Roberta expanded her awareness of how to interact with others through her coaching with Lisa as discussed in the previous two blogs. In their next coaching session, Roberta chose to focus on exploring personality differences and how that impacted her interactions. Lisa asked Roberta about her current level of knowledge. Roberta shared that she vaguely remembered attending a training program on different personalities.
Lisa asked Roberta to describe each of her direct reports and together they began creating a list of people and characteristics. Lisa asked Roberta whether the individuals were more logical or more emotional. Then she asked if they were more passive or aggressive. With the information in front of Roberta, Lisa asked her how each person liked to be treated and what shut them down. Together they created a list.
After they had the list of people, characteristics, and what did and did not work for each, Lisa asked Roberta her plan for how to interact with each individual and how to interact with all of them in a group setting. By talking it through, Roberta felt she had gained tremendous insight and had a strategy for moving forward.
In a subsequent coaching session, Lisa asked Roberta what was working and what she wanted to change. With her new approach, Roberta experienced a shift with her direct reports. Her team understood her and followed through plus many of them expressed their gratitude at her efforts for positive change.
