[S11E6] Don't Let's Start

Jim Collison 0:18Called to Coach is a resource for those who want to help others discover and use their strengths. We have Gallup experts and independent strengths coaches share tactics, insights and strategies to help coaches maximize the talent of individuals, teams and organizations around the world. If you're listening live and you don't see the chat room, there's a link to it right above me there. I'll take you to YouTube, where you can sign in there. And we'd love to have your questions in chat. If you have questions after the fact, you can always send us an email: coaching@gallup.com. Don't forget to subscribe to Called to Coach on your favorite podcast app or right over there on YouTube as well, so you never miss an episode. Jacque Merritt is my guest today. Jacque is a Subject Matter Expert and Senior Consultant here at Gallup. And Jacque, always great to be with you. Welcome back to Called to Coach!Jacque Merritt 1:02Hey, Jim, thanks. It's fun to be here.Jim Collison 1:05Great to have you. In the coaching community, you're kind of famous, so every -- but maybe not everybody knows who you are. So give us your give us your Top 5, And then, what do you do for Gallup? What do we pay you to do?Jacque Merritt 1:17Yep, so my Top 5 are Woo, Maximizer, Input, Focus and Connectedness. And what do I get paid to do? So I have, I'll tell you a little bit about myself. I'm in Omaha, Nebraska. I'm in my home office today. If I was on the Riverfront, I'd be, like, with about 200 other Gallup associates. And I have actually been at Gallup for 34 years. So Jim and I were just having a good conversation around our associates in Asia. And I was thinking back -- I worked in Singapore for a couple of years, I worked out of our Irvine office for a couple years. I worked out of our Lincoln, Nebraska, office for, for many, many years, and finally ended up back here in Omaha. And out of all those years, I've kind of been doing the same thing. Hopefully better as I've gotten more mature. But basically, my first coaching client was back in 1989. And that's when I first really kind of started having conversations with people around their strengths, around how to be more effective in their roles and leadership -- we used to run a leadership program at Gallup. It was a 6-day program. And so that's kind of where I started. And I've really just been in the same job. You know, at Gallup, most of you know that we hire people because of a certain fit, and it fit me like a glove. And so here I am, you know, almost 60 years old, doing the same thing.Jim Collison 2:51I was gonna say 29. I mean, I was trying to figure out how that all worked together.Jacque Merritt 2:56I'm trying to cash in on my maturity.Jim Collison 2:59I like it. Of the 40 hours a week, how many do you think you spend coaching leaders now? How big of that as part of your role?Jacque Merritt 3:09It's probably, let me say 75% of my role would be coaching leaders, and it's coaching them over time. So some of the leaders I have coached for 15 years. Some of the leaders I coach, you know, 6 sessions over 3 months. So it really does vary. But probably every day, I'm coaching about four different leaders in four different organizations. I also do team-building sessions, usually for the clients that I coach. So it might be part of the coaching package where we come in and work with their executive team or their leadership team and help them to know their strengths. And it really does help me, I think, in my coaching, if I know more people at the client than just the person that I'm coaching.

[S11E6] Don't Let's Start

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Jim Collison 4:01No, that's great. You spend a lot of time talking to and coaching leaders -- we're talking about how to coach leaders more effectively today. As we think about this, and this is the end of a 5-part series we've been doing as we've launched the CliftonStrengths for Leaders Report. And in each one of these, we've kind of started off with this question, and it's been interesting to hear people's different take on it. But as we think about leader, leadership and management, can you talk a little bit about how you see the difference maybe between leaders and managers, in your role in what you do in coaching?Jacque Merritt 4:38Yeah, and maybe I'll start with leaders. Because I think, I mean, what I love about that is that there is no right answer. You can't really look it up in a book. And there's no definitive body that says, "This is what leadership is and this is what management is." So even when I'm coaching my clients, and they come into the, you know, opportunity, saying, "I want to be a more effective leader," the first question I might have for them is, "How do you define leadership?" Because I really want to see from their, you know, lens, how they think about it. But if I would take leadership, I think the shortest way that I could define it is it's helping people to enable a more positive future. So "helping people to enable a more positive future" is words that I learned from one of my colleagues. And I think she read it somewhere. And I don't know, it was so short and sweet that it kind of stuck with me.Jacque Merritt 5:39And I, you know, just to expand on that, I think it's really about helping people believe in themselves; helping them believe in each other; helping them to believe in the organization and, ultimately, believe in the vision, and use that to move people into action. So I think it's got kind of a broad, a