I was strolling around the office doing a little "Management by Walking Around" when one of my customer service guys says "Hey Bob, when you have a minute?" I was like, "What do you need?"

The drama triangle was glowing brightly in this one. His leader is out of the office today at a customer and he was buzzing around the drama triangle about all kinds of issues. He even called in our shipping guy for backup. I'm thinking, this is awesome! I've got a perfect opportunity here to help coach both of these guys. In the past, I would have just reacted and gone into a lecture or even tried to defend the actions of others and try to rescue the situation.

On Tuesday, I had presented to the whole company a slide on Committed Action and talked about enrolling others and making clear requests. Previous to that I had talked about FISBE, TED, and the DDT. I was almost jumping for joy that this situation was going to be perfect to coach and then challenge him. I was just a bit nervous that I would blow it. So, I took a breath and thought STOP, Exhaled and thought GROUND and then looked at him and thought CENTER.

Everything was truly different than in the past. I was able to not argue with him but listen and ask questions and then coach him on where maybe he doesn't know everything. I talked about a book I'm reading where the author says we tend to make decisions based on "What you see is all there is" and that there is always really more to the story.

I asked him why he is so frustrated with certain situations and we learned together that he is bothered that people don't immediately jump on a customer email request so he is the only one doing certain types of tasks. After some discussion around committed action, we learned that he was making assumptions and that others were also making assumptions. We walked through how he could make a request and enroll his coworkers in a way that would lessen his frustration.

In the end, praised him for his passion, enthusiasm, and trying to take to heart my One Call, Problem Solved philosophy. I challenged him to be aware of what his body is telling him and to take a breath and instead of assuming that people are lazy or that his boss is attacking him to ask why am I frustrated or angry? Why is my boss asking me this question? Why didn't my coworker answer that email when I was out? How can I get a little more perspective on the situation? Maybe, I don't know everything.

He was way calmer at the end and I believe we really did make strides. As I was walking down the hall I got a positive nod from one of my team.

Anyway, I could go on and on. This was truly a breakthrough moment for me. The material to date was really beneficial and also the coaching of throwing away the script and speaking from the heart helped me be a better leader today.