Collaborative Coaching
Daniel Dunworth, Director
Learning Experience, Pivot Point International
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Chris Linford:
Daniel Dunworth is a beacon of inspiration for educators, learners, and professionals worldwide. With two decades of varied experience, including roles as a cosmetology educator, school director, corporate trainer, and currently as the director of learning experience with Pivot Point International, Daniel is a testament to his commitment to cultivating talent in the beauty industry, an advocate for the modernization of learning through technology. Daniel’s servant leadership approach has helped thousands embrace innovative education methodologies driving them to reach their full potential. Daniel, it’s awesome to have you with us, man.
Daniel Dunworth:
Chris, super pleasure as always. So excited to be back and as always, even just a little bit nervous to always speak back to the group again, which keeps me excited too. So thank you for having me once again. Well, everyone I know I’ve got 20 minutes with you all. We’re going to try to pack it in here pretty tight. As I’m going to just introduce the session for it, what I’d love to know is just let me know where you’re from, tune in. I’m seeing everything flow into the chat, and thank you everyone for the love that I’ve already kind of joined in and shared that you’ve sat through some of the past sessions. So thank you. Thank you again. I really am so honored to be able to do this and share with you all, but I’m loving to see everything from all over the place here, from Canada to Puerto Rico as well too.
This is phenomenal. I’m loving it. As we’re kind of getting set up, here’s what I’m going to ask you to do. I know we’re all tech, very friendly today. I’m going to ask you to just keep a pen or pencil and a piece of paper nearby. You’re going to need that a little bit later on, and I just want to set the stage in case you might need to grab it as we are all watching our Zoom cameras and our screens, whether they be on our devices, anywhere here or there, but have a good, old trusty pen, pencil and a piece of paper for a little bit later on.
What Does The Role of a Coach Mean to You?
But welcome to Collaborative Coaching. I’m really excited to be sharing this information for anyone that might’ve had educators or maybe even attended some of the other seminars throughout the year. I’ve spoken to this to many educators over the past couple of months, the idea of collaborative coaching and what does that role of a coach really mean to everyone in the industry today?
Because education is evolving. I know that you know it because you’re living it day in and day out just like I am that our learners and also our staff, even more importantly, they’re changing. They have different expectations. They’re looking for things a little bit differently, and that is what the idea of collaborative coaching is going to be and what we’re going to chat about over again this course of just a couple of minutes to give you an idea and hopefully some inspiration and motivation to start thinking differently. But I want to ask you a quick question here, and again, please feel free to use the chat or even just jot this down for your own personal reflection. I’d like to ask you, who comes to mind when you think of a coach? What’s that first name, that first person that you really think of when you see that word right there?
Who comes to mind when you think of a coach? I’m going to give you about 30 seconds. We’re going to move a little brisk here. Is it someone you know, is it someone that you’ve maybe seen before? Does a specific type of event or maybe other group situation maybe pop into your mind when you think of coach? Well, today, as we go through these sessions here, I’m going to get an opportunity to be your coach. And as Chris already did introduce, I’ll just kind of recap again, my name is Daniel Dunworth and I do lead our learning experience team here at Pivot Point International. What that really means is I get an opportunity to have my head, heart, and hands in all of the different education that we do, supporting from cosmetology, barbering, aesthetics, nails, and also staff training through our mindful teaching. Today, I’m going to get an opportunity to kind of share these ideas around what does it mean to adopt a mindful coaching mindset, and what does this idea of coaching really mean?
Developing a Mindful Coaching Mindset
And there’s two major aspects that I want to share with us today. Number one is going to be, can you identify what a mindful coaching mindset is? When we use this terminology, mindful coaching, what does it mean? What does that behavior look like? What am I trying to accomplish right now? And number two, I just want to talk to you a little bit about what does it mean to really implement that type of coaching style using mindful coaching and this collaborative coaching approach. Now, to kick it off, I also want to share what is the idea of a mindful coach and how is that maybe a little bit different than another coach that you might’ve mentioned? Now, I did see a couple of names that popped up throughout the chat, and some of them I absolutely recognize. Big shout out to Carol Woodard for the person who posted her name.
