Over the years, I have worked with a variety of coaching clients but when I get to work with a colleague in the HR field, it makes it even more interesting. “Scott” offers services that overlap some of mine, but we have some areas where we differ. The challenge he presented for our coaching sessions was about managing his time when meeting with his own clients.
Having a DiSC® style of “ID”, Scott would tend to move quickly, be creative, engaging, gregarious, eager but could tend to be a bit disorganized and not always use his time productively. With Scott’s passion for his clients, he said that he struggled with spending more time in meetings with them, often at the cost of not completing tasks or getting home on time for dinner. Remember I said earlier that working with peers in my HR world can be interesting. The thing is, Scott knew what he needed to do; as he would recommend that very advice to someone else but when it came to himself, he wouldn’t follow his own device.
As an objective partner in one’s success, as a coach, I can offer suggestions or even say something out loud that they know they need to hear but may not like hearing. My recommendation was that he set a “hard stop” for his meetings. If he plans to meet for one hour based on the agenda items that need to be covered, at the beginning of the meeting, he announces that to his clients. And when he gets down to the last quarter-hour, he announces that there are 15 minutes left. It’s time to recap what they’ve accomplished and what may still need to be done or saved for another time. This will guide them and protect him and his time. The thing is that Scott knew that it’s what he needed to do but hearing it from someone who is going to hold him accountable, at least for the short term, encouraged him to do the right thing and he claims to have been successful. Ironically, our paths crossed at a professional meeting last summer. I asked him how it was going and he claims it was still working; albeit challenging to do, but he saw the benefit and stuck to it.
“Coaches and the people they coach know that for the future to be different, we need to change the way we do things in the present…. More often, changes involve shifts in attitudes, thinking, perceptions, and behavior.” – Gary Collins