Video Transcript: Semi-Directive With Encouragement And Challege

Hi, my name is Steve Elzinga. And again, we're in the coaching basics part two  class where we're trying to take what we're trying to be I'm trying to teach. How  as a coach can be more directive, we talked in the first class about how  coaching is non directive. And now I'm actually contradicting some of that by  saying you can be directive. But in the last few sessions, we've been looking at  ways that you can be a little more non directive in the directive style of coaching  and calling it semi directive. So in this session, we're going to look at how we  can make the directive more non directive by using challenge and  encouragement, challenge and encouragement. Hebrews 10:24-25, two of my  favorite verses in the Bible, let us consider how we may spur one another on  toward love and good deeds. In other words, spur, at least in the English  language. is the word or the thing that we use. When a cowboy wants to get  going on a horse, we attach these things we call spurs, little steel, pointy things.  And when the cowboy wants the horse to run, they poke, actually poke or spur  the horse, and then the horse galloping. And so Paul here or the the author of  Hebrews, were not sure who wrote Hebrews, is talking about you know, how do  you help someone towards a specific goal by spurring them by, I guess, a more  or less aggressive word would be challenge. You challenge someone, when you challenge someone who's walking in, you're challenging them to run, you're like, Come on, let's go. So let us consider how we may spur or challenge one  another on toward love and good deeds. Let's not give up meeting together as  some are in the habit of doing but let us encourage, encouraging one another,  and all the more as you see the day approaching. So on the one hand, you have challenge, and on the other hand, you have encouraging. And these really are  the two basic ways that we motivate that as parents, we motivate our children.  Sometimes we challenge them, come on, let's go, we got to get ready. Clean up  the mess that you just made. Put your clothes on, you know, do your homework, do your chores. Much of parenting is challenging, putting before a child a  preferred future. This, this is what we're going for. We don't have it yet. The  challenge is you're challenging someone to do what what they have not yet  done. But then encouragement is what a person needs to figure out whether  they're making any progress. And if if, if, for example, parenting becomes all  challenge, you know, your parents are always challenging you to do things. But  never any encouragement. Encouragement is is saying something good. Look, I appreciated what you did, I think you're on the right track. If if a parent only gives challenge, then it's easy for children to grow up thinking that they can never  please their parents. And a lot a lot a lot of us have been raised with that a lot of  challenging very little encouragement. I read somewhere that it takes seven  words of encouragement to balance out one word of challenge. And then if if we  don't have that balance, if if Challenge gets out of balance, then then people will  one or two things happen. A small percentage of people who always get  challenge will go we'll spend the rest of their lives trying to please people that 

cannot be pleased. They'll think that they can do it but they never quite get  there. But then the majority of people will just give up and say well, I'm not even  going to try, Why should I try because no matter what I do is not going to be  good enough. So as I said it's seven words of encouragement to every one word of challenge to just balance out and in fact We should really go a little overboard on encouragement. Most people are suffering in life because they don't have  enough encouragement. bosses don't encourage enough teachers don't  encourage enough coaches don't encourage enough, pastors don't encourage  enough. So in some ways, it's easy to challenge and hard to encourage. But  what I'm saying is we need both, especially, you know, in this semi directive sort  of manner, so why, why is encouragement and challenge needed, it would not  be needed, if all you did, as a coach is to be totally directive, when it comes to  teaching your clients something, you just teach it. So I'm going to teach you  about parenting. And there you go, you know, I'm going to tell you how to do it.  And you just go ahead and do it, or I'm teaching you how to learn how to play  the guitar, here's the chord now just do it, right. But when you try to teach  something in a more semi directive manner, you're relying to a great deal on  your client, being able to figure things out. And this requires challenge and  encouragement. So let me try to show you how that works. When is challenge  appropriate? When the client seeks to pursue a course of action that could hurt  the client and others. So if you have a child and you, you're encouraging them to go outside and play, and they go outside and play next to the road, you  challenge them to move towards the backyard, because you don't want them  accidentally running into the road and getting hit by a car. Now, I suppose in  some ways, the best way for anyone to learn is to, you know, to experience the  consequences of your decisions, whether they're good or bad, if you make a  bad decision, and you suffer for that bad decision, you're going to learn not to do that again. But some consequences are so severe. I mean, we don't want our  kids being hit by a car in the road to learn not to play in the road. So that's why  we challenge them sometimes. So for example, I did some church consulting a  church and went out to Washington State, and I spent about seven weeks with  this church, you know, doing preaching, meeting with the leaders, and, you  know, doing questionnaires trying to figure out where the church is at I was there to sort of help them figure out who they are. They had a pastor for 26 years, and then he left the church had been a church of 150 to 200 people over that 26  years, they went down to 50 people. And so you know, there were some issues,  obviously, at least, from my perspective, that's what I thought they weren't  always, you know, it's interesting, when you see a church in decline, often the  church is not even aware of it. I mean, you think, well, how can you not be  aware of it? You know, I was looking around in some of the different rooms in the church, and I stumbled upon this room that had like, 150 chairs in this room, that that, well, how can you not know that you you're declining when you put 150 