Great example of a coach as well. But I’m going to start somewhere where maybe some of those individuals that you thought of landed and maybe some of them landed somewhere else. And I want to start out by introducing if we’re going to talk about what a mindful coach is, well, I want to start out with just that core traditional definition of what is a coach or what we’re going to just kind of call for a moment, a traditional coach. Now, this is not something good or bad versus a better mindful coaching. They both have roles and purposes, but here’s a big difference. The idea of a traditional coach is that what many of us have probably been serving for many years is we’ve been focused on results.
Anytime in the past that I can think of that I’ve been really working with a lot of staff members, again, really kind of calling out to those owners, those directors and lead educator roles, or if you were an educator, even working with your learners, you might’ve been spending a lot of your time focusing on traditional coaching, which is focusing on the results. Are you getting them to a certain expectation, a skill set, a set amount of knowledge, something that they need to be able to do? And your goal as that traditional coach has been to give them feedback that kind of pushes them to that specific goal, passing state board, showing up every day and reaching that 80% attendance, 90% attendance, 100% attendance, their academics, all those types of things where we want a specific result as the outcome. And that’s traditional coaching, and it’s definitely needed. Today, what I want to introduce you to is the concept of mindful coaching. And mindful coaching is not necessarily about a specific result, but it’s about the motivation and the momentum that gets us to achieve results in general.
How can we start to develop people to have their own motivation, their own momentum, and be able to accomplish things without necessarily needing someone to say, “Here’s what I need you to do”? A mindful coach can plant those seeds and watch them grow in others. And I want to just share a few examples of someone that might’ve come to mind if you were listing out some coaches or people that I think of. And number one is Oprah Winfrey.
Oprah Winfrey is a great example of someone that would represent a mindful coach. Here I am looking like I’m almost trying to be Oprah Winfrey for a moment, but there she is, right over that shoulder. Oprah Winfrey has been someone who has developed people over time, and if you could think of many other successful names, Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray, all of these individuals started under Oprah Winfrey’s kind of umbrella and helped her kind of achieve her own success, but then she saw opportunities where they could develop their own.
While they all, every single one of those, Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray, and many others actually all started as guests on Oprah Winfrey’s show, they all now have their own presence, their own representation. They are now starting to develop other people underneath them. That is a great example of a mindful coach, Oprah Winfrey, while yes she’s successful, her big focus is helping other people succeed, and I love this quote there from her, “Meaningful things happen when you release the anxious thoughts and tune into what the person in front of you is saying.” A big thing that Oprah mentions there is that idea of really true active listening. Now, I did see someone else mention one of my own personal favorite human beings on the face of this planet right now, which is Brene Brown. And if you’re not familiar with Brene, you need to be. You’ve got to pick up one of my favorite books right now, which is Dare to Lead or listen to her podcast on Spotify, which is also called Dare to Lead.
And I love this quote from Brene, “Whatever you choose for a career path, remember, the struggles along the way are only meant to shape you for your purpose.” What does Brene really speak about and what does she know about the role of being a mindful coach that’s not just about results, but about helping people drive to that inner potential? And a big thing that Brene talks about is vulnerability. That to be a coach, to be a leader, it’s not about always being strong and powerful and knowing the answers. From Oprah, we learned that we’ve got to be able to help other people, but in order to really step into that type of role, one thing Brene knows is that you’ve got to be vulnerable with those people as well. You’ve got to be able to open up and really expose what are those challenges that we, even as coaches can go through.
We’re not impervious, we’re not perfect, but we have the opportunities to show them what potential can really look like if we stay open and true with those people we’re working to lead. Now, another person that I absolutely cannot go without mentioning when it comes to the concepts of a mindful coach is Leo Passage, our founder here at Pivot Point. And again, this quote here from Leo, “Surround yourself with people who have a positive attitude and always believe in you.” Again, one thing that a mindful coach knows is that while there’s opportunities for me to step in and be a leader, to be that mentor which many of us probably thought of, it’s not always a solo gig. You’ve got to be able to work with a network and work with a community.
And one thing that a great mindful coach knows is that they don’t have the answers to everything, but what they try to do instead is encourage you to stay curious and go looking for the information that can help you grow and develop in the way that you need to.
