Put Me In, Coach!

The CX Leader Podcast: "Put Me In, Coach!": Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Download the “The CX Leader Podcast: "Put Me In, Coach!" audio file directly.

The CX Leader Podcast: "Put Me In, Coach!": this wav audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Pat:
A good coach motivates players, fosters teamwork and builds up a strong, resilient and hopefully winning team. How can that mindset help a business team or specifically a CX team?

Drew:
Once you put on that coach hat, it not only empowers you as a leader of a team, but it empowers your team. Powerful teams have a group of individual contributors and a coach that's driving that group in a shared direction.

Pat:
We'll dive into CX coaching methods on this episode of The CX Leader Podcast.

Announcer:
The CX Leader Podcast with Steve Walker is produced by Walker, an experience management firm that helps our clients accelerate their XM success. You can find out more at walkerinfo.com.

Pat:
Hello everyone, I'm Pat Gibbons, today's host for The CX Leader Podcast, and thank you for listening. It's never been a better time to be a CX leader, and we explore the topics and themes to help leaders like you develop great programs and deliver amazing experiences for your customers. In 1989, Everett and Selman put together the idea of looking at managers as coaches, and they said it creates a better culture for employees. They say, quote, "coaching focuses on discovering actions that enable and empower people to contribute more fully, productively and with less alienation than the control model entails." End quote. Well, you know, that seems like an approach that has a great deal of relevance for CX leaders. A lot of these skills translate directly to leading a CX team in a company, or even guiding the whole organization to get on board with CX initiatives. Well, our guest today is a colleague of mine at Walker who has worked with many CX leaders and many CX teams. He's a vice president and team lead in our advisory and managed service group. Coach Drew, welcome to The CX Leader Podcast.

Drew:
Yeah. Thanks, Pat. I'm really glad to be here. And this couldn't be a more interesting and appropriate and exciting topic as a team lead and coach myself.

Pat:
Well, you know, I think it is a great time to discuss this topic because anybody that's in business been in business for a while, they know there's a big difference from being an individual contributor versus a role where you're a manager or a coach of others and the CX industry, it's just rapidly maturing. And so a lot of these individual contributors are being asked to step into roles as managers and leaders and coaches. And, you know, they're they may not be set up with that. I don't know, out in the field. Do you see that as well?

Drew:
It's really hard to do just to change your mindset from being someone on the field, a player driving towards the goal or the hoop, or pick your sports metaphor and actually winning the game versus the coach who's on the sideline and not allowed on the field, and that drive to want to deliver, to want to win and be that individual contributor is actually really difficult and challenging to manage internally. And I certainly fight that urge on a daily basis. But once you embody the persona of coach, knowing that it's your job to enable your team member to be their best and perform at their best, the the gratification you get in your career is is a different and beyond what you get as an individual contributor.

Pat:
Yep, yep. So I don't want to skip over the fact that let's let's give a little bit of your background because I mentioned your role at Walker, but you have a lot more CX experience than that. Just take us through your career.

Drew:
Yeah, sure. Um, I discovered customer experience maybe 15 years ago during an internship program. I was working with Cisco Systems, and Walker was, in fact, the organization that was helping guide and lead that program. Flash forward 15 years now I'm a team lead at Walker, so it's a real…

Pat:
Who would have thunk, you know? Right?

Drew:
No. But between then and now, I've had a number of individual contributor gigs and there's a lot of CX folks know you're really on an island for a while in an organization. You're either relying on external consultants or it's a second component of an existing job you have. And as organizations climb that maturity ladder, there's absolutely a stage where there's not a big team and it depends on individual contributors. So I was probably at 3 or 4 organizations in that individual contributor role before I got into coaching, which wasn't through CX. It was through contact center as a secondary gig I was doing CX and contact center. And that's where I first got the the understanding of the difference between contributing directly and leading a team. And certainly there are behaviors from that control model where you need to manage risk and manage time and do the classic manager stuff. But once you put on that coach hat, which has really been, you know, critical for me in my career at Walker, we call our leaders coaches, right. My slack nickname is Coach Drew. It's not Drew or Manager Drew. And we really embody that. And I'm glad we're talking about that today to encourage other CX leaders to take that mindset because it not only empowers you as a leader of a team, but it empowers your team to see that it is up to them to contribute. And you can't do this. You could try to do them, but that would reduce you back to individual contributor. When powerful teams have a group of individual contributors and a coach that's driving that group in a shared direction, and when we win, we all win together.

Pat:
Yeah, yeah. Now. So you've worked with a number of organizations, you've worked with a lot of different teams. And I think I'm going to guess you've seen some really good coaches. So I'd like you to maybe think of 1 or 2. You don't have to say their names, but maybe describe them and tell us about what what made them so good.

