Coaching Conversations in 2025
Coaching Conversations with Tim Hagen, where we teach leaders and managers how to coach their employees. This is the ideal podcast for leaders, managers, and aspiring leaders to improve their coaching and leadership skills to create a more positive coaching culture within their teams.
In 2025, we're doing weekly podcasts on various coaching topics and strategies that will rotate throughout the month, as opposed to 2024 where the weekly episodes featured a monthly theme. Coaching Conversations will continue to have four episodes per month and we're going to sprinkle in masterclasses, which will be lengthier, workshop-style formats.
We also invite you to join the new FREE e-publication, the Workplace Coaching Times founded by Tim Hagen. This weekly newsletter contains expert insights on coaching strategies on specific topics like sales coaching, leading with empathy, and self-awareness techniques, and much more. We're a community of leaders, managers and coaches transforming workplace challenges into coaching victories—one conversation at a time. Subscribe here: https://coachingtimes.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Coaching Conversations in 2025
Unmasking Self-Awareness: The Key to Better Communication and Perception
Ready to challenge your self-perceptions? Prepare to have your understanding of self-awareness turned upside down as we uncover the truth that only a mere 10% of us are genuinely self-aware, despite a staggering 95% of people believing they are. We uncover the truth behind embellished narratives and emotional interpretations, with a focus on how these distortions can lead to missed opportunities, as highlighted by a job interview scenario that took a wrong turn due to a lack of self-awareness.
Let's delve deeper into the nuances of communication and the pivotal role self-awareness plays in shaping our conversations. We shed light on the power of the right word choice and the manner of approach, with a compelling real-life example of a parent upset over their son's benching in a basketball game. Additionally, we tackle a prevalent challenge in the training realm - attendees losing focus. Buckle up for a stimulating discussion that could potentially revolutionize your perception and self-awareness!
Welcome to Coaching Conversations
We have created a NEW and Innovative line of books called Workplace Coaching Books. These books use QR codes with embedded audio and video lessons speaking directly to the reader. Each book comes with assessments and journal based coaching pages where they document what they've learned and what they've applied. In addition each book comes with the self analysis link that prompts them to share what they've learned and what they've put into action leading to greater learner application a
Progress Coaching 360 is a dynamic leadership development system that equips managers and teams with powerful coaching skills through a blend of training, real-time practice, peer learning, and feedback. It combines expert-led instruction, a train-the-trainer model, group coaching certification, and monthly coaching pods where leaders practice, share wins, and tackle challenges. With built-in accountability and hands-on application using Coaching Cards and best practice sessions, Progress Coaching 360 turns coaching from theory into action—building a sustainable culture of growth, feedback, and performance.
Progress Coaching 360 teaches leaders how to coach and employees how to develop coachability skills. This unique combination helps build great workplace cultures.
Get More Info Here: https://form.jotform.com/251187914739165
When you think about self-awareness. Self-awareness is a person's ability to truly look in the mirror and really really be honest with themselves. As I'm doing this podcast, I'm preparing for a workshop today, actually teaching the merits of how to coach to self-awareness. By its true definition, self-awareness is the ability to recognize and understand your own moods, emotional reactions and drives, as well as those attributes of other people. Now think about that just for a second. When was the last time you had an employee come into your office and say you know what, bob, last week I was pretty moody, sorry, I was undermining and talking about your poor leadership. Now I bet you're laughing as you hear that. It sounds crazy, right? I know I go back to this statistic a lot. I go back to the work by Tasha Yurak. In her book Insight she talks about her study. In her study she talks about a survey that she did where she asked people were they highly self-aware? 95% said yes. When she tested them, she found out only 10% were. Think about that. Think about 85% of people. 8.5 out of 10 people are absolutely fooling themselves. Think about training. I love the training world. How often do trainers have people who sit there and say, oh, I had to attend this workshop. Well, this was dumb. Or they're playing solitaire in the back of the room on a computer and they're not paying attention.
Speaker 1:I always go back to a fundamental statistic I've shared for now 30 years. Do you know? Every year the study remains pretty much the same. Or the research. I should say that roughly half of salespeople hit their numbers. But I guarantee you'll never hear a sales number Go down and have a sales rep actually say you know what? My numbers went down due to my poor performance. I asked too many close-ended questions. I don't act of listen, I don't know how to negotiate and I certainly cannot handle objections. What do they say? Well, the economy went south or the marketing department didn't do its job. That's a demonstration of a lack of self-awareness. We all struggle with it. We all do. We have all demonstrated a lack of self-awareness at some point. Now, why do we lack self-awareness? Think about this for a second.
Speaker 1:Think about a person going home talking to his or her spouse, and what do we typically do? We say well, how was your day? I had a tough day. My boss was just. He was all over me and he was just. You know, he called me into the office.
Speaker 1:And what do we do? We embellish, we emotionally interpret, and then we embellish. And when we embellish, what does our significant other, our spouse, our family member, do? We don't challenge that person and say hold on a second, he seems like a good guy, but you can kind of be a jerk. We don't do that. It's not a safe place, is it? So what happens is we embellish, we emotionally interpret, we give a narrative and guess what happens with that narrative? It becomes other people's reality of that perspective. It becomes their perspective. And then what does the spouse say? Well, honey, geez, you shouldn't, maybe you shouldn't work there anymore. The spouse wasn't there. They have no clue. We are not accurate, especially when there's emotions involved. Very few of us. When we have an emotional interaction or emotional situation in emotional circumstance, we're not accurate. We emotionally interpret and we embellish.