And those are a few things that we know we can kind of really keep an eye out for is as a mindful coach, how can I offer guidance to individuals to help them define and shape their own success? What improvement opportunities can I look at? How can I stay vulnerable to where I can recognize the improvement that needs to be done for everyone that’s involved? And how can I focus in and promote that process of learning from others, staying that kind of lifelong learners? At Pivot Point, we like to say, “Always learn forward,” always kind of stay hungry for it. What can I do to really help out there and encourage other people around me to grow?
Difference Between a Traditional Coach vs a Mindful Coach
Because that is going to be the key difference between a traditional coach that is going to focus on the results I need to achieve right now, and a mindful coach that goes, “What is it that I have the potential to do? What is that reach that we all can accomplish together, but also looking at those individual levels that everyone on my team, again, as an owner, as a director, all of my team members will have different strengths and different desires that they want to develop.” Even if they’re working in the same department, they all have different levels of success that they want to reach.
As a mindful coach, how can I make sure the team succeeds while the individuals also feel successful? Now, with that moving right along, I want to share, well, what are some things that we can do and what are some scenarios that might even get in the way and prevent us from really reaching our own potential as coaches. Well, as a mindful coach, there’s three things that we can always do and just kind of build into our approaches and our interactions with those that kind of look to us for that leadership and that coaching that we can do to always help.
And those three things are this. Number one, we have to stay curious and ask questions. Oftentimes, as and coaches, when someone comes to us with a question, we can be pretty eager to want to share an answer, “Oh, I’ve learned this. Oh, I’ve done that. Oh, I know that answer.”
Oftentimes we might even jump the gun and provide an answer they’re not quite looking for.
Here’s a behavior I want you to consider. Always lead by asking a question. This will help you and that person turning to you to kind of focus your thinking and really find out, well, what is that deep curious reason why we’re doing this?
Another person that I’d love to just mention here is Simon Sinek, and his great philosophy is like start with why. Getting to that why will help us get to the heart of the issue, the challenge or the situation at hand that we might want to be looking for something different to do or a different way to approach it.
Lead with Questions
So if we can ask questions rather than provide answers, it’s going to allow us to step into that more mindful coach scenario where a traditional coach would’ve been like, “Oh, if you want to know how to do this, here’s what you need to do, and now you’ll get that result that’s expected.” The other thing that we can do is when we’re offering coaching and leadership and mentorship to others, is to use associations that can help them tie it back to their real world experiences or help them build a relationship. One thing that I always like to share is this idea in learning, I call it the PEP, other than just being a lot of energy and having some spunk, PEP actually stands for personal equals permanent, so this idea of associations allows me to go, what can I do to make sure that this information, this experience we’re going through gives you the most personal heartfelt connection to it that will allow this learning experience we’re going through to really stick with you for a long time?
And I think about it as a kid all the time that we used to spend saying, moms, dads saying, “Well, don’t touch the stove. Don’t touch the oven. It’s going to be hot. It’s going to be hot, it’s going to be hot,” when did we as kids finally learned, “Oh, wow, I shouldn’t touch that”? It’s when we finally had that personal experience, “Oh, I touched it. I burned it. Wow, that is hot. Let me not do that again. They were right.” But if we kind of focus on that type of experience where we have to let people experience those moments, we got to tie it back to those real world scenarios. Associations can help us do that when yeah, maybe we don’t want them to go out and burn themselves. Sometimes you got to be burned to learn what not to do. The other thing that we can really practice is giving people the opportunity to go through those actions, and yes, sometimes that means letting them get burned.
Using those actions and supporting the learning process throughout there is what it’s all about. With my team, listen, mistakes are inevitable, and I love to try to be more of a Bob Ross when it comes to a mistake because you know what? That happy little accident, just a learning opportunity of what we can do, but if I support you through those actions, whether you’re right or maybe not so right, you’re going to learn something from it. Oftentimes, as a coach, as a leader, people that have a team that we manage and oversee, we want to avoid those mistakes from happening because we think of it, it might cause more work, it might cause more time, but really in the end, it’s always going to take that time if we are the ones that complete the actions or give the answers. We have to allow those that follow us, our learners or our team members opportunity to take their own actions and see what happens from there.
