The Power of Pressure: Read the First Chapter
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Confronting is a Coaching Conversation
Confronting is a coaching conversation. It doesn’t fit neatly with the popular notion that coaching is just about asking good questions, but watching Olympic coaches operate, as we have for 30 years, makes one thing very clear: having the courage to have a direct conversation when needed is vital to helping someone reach their highest potential. In fact, avoiding a difficult conversation about something that’s preventing a person’s success is the opposite of good coaching. That’s why confronting is one of the four core communication skills in our 3×4 Coaching model, and one that builds on the other three communication skills – questioning, listening, and feedback. It’s not the first or most frequent approach that coaches reach for, but it’s an important part of the overall coaching skill set. Knowing that you can navigate complex, high-stakes conversations is part of what underpins your confidence as a leader.
Choose Your Challenge
Having a confronting conversation with Leo is going to be challenging because I don’t want to damage our relationship. It doesn’t take tremendous courage to call up the airline after my flight was delayed and demand a refund because I only care about getting compensated, not my relationship with the customer service representative. But Leo is one of the strongest performers on my team and I want to have a good relationship after this conversation. It’s also going to be challenging because Leo has been resisting making this change and now it’s getting in the way of his success. This isn’t just a straightforward piece of feedback anymore. There are real stakes. If Leo’s behaviour continues, we could end up in the realm of more formal performance management channels.“When done effectively, these conversations can resolve the issue at hand, build the other person’s commitment to making progress, and strengthen the relationship.”It’s easy to see the threats in these conversations but there are also potential benefits. When done effectively, these conversations can resolve the issue at hand, build the other person’s commitment to making progress, and strengthen the relationship if they see you as someone who holds them to a high standard yet cares about them and respects them. So, I choose my challenge: I can avoid the conversation and deal with the fallout – Leo’s behaviour continues, our relationship becomes strained as my frustration seeps out, and I lose credibility with other people who see me allowing this behaviour to continue. Or I can face the discomfort of addressing the issue head-on and put my coaching skills to the test.
Connection Before Correction
Once I decide to address the issue, how do I have this conversation in a way that not only protects our relationship but gets Leo committed to making a change? It starts before I even enter the conversation. Often, we fall into the trap of thinking that we need to emotionally distance ourselves from the other person in order to be “tough” or objective. But it’s our relationship with the other person that’s the foundation for coaching them. I cannot coach Leo if I lose my connection to him. So rather than distancing myself, I start by strengthening my connection to Leo. I put myself in his shoes and explore the most generous, plausible story I can come up with for why he might be acting this way. Maybe he’s under a lot of pressure that is leaving him with little patience. Maybe I’m not aware of some underlying tension with his teammates. Or maybe Leo is so enthusiastic about his ideas that he doesn’t realize he’s shutting down other people. I choose the story that most strengthens my connection to Leo because it puts me in a mindset to engage in this conversation in a direct but caring way. I also need to get clear on the specific change I want to see – not all the ripple effects of Leo’s dismissive behaviour, or the fact that I’m also irritated because he was late for our team meeting yesterday – but the specific gap between what I need to see from him and what I’m currently getting.Open Strong
Next, I need to prepare my opening statement. This will set the tone and direction for the conversation. Without carefully crafting and practicing my opening, things can go sideways quickly. I could fall into the trap of starting with a sneak attack, “Well Leo, I guess you know why we’re having this conversation…” Or I might unleash my pent-up frustration and anger, leaving Leo like a deer in the headlights trying to respond. Or I might revert to the classic “feedback sandwich”, muddying my message and leaving Leo guessing at what I really mean. An effective opening is short – less than 60 seconds – and clearly articulates the specific behaviour that needs to change, the impact of that behaviour, what’s at stake if it doesn’t change, and my desire to work together to reach a resolution. “Leo, I want to talk to you about a pattern of dismissing input from your peers. For example, in yesterday’s meeting, Sarah raised a concern about the project timeline. You interrupted and said, ‘That’s not really an issue.’ I felt worried that you dismissed her question because I’ve noticed people hesitating to speak up in front of you. This can affect your ability to get the information needed to make good decisions and manage the concerns of staff. Advancing in this organization depends on your ability to build relationships and collaborate effectively. I haven’t been entirely clear on the importance of this, and that’s on me. I want to find a way to modify this behaviour. What are your thoughts?”Drop Your Agenda
After delivering my opening, it would be great if Leo said, “got it boss, no problem.” But that’s not what typically happens. I’m likely to get resistance – anger, excuses, deflection, or awkward silence. Counter-intuitively, that resistance is not something to fight against or try to “objection handle”; instead, I need to recognize that the path to a solution is through the resistance. So instead of defending my position, I drop my agenda and lean in to explore the resistance I’m getting from Leo. Questioning and listening are the critical coaching skills at this stage of the conversation. Questions to deepen and clarify my understanding of his story: Can you say more about that? Could you give me an example? What is significant about that? And active listening to draw the person out and check for understanding: So, what you’re saying is…, Let me see if I have this right… I stick with asking questions and listening until I can summarize what we call “the third story.” The third story represents all of what is true for me and what is true for Leo. It’s like I have a bucket, and I keep adding things into the bucket. I don’t take anything out and try to solve it yet. I just add things until we’ve collected all of what is true for both of us.
