Successful Coaching in Leadership: Seven Lessons from the ‘Trillion Dollar Coach’

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Bill Campbell was once described as the “Silicon Valley’s best kept secret” by Fortune.

Bill was a former American Football Coach who became so influential that he worked regularly coaching Steve Jobs and the founders of Google.

The ‘Trillion Dollar Coach’ is written by former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, Former Snr Vice President of Google Jonathan Rosenberg, and Director of Google Alan Eagle.

All three of the authors have worked with Bill Campbell throughout their careers and time working at Google and describe the impact the Bill had on the company by saying:

“We can say, without a doubt, that Bill Campbell was one of the people most integral to Google’s success. Without him, the company would not be where it is today.”

Here are 7 lessons that I have taken from the book and from Bill Campbell’s leadership and coaching skills.

1. The difference between a mentor and a coach

“Whereas mentors dole out words of wisdom, coaches roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. They don’t just believe in our potential; they get in the arena to help us realize our potential.”

2. The power of listening and being honest

“Scholars would describe Bill’s approach-listening, providing honest feedback, demanding candour as “relational trans-parency,” which is a core characteristic of “authentic leadership.”

3. Solving problems as a team

“His first instinct was always to work the team, not the problem. In other words, he focused on the team’s dynamics, not on trying to solve the team’s particular challenges. That was their job. His job was team building, assessing people’s talents, and finding the doers.”

4. Working towards shared goals

“There is another, equally critical, factor for success in companies: teams that act as communities, integrating interests and putting aside differences to be individually and collectively obsessed with what’s good for the company.”

5. Telling stories to pass on information

“Bill coached me to tell stories. When people understand the story they can connect to it and figure out what to do. You need to get people to buy in.“

6. Invest in making people better

“Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how they are going to make someone else better. But that’s what coaches do.”

7. Human connection creates empathy

“Bill’s approach was to make the human connection first, then approach the work with that understanding.”

Throughout the book, i turned every page waiting to read the moment that describes the skill that Bill Campbell had that made him so unique.

But it never happened.

The truth is, that the majority of the things that Bill did were basic skills that we can all do; listening, building strong teams, creating communities within teams, telling stories for impact, taking time to make people better and connecting with people on a human level.

The final lesson that I took from the book was:

“Being a good coach is essential to being a good manager and leader. Coaching is no longer a specialty; you cannot be a good manager without being a good coach.”

I’ve dipped in and out of this book for years and noted pages and pages of quotes that I regularly reference back to when working with clients.

How to speak so that people people want to listen | Julian Treasure

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This is one of my all time favourite TED Talks.

Julian is a sound and communication expert, author and international key note speaker.

“What would the world be like if we were speaking powerfully to people who were listening consciously in environments which were actually fit for purpose?”

His talk has amassed nearly 40 million views on YouTube and explains to the viewer his ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ of speaking, his four cornerstones to make our speech more powerful, the toolbox we can use to say our speech better, and his speaking warm up exercises.

Julian Treasure’s Seven Deadly Sins of Speaking

  1. Gossip – “Speaking ill of somebody who’s not present”
  2. Judging – “It’s very hard to listen to somebody if you know that you’re being judged”
  3. Negativity – “It’s hard to listen to somebody when they’re that negative”
  4. Complaining – “complaining is viral misery, It’s not spreading sunshine and lightness on the world”
  5. Excuses – “They pass it [blame] on to everybody else and don’t take responsibility for their actions”
  6. Embroidery, exaggeration – “exaggeration becomes lying, and we don’t want to listen to people who are lying to us”
  7. Dogmatism – “Confusion of facts with opinion.”

Julian Treasure’s Four Cornerstones – HAIL

Julian talks about his four “really powerful cornerstones, foundations that we can stand on if we want our speech to be powerful and to make change in the world.”

Honesty – Be clear and straight

Authenticity – Be yourself

Integrity – Be your word

Love – Wish them well

Julian Treasure’s Toolbox

According to Julian, we all have a toolbox which contain really powerful tools we can use that will make our speeches much more powerful.

Putting all of these tools together can ensure that when we have something to say, we know that it will have the power and affect that we wanted it to have.

Register

  • “We vote for politicians with lower voices because we associate depth with power and with authority”

Timbre

  • “We prefer voices which are rich, smooth, warm, like hot chocolate”

Prosody

  • “It’s the root one for meaning in conversation.”

Pace

  • “I can get very excited by saying something really quickly, or I can slow right down to emphasise, and at the end of that, of course, is our old friend silence.”