Now, this is all great ideas and you might be saying like, “Daniel, oh, this sounds really positive. I’m really excited about this, and this seems actually really simple.” The truth of the matter, coaching, leadership, it’s not. There are always going to be things like roadblocks and challenges that get in our way. If it was easy as saying like, “Oh, just let your people make mistakes and they’ll be just fine afterwards,” it’s easier said than done. The roadblocks can really prevent us from actually learning from moments that can be beneficial. Oftentimes though, as a mindful coach, we have to have mind shift moments, areas where we might want to jump into things a little bit sooner that’s needed, and I’m going to share three common phrases that I hear over time when working with other coaches and developing that that oftentimes set up our own barriers and our own roadblocks that don’t allow us as leaders, directors, owners, to actually maximize our own potential for coaching others.
One of those here to just kick right into it, it’s going to be this phrase, how many people here have ever heard this or said this? Give me a yes in the chat if you ever have, heard it or said it, maybe you’ve even just felt it. You know what? It is what it is. I’m seeing those guesses fly through this. This pops up all the time. It’s quite often to end up in that situation of it is what it is. This is a moment where our mind is kind of saying, “You know what? I don’t know if I want to invest the time, energy, and effort into maybe changing this process, changing how I think about this or changing the way we as a team even work with it. It is what it is.” Another way you might phrase this or have used this in your own culture is saying, “Well, we’ve done it like that for…” and then go ahead and add on the years that you might’ve.
It’s always been that way. Those ideas, there are things where we’re setting up limitations that might not need to exist. What I really want you to do to walk away from here as a mindful coach is to have that mind shift moment that when you feel the urge to go, “You know what? It is what it is,” instead, I want you to think, “Well, you know what? If I take a moment to learn, the more you learn, the more you can learn.” Instead of saying, it is what it is, maybe there’s something I can learn here. Maybe there’s something I can do differently here. And I want you to ask yourself that question right here, what’s stopping you from embracing this change that might be staring you in the face? Oh no, we can’t do that. We’ve always done it this way. If you feel that itch, stop and ask yourself, what’s stopping me from wanting to maybe do something different?
Is it time? Is it energy? And I want you to take a moment and just call back to a good old Dr. Seuss book, Oh, the Places You’ll Go, and in that book it actually says, “The more you read, the more you’ll learn, and then the more you know, oh, the places you’ll go,” and that simple phrase there from Dr. Seuss, a child’s novel can give us that mindset shift that we need that goes, if I can just take a moment and say, let me stay open to it, who knows the potential that we might be able to accomplish both as individuals or as a team, depending on where my coaching outreach might go. But the thing is, change feels awkward if you try to do something different. So here’s what I’m going to ask you to grab that pen and paper right now. I’m going to give you 30 seconds.
Get it quick, get it fast, and what I want you to do is as fast as you can, I want you to go ahead and just start signing your name. Start signing your name as if you were signing a check, and if you want to fill one of those out too, I’ll give you my address to send it over. Go ahead and start writing your name as fast as you can. Now, I’m going to give you a couple seconds here. I’m staring at my clock and I’m counting down from 10 right now, counting down from… go and start signing your name. Here we go. You’ve got five seconds. 3, 2, 1. Go ahead and put your pen down. Here’s what I want you to do really quick. I want you to go ahead and just count up how many times were you able to sign your name on that piece of paper that you got out earlier.
Let me know in the chat. What’s that number? Let’s see if we’ve got a record in there. How many times were you able to sign your name, right? I see some eights was the first number that flew up in there, right? We’re staying up there. 10 seconds, not a long time, so we’re not looking for big numbers. I saw 10 pop up for a second, saw another 10, lots of sixes, lots of sevens. All right, 15 signatures there, I just saw pop up for Joshua. Kudos. Kudos. That might be the record. Here’s what I want you to do is realize, listen, change is awkward, but maybe there’s an opportunity to learn. I want you to take that pen down and put it in your opposite hand. Go ahead and switch that pen over to your opposite hand, and on the count of three, I want you to go ahead and start signing your name as fast as you can.
