Customizing Coaching Styles

People have such different social styles, different communication styles, they accept and hear feedback differently. Do you coach different people on your team and at the various companies you advise in different ways, depending on who you’re talking to?

Totally, totally. I think some people like very straightforward, no fluff, no side conversations, just, “Eric, tell me what I gotta do. Tell me what...” And I always ask them straight up, “Before we start this, what’s your communication style? And how do you like feedback to be given?” And then I just write it down, I write it down in this notebook, it’s super easy for me to remember.

Then I just say, “Okay, great. You like to get to know me on a personal level.” So we’re going to spend five minutes before every conversation talking about whatever, talking about my kids, talking about the weather, whatever. Or some people don’t want that. Some people just want straight up like, hit the points, hit the points and get out.

And so, it starts with the question, what do you prefer? What are your preferences? It’s kind of like when you onboard onto any platform, you’ve got to get those dots. What’s your age? What’s your gender? How frequent do you want emails? Things like that. I think we don’t ask that question enough, what do you prefer?