Pitch

  • “pitch often goes along with pace to indicate arousal, but you can do it just with pitch.”

Volume

  • “Some people broadcast the whole time. Try not to do that. That’s called ‘’sodcasting’.”

There are some really valuable public speaking skills that I have taken from this video as well as the the other TED Talks I use to enhance my public speaking and presentation skills.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood – How to build effective interpersonal communication to build influence

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In his book – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey dedicates a chapter to Habit No.5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood. 

We are all guilty of being too keen to help someone with a problem they have. We jump in and explain what we think they should do or what we think they need to hear. And it will often come from a good place; “You should try doing this…” or “what you need is…”. But really, all we’re doing in these circumstances is passing on our thoughts based on what we think.

Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes…

How can we really tell someone what we think they need, or need to do without fully understanding their needs? Stephen Covey uses an example of using someone else’s glasses to fix their eyesight. Just because the glasses might benefit the person who is wearing them, doesn’t mean they’ll be any good to anyone else who has eyesight issues.

We can’t fully ‘fix’ someone’s issues, if we don’t fully understand what the problem is. And what works for us, won’t always work for someone else.

I see this a lot in the mental health awareness and ambassador/first aider training that I deliver. Our instinct is to tell a person suffering from poor mental health what we think they should do to get ‘better’. We forget to seek to understand and jump straight to wanting them to understand what we think the problem is and what they should do.

More often than not, the majority of us don’t actually want to hear someone giving us their solutions to our problems, we just want them to listen and understand.

And there lies the problem… Listening.

When did we learn to listen?

Covey describes the 4 basic types of communication:

Reading

Writing 

Speaking 

Listening

But what ones do we use the most every day?

For the vast majority of us, speaking is the main form of communication that we use. Writing and reading would come next and listening often comes last. From our earliest years, we are first taught how to speak, then read and write. But can anyone actually remember being taught to listen?

Julian Treasure’s TEDTalk – How to speak so that people want to listen – is one of the most popular TEDTalks of all time. It sits in the top 10 talks comfortably and has well over 50 million views on YouTube. However, in his interview on the Diary of a CEO Podcast, Julian explains that he has done 5 TEDTalks, and the talk he did on listening has just a 5th of the viewers as his talk on speaking.

“We’re much keener to be heard than we are to listen to others” – Julian Treasure 

Why do we want to be heard so much, but struggle to hear others?

Everyone likes to feel heard. We want to be validated and feel valued. We want to give our value to others and help them when they need it. But we often fall into the trap of doing it on our terms instead of the other person’s. We forget to seek the understanding. Asking questions instead of imparting our knowledge. Truly finding out exactly what the issues, problems or needs are.

We look at things through our own perspectives and hold our own judgments. But as Stephen Covey explains in his book – “The key to good judgement is understanding.” 

A mistake often made in sales is trying to sell a product rather than selling the solution. Finding out exactly what the needs are of the buyer or the market is how some of the most innovative inventions and technology has been created.

Communication is a 2 way process. When we speak, we want to be heard. Julian Treasure can explain exactly how to do that in his TEDTalk. If we really want to be heard and really want our message to have an impact on the people we are talking to, then we need to know and understand them first. Then and only then can we have the impact that we want our own words to have.

How do we listen?

Stephen Covey believes that Empathetic Listening is key to creating an understanding. Trust plays a huge role in being able to get someone to open up and confide in the listener. If anyone starts to feel judged or unsafe, they we won’t be as open as they would if they were comfortable with the listener. We can’t build an understanding if the person we communicate with doesn’t feel comfortable enough to speak to us.

Listen with the intent to understand rather than listening with the intent to reply. Sometimes, silence is golden. We might think that we’ve had a similar experience, but this is their space to share not ours. Respect their space.

Empathise, don’t sympathise. Sympathy is a form of judgmental listening. Sympathy can create dependancy, and Covey explains that people can often feed off sympathy.

It’s not about agreeing or disagreeing, it’s about understanding. We all see the world differently and can have varying perspectives. Enjoy finding out how to see the world through someone else’s eyes.

Be aware!

Empathetic listening is just one way to improve communication. It’s not a technique, and it’s certainly not something that needs to be used all of the time. If someone feels like a technique is being used on them, then they won’t trust you. It takes practice but more importantly, it takes awareness.

Be aware of when to use it and when you don’t need to use it. And be especially aware of when you find yourself creeping back into bad habits of judgmental listening, telling rather than asking and/or diagnosing before prescribing.