gayle@leadergov.com or Bill@leadergov.com, and we'll get get with you. But you know, $1,500 to invest in a person's career that's going to have an impact over the next 3456, years of their career, that's a pretty modest investment, honestly. I mean, it. So you know, we really would would encourage it. We also this third bullet here. We do meet with the manager before and after, just to kind of understand the lay of the land and provide some general feedback on the coaching process at the end of the at the end of the program, and and oftentimes our coaching includes a disc assessment and things of that nature. So anyway, we wanted to just provide a little bit of. I know some of you all had asked earlier, you know, how much does this cost? Can you do it? That kind of thing. So that's that. So yeah, if you want, we are going to have another workshop. We don't have it on the calendar yet, so you all are all probably getting our emails on Thursdays. If you're not getting our emails, let us know. We'll put you on the list. We have we do this about every six weeks, so that would be probably early December. I don't know if we'll have one or not with the holidays. We'll see, but you all are welcome to come. It costs you zero, and if you want to stay on when we get done, just just hang around. Just just stay on the Zoom, and we'll chat with you and talk. And if you want to get a hold of us again, these are our emails. You're welcome to to give us give us a call. We're here to serve you. You're our local government folks. We love you and we care about you. We want to support you any way we can. So, thank you very much, Gayle. Thank you. You did a great job. It was awesome. Thank you

52:12 so much.

52:12 Yeah, yeah. Take care, everybody.