“So, to summarize, I need you to listen to the concerns and questions of your teammates and address them. It’s frustrating for you to have to consider other people’s concerns as you’ve already thought it all through. Further discussion is unnecessary, slows you down, and may interfere with you hitting your numbers. Do I have that right?”
I don’t necessarily have to agree with Leo’s perspective, but I need to get to a place where I understand him, where I can summarize his point of view in a way that he says, “yes, that’s it.” And if that’s not it, then I keep asking questions until we get to the core of the issue. It’s not until we reach that point that we can start problem solving.
It’s this final stage of the conversation that is often more comfortable and familiar – generating options and agreeing on a path forward. It’s best if most of the options come from Leo so that he owns how he wants to move forward but I can offer ideas as well. Together we can agree on a plan and next steps. Be sure to build in support and accountability. “What do you need from me to put this plan into action?” “Let’s schedule time to check-in and see how it’s going.”
Manage Yourself
Now, is it ever that easy? Of course not. While it’s helpful to have a map for these conversations, no matter how prepared we are, it never goes exactly how we expect. People are complicated and will almost always throw a wrench into the conversation that we never saw coming. Or they’ll do something that seems perfectly designed to get under our skin – raise their voice, roll their eyes, or say that one thing that touches our most sensitive nerve And so, a big part of the discipline of these conversations is having a plan for how we will manage ourselves in the face of the triggers that could knock us off our game. First, we need to be aware that we’re triggered in the first place. Often, we become our irritation, or our anger. Instead, we need to notice it by tuning into our internal signals – I might notice myself thinking “here we go again with the excuses,” or that my breathing has accelerated, or that I’m starting to feel impatient. These signals are like lights on your car’s dashboard. When the “check engine” light comes on, you don’t smash the dashboard – you check under the hood. The same goes for triggers in tough conversations. Get curious about what the signal is telling you and take corrective action to get yourself back on track before you respond. If we don’t notice and manage our triggers, all sorts of unintended behaviours appear, and we can become the worst version of ourselves. Things start to escalate, or the other person withdraws, and we get further and further from a resolution.The Courage to Coach When it Matters Most
Being effective in these conversations requires the very best of us. It takes self-awareness and being a big person. But the 3×4 Coaching model provides everything we need to succeed. We need to enter the conversation with a generous mindset and clarity on our objective. We deliver a clear opening statement to get the conversation off on the right foot and then drop our agenda to explore the other person’s perspective before we jump into problem solving. It isn’t always comfortable, but the goal of coaching isn’t comfort. It’s about challenging someone to reach their highest potential. It requires the courage to speak up, the patience to wade through the discomfort, and the belief that the people you’re coaching are capable of more. Rosie MacLennan is a powerhouse: she was the first Canadian athlete to defend a gold medal at a summer Olympics by winning back-to-back golds in trampoline in 2016 and 2020, she served as the Chair of the Athletes Commission at the COC and fought tirelessly for safe sport, and she has an MBA from Stanford. We were fortunate enough to have Rosie join us at our annual Third Factor client dinner a short time ago, where she shared a behind-the-scenes look at her path to Olympic triumph, the significant challenges she faced on the journey, and the tools she used to help overcome them.
Here are three lessons from Rosie’s talk that can help anyone striving for their own version of a gold-medal performance.
1: Confront failure head-on
One of Rosie’s most interesting insights was slightly counter-intuitive: when the fear of failure is strong, don’t shy away from it – lean into it. Ahead of the Olympics, Rosie consciously worked to confront the possibility of failure directly, and work through her worst-case scenario in vivid detail.“By confronting the possibility of failure, you can free yourself from its grip.”In partnership with her mental performance coach, Rosie sat down and played out two scenarios: what if things go well and I win? And, what if I stumble and fail? With these two scenarios in mind, she vividly worked through how she would feel and what her life would be like: 1 day after, 1 week after, 1 month after, 1 year after, and, eventually, 5 years post-Olympics. Rosie’s realization? Ultimately, the outcome at the Games would have little impact on her life 5 years down the road. Regardless of the outcome she would be okay. This mental exercise allowed Rosie to remove the distraction of fear from her preparation. By confronting failure head-on, she could redirect her energy from worrying about what could go wrong to focusing on what she could control. Whether you’re preparing for a major presentation, launching a new business venture, or pursuing a personal goal – instead of trying to avoid thinking about failure, take the time to visualize the negative scenario. When we “play out the full movie” what we often find is that the fear comes from the fact that we are just imagining a moment in time – an incomplete thought or image that doesn’t reflect the fullness of time. By confronting the possibility of failure, you can free yourself from its grip and focus entirely on performing at your best.
