Video Transcript: Managing the Plan of Action Part 1

Hello, Steve Elzinga. Here again, we're in the coaching class. And this session we're going to  deal with managing the plan of action. Remember, coaching is about getting your client to  some form of action. It's not just reflecting on the past is not trying to understand,  necessarily, you know what happened or what it you know, some childhood memory or some  background with a father or a mother, it's really about behavior it's trying to, it's trying to  change future behaviors, to make a difference in a person's life. So we're trying to get them  to a plan of action. And three things that coaches do to accomplish this, you should know  these by heart by now. Number one, you help the client figure out what they want to do about their lives, or some aspect of their life to make a decision about some kind of action to take.  Secondly, you help your client figure out how they want to do that action, what kind of plan  are they going to come up with, in order to reach the goal that they want to reach. And finally, and that's what we're going to be looking at the next three sessions, help the client do what  they plan to do. So you have a goal, you make a plan to reach that goal. And now as your  client is trying to attempt to follow through that goal, you manage that process or you hold  them accountable. management is the process of accountability as the plan is carried out  over time. It's an accountability to a plan. It's not the plan, it's the accountability to the plan,  as it is carried over time. Why do people need help in managing the plan that they decided to  do in some ways, the hard part is getting people to figure out what they want to do, what area of their life that they, you know, what area of your life? Is you struggling with? What area of  your life? Would you like to see some improvement? Where what area in your life? Would you  like to go to the next level, that's the hard part. Then the second part is sort of, well, okay,  now, once we have an area, you know, I want a better marriage, or I want to go to the next  level with my work or I want to plant a church, whatever that goal might be. Now, it's just a  matter of breaking down that goal into its many parts. What are all the steps? That's what a  plan is? Management is now trying to help people actually do what they said they want to do.  In some ways, you would think, well, why do you have to do that? I mean, here's what it is.  Here's the plan go do it. But there are many reasons why people need this. Why do people  need help in managing the plan, they decided to do number one, lack of endurance. So  people are enthusiastic when they start something. But as time goes on, they get tired. That's what happened to Nehemiah building the walls. If you read the story of Nehemiah, Nehemiah  goes back to Jerusalem, and the walls are all in shambles. And he you know, he motivates the  people to start to rebuild the walls. But I forget what chapter it is. But there's a verse that  says when it got half, the workers quit. When the when the wall got half its height. They  started complaining, there were problems. So people start something, they're motivated in  the beginning, maybe you were motivated to take a lot of classes at CLI but it's harder as you  go through it, you have the enthusiasm of the new in the beginning of something, you're  finally going to get up and make something happen in your life or some area of your life. And  you have that initial enthusiasm to carry you through for a while. But eventually it doesn't go  exactly how a person plans. There's always bumps in the road. There's always obstacles that  you hit. And most people don't have the endurance. They hit an obstacle they want to quit.  Why do people need help in managing the plan that they decided to do a lack of focus? Okay,  without having to come back every week or every two weeks to the coach? There. People are  scattered with so many demands. While they're sitting with you, it's very clear, this is what  they want to do. They're going to do it. But when they leave your office, they they experience  real life and the real demands of life all around them. There's demands in the family. There's  demands at work. There's demands in the community. There's demands in the church. And,  you know, so, you know, the thought of what you want to do in the office and the reality of life are two different things. So a person needs some kind of accountability system, a coach, who  they know, you know, in a week is going to ask, Well, how do it go? Lack of discipline. Again,  people lack discipline, that's why they need a coach in the first place. If someone is extremely disciplined, they probably don't need a coach, they just go and do. Number four, lack of  support. Okay, I talked about this way, at the very beginning of this class people. The systems we used to have that that would support people to succeeding and doing what they want to  do, those systems are falling apart. I remember in the 90s, Henry Reyenga and I thought, you  know, let's try to help people get a walk with God. Get people to read their Bibles and pray 

daily, to have a daily walk with God, in your personal life, in your marriage, and in your family, you know, the whole seven connections, and we thought it was going to be easy to just tell  people, This is what we have to do. You know, we've been playing church, and the Minister is  preaching and we have all the singing on Sunday, but people aren't doing anything Monday,  Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So let's just tell people, Hey, let's do this  Monday through Saturday. There it is. And we thought it would be easy, and it wasn't. And it  wasn't easy, because the support systems for all those things have fallen apart. If you go  back when I was raised, people used to eat together. Food took a long time to prepare. And  my mother mainly did it in our home. And her attitude was if it's gonna take me all this time  to prepare this food, we're all gonna sit down together, and we're going to be together as a  family, three other siblings. And while we're eating together, we read the Bible. And we would  pray that the eating together was a support system for the prayer and the Bible in the family.  But fast food came and and soon families aren't meeting together, and everyone has their  own schedule. And everyone's doing their own thing. And the family no longer eats together.  