Drew:
Sure. And and we could spend countless hours on the, the influential coaches I've had in my career. And I hope a few of them are listening to this podcast now. You probably know who you are, but I think it comes down to trust. Fundamentally the first, the critical factor in a good coach player relationship is trust. You have to trust your player is going to do everything they can to do the job. And I said that specifically because they may have skills and abilities that aren't perfect for one job, but might be perfect for another job. And my good coaches have have observed me and have worked with me to build my skills, to give me the experiences, to put me in the best positions, to be as productive and value creating as I can be. Which is what you would want your coach to do, is help you succeed. So I've had a lot of great examples of that, and there's even a really powerful image. It's called the Triangle of Success. And sort of each point is one of the behaviors or attributes I guess you'd call them, that define a player's success. And the more you can expand on these, the larger the triangle gets and the more success you'll have.

Drew:
One of those is skills, right? Do you know do a good job? Do you have the training? And a good coach should help their team build the skills through structured or unstructured approaches. The second dimension of that triangle is experience. And a good coach, my good coaches have found opportunities to expand my experience. Sure, when someone does one thing really well, why would you not want them to do that? But there are synergies. There's economies of scope, economies of scale. The best coaches expand a teammates exposure to practices, processes. This is one of the things I love at Walker and as a consultant is you're exposed to a lot of different experiences that then all come together. And then the last one is attitude. And this is probably the one piece that a coach can't directly coach. They have to really watch and observe attitude and where you find your teammates really coming to life and getting energized and their attitude is productive. That's the key behavior that once you find that attitude fit for someone on the team, with the jobs and tasks that need to get done, you can really unlock the power of your team.

Pat:
Yeah, yeah. Do you see some of the pitfalls or common mistakes that some coaches can make in the CX world?

Drew:
Yeah, I think the first, again, is struggling with that desire to be an individual contributor.

Pat:
Yeah, that's where I was. That's what I was thinking. Right. Yeah. I mean you still want to do it all. You know, you want to do the analysis. You want to design the the approach.

Drew:
You wouldn't really elevate to team lead if you didn't have those skills and experiences yourself. And so there's this challenge a coach has, which is I could probably do that faster. Right? I might even be able to do that better. And if that internal dialog, you have to, you have to form a dialog with yourself that says, I need to be patient. I need to coach my team to get there themselves. I can't step onto the field and score this goal.

Pat:
Yeah.

Drew:
So it changes your perspective fundamentally. And that's the number one mistake young coaches make is they still try to play rather than focus on coaching and building a new set of skills which are completely different than individual, individual contributor skills. And that's probably the number one challenge.

Pat:
Yeah, yeah. And I think that that can really take you when you get into the weeds, it takes you away from directing the vision or you know, how this connects to the business, which I think is another key part of being a good coaches, is you got to be able to explain how this all relates and get your team to embrace that right?

Drew:
100%. And then to your earlier point that coaches are in addition to coaching their players, there's also organizational coaching that needs to occur. And to do that, you can't be narrowly focused on what the team is doing today. You have to think about where the team could go tomorrow, right? I'd imagine that most football coaches are thinking about the Super Bowl on Game one, but I'll have to play game one to get to the Super Bowl. Right? So, and to get to the Super Bowl takes support from the training staff, from the marketing department, from everyone in the organization to build the culture and momentum, to support the players, to create fans, to, to to bring energy into the room or to the stadium per se. So you, you, you're opening up a very important you know, we could we could probably chat about this one for a bit and how in terms of how do coaches build awareness of what the team is capable of to position them for further success and really do both at the same time? Grow your team in a steady way that meets the skills and experiences and future direction, while not promising too much and putting your team in a place where they're going to fail because you missed on the skills and capabilities.

Pat:
Right. And I think when the when the goal becomes more than just, hey, we're running a listening program and we want to do it well, but it becomes a bigger thing that here's why we're doing that and here's how it's impacting the business. I think a team can get behind that because they they suddenly see themselves as, you know, not just a cog in the wheel, but an important critical element in how the business works.

Drew:
A very, very important point, right? We start with why. And the why does make sense at a listening post program level. Right. We want to listen to our customers or partners or employees or patients or students, and we want to improve their experience. That's that's a why that I can get behind and that I know most people, if not everyone listening to this podcast are behind. It's figuring out then, though, as a coach, how to communicate the bigger why, how that small "why" impacts the bigger "why" of creating an organization that's known for delivering great experience or disrupting an entire space and and gaining new customers and keeping our current thing of growing our existing customer base because of the differentiated, the differentiated experience we're able to offer through those programs. And that doesn't happen by the program itself, right? Coaches need to again, bring in the organization to support the team, because the team is going to have its skills, it's going to have its abilities. Right? And and cross-functional dynamics are incredibly important to getting to that higher value.

