Coaching Demo with Pam Ross: Master Leadership Development Using the Blues & Oranges Feedback Model

Tobi

Have you ever seen feedback go wrong because it was a plain sandwich of critique? Or have you experienced it as a powerful driver of change? My guest on last week's episode, Pam Ross, built a leadership development agency called Blue Rebel Works, where she trains leaders to adopt a coaching approach. One of her main tools there is the Blues and Oranges Feedback™ model that she developed herself. When I asked her about it in our interview, we accidentally ended up running a small coaching demo, where Pam gave me feedback and coached me on hosting this podcast. So this part of the conversation turned out to be a nice glance behind the scenes of the Making of a Coach podcast, and also a powerful demo of how the Blues and Oranges Feedback™ model combines SBI feedback, situation, behavior, impact, with the GROW coaching model. While producing the previous episode with Pam's business building story, we found these 20 minutes so useful that we are testing a new kind of episode here. A quick dive into a coaching demo. Let's go.

Tobi

Can you take us into that four step feedback model? How does it look, and why is it important?

Pam Ross

Sure. Our four step feedback model is called Blues and Oranges. Blue is also in the name of my company, Blue Rebel. Blue is the color of trust and freedom, if you look at the research on color, and the rebel part is disruption and change. Let's try something new, let's innovate, in a trusted way. That is why we brought the blue into the rebel. In almost everything we do we are thinking, how is trust and freedom a part of this? How are we disrupting or challenging ourselves? That is really what the Blues and Oranges Feedback™ model is. Picture a two by two framework. The left hand side is the blue side. These are the things people have freedom to work in, because this is the positive feedback. This is where we recognize them, where we build confidence in those skills, where they are doing great. On the right side is the orange side. That is where someone might be having a challenge, or where there is an opportunity to learn more, a new skill. So blue is on the left, orange is on the right. Along the top it is a questioning style, so we always ask first. Step one is the blue question. We use something called focused open questions, FOQs for short. Focused because we are focusing on something that is going well, and open because we want an open question. So I might say to you, Tobi, tell me, what are you really proud of accomplishing over the last couple of weeks? And you would tell me something.

Tobi

Out of my comfort zone, and actually starting this podcast, showing my face, posting on LinkedIn.

Pam Ross

What was challenging about that for you? What did you have to overcome to do it?

Tobi

Some limiting beliefs about social media. On the one hand this conviction that social media is overall rather negative for us as a society, and at the same time being a heavy user of YouTube. I liked the move of LinkedIn towards video, because there you can bring more depth. You can actually bring value, not only photos of my breakfast. We are working with that.

Pam Ross

I love that. So you overcame that limiting belief and you are bringing your own strength and value to platforms. You are not letting the negative side overcome you. You are bringing the positive to it.

Tobi

And I really enjoy it. I think we have one on one conversations in common, because of their depth. I enjoy conversations about personal development, coaching and entrepreneurship, and with this podcast I managed to combine all of that into one product, if you want.

Pam Ross

What a great way to bring all of that together. I love it. So we just did step one of the model, which is me asking you about something that is going well for you and recognizing that strength. You will notice I didn't just ask you and move on. I spent some time there. This is something leaders often forget about. We don't give people the time to really celebrate the things they are doing well. We focus so much on what to improve that we don't spend the time there. So in step one you are listening, maybe asking and confirming something. That empathic listening is part of that step.

Tobi

It feels great to talk about myself and about the thing I am proud of.

Pam Ross

Exactly what we want. We want to start our feedback conversations with that person feeling great, building that confidence. The second step is that I give you some feedback. We don't work together regularly, but I will give you some feedback, and this is blue feedback, so we stay on that side. I want to recognize you for something. We tend to use the SBI model here, situation, behavior, impact, which is a pretty common model created by the Center for Creative Leadership. Tobi, one thing I am noticing is that you have asked me some really open questions, and I have a tendency to almost flood you with so many things, and I have noticed you condensing it into: what I am hearing are these three things. You are actually making me sound smarter, and I love it. You are bringing such value to this conversation by clarifying what the top things I am sharing are, and I so appreciate that about the way you are leading this conversation. What do you think helps you do that? How did you develop that skill?

Tobi

I am not sure I am actually a great listener. I often get sidetracked in my own thoughts. But in this podcast setting I wear the headphones, which helps me to be in the tunnel, and I center myself on this attitude of curiosity, going into the conversation as if my life depends on it. I really want to learn from this person. I have learned that this makes great conversations, for both parties involved.

Pam Ross

It is interesting for me to hear that you don't think you are a good listener, because in our conversations I really feel that you are. It sounds like the intention you come into the conversation with is helping. If I was your leader I would spend some time here and talk about where else you could bring that same intention in, and when that listening skill could help you more. When do you want to use this more often? So I might spend some time there, but I am going to go through the model. That was step two. I provided you a little SBIQ. The Q is the question I asked at the end. I gave you positive, reinforcing feedback, and then I asked a question to build on it and see whether there is an opportunity to learn here.