2: Embrace direct feedback
Rosie’s coach, Dave Ross, is known for a style that is extremely candid. While some athletes balked at his bluntness, Rosie saw something deeper: a genuine commitment to helping her succeed. She understood that behind his straightforward critiques was a profound belief in her potential. Instead of resisting his feedback, she consciously worked to lean into it, using it as information to unlock higher levels of performance. This ability to harness the value in blunt feedback came from her taking the time to understand Dave as a person. She took the time to look beyond personality and style to understand his values and ultimately his character. These insights didn’t just unlock her own performance, they also allowed her to help other athletes shift their perspective on Dave’s feedback by sharing her insights into what was behind his style. When you find yourself chafing at direct feedback, consider the intent of the person delivering it. Where are they coming from? What are they trying to help you accomplish? Often, others are trying to help – even when their wording or approach might trigger some reactivity.3: Use visualization to overcome obstacles
In the lead-up to the Tokyo Olympics, Rosie faced a daunting challenge: a series of serious ankle injuries that left her unable to perform her trampoline routine for weeks. In fact, she was unable to practice her full routine until one day before leaving for the Games.“When we imagine something with enough vivid detail – to our body, it’s real.”Rather than letting this setback derail her preparation, Rosie turned to the power of imagery and visualization. Unable to train physically, she trained mentally. This started with simply imagining herself bouncing on the trampoline again. She shared that, initially after the injury, every time she would close her eyes and visualize jumping on the trampoline – she would see herself falling. With effort and (mental) practice, she was able to start to imagine herself jumping with confidence, and eventually to visualize her entire routine in vivid detail. Remarkably, Rosie finished 4th at the Tokyo Olympics— less than a single point off of the podium featuring the best athletes on the world, all of whom had been training regularly, despite having been unable to physically practice until a single day prior to travel. When we imagine something with enough vivid detail – to our body, it’s real. Some studies estimate that for elite athletes, mental rehearsal delivers roughly 85% of the benefits of physical rehearsal. Rosie’s experience certainly backs up that research. Visualization isn’t just for elite athletes. It’s a tool anyone can use to prepare for high-stakes situations —whether it’s a speech, negotiation, or exam—spend time visualizing your performance. Imagine every detail: the environment, your actions, and the desired outcome. This mental preparation can help you feel more confident and prepared when the moment arrives.
Bringing it all together
Rosie MacLennan’s journey to Olympic success is more than a story about athletic achievement. Her approach to confronting failure, embracing feedback, and harnessing the power of visualization provides lessons that can help all of us. Here’s a challenge: think about your own version of a “gold medal performance.” What are you striving for in your career, relationships, or personal growth? Now, consider how you can apply Rosie’s three strategies: Confront failure head-on: What’s holding you back? Imagine the worst-case scenario to start to rob it of its power. Embrace direct feedback: Who in your life is pushing you to be better? How can you listen with an open mind and use their insights to grow? Use visualization to your advantage: What mental rehearsals can you do to prepare for your big moment? As in many sports, when navigating uncertainty it helps to “look where you want to go.” In his latest article for HBR, Third Factor CEO, Dane Jensen, outlines a process for imagining a plausible, positive version of the future and taking steps to actually get there. Read the article at HBR.org. What’s the most pressure you’ve ever been under? Dane Jensen joins CTV’s Your Morning to discuss what he learned by asking this question and share his advice for how you can use the energy that accompanies pressure to thrive.🏷 Label the negative emotion and engage. Right or wrong, giving it a name helps uncover important information that can be used for moving forward. 👏 Feed the self-coach, not the self-critic. Encourage them to look for the opportunity in the crisis. 🛴 Channel energy to action. Use the moment to build a vision of a better future and build clarity around what it takes to get there.
Strong leaders don’t shy away from negative emotions. They lean into them and help their people use them to recover and grow. Click here to read the article on hbr.org. Editor’s note: This article was first published on April 14th, 2020, just a few weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic. While the context may have changed, your plays as a leader are still the same.In this article:
Four imperatives for leaders in times of uncertainty
- Invest in relationships. Try to find “30 seconds for every player, every day.”
- Think small. Annual plans are out – ensure your people are clear on what the work expectations are for today.
- Make a habit of catching people doing something right. Reinforcing feedback is vital to fostering engagement.
- Coach the whole person. With personal life and work life collapsing, now is the time to demonstrate empathy.