broad lens on it. It's got a broader scope than management. And I want to, I want to go back to that CliftonStrengths for Leaders Report. Because I have watched some of the previous podcasts. And I know we talk about the fact that we didn't put a leadership framework in there. We didn't say like, this is what you should be going for. But we do drop some clues in there of what -- how we would define leadership and how leaders should think about leadership, as they start to look at their reports. And so I pulled that page, and I've got it here in front of me. And because a lot of you listening might not have your own reports yet or may have not seen the sample yet, I just wanted to share with you the way that we kind of positioned it. Because I think it's helpful as you help people navigate through the report. So oh, you've got it there. You're one step ahead --Jim Collison 6:53Modern technology, right? This is my report -- just full disclosure: This is my report.Jacque Merritt 6:59Oh, beautiful. OK, too bad it's so small, I can't see it, or I'd probably start coaching you, Jim.Jim Collison 7:05Oh, yeah, well, maybe I'll just leave it small, then.Jacque Merritt 7:09So what I love about this is it starts by saying, "Leadership is a way of, a way of working, a way that you show up for others. It's a, it's service-oriented and requires you to be at your best." So when you think about service-oriented, we orient toward like a servant-leader model. That's what we were thinking about when we wrote this report. It's about doing things for the benefit of individuals, benefit of the organization. And then it says, "It's your responsibility to communicate the vision, build a positive culture and show up as the strongest leader you can be." So "culture" -- that's dropped in there, I think, on this page, about three different times. So you get the feeling like that's the, that's the perspective or that's the scope of leadership is to think about organizational culture. And then it says, "Before you lead others, you must know how to lead yourself." So it's also about knowing self is part of leadership. Being able to show up for others is showing up for yourself first in the ways that you want to show up.Jacque Merritt 8:18And then if you zoom down to the bottom of the page, it says "Use Them," right, and it's talking about using your strengths. And it says, "Your leadership style comes through in everything you do; you are the main contributor to your culture. With your role comes great responsibility, which means you'll need to use your strengths to both focus on the details of your organization while also being able to see everything holistically." So there you're getting that clue that leadership is about being able to zoom in and zoom out, kind of being able to pop up and see kind of how things are interrelated, but also get down on the, on the dance floor and be able to swing people around a bit. And then it says, "Regardless of your specific strengths, you can and should use them to accomplish every goal, guide every interaction and build your organization's culture to succeed like never before."Jacque Merritt 9:13So you get this sense of responsibility, responsibility for what's happening at an organizational level. And that's really, I think, the differentiator with management is management's more focused on, Who am I with my team? How am I engaging my team, influencing my team, leading my team? So it has more of a, a little bit more of that relational component to it. And leadership is relational. You know, you don't have leaders without followers. So it is a relationship at least between two people. But I think that's where it kind of divides, maybe, is we used to use an old framework. And this one, it sticks with me in everything I do. And it looks like a bullseye. And in the middle was Leading Self. The next layer out was Leading Your Team. And then the next layer out was Leading Your Organization. And we even had another layer, which was Leading Your Community or Leading the Marketplace. And then for leaders who are about to retire, we would talk about Leaving Your Legacy, right? So if you think about those circles, and you think about, like, what circles you're responsible for, the leader really has all those circles. And the manager primarily has the Leading Self and Leading Teams circle. Does that kind of make sense, in terms of what other people have said?Jim Collison 10:42Yeah, it's a great answer. Well, and everybody approaches it a little bit differently. We spoke with Jeremy about this, Robert Gabsa we spent some time, Austin and Therese, who wrote the report, we all talked about this. And I just find it interesting, and I think what you read off the report means that coaches need to, I think, understand their own leadership style first, right, going into this -- being able to define it for themselves, being able to work through it in a way that makes sense to them. I've said throughout this: You can't take someone a place you've never been before. And so I would encourage our coaches and those, those coaching strengths to get, get, you know, we created the series for you, to kind of dig in and be able to, to understand your own first. How important do you think it is, you know, the Leader Report has Top 10, as well as the Sales Report and the Manager Report -- we went Top 10. First ever, I got asked that, I got asked to create those kinds of reports forever. Like, hey, when can we get Top 10? Well, it's available now. And when you're coaching managers, I know you