Pat:
Do you see things that CX coaches can do when, I guess, when they're bringing somebody in to this new role, kind of a first 90 days thing, are there certain things that a coach can do that can really set somebody on the right path?

Drew:
100%. And this might be counterintuitive, but you observe, you observe and you watch, right? You can complement, you can find some constructive criticism, but you have to give yourself enough time to really understand the team members skills, their experience, and then again, their attitude.

Pat:
Yeah.

Drew:
And that can't be done on day one. And so to try to force feed trainings or structure workloads, it's it's going to be counterproductive to really finding the right place and purpose for that team member. And it might require shifting some other players on the team around. You might think you hired a defender, but you've got a great offender, right? So that's going to score those goals, not protect not protect the goal.

Pat:
Yeah. So let's think a little broader than just the team because a CX leader also has to in a sense coach the broader organization so that they kind of understand what's going on. How do you see that role playing out? And again, reflecting on some of the people you've worked with in the past or clients you've worked with, anybody come to mind that you think does a good job of that?

Drew:
Oh, a lot of organizations I've seen do really great jobs, and they all do it a bit differently. So there's no silver bullet on how to coach your organization because they're all different. But that's good enough answer, right?

Pat:
Yeah. That's not a good enough answer. Come on man.

Drew:
No it's not. I think the thing that regardless of the way an organization's structured and how the teams are organized, it has to be about communicating where the team is at and what the team is capable of today, and not over promising the future, but really being tactical in how we execute on a bigger strategy. So making the right promises, finding the right research or the right white paper or the right podcast to put on someone's desk and say, hey, would you take a listen to this, tell me what you think, and then start the conversation about whether or not the team can help support these additional organizational efforts that will that, you know, you got to again prove what the value of that is, right? So improve the experience, reduce some support costs, gain new market awareness and traction. So I guess the specific tactic I've seen really work is the sharing of information, the exposing the other teams to the practice areas, the methods that a CX team knows intimately. Right. Basically building their skills, the the rest of the organization skills around those activities to appreciate what your team does at, you know, at the professional level.

Pat:
Right.

Drew:
Everyone should know how to kick a soccer ball around. But when you want to win the game, you bring in the professionals.

Pat:
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think, you know, a coach at the broader level where they're being influential in the organization, I think in CX it can be both reactive and proactive. There are things that an organization will be hopefully requesting of you, hey, I'm working on these things and I need to understand what my customers are saying. And there's times where the CX team and the coach leading it has to say there are things this organization needs to do, and we're going to be the ones leading the way, you know? So I think it's kind of a dual role which which can be difficult because then you've got to align your resources appropriately. Right?

Drew:
Yeah. And you're right I think they talk about presidents as suffering from this challenge. What are you going to do in your first 100 days? Right on the campaign trail, you hear all the promises, but the first 100 days are reacting to the nature of the organization, trying to figure out what the dynamics are, solving problems that haven't been solved. And so that's probably to go back to what are some of the early things coaches can do to set them and the team up for success? It's to really assess what the reactive needs are for the organization. Let's call them quick wins.

Pat:
Yeah.

Drew:
Right. We don't need to sell the future and then deliver on it. We need to just do the things that need to get done, and that does to some degree challenge the coaching of the players. And so you need to be thoughtful in constructing the why statements to ensure that the attitude is still there to deliver on the things that can be, you know, not the most exciting things about a gig, right? Building more pages and segments of a report than you thought were needed or wanted to do, right? Taking the time to to watch web journeys and work with the software engineering team on fixing that part of the e-commerce process that that you know, that that hurts checkout… the checkout journey. And so there's always there's there's always what we want to do, but that has to be balanced with what needs to get done. And I think the role the coach plays is ensuring that the why and the purpose of how that translates to bringing value to the organization is clear to both the players and everyone else in the.

Pat:
Yeah, yeah. What about resources? As a CX coach, if I'm looking for help, assistance, advice, where are places they can turn?

Drew:
You know, there's lots of, I think, sources for inspiration. I find as a coach, I, I look to sporting leagues and I look to sporting stories. There's lots of great stories of the might have been the the Bulls have some great I think their documentaries around the coaching staff and how they built great teams. So the point there is the lessons on being a great coach are are just as far as typing in great coaching stories, and you're going to be reading about sports because coaches are typically defined in sporting places. And those metaphors and analogies are are true. Um, I'm not sure if that's the question you or we're asking as much as how to go get guidance on becoming a great coach and finding some lessons, or if it was on materials coaches can use inside their organizations.

