From your own experience, describe a situation in which you used explicit questioning. How did this help you avoid the ORJI traps?
As an executive coach in my organization, explicit questioning is critical to success. I am often partnered with very senior leaders, engaged with sensitive and confidential information and my questioning and direction of conversation has the potential to influence that person’s decision making. Sometimes it is down right scary. As a human being, I think it is quite difficult to not fall into any of the ORJI model cycle steps. Through basic observation and emotional reactions, it takes great skill, experience and open-mindedness to remove stereotypes, assumptions, bias or preconceptions.
One example that comes to mind is when I was coaching a data team just prior to them going into a senior leadership event where their readout would shape the decision making and next steps for some big initiatives and changes. To try to avoid emotional reactions and judgement, especially as I already had a bit of assumptions based on the senior teams past behavior, I worked diligently with the team as this was a new scenario, new data, a new story and a strong potential to influence the senior leaders decision. The data team and I talked through word choice a lot – word choice is powerful. Something as simple as “I think we should take this direction” compared to “my recommendation based on what I shared today is that we…” We role played and practiced how the senior team might challenge the data. We ensured they not only knew their data in and out, but we went a deep step further, to ensure that their data story – the true story- was inviting, clear and relatable – and met the goals and OKRs of the senior team and the dept.
As their coach, once I gave them some solid tools and extra confidence through the role plays, I stepped back a bit for them to grow. As I reflect on the ORJI model, I believe I was able to step back enough to avoid falling to deeply into one of these ORJI steps. What I recognized, is that without a bias or pre-conceived judgement, I was able to let the data be more free and creative with what they brought to the table. I also think I was able to avoid this trap as I really believed in the data team and their group dynamic. They were highly engaged, excited about the opportunity, and they believed in their work and impact. They had clear goals and worked well together toward them – hard to have bias with that type of set up. After all was said and done, their presentation was effective and they delivered a very positive readout with a clear and confident recommendation, all which were accepted and praised.