chairs away in some room instead of being out there in the sanctuary? So  anyway, I was, I was doing this consulting, and, you know, meeting with leaders  and so on. And after a couple of weeks, I met with who I thought was sort of the  main leader, he's the one who called me in the first place to come out, see if I  can help them in some ways. And he was saying, you know, I think, you know, I  think we're, I think we're gonna be okay. And it's a real positive kind of person.  And I think you know, what, but we need a leader, I think we should start looking for a leader and call a leader. And I said, I looked at him and I said, if you call  the pastor right now, he would come in, you would kill him. What do you mean,  you would kill him? He would be full of vim and vigor. And he'd want to do this  and do that and change things. And you guys wouldn't want to change anything.  You don't know who you are, you don't know what your vision is. You don't  you're not taking ownership for what has happened in this church in the last 10- 15 years. And then until you do that, you know, inviting a capable person into  this Hornet's Nest, this person's gonna get stung. And, you know, it took him you know, he was a little bit taken aback, but he accepted it and said, Well, you  know, explain more about what what you mean how, what exactly is going on  that that would be a problem. Number one, you guys can't handle any change at all. Because I came in I rearranged the chairs and I, you know, I was gonna  make Hey, I wanted to do You know, my goal was to, in some ways, I was  challenging them like crazy, just with the seating arrangement with the music,  you know, I, their sanctuary was dead as the space is dead as could be, and  their, their welcome area was really alive was a big welcome area. So I had him  sing the first verse of the song. And then I said, you know, in the Old Testament,  they would come in singing into the temple. Let's go out into the welcome area  and let's sing you know there and then we'll come in, and I just wanted them to  experience it. So we went out there and we sang. And, you know, the acoustics  were so alive. You know, when you're in a in a dead space, acoustically  speaking, the only person you can hear singing is yourself, you stop singing.  And then because everyone stopped singing, everyone stopped singing even  more than this sound gets smaller and smaller and smaller. In an alive space,  you start singing and you hear everybody else. And it sounds like you're a big  choir. And so you sing even louder then everyone else starts singing louder, and still, the volume goes up 4, 5, 6 times. So it took him in there into this room. And  they did that. And they were all like, it was the most amazing thing they had ever experienced. And I used that as a metaphor, I said, you know, you would never  would have thought that just going in from one room to another would make that big a difference. And that is just a small little change, it was 20 or 20 foot walk.  And that's the way it is with so many things in church, it doesn't seem like a big  thing. But if you make that change, it will make a bigger difference than you  could ever imagine. But change is all about challenge. Okay, change, is that  which you are not doing. So I'm challenging you to do something you're not 