Ready? Two, one, go ahead and start signing. You’ve got 10 seconds. Equal amount of time. I want you to sign your name, but here’s the thing, try and make it look just like the first hand did. Put some effort into it. I’m going to give you about five more seconds. 3, 2, 1. All right, what do you got? How many times were you able to sign your name with that opposite hand? And my guess is, yep, we’re seeing some lower numbers that’s in there. Listen, change is awkward. It’s difficult, but the thing is, maybe there’s an opportunity to learn something new. What if you weren’t able to do things the same way? What if something came and was a catalyst and someone said, “Hey, not even one”? And that’s okay, but now you’ve got an opportunity to say, listen, you never know when you might have to be in that challenge, that hand tied behind the back.
Could you still sign those checks that you needed to? So looking at it, change feels awkward, it’s uncomfortable, but it gives us opportunities to grow, and I think about that because how many times do learners enter our industry when they’re looking for opportunities and they’re a right-hand, left-handed learner, and they’ve got to process and perceive information.
I’m going to move on to one more with you here and just keeping an eye on my time. Sometimes we have this thought here, “Some people are lazy.” This is a common one that oftentimes will come up, oh, they don’t want to do that. They’re not as invested as I am. They’re kind of dragging, they’re lethargic. If you ever have a thought process where you want to assume someone might not be putting the effort into it, here’s that thought transition, that mindset shift I want you to have, which is more about what could you do to actually peak that person’s interest or build momentum?
What opportunities do you have? Turn inward and say, “Is there something else I can do that might need to help me reach that individual?” Everyone’s going to be interested by something a little bit different. I’m going to share this when to which story. My kids were having a conversation the other day about some of the coolest things that they own, and my son was talking about his PC and his VR headset. My other daughter was all excited about her tablet and everything that goes on, and one daughter, another daughter said, “You know what? The coolest thing I own, my Stanley. You know why? Because this Stanley is so smart. It knows when to do what I need it to do. I can put my hot chocolate in it and it stays hot all day long. I can put my ice drink in here and it stays cold all day long. I don’t have to tell it or make it do anything. It knows when to which to switch for it to help me do what I need to do.”
I want you to think about that as a leader. What can you do to just recognize and switch to support those individuals around you and just start to change that perception we have when we leading that, “Oh, I’ve got to help everyone the same way.” Different people need their momentum built differently, and all it takes is a simple perspective shift. Pablo Picasso once said, “There’s only one way to see things until someone shows us how to look through different eyes.” I want to ask you to do one last activity with me. I want you to go ahead and just stick your thumb up like this, close one eye, and I want you to block me, make me invisible. Hide me on your screen, stick your thumb out in front of you, whether you got to move your arm in and out, but close one eye and block me completely.
We’re going to do a perspective change that yeah, it seems like there’s one way to get things done, but here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go ahead and switch eyes now. Go from one eye to the other and keep your thumb in the same place. Am I still blocked or did you just have a perspective change, that there are more than one ways to approach things with our team, that there’s not always a right way or the highway. We as leaders, we with the responsibility of being able to mentor and coach others, have to keep our mind open to what we can also learn from those around us and be able to offer coaching in the way that we possibly can.
It’s really all about being able to build up the ability and recognize that everyone has the ability to learn. We’ve got to rise to the occasion to help those around us because people are turning to us, right? They’re looking to us as guidance. There’s more than one way to get things done, and sometimes it might mean we as the coaches have to do the learning, but to do so, we’ve got to stay curious and hungry. We’ve got to ask those questions. We’ve got to look for those real-world associations and connections and what can we do to allow other people to stay active in the learning process with us? What activities can we delegate, assign to give them the chance to learn on their own and not always have to come to us for answers? That’s what a mindful coach really knows what to do with their team is to stay curious, lead through that interest, not to be the one who’s the beacon of answers, but more of that beacon of guidance and curiosity and to always stay hungry as a future learner themselves.
So thank you very much. I know that’s my 20-minute time. Maybe I stole a few more, but thank you very much for all of that. If you always do want to know a little bit more, I’ll take a chance and I’ll share my email, my contact information right down in the chat, but I want to make sure I pass things right back on over to you, Chris and Parker. Again, thank you so much for that 20-minute time today. Man, it goes so fast, right? Anyone else that might be watching Fallout lately too, a different meeting, but you block me and you can hide me, so thank you everyone. Have a great one.
Chris Linford:
Daniel, thank you. Thank you so much. As always, wonderful presentation. Stay curious.