prefer to have 34. But is there a difference between only having -- or having 10 and only having 5 when you're coaching them? How does that work for you, if it's between 5 and 10 -- better, better to have 10 for you?Jacque Merritt 12:03Better to have 10, for sure. It completes the picture. Like even when you asked me, "What's your Top 5?" Like, I felt like I was leaving half of myself off, like half of me was off the table. Like I didn't get to say the other half. And I don't need to say it, but I'm just thinking, like, when you see -- and I do this in team sessions. I actually will do a slide when I'm doing a team session, and I will say, "Meet -- " and there's like a little figure, an icon of a person, and then I'll put up their Top 5. And the Top 5 is actually the Top 5 of the team, but they don't know that. And I'll say, "What would you see -- if this person walked in the room, what, who would you see? Like what would you expect? What's predictable? What assumptions can you make?" And they'll start describing this person if they walked in the room, right?Jacque Merritt 12:56And then the next slide, I'll add 6 through 10. And I'll say, "How does it change? What's your perception? What's your prediction change?" And they always have a lot more of the story to tell about that person if they have 6 through 10. And then I'll, you know, do the big reveal, like, Who do you think this is? And some of them might guess it, you know, but they're always like, Oh, that's us! You know. But when they can describe those patterns around 10 themes, it just gives a lot more complexity, a lot more richness. There's a lot more to talk about. And for, I think, I think it's very situational how our themes show up. Like we all know, if we go through it multiple times, it's going to be roughly similar. Like things jump around a little bit within that Top 10, maybe even drop down a little bit. So, you know, I think, to not get hung up on that list in a linear way. But to use more of that strengths wheel -- which I think is a game changer on that last page of the report -- really gives a lot more options for people to think about. Like how do I intentionally use my themes and put some of them ahead of others when I need them? Like I don't always want to be, just because my Woo is No. 1, I don't want that to be my leading theme all the time. I want to, I want to dig down to my Responsibility and Individualization too.Jim Collison 14:25I want it to be my No. 1 all the time. I'm just gonna put that out and -- Woo, for me. Since you said it, the chat room is asking for it. So they'd love to hear your 6 through 10. And maybe how any -- you mentioned a little bit in that, but can you get your, can we get your 6 through 10?Jacque Merritt 14:42Yeah, so I have Ideation. I have Strategic. I have Positivity. I have Responsibility and Individualization. So for me, it completes the picture because it kind of brings in a little bit more of that like creative thinking side, I think. When people see the word "Focus," sometimes they think, you know, like, I'm just like on a one-lane highway. And I think it just kind of opens it up a little bit more -- at least for me, that's the way I think about it. Like I can either narrow or I can go broad.Jim Collison 15:15Love that. I love that. I, 6 through 10, I have Relator, Developer and Individualization, which, so I make this big deal about Woo and Positivity and Communication being out front. And yet for me, 6 through 10, there's these developing, Relationship Building, developing people strengths, which is what I do for the community behind the scenes, right. So this is the forward-facing bit, the behind-the-scenes stuff -- a great way, I think, with 6 through 10, to be able to explain those. You just did that a minute ago; I'm doing that right now of, and I just think that's the power of getting 10. 34 opens it up even more. And so let me encourage folks, if you can, get them, those you coach or you yourself, the All 34 Report that opens up even more, you know, even more possibilities.Jacque Merritt 16:04Yeah, I even saw, like, when you just explained your, the next themes, I saw your mission. I saw like your purpose of doing this. The, you talked about it as kind of what you do behind the scenes, but I saw why you do it. And I think when I look at the Leadership Report, you get clues to that about a person. So if you get this for a leader that you're coaching, you're seeing kind of how they see themselves; you're seeing their identity. And you're also seeing how others might perceive that identity, right? Like how they show up in maybe positive and negative ways, how that contributes, how that impacts others, how that can impact the organization. So, like, there's so much richness, I think, in that Leadership Report that gives you a lot to coach on and gives that person a lot to think about.Jacque Merritt 17:02Like, if you, if you read your own report, kind of as a starting point, you're going to see kind of that almost like that framework behind the scenes there. You're going to see things about leading self; you're going to see things about leading the team; you're going to see things about leading the organization. And you're also going to see what's going to get in their way. And then you're going to see like suggested actions that they can take. And that's the, that's the thing. People come into this always saying, What do I do with this? And I think the report does a great job of saying, Here's what you do. Here's, here's where you're at your best. 041b061a72