You don’t have to be a trained coach to effectively utilize these two coaching skills: 1. Leading with Questions and 2. Positive Reframing

The lives of leaders are shaped by one conversation after another. With groups. With teams. With individuals. With self! In their book, Conversations Worth Having, Jackie Stavros and Cherie Torres offer a framework for infusing any conversation—from executive level strategic planning to one-on-one family conversation to a person’s ongoing inner dialogue—with meaning, creativity, and productive purpose.

The first helpful skill is to frame a conversation with inquiry rather than commentary and advice. Our culture values leaders who know many things and promote what they know. Giving advice. Offering prescriptions for solving problems. Repeating our own stories of struggle and success. We think we are being helpful when we offer suggestions and solutions.

• What if, instead, we enter a conversation trusting the other person(s) possess inner wisdom and expertise about how to move forward in their dilemma? We lead with questions and listen to responses with care.

Leading with questions creates a conversation worth having.

The second helpful skill is learning how to create a positive frame. Notice how many of your conversations are focused on a problem to be solved. We may not intend to get stuck in problem-solving mode but find ourselves there again and again.

• What if, instead, we begin conversations by focusing on organizational strengths or personal strengths or asking what we might celebrate? We lead by paying attention to whether our conversation is positively or negatively framed.

And when we realize—perhaps mid-conversation—that we are focused entirely on what is wrong, we can learn to “flip it” by first noticing and naming the problem and what the impact of it might be. Then we can ask what the positive opposite is to the potential negative impact. We continue flipping to a positive frame by inquiring and exploring what the positive result might be of the reframed “problem.”

Positive framing creates a conversation worth having.

This week, try these two coaching skills. Leading with questions invites us to tap into the resourcefulness and creativity of those we lead. It takes the pressure off us to have all the answers. We empower others to seek, find, and implement their own solutions from within. Positive reframing is a tool for shifting our own inner dialogue as we self-manage. And a positive frame can change the trajectory of our group and team conversations from what is wrong to what can be right! We acknowledge and name the negative reality. But we shift our eyes and hearts and minds toward where we want to go.

The prayer of St. Francis is an example of positive reframing:
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; Where there is hatred, let me so love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life. Amen.”