Tobi

So you had the situation,

Pam Ross

Exactly.

Tobi

Is that the blue part of the feedback, meaning it is necessarily positive?

Pam Ross

Yes. These are some things I am noticing that you do really well, so that listening piece. Now we go to the orange side. And again, we always ask first. The top of the model is ask first. So we are in step three. I might say, what are you finding most challenging over the last week or two? And you don't have to answer. I won't make you answer it.

Tobi

What was very challenging for me is to structure these podcast conversations so that they fulfil the promise of diving deep into the journey of my guests, which I really enjoy, while I can also see that not everybody wants to listen to every single bit of that journey. How do we build it so that especially the beginning of the conversation is useful already? That is why in today's conversation we didn't have this past, present, future framework, but went present, past, present in a way. That was a frustrating and challenging experience. I think I gave my last guest, a lady from the west coast of the US, quite a hard time, and also myself. So that was one of my biggest challenges.

Pam Ross

So I am hearing there is this curiosity you bring, you want to learn all of the things, and then the thinking about what the audience really wants to hear. And there might be different people in that audience. And then the level of work that comes into it when you do have all of this information, this two and a half hour conversation that you are trying to drill down to something shareable.

Tobi

Yes.

Pam Ross

What if you were to think about success for this podcast? What is most important?

Tobi

Actually delivering something useful to our audience. When I say audience, I think of the people who buy our metaFox card sets, who I tend to speak with a lot. The thing they always have in common is: I have this coaching business, your cards are great as conversation starters or to go really deep, but my main challenge is how to build my business. And it is hard to solve that with another card set. With this podcast we want to solve that problem and build something useful. That is how we want to deliver value. At the same time it is great if we reach more people, if the brand of metaFox becomes more known, without being salesy.

Pam Ross

So the goal is to add value, to help coaches build their business. And the side effect, if I can call it a side effect, is that you also spread the word about metaFox and the picture cards that add to your business once you have them. What are the parts that stand out as helpful when it comes to building a business?

Tobi

That is for the listeners to judge, but I tend to believe it is the acquisition bits. That is why I was quizzing you so much on how you found your first clients, how you do this with the keynotes, how your journey of posting videos went.

Pam Ross

And now I can see those targeted questions. That is awesome for me, it helps me add that value too. You said you have changed the way the questions run, from past, present, future to present, past, future. What are you learning there? What do you find is working well?

Tobi

Let's see. I hope it is less editing effort for us.

Pam Ross

Are there any things standing out as you think about that, that could be helpful? When you are going into that editing, to take some stress off the process, what might be helpful?

Tobi

I am getting help. We have Justin, one of our team members, and also some external experts who onboarded us. So not doing everything by myself, I would say.

Pam Ross

What else?

Tobi

Getting my questions more straight, so that the overall recording is shorter.

Pam Ross

In our workshops we will sometimes do a demo and I put on glasses to show that I am no longer in the coaching. So that was step three. Now, depending on what you say in step three, where I ask you about a challenge, I might do some coaching like I did there. If you are familiar with the GROW coaching model, that is what we generally teach. So I am asking you about a goal, what success would look like, and reality. I can't remember exactly what question I asked, but something to uncover what was really important. I would probably ask a few more, to be honest, because it sounds like there might be some beliefs there that we could challenge. But for now I am going quickly, and then I get to options. What could you do? Ultimately you leave with something to try. That is step three. And then in step four I would provide you either something new that I see as an opportunity for you to try, or, if we work together, something I noticed that I would love to see you do a little differently. So I am looking for something where I can add value, a new growth opportunity, or, if there is actual constructive feedback, I would give it to you. The benefit of doing this is that I am practicing coaching even on the blue side. Even though it was positive, I still asked a couple of coaching questions to learn what was really positive about it for you, and to give you time to celebrate and stay in that space. On the orange side I am coaching you through solving the problem yourself. Asking first builds your accountability, autonomy and empowerment, because you are solving it and you are talking about it. And then I get an opportunity to be clear. I don't have any constructive feedback for you. What might be helpful from an interviewee perspective is if you let me know ahead of time, and I will do some deliberate thinking about what has helped me acquire clients. I might be able to talk more about that. What do you think of that?

Tobi

Do you think you would still speak authentically if you scripted the conversation?