doing, I'm challenging you do something different. Is that something different  going to work? Or is it not going to work? Are we going to fail? See, that's what  challenge is all about? Well, I was trying to challenge them, you know, to start  using those change muscles, before they call the pastor who you know who had tried to change things and make things happen, and then they might not let him  do it. And then he quit in discouragement. So when is challenge appropriate  number two, when the client settles for a partial understanding, standing of a  concept and needs a push, so the same thing with this church consulting, they  would understand partially what I was talking about, but they needed to be  challenged to experience the whole thing. I mean, that was true for the lighting,  it was true for their committees. I met with the leadership and they had a  leadership and everyone on the leadership was a liaison leader to one of the  committees building and grounds fellowship, social things, missions, finance,  worship, education, so all the different committees of a church. The problem  was, they had all these liaisons, but half the liaison didn't have a committee that  they liaisoned to the committees didn't exist. There was no leader, there were no members. So there was was the liaison. And now the liaison was trying to do for  example, the fellowship committee. But, but this liaison was not chosen because of his interest or passion or giftedness in fellowship, he just happened to be  elected to be on the board. And then they needed a liaison. So he got assigned  the fellowship. And now you have someone who isn't particularly wired towards  fellowship trying to make fellowship happen. And I said to them into just get rid  of all these committees, get rid of them, they don't exist. Anyway. It's better to  have nothing than to have someone who's not really equipped for it. And then  wait for someone who is equipped find somebody who is actually fits it. So they  had a partial thing, you know, we need all these things. But they, they didn't  know how this was going to go going forward. So then I had to challenge them  and give them information about how things work. Number three challenge is  appropriate when the client does not see the obvious poor practices that are  contributing to a lot of suffering in the life of the client. And when the church is in  decline over a long period of time, they don't understand what they don't  understand. They don't see what they don't see. I walked up to the pulpit to  preach. And there's one light shining on my face on this side. And this light over  here is shining to who knows where someone that moved it or something  happened long ago. It's been this way for years. So, you know, the pastor is, on  this side, in the light, this side is in the dark. And, you know, studies have been  shown that it's hard to pay attention to somebody who's in the dark, our eyes  gravitate towards the light, the thing that is lit up the most. It's fatiguing, when it's not. It's a simple little thing, but had been gone on for years, years and years  and years. And no one noticed no one changed. No one not paying attention so  new eyes come and you go, hey, you know your lights are not lined up. It takes  five minutes to change that. See I'm challenging. Let's get the lights right Their 

online streaming, they would they would stream their services online. Today,  people even before they come to a new church will look at the service online  and evaluate the church based on that. The singing that the piano was loud  enough that you didn't need to mic the piano. But the problem was that the  online service only picks up what that which is miked. So the four people singing were miked and the piano was not. So all you hear is the four singers. And then  there was no reverb whatsoever, because the room was alive enough to not  have to put reverb, which is echo in like every room has natural Echo to it that  makes it seem lively, not like a library not like a library where there's no echo. So they didn't have that on the feed that goes out. So you have four singers, no  piano, and they sound horrible, because there's no reverb, reverb sort of makes  voices blend together. Without it. It's very harsh. And so the online is very harsh. So they, and this was going on for years. See, you know, anyone, any person  would look at it, anyone from the outside would look at it and go, this is horrible.  But people get used to horrible over time. And they don't know what they don't  know. And so you you have to show, you know, this is a problem. This is a  problem. This is a problem, we there's a lot of things that we need to fix around  here. Okay, you got some drywall on the back wall, it's been that way for three  years. This is what the pastor sees that anyone walking out, this is what they  see. It only takes you know, three hours to for someone to come in and fix that  and do something. But there it sits year after year. So challenge is appropriate  when the client does not see the obvious poor practices that are contributing to  a lot of suffering in the life of the client. Well, when is encouragement  appropriate. When the client is filled with fear of failure, and needs a lot of  encouragement to be more active in figuring out a concept that is being taught.  So in this church, there was a piano player who was hired now to run the whole  music program. But didn't sing so. But but I think she could. So I'm challenging  her look, if you're in charge of the singing, you better learn how to sing and learn how to help people sing, she also could only play the notes. She needed sheet  music that had all the notes for every song. And that's fine with hymns and so  on. But with contemporary songs, the problem with that is contemporary songs a lot of times build starts off very soft, and then the drum comes in or a bass  comes in. And then the piano does more and adds different things. But a lot of  times this will be very simple, like just a chord. Contemporary Music is very  chord centered. And piano players need to learn how to play chords. So I was  challenging. I said, Well, you needed to learn how to play chords. And someone  like you someone as talented you as you can learn in two, three hours. Here's  three chords. I just showed her three chords here. Let's try it. It's not hard, but  she was resistant. She's resistant because well, I've always played by notes.  That's all I know. And it's like, I'm not open to learning. So now I'm challenging.  I'm saying if you're going to be the music director, you need to learn this. And if  you're not willing to learn something that you could learn in three hours, then 