And so that support system of eating together, that helps a family stay connected to God and  disappeared. So now when people try it, I mean, when you bring it up, and you say, you're not going to have a close family, God is not going to be at the center of your family. Unless you  start doing family devotions. People get it right away. And they say, Yeah, that's true. Wow,  that's amazing. Let's do this. And then next week, they go out and they fail. They fail because the support system, whereby people used to succeed is gone. And without the support  system, people can't do the very thing that they say they want to do. So and that's almost  true in almost every area of life. The support systems, they used to be family lived near you,  your uncle's, your aunts, cousins, your your grandparents, and they all helped in shaping and  molding the family and the family members. And the grandkids, everyone was in it together.  There was this huge support system that helped you succeed in whatever it was that you did.  Now we're on our own. And when people are on their own on their own, they don't succeed.  We, we are human beings, we need the support of others. That's what the church is all about.  That's why the church is so important. We can't do it our own. It's not just a matter of you  knowing Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Jesus is the head of a body, you need to be a  part of a group, a group that's doing the same thing. See, when you're a part of a church, and  everyone's reading the Bible, in their personal life, their marriage and their family it's a lot  easier because you start putting systems in our church, we have a devotional. And there's  verses to read and questions to answer every single day. And then on Sunday, I preach out of  that. So I'm trying to give support systems to help people do what they say they want to do in the first place. So that's what a coach does. That's why a coach is necessary. That's why this  accountability piece is necessary. Lack of negative consequences. Okay, we live in a rescuing  world. We don't want people to feel bad about anything. And so we let people do things. And  when they fail, they don't experience the negative consequences of failing. Back when I was a kid, if I missed the bus, I had to school I had to walk. My parents said, you know, take your  bike. Now parents are too afraid. At least in the United States and too afraid to let the kids  walk to school or take their bikes, so the kid misses the bus. And the parents drive him over  there. Well, what's the incentive to not miss the bus? If you miss the bus, or if you make the  bus fine, if you missed the bus, it's going to be fine too see where you know, back in the day  for myself, if I missed the bus, I gotta walk. So I don't want to miss the bus, I experienced the  negative consequences. So people today aren't feeling all the negative consequence. People  need to feel pain to know not to do something. Or if I do this, this is what's going to happen. If I if I stopped walking, see it walking with God, instead of me personally taking ownership for  my walk with God, I just go to a big church where the pastor does the walk with God for me.  So I don't experience all the negative consequences of not walking with God, because I have  someone else who does it for me. And that's, that's kind of a cultural experience these days.  Number six, lack of positive reward. I mean, if you stick with your plan, what do you get?  These are the two things that motivate people, it's called the carrot and the stick, the carrot is the thing we want that's part of positive, the stick is the negative. I think it comes from riding  horses. You feed the horses a carrot, they like it, you hit him with a stick to get them going.  And those are the things that motivate us. you we track, you touch a hot stove, it's hot, it 

hurts and so you don't do that, again, we need the negative reinforcement, and we need the  positive reinforcement, to help manage our stuff, and figure out what we really want to do  and what works and what doesn't. Lack of criteria for success. So a lot of times we have  goals, but we have no idea. You know, what does that mean? I just met with a with a couple  last night. And you know that they had an issue or a trust issue. And the husband did  something and the wife lost trust. And so I'm asking them, so what do you want to do? What  do you want from each other? And one of them said, Well, I just want more respect, or I just  want to be cared for. But those are so broad and general, we how, you know, if my spouse is  saying, you know, I want you to, you know, love me more or understand me more? I don't  know, when I've done that. I mean what's the criteria for for you? I mean, what specifically do  I need to do, so that I know that I've actually accomplished this thing it's so broad, and so  general. So a lot of our goals are just broad, I want to improve, I want to do better, I want to  be a better Christian, I want to be in a better walk with God, those are all just broad general  goals, and there's no real criteria. Well, when have you succeeded at that a more specific goal would be I want to walk with God for the next 21 days, I'm going to read one chapter of the  Bible, I'm going to spend five minutes of prayer, I'm going to do that 20 days, 21 days in a  row, And see there's a criteria, and someone's gonna hold can hold me accountable to that  they can't hold me accountable to some broad thing to either to love my spouse more. So this is where management comes in. We're trying to hold you to a specific criteria. So that you  know, when you're making progress, you meet with the coach. And when you're done with the session, you know, where you let things slip and you know what you've done and then you  know, what you have to do yet. walk into management is not part of coaching. Controlling. So  while you're trying to manage the management in the in the broad general sense, you're a  manager in a company, that you manage some employees, and your goal is to get them  working, making make sure that they accomplish the goals of the company. And so you're  always trying to motivate and trying to remind, okay, a lot of times it's controlling, I want  them to do what I want them to do. Okay, in this coaching process, you're not trying to get  them to do what you want them to do. You're trying to get them to do what they want to do.  