Pam Ross

I personally would. If you set it up right, it is hard not to be authentic with someone who comes in curiously and asks questions. I did make a few bullet points when I thought about our conversation. I will be honest, I haven't really looked at them. Just knowing that the overall purpose is how we can help coaches build their business, I might be a little more intentional in the stories I share. They are still going to be my stories. You are still going to be curious about them, and I am going to be genuinely me in sharing. But I might have asked myself: is there something specific that has really worked for me that I should bring to Tobi, that would really help? And that would give you a clip that is easy to share, in your editing too.

Tobi

Thank you. I thought I had been doing that, but I guess I am also not clear enough in the walls of text that I send to people.

Pam Ross

Maybe it is that. We do get a lot of questions, and I didn't look at today's questions. I did look at the previous ones, and I didn't see the real highlight on that part. So maybe it is just bolding that specific part about acquisition. It could be as simple as that.

Tobi

Let me try to abstract this, going away from our podcast conversation back to the feedback model.

Pam Ross

Yes.

Tobi

You started with the focused open questions, right?

Pam Ross

Yes. Start with the blue side, the positive, because you want to spend some time there. Too often we just focus on what is going wrong and on fixing it. We really want to spend time and learn where else we can use that positive skill or strength you are learning, and understand why it is positive to you. So you do want to celebrate it. It also builds a bit of connection and trust for the rest of the conversation. I also want to highlight focused open questions more, because what we find is that leaders will sometimes go in and say, so how are things going? That might be okay for building rapport, but you are not going to get the blue and the orange side that way. That is why we ask a specific question focused on the positive, on the things that are going well, so you can highlight those, and a specific question about any challenges or opportunities for growth, so that you get that balanced feedback. Instead of just asking how things are going, because then you are probably going to get a status update.

Tobi

What are you proud of. Which other questions could you ask there?

Pam Ross

We have a whole variety of them in our free micro course. You could be at a milestone in a project, so you could say, here you are, you just launched that product, what went really well in that launch? What are some highlights over the last week? What are a couple of successes you have had lately? What has been going really well for you as you joined this team? It depends on what is going on for them in that moment, but the point is that it is focused on them sharing something that is going well. On the orange side it could be, what are some roadblocks you have run into, or what has been really challenging for you. We do our blues and oranges at the end of every workshop. Ours is, what do we want to do differently next time we run this workshop? So if you have another client call, what would we do differently with the next client? What do you want to do differently next time? You could ask, what are some things you want to learn more about? What are some areas you want to improve on or develop further? Those are all orange questions. They are opportunities for learning. It could be challenges, but not everyone has a challenge all the time. It could be just an opportunity for learning, or something they want to grow and develop. That is the orange side.

Tobi

Great. On that orange side you said you use the GROW model. So goal,

Pam Ross

Goal, reality.

Tobi

reality, options

Pam Ross

It happened on our orange side today. Sometimes it might even happen on the blue side, depending on what comes up. You go in with curiosity and whatever you hear, you ask more curious questions and find the opportunity: oh, there is something to learn here. And then you bring GROW in where that happens. So it is often in step three, which is the orange question, but it could be at a different step.

Tobi

So we have step one, basically making me focus on what is going well. What am I proud of? Which pulls me away from a fight, flight, freeze mindset and puts me in this creative, open mode. Then we are on the blue feedback, where you give me positive feedback. In our example it was: you are actually a surprisingly good listener, or something like that.

Pam Ross

I was not surprised. You bring in SBI, situation, behavior, impact, where possible, to make it really clear. What did you do, what did I notice from you, and what was the impact of it, so they know why it mattered. I want to share something positive on that side, in step two. And then we go to step three on the orange side, and I am asking you again to share first. What are you finding challenging? And you might use some GROW questions to dig deeper and help solve a challenge. Step four is that I am going to SBIQ you again, situation, behavior, impact, and ask a question, if I have constructive feedback for you. What happens often is that the orange the person shares is the same one I was thinking of, and now I am just using GROW to solve it.

Tobi

So this is really an entire coaching framework that you teach, or train leaders in, for them to adopt that coaching approach to leadership.

Pam Ross

Absolutely. We have a free micro course on it right now that takes you through the steps and gives you examples of those focused open questions. As an example, if you want to grow business development, I think giving stuff away is okay. We give away a lot, because there is only so much someone can do with the content if they take it. It is how I, as a coach, interact with you and help you put the content into your context that is going to make you want to work with me. The content you can find on the internet. You could probably google feedback models and find something very similar. It is just not called Blues and Oranges. It is the way we deliver it and the way we interact with you that makes that connection and adds more value. So as a business owner and a business development person, I give away a lot of content and then build the connection with people, so that I can add the value in working with them.

Tobi

This was the Blues and Oranges Feedback™ model in action. As a client I found it quite a powerful experience, because it didn't feel like fixing something. It felt empowering, because Pam first zoomed in on my strengths in the blue part, which helped me open up and then be ready for Pam's GROW questions in the orange part, which helped me self discover my areas for development.