It’s all about the relationship
When people go through difficult times together, they can emerge more connected – but only if they’re conscious about it. Difficult times can also lead to fracture. As a leader, it’s your job to step back and really think about how you are building and deepening relationships with your people in this new environment. Take the time to check in with your people and listen to them. Take some time to step back and see what you’re going through as impartial observers and acknowledge that it’s hard. These are unprecedented times and the effort you make to stay connected with your people can make a huge difference. Coach Roy Rana of the Sacramento Kings spoke with us about how building relationships is intentional. There is an intention to communicate, to make the person feel connected, to ensure they know they have your attention. He talks about the little things that he does to accomplish this. In the video below, he lays out the wonderful challenge he sets for himself of “30 seconds every day for every player”: Rana’s Strategies are for basketball – not your environment. So what would work for you? What are the little ways you can connect with your people to communicate that you are thinking of them and you care?The game has changed
By now, every workplace has been impacted by COVID-19. The game has changed, and clarity needs to be re-established. Your team needs new skills and mindsets so that you can get through this together.“We can’t go back, only forward.”Ask yourself what your team needs for their new playbook. Do your people know what the work expectations are today? Timelines are different. Things change quickly so clarity is always evolving. Think short term and help them find focus. Do they know what other people need from them? Are they aware of how your goals have shifted? Especially if your team is working differently than they’re used to, over-communication is impossible when it comes to these things. Your team also needs clarity on what your organization’s values look like in this reality. Not just the vague, nice-sounding words – what they actually look like. If you value safety, how are you acting on that value? If you value team, how are you making sure that no one’s feeling isolated? Get together as a team to discuss your values and think through how you’re living up to them at this time. Through all of this, recognize that as a coach you need to meet your people where they’re at. Some team members might be juggling kids and other family constraints. They may even be caring for someone who is sick. Give them real clarity on how your team can work well together in a way that’s not going to make anyone feel criticized, judged or guilty. Have empathy for what they’re going through and use humour to help people feel at ease. Some team members (and perhaps even you) may be thinking they just need to hold on for a little bit longer until things get back to normal. That thinking will not serve them or the organization well. When companies face disruption, the ones who try to ignore it or find a way to hang on to their old ways of doing things don’t fare well – think Blockbuster. We can’t go back, only forward.
New plays for a new game
When the game changes, you can’t expect to get the same results from the same behaviours. As a coach, your goal is to help your people succeed in their new reality – and this means helping them get up to speed on the skills that will support the new expectations as well as discouraging the old behaviours that are no longer productive. This is all about consistent feedback and communication, and feedback is a challenge when you can’t see what people are doing. For the coachee, the lack of visibility can lead to frustration and unnecessary roadblocks that can harm engagement. Make a habit of checking in frequently with each team member to support their development. This isn’t about micromanaging or checking up on them; it’s about making sure they’re not sitting alone frustrated because something’s blocking their progress. If that sounds like a big job, that’s because it is. Coach Rana told us about how making time for each and every team member is a challenge even as a professional coach. And he offered this advice for keeping the connection alive even when it feels like you’re too busy.Out of sight, not out of mind
If what I’m doing can’t be seen, how do I know if it’s valued or appreciated? This is one of the challenges your people are facing as they transition to a new reality. People need to know that what they do has value, so giving appropriate recognition is more important now than ever. This doesn’t mean handing out awards and prizes. It’s about looking for the bright spots – things that are going well, little wins, positive behaviours – and acknowledging them. You might recognize a team member who creates a shared space for everyone to connect, or someone who volunteers to take on a task for another team member they see struggling. It’s also vital to recognize that people need to feel connected and not isolated. Make every conversation a coaching one. Even simple questions like “how are things going today” have value for a coach. As you explore the answer, you can uncover the information you need to find possibilities and build commitment to a solution. When people are worried, anxious or afraid they’re harder on themselves than ever. Having the coach remind them of who they are at their best brings tremendous energy.Be ready for the human element
Behind all this is a real humanitarian challenge. As time goes on, the people on your team may become sick, need time off to care for loved ones, or worse. Loss is going to look very different for different people – it can be loss of a loved one, income, or something else. As a coach you have a role to play in supporting your team members as they recover from whatever their loss may be. The temptation is to think that when someone is in pain over their loss that bringing it up will cause undue pain by reminding them of it. Just keep to your work and ignore it. And that’s like the monster under the bed for a little kid. As long as the kid believes there’s a monster under the bed it gets bigger and bigger. The longer it goes, the bigger it gets.“When loss isn’t acknowledged, it feels like it’s been dismissed.”This is true on both sides of the relationship. In Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, she talks about how the hardest part of going back to work after losing her husband was the silence. When loss isn’t acknowledged, it feels like it’s been dismissed. And a significant loss being dismissed feels really bad. You don’t need to be a counsellor or have all the answers, and there’s no secret formula for how to deal with these times. Your job as a coach is to bring things to the surface and give people permission to talk about it if and when they want.