why would anybody take direction from you? Why would anyone Learn from you if you're not willing to learn yourself. So I mean a pretty strong challenge. And  you know, I've yet to see what's going to happen. So when a client is filled with  the fear of failure, and maybe that's what it was, I'm gonna fail. Whenever you're trying something new, it's something that you haven't done, you're comfortable  with what you have done and what you already know, and you want to stick with  it. So we all need that little bit of a challenge, to move towards that, which we've  never done before. And we need to get over that fear of failure. So in order to do that, we need a challenge. But in order to get over the fear, we need  encouragement. That's why I kept saying to her look, you can do this, I know  you can. I know how talented you are by the music that you play. And chords is  just, you know, in some ways you're playing all these notes is way more  complicated than chords, chords are very simple. It's just like learning in  memorizing, you know, the A chord, and then the C chord, and then the D chord  and the G chord, you know, and then the A minor and a few others, in three  hours, you could memorize like four chords, where you never have to look at the notes again, and you'd have these four chords down, and you can play off your  different songs. I know you can do. And then as she was trying and, you know,  stumbling a little bit, I'm like, Yeah, see, you're getting it already. We haven't  even worked on it for 20 minutes, and you're already good at. So it's letting this  person know that they're on the right track, and that they can do it. And as they  try that they're making some progress. Number two, when a client is on the right  track to figuring something out? How do we know we're on the right track to  figuring you know, we're, our world is filled with a lot of challenge, Challenge  Challenge. But how do you know when you're on the right track? Sometimes,  you know you're on the right track. Because, you know, good things happen. A  lot of times you don't know, at least in the beginning phases of something  because you're not quite good enough for any positive feedback somewhere,  you know, to just happen naturally. So we need someone to say, I think you're  doing it right. You're on the right track, you haven't figured it all out. But but but  you're getting there. And we all need to hear that. I think this is really part of all  the coaching that you do, even the not totally non directive. You know, someone  knows what, you know, they figured out what they want to do. They figure out,  you know, the plan that they want to follow. And then when they meet with you  again, and they explain what they've done. They need to hear a coach saying,  Good job. Good job. You know, you, you said that you were going to do this last  week, and you did it. That's no small thing. People make plans, they say they're  going to do things, and then they don't follow through, but you follow through  your follower, follow through er. That's the kind of thing that you want your client  to get to get a feeling of, you know, I am a follow through er. I can do these  things. So I, this whole arena of challenge and encouragement. It's probably just universal with dealing with people at all. If you want to influence if you want to 

have an effect on someone's life. Whether it's directive, non directive, semi  directive, it doesn't really matter. I think these things are necessary challenge  and encouragement. And some people actually need more challenge than  encouragement. I'm I'm like that, if you want to, if you want to encourage me,  the best way to encourage me is to challenge me because I respond well to  challenge. You know, I'm of Dutch background. And Dutch people are known for  challenge. And they're also known for very little encouragement. So us Dutch  people can get by with very little encouragement, but we can't get by without  challenge. Now, other of you is the reverse, that you don't need a whole lot of  challenge, but what you need is encouragement. And encouragement is almost  like challenge. When you get encouraged, then you try even more, which is  what challenge does so. So today, as you go out today, I want you to be aware  of all the interactions that you have, and try to throw a little challenge and  encourage. See how many times you can do that in All the dinner different  interactions that you have today we'll see you again next time