Speaker 1:I'll never forget the time I walked behind a woman that I was personally coaching and she did not get a job. She went for an interview and literally said these words to three people in the cafeteria I've cited this story before and she said yeah, this guy just attacked me. Two or three of the other ladies said oh, what do you mean? Oh, he was just such a jerk. He was just such a jerk he didn't give me a chance at the job. He attacked me and I stood behind her. The three ladies saw that I was standing behind there and kind of quickly dissipated. She turned around and she goes oh, I didn't know you were there. I said he attacked you. Well, yeah, I said so.
Speaker 1:What did he specifically do to attack you? Well, I just felt. I said stop. I didn't ask how you felt. What did he do to attack you? Well, I'm trying to answer. I just felt. I said stop. I didn't ask how you felt.
Speaker 1:I am asking you to depict specifically, because it's a heck of an accusation you made. He got you in a headlock, he slapped you, he punched you, he pushed you, he yelled at you in your interview for a job. Well, no, I just felt like you know, I was really hoping to get the job and I said so, you're disappointed, she goes. I'm incredibly disappointed. I said awesome, I appreciate how you feel.
Speaker 1:What did he do? She said, well, nothing really. And I said do you know? You just told three people he attacked you. When you hear the word attack, what goes through your mind? I hear physicality, I hear yelling, I hear screaming. I haven't heard you say that's what he did. She said no and I said now guess what's going to happen. Those three people are going to tell four people. They're going to talk about that guy in very unfavorable terms and guess what's going to happen? There's going to be 12 narratives out there, 12 different versions, 12 embellishments that are going to come back to you. Now, do you think he'll ever interview you for the next promotion?
Speaker 1:Now, to her credit, she went to the guy. She came clean. She told him she wasn't qualified for the job. She was working on a shop floor to manufacturing plan. She went for an office job. She had no office skills. She was lucky to get an interview. That's her reality. So the toughest thing that we all go through is self honesty. By the way, you didn't get the job because someone was more qualified. You didn't hit your numbers because you didn't perform. Your customer service metrics weren't as high as they could be because you know what? Maybe you got lazy. It's tough here in the truth.
Speaker 1:Now, for 30 some years, on and off, I coached boys volleyball. You know what our biggest pain in the butt is? It's the parents. Parents will come charging hard. They're already mad, and I once had a mother say to me I'm really upset. And I said what are you upset about? Well, my son's not playing. He just sits there, he never gets off the bench. And I said well, I'd love to tell you why she goes. Why would love to hear it. She's angry.
Speaker 1:I said well, do you mind if I ask you a question first? She said sure. I said what's your understanding of why he's not playing? Well, I don't know. That's why I'm here. I said do you mind if I share something else with you? She said what's that?
Speaker 1:I said he knows why he's not playing. And let me quote your son coach, I get it, I'm fine, not playing. Now what I would ask you to do is take a deep breath and I want you to hear something your son knows. So I'm gonna ask you a question. I think I know the answer and I think you know the answer, and I call my voice down. I slowed down. I said is this about you or your son? She goes yeah, it's just been really tough. And I said is it about you or your son? And she wouldn't answer me. And I finally said when you see him on the bench. What do you see? Well, he's jumping around. He's high-fiving guys, he's yelling, and I said that's why your kid's on the team. He's not on the team because of ability, and if you want me to give you a laundry list of what that is, I'm fine doing that, but I don't wanna degrade a kid, because the value to our program and our team has nothing to do with this athletic talent. It has everything to what you just said and what you just illustrated.
Speaker 1:See, what happens is we lose control of reality, we embellish, we emotionally interpret. When we don't get a job, when we don't get the pay raise, we don't calmly say you know what, boss, I know you're not gonna pay me more money, but good for you for sticking to your guns. We don't typically do that, do we? We embellish, we emotionally interpret, we give a narrative of other people. And oh, by the way, when we don't go to the source and we tell other people, guess what happens, oh, my gosh, guess what happens. There's a version of your reality that is so non-reality. It'll drive people crazy.
Speaker 1:Self-awareness has to be practiced. The way you drive someone's self-awareness is to ask them questions. When that mom came charging hard about her kids lack of playing time. I asked her what's your understanding of why your son's not playing? She couldn't answer it. That diffused her argument. The second thing I said was do you know that he knows why he's not playing? And in his words, I'm fine with it, coach. And her facial expression went from anger to bewilderment. What did she illustrate? She had never talked to her son. This was about her, and it is tough to watch your kids sit there. So we have to ask questions, we have to practice self-awareness. Insert the word honestly, john. Honestly, your numbers are at 92%. What can you do to improve and what could I do to assist you? Now? A different approach would be with anger, john. Why are your numbers so low? See the way we approach, the way we coach, the language we use matters. Ask questions, practice self-awareness and you will see a dramatic difference in your people and yourself.