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Brief
12 Plays1 year ago
Language is a crucial skill for a coach, especially our ability to be brief, concise, and clear. What are the reasons why we have difficulty being brief with our language? Using points from Joseph McCormack's book "Brief: Make a Bigger Impact by Saying Less," Elias gives us an opportunity to reflect on and become more skillful and intentional with our language.
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Transcript
Welcome to Prime Space
00:00:03
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Welcome to Prime Space, a Prime Coaching Academy podcast with your host, Elias Scultori.
The Art of Communication in Coaching
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For some of you who have worked with me in the past, either as a student or a mentee, you probably know that one of my pet peeves in coaching is language.
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I came to this point where I began to realize that regardless of our listening, our questioning, our observations, our presence, we communicate through language in our coaching conversations with our clients.
Clarity and Conciseness
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So it is, to me, imperative that we as coaches are mindful and skillful in the way we communicate with our clients.
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And one of the primary points of this communication is the aspect of being brief, of being concise, clear in our language.
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Coaching is this process where the client is processing the
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The client is doing the work.
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So at any moment that we interject, that we feel that we are going to occupy that space, that time that the client is processing,
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We need to be mindful of utilizing that moment with the best of our abilities, not to clutter the space, not to over-utilize the space.
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We are just going to use that opportunity to support the client, nudge them a little forward so that they continue the work that they are doing in coaching.
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And this has to be done in a beautiful, I'm going to use the word artistic perhaps way, because we are building relationship with our clients.
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We are sustaining the relationship that we have already built with our clients.
Insights from 'Brief Conversation'
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So it's not that the language is going to be sterile, but the language needs to be clear, succinct, and intentional.
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So with that in mind, I always have that in mind.
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And if you've worked with me, you know that I'm always talking about that because I think it's crucial to a coaching conversation.
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So with that in mind, I bumped into a book this week that some of you may know this book already called Brief Conversation.
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Make a bigger impact by saying less Just by that title I was like, ah, that's exactly what we try to do in coaching This is a book by Joseph McCormick And I highly recommend the book I listen as an audiobook And then I got the hard copy as well
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And the reason why I'm bringing this book up, I'm not endorsing the book or I'm not making any money out of the book.
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It's just a book that I happen to see and benefit from it.
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And I thought that I was going to bring this to you here.
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One of the points that he does in the book that I so appreciate is the seven reasons why we are not brief in our language.
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And he named these seven C's.
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And some of these words are strong, but I so appreciate what is behind these seven words.
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And I'm going to give you the seven words here.
The Seven C's of Communication Challenges
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The very first one is cowardice.
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So it's a strong word, but bottom line of this is cowardice.
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We have a point to make or we have a challenging question to ask, but we are concerned on how this is going to land with the client.
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So because we are concerned about the delivery, and we should be mindful, right?
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But because of this over-concern of how we are going to deliver that particular question or how we are going to make a point, so then we start going around the bushes and we start adding words.
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And then all of a sudden our questions are...
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super long or whatever observation we want to make, these observations are long and become more complex only because we are afraid of saying what we want to say.
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So this is such a beautiful thing.
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If I am using too many words, what's happening there?
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Am I afraid of delivering that message?
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Can I simplify?
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And you can see the problem there because the more we add words, the worse it's going to become, right?
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Whatever message we want to deliver.
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So this is the first one, cowardice.
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The second one is confidence.
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It's the opposite of cowardice.
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This idea of overconfidence.
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Then there is the aspect of I am the expert.
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There is an ego involved.
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And I have to say and I have this beautiful message that I need to deliver to you.
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And then we go into very robust language and our questions become complex because of that.
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because we are confident, overconfident perhaps, in what we have to say.
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Look at me.
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This is a moment that we end up putting the spotlight on us, and that's a skill that we need to be very mindful of.
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Third one is callousness.
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And I appreciate this because one thing that we need to keep in mind, the more we use the time, the more words we use, the longer we talk,
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We are taking the time of the other.
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We are taking the time of our clients.
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So it's kind of self-centered and not being mindful of the process that is happening with the other.
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How many times I'm listening to recordings that I'm assessing and I can see that the client is there just waiting for the coach to stop because the client is ready to move on but the coach is still talking.
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So there is a disregard for the other person's time.
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So keep that in mind.
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Fourth word is, for the fourth C word is comfort.
00:06:50
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Very common, again, we as coaches are not comfortable with silence, not comfortable with pauses, not comfortable in letting the client just do the reflection, and therefore we keep talking and we add more words because it's more comfortable speaking than allowing that space to be a space of reflection for the client.
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Fifth word is confusion.
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We may be confused.
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We may not know what we are saying.
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And then we have to verbally process it.
00:07:28
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And we keep adding words because what we expressed and not exactly what we wanted to express.
00:07:33
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So we wanted to say more.
00:07:35
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So we are confused.
00:07:36
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And I always say if we are confused, if we are not quite clear during a coaching conversation, where do we go?
00:07:44
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We go back to the coaching agreement, right, to the session agreement, because there is clarity.
Improving Communication Skills
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So confusion may be what's happening there.
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Another word that he says, another reason why we may not be brief in our language is complication, overcomplication.
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We love complexity.
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If it's too simple, perhaps we don't give as much value.
00:08:07
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So we have to be complex in our language and very robust with our language because that shows how good we are.
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And we ended up making things more complex than necessary.
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Our job is to make things simple.
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And clear for our clients.
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So complication may be one of the reasons why we are not brief in our language.
00:08:33
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And the last one, the number seven word that he gives, C word that he gives around not being able to be brief with our language is carelessness.
00:08:45
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Our language in coaching needs to be intentional.
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So every word that we say needs to have an intention.
00:08:52
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And if we are being careless and not taking care or paying attention to what we are saying, we end up being complex.
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We end up being more robust than necessary.
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So anyways, those are the words there.
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Cowardice, confidence, callousness, comfort, confusion, complication, carelessness.
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Perhaps you can utilize this as a self-reflection.
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When I am being complex...
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when it's hard for me to really deliver, where am I in these concepts here from Joseph McCormick's book?
Episode Conclusion
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And that will perhaps give you an opportunity for you to summarize, confront with yourself what is truly happening there, and make sure that you use language that is simple, that is clear, that is brief, so crucial for our coaching conversation.
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So I hope that this is helpful and I hope that you enjoyed these episodes.
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Don't forget our YouTube channel that we have several books, several videos there.
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And I will talk with you next week, everybody.
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Take care.