And if you're going to try to let them do what they want to do, then you can't be controlling if  you're controlling then then then you're trying to make them do what you want them to do. So things like this. These are the kinds of things that we sometimes say as a coach, and it's a  veiled you know, we might be asking questions, but we're leading our client on, we're trying  to control them with our questions. Whenever you start a sentence like this, don't you think  you should see, the client isn't really doing this one thing, but don't you think you should do  this? Now I'm making a suggestion, suggestion, see, I need to let the client make the  suggestion not me. wouldn't it be better if, again, the client is struggling, let's say, in a certain area, and a husband and wife or he is struggling, then and you can see that they're  struggling, what they're doing is not working. And so you want to jump in, and you want to  rescue them. And so you might say something would be better if you did this, or did that. But  you see, now I'm controlling the situation, in my experience, okay. This is typical, you know, in pastoral care, this is typical in counseling, you have all this experience with people, and now  you see someone that's hurting. And so you know, you gravitate towards saying, you know,  sharing your experience, my experience, I've seen couples just like you, and this is what they  did. This is what happens, and this is where it goes. But again, remember, in coaching, it's not about your experience about it's about the clients experience, you're not the focal point, the  client is. So management is not, is not controlling. Number two, it's not guilting or shaming.  These are motivation techniques, guilty making someone feel guilty, or making them feel bad  about what they've done. Questions like this? What is it going to take to get you to do what  you said you were going to do? So a client, you know, makes a plan. He's going to do  something before the next meeting, you meet the next time, and you ask, Well, how did they  go? When the client says, Well, I really didn't have time? Maybe you have patience the first  time you got it. Okay. So how are we going to make time for next week? You made it a week  later? Well, what happened? Well, you know, this happened, I was going to do it on  Wednesday, but then this thing happened. And there was nothing I could do. And so it gets  very frustrating. And so you want to motivate them, Hey, do you want to do this or don't you? 

The I'm frustrated as a coach, because you're not doing as I expect. And I don't feel like as a  coach, I'm succeeding. Okay. But again, it's not about you. It's not about us succeeding. It's  about the client succeeding. And sometimes you have to let the clients struggle a little bit  without making him feel guilty. That's their, that's their issue. If they don't want to accomplish anything, that's their problem, not yours. How do you expect things to change in your life? If  you don't? Again, these are all statements, that are questions that make someone feel guilty,  you're trying to motivate by making them feel guilty? How do you feel about wasting your  time and mine as well, that's when you're really frustrated as a coach, because week after  week, and they don't do anything? And what's the point of us meeting? Let them figure out,  let them finally come to the conclusion or the question, what is the point of our meeting  together rather than you doing it? What kind of management is not part of coaching, pushing  and directing? Don't you think it would be better if you're going to give a suggestion? I found  after many years of experience that I think if we spent more energy on this thing, things  would go better? Judging? Don't you think we're just avoiding this issue or don't use? Don't  you think you're just avoiding the issue? So you're meeting with a client, he's frustrated with  the goals in the plan that he's trying to accomplish? He's meeting obstacles and things in the  way. And and you know why? You know what the problem is, and you want to point it out. And instead of patiently waiting for your client to figure it out for themselves, see, because if they  figure it out, if they figure it out themselves, they're really going to adopt it and understand it. If you tell them, it's just another thing that someone has told them. We get told things all the  time. People around us are always willing to throw in what they think about our problems.  People have heard a mountain of things and it doesn't stick. The things that stick are the  things that a person figures out for themselves. So don't you think you're just avoiding this  issue? Because isn't the issue your father or isn't the issue that you're still you're not forgiving your spouse or whatever it might be since I'm taking charge In this situation, I'm not letting  the client figure it out. Why didn't you do what I said you were going to do? Why didn't you do what you said you were going to do? So I'm judging you? Well, that wasn't very good, was it?  The coach does, or the client does something, it doesn't turn out well. And then you make a  judgmental comment. That you're not the judge. You're not, you're not the mother or the  father, in this situation, you're reminding the child that you know what, that wasn't the right  thing to do. You should, you know, this is what you should do. You're not the teacher. You're  not the pastor, you're the coach, you're just trying to help them figure out things for  themselves. Maybe it is time to try something new out, because what we are doing is not  working. Again, as the coach, you're the one trying to find a way out of the frustration. Rather  than let the client deal with the frustration themselves. They have to figure out their way out  of the frustration, not you. What kind of management is part of coaching, making the client  accountable to the decision to do something about some aspects of his or her life, and the  plan chosen to make it happen? So now we're on the positive side, we're looking at some of  the things that coaching is not this is what it is, how can I hold this guy, this client, this person accountable to the thing that he decided to do? Well, how does one do that? And that's what  we're going to look at next time.