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Kathy Stoddard Torrey

~ Leadership Coach and Trainer

Kathy Stoddard Torrey

Tag Archives: #CAR

Coaching a Bad Attitude (part 3)

09 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in coaching, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#CAR, #coachingabadattitude, #LeadershipRules #LeadYourselfFirst #KathySays

CAR STP feedback 550 px

In part 1 of Coaching a Bad Attitude, we talked about the importance of having a job manual for every single employee. Often, employees with bad attitudes are also people who hold onto knowledge and power. A manual ensures that no one’s daily actions are a mystery, which means that everyone can be let go if necessary.

In part 2, we discussed the importance of the coach having a positive attitude. Leaders are responsible for helping their employees create success. If we get adversarial with employees, we are ensuring a battle during the coaching.

So now the job manual is done, and we have the proper attitude. The next thing to consider when planning to coach an employee with a bad attitude is, “What is the outcome that I am looking for?”

Most people immediately answer, “I want him or her to have a good attitude!” However, discussing the attitude itself is usually counterproductive. If you sit down to coach me and say, “You need to change your attitude,” my response would be, “What attitude? I don’t have an attitude. You have an attitude!” And we are off and running in a conversation that runs in circles.

We want to discuss the specific behaviors that lead us to believe that the person has a bad attitude. Is there a lot of eye-rolling and negative body language going on? Discuss that! Are there foot-dragging and bad-mouthing behaviors? Discuss the specific behavior that you want to change. It’s the behaviors associated with a bad attitude that we can prove and discuss.

Observable behaviors are facts that a person cannot deny. We want to give specific instances of when a person behaved in a way that was detrimental to productivity, efficiency, or morale. There is a formula that we can use to help us stay on track. It’s called a CAR, which stands for Circumstance, Action, and Result.

We start with Circumstance by describing what was going on when the person displayed the specific behavior that we want to see changed. For example, let’s say that we have an employee named Henrietta who rolls her eyes at what other people say during meetings. We could start with “I want to discuss your reaction to Joan’s comments during our staff meeting last week.” We’ve told the person exactly when and where the behavior happened.

Next, we want to name the specific Action that Henrietta did. We might say, “When Joan suggested that we change the way we process paperwork, you rolled your eyes.” By the way, eye-rolling is totally unacceptable behavior. Next, we are going to explain why.

We explain the detrimental results that come from eye-rolling. It could go like this: “When you roll your eyes, it looks to all of us like you are disapproving of what has been said, which makes people hesitant to speak up. It’s important for the team’s success that everyone feels free to share ideas and even disagree.” We could go on to mention Google’s Project Aristotle and how essential psychological safety is to the creation of a successful team. We are great leaders, so we are sure to have mentioned this before.

We might also say that the eye-rolling doesn’t let us know why Henrietta disagrees. We want to remind her that we value her perspective and want to hear it. We want to hear what Henrietta thinks, but we want her to say it in a respectful way. Now would be a good time to remind Henrietta of our Designed Alliance, which states that we speak to each other respectfully even when we disagree. We are fantastic leaders, so we are sure to have created a Designed Alliance with our team.

Eye-rolling is probably only one of the ways that Henrietta flies her bad attitude flag, but it’s best to deal with one behavior at a time. Pick the behavior that is most damaging to the morale and productivity of the team, and start there.

The CAR format is an excellent way to begin a coaching session, but it’s just the opening. We will talk about the rest of the process next time.


For a little bit of fun (and free) leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com. #PositiveEffectLeadership #LeadershipRules #KathySays

Psychological Safety: Open with a CAR

20 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Psychological Safety, Uncategorized

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Tags

#CAR, #feedbacktool, #Google, #KathySays, #LeadershipRules, #LeadYourselfFirst, #ProjectAristotle, #psychologicalsafety, relationships

I’ve talked with several people over the past few weeks about how to begin the difficult conversations that are the hallmark of psychological safety. Even if the group has norms in place that encourage people to challenge one another and to offer diverse ideas, it can feel intimidating to bring up a subject that is going to create some conflict.

A great way to start is with a CAR; it’s a feedback tool that includes Circumstances, Action, and Result. This format works well because it encourages us to talk about facts. Our discussions stay grounded in objective, observable behaviors.

CAR with outline

We begin by discussing the circumstances surrounding the action we want to talk about. We clearly outline when it happened and what was going on. For example, we might start with, “Yesterday when we were trying to get the order shipped for XYZ.” That tells the person or group what situation you are talking about.

Then we move on to the action or procedure that we want to discuss. We might say, “Fred followed our required procedures to get the order out the door.” It’s important to stick to observable facts and use no colorful adjectives or adverbs like “archaic” or “stupid” when describing the procedure or action – or a person, for that matter!

Then we explain the results of the actions. As much as possible, we want to make these business results – how the actions impacted the organization and group goals. If we continue with our example above, the results might have been that we did not get the shipment out on time because the required procedures include a lot of paperwork and time. We damaged the relationship with the customer, and our reputation for reliability was weakened. All of those results will make it more difficult to keep and gain customers.

After describing the circumstances, action, and result, we can offer an alternate action that would have been more useful. In our example, we might offer ways to streamline the process so that it takes less time. We could also ask for other people’s ideas about how to get orders shipped more efficiently.

It’s important to talk about the positive outcome that would happen with the new actions so that everyone stays focused on a positive business result. In our example, if we improve the shipment paperwork process, we can meet deadlines more easily, get more done faster, and maintain our reputation for reliability.

The beauty of the CAR format is that it helps to keep the conversation grounded in observable facts and desired business results. It keeps a group from blaming each other and going over past events. The focus is on achieving outcomes that help everyone.

Before we begin a discussion using the CAR format, it’s important to set our intention to create a positive, helpful environment for the conversation. Our purpose is to create success for the group and the organization, not to prove anyone wrong. We must maintain a helpful, positive attitude. We do not want to carry an adversarial attitude into the discussion.

The CAR format can be used to give any kind of feedback. In leadership workshops, we practice using it to give positive and developmental feedback to employees. We can use the CAR format to let someone know the specific action that he or she took that helped the team and organization. Remember, we want to create positive relationships and comment on the good things that we see as often as possible.

The CAR format is great for giving positive feedback because it tells the person exactly what they did that was useful and the good effect that it had for the business. Whenever we see someone doing something that we’d like to see them do again, we should give them some positive feedback on it. Appreciation is one of the biggest motivators for people.

Printing the CAR .pdf and using the individual CAR formats to keep track of feedback that we’ve given is an excellent practice. You can download a copy under the “Free Stuff” tab on my website. It’s a good way to collect information that we will need when we give performance reviews. It can be difficult to remember the actions of all of our employees over time.

It’s also a good idea to use the CAR format to keep track of our own actions. Our supervisors might not notice everything that we do. If we take a minute to jot down things we do, both good and not so good, we have specific examples to offer during our performance reviews. We can say, “I think I’ve done this well, and here are some examples.” Be sure to date the CARs. When asked what we need to work on, we will have already identified areas that we want to improve. If by chance our supervisors say that they think we need to improve in a certain area in which we have actually had some success, then we have ready examples of specific circumstances and our actions in those circumstances.

Maintaining a fact-based conversation with a positive attitude supports an environment of psychological safety. The CAR format can keep us on track and give us courage to start difficult conversations.


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

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