Pat:
Well, I think I can look at it from two levels. One is just being a good coach, no matter what topic you are, whether you are coaching a marketing team, an ops team, a, you know, whatever kind of team. Yeah, there are a number of resources, books, that sort of thing. I think then there are some related to just simply CX. Obviously there is a growing number of conferences out there that can be an inspiration and give you some advice on techniques, and it is an opportunity to network with others. There's our association, of course, the CXPA that has a lot of great materials, and they have if you're in a relatively big city, they have networking groups that I think there's sometimes from a practical standpoint, nothing better than being able to team up with somebody in a networking group.

Drew:
Those are perfect resources for coaches to be encouraging their team members to engage with. And I think it comes down to the principle that a coach can't be everything. Coaches need to know that there are limits to our own knowledge and our own experience, and just because we're the coach doesn't mean we're always right or we know what's best. And so, exposing your team members to the discussion forums at CXPA or Local Insight exchanges, local meetups is critical to not only drive skill development, but exposure to different experiences. Folks have had. You learn by listening, right? And I've only had the experiences I've had. And then of course, when when as a young person in CX if you're an individual contributor on a team, knowing that there's other people working on similar projects in different organizations is really a club of folks that it's, you know, the industry has grown tremendously in the last ten years, but we're still relatively small. We're still a relatively bespoke practice inside organizations that not everyone understands. So being part of a larger community is absolutely the type of resources that we as coaches need to be providing and focusing then on the skills that you need to develop to be a great practitioner, right? A basketball player needs to be able to shoot a good three pointer, and we need to be able to pick out what those opportunity areas are for our team members, and then guide them towards those resources in the forums or in the thought leadership whitepapers in our podcast library to bring exposure to those skills and then to coach on progress. I think that's the most important thing, is coaches need to know what pushing too hard looks like and what not pushing enough looks like.

Drew:
The coach can't always say, well, good job, you did your best, right? That's maybe when we're coaching like Little League, but we're professionals in the big leagues and there is a desired level of effort we need to see our team members put out – a needed level of skill. And I think a coach's job is to identify that. That was my first 90 days, right? Figure out your team members skill sets and then put the skills that are mature enough into use, and then really build a plan to help your team develop the skills that they don't have. Right? Have a practice. Do things outside of client or customer facing activities, where you create a safe space for your team to to try things out, to take risks, to fail, but to do it where they know you as a coach are trying to help them succeed. It builds a really strong bond, something very different than a manager employee bond. A coach player bond might only be exceeded by a mentor mentee bond, which is where I think coaching gives you the opportunity to go is not just coaching for the performance of the job you're in, but really helping make a career out of the work you're doing. And I think that's an opportunity great coaches have is to grow into long term career mentors, and I'd like to think those coaches of mine I had when I was an individual contributor are still mentors, coaching my continued career. Yeah, I wouldn't trade those relationships for anything.

Pat:
That's excellent. Well, we've come to that part of the show where we ask the big question, the hallmark of The CX Leader Podcast. And that is we ask you for one tip to take home value for our listeners. So, Drew Hall, what's your take home value for today?

Drew:
This is my favorite part of the podcast and always the hardest to come up with, because you want it to be a good one. My take home value for any coaches that have a team they're working with is to not worry about your skills and what you're accomplishing, but to focus on what your team is accomplishing and to grade your own success by the quality of work your team puts out and how far they're able to go, not how far you're able to go.

Pat:
Fantastic. Fantastic. Drew, thanks for for being on The CX Leader Podcast. I'm sure people can find you on LinkedIn if they want to continue the conversation. I'm sure you would always enjoy that.

Drew:
I do. We do have some fun post conversation discussions. In fact, I'll probably post this podcast and ask for comments and replies. What did I get wrong? What did I get right?

Pat:
Wonderful. It's all learning for all of us. So. So again, thanks for being on the podcast.

Drew:
My pleasure.

Pat:
And if any of our listeners want to talk about anything you heard on the podcast or how Walker can help your business customer experience program, feel free to email us at podcast@walkerinfo.com. Remember to give The CX Leader Podcast a rating through your podcast service and give us a review. Your feedback will help us improve the show and deliver the best possible value to you, our listeners. Check out our website cxleaderpodcast.com. You can subscribe to the show. You can find all our previous episodes, our podcast series, a link to our blog which we update regularly, and contact information so you can let us know how we're doing. The CX Leader Podcast is a production of Walker. We're an experience management firm that helps companies accelerate their XM success, and you can read more about us at walkerinfo.com. Thank you for listening and remember, it's a great time to be a CX leader and we'll see you next time.

Sonix is the world’s most advanced automated transcription, translation, and subtitling platform. Fast, accurate, and affordable.

Automatically convert your wav files to text (txt file), Microsoft Word (docx file), and SubRip Subtitle (srt file) in minutes.

Sonix has many features that you’d love including collaboration tools, automated subtitles, enterprise-grade admin tools, automatic transcription software, and easily transcribe your Zoom meetings. Try Sonix for free today.