Episode 197: Classic Coaching Tools To Help Leaders Thrive with guest, Madeleine Blanchard

Chaos at work doesn’t just scramble priorities, it shrinks a leader’s ability to think. We sit down with coach and author Madeleine Blanchard to get intensely practical about what helps when everything feels urgent and noisy: classic coaching tools, simple models, and the kind of questions that create instant clarity without turning coaching into advice-giving.

We dig into why leaders sometimes complain that “all my coach does is ask questions,” and how coaches can use frameworks to ask better questions and help clients move faster. We talk through the Eisenhower Matrix for urgent versus important decisions, plus the sphere of control and the often-missed middle ground of influence. If you coach inside organizations or support executive coaching clients, these tools can turn a stuck conversation into a focused plan.

Madeleine also brings back an oldie-but-goodie that still holds up: the Johari Window. We connect it to self-awareness, trust, authenticity, and how leaders can narrow blind spots. From there, we explore how to work with 360 feedback and assessments without getting lost in the instrument, using clean questions like “What if it were true?” and “What are you making it mean?”

We wrap with playful accountability ideas (including WIN, “What’s Important Now”) and book recommendations for coaches who love models and want a deeper toolkit. Subscribe, share this with a coach or leader who’s feeling the strain, and leave a review with the tool you’ll try first.

Watch the full interview by clicking here. 

Find the full article here. 

Learn more about Madeleine here.

Grab your free issue of choice Magazine here - https://choice-online.com/

Transcript

Welcome To Beyond The Page

Garry Schleifer 0:07

Welcome to Beyond the Page, the official podcast of choice, the magazine of professional coaching, where we bring you amazing insights and in-depth features you just won't find anywhere else. I'm your host, Garry Schleifer, and I'm excited to expand your learning as we dive into the latest article, have a chat with this brilliant author. Oh, it's that way if you're watching video, always get the fingers wrong, and uncover the learnings that are transforming the coaching world. When you have a chance, join our vibrant community of coaching professionals as we explore groundbreaking ideas, share expert tips and techniques, and what we as coaches love most make a real difference in our clients' lives. In today's episode, I'm speaking with coach and author Madeleine Homan Blanchard, who is the author of an article on our latest issue, Coaching in Chaos. Her article is entitled Breaking Through the Chaos: Classic Coaching Tools to Help Leaders Thrive. A little bit about Madeleine. She holds an MSC, she's an MCC, and is the Chief Coaching Architect and Co-founder of Coaching Services at Blanchard. She is a co-author of Blanchard Management Essentials and Coaching Essentials, Leverage Your Best, Ditch the Rest, the coaching secrets top executives depend on, and coaching and organizations, all from the Ken Blanchard companies. Madeleine was a founding advising board member of and senior trainer for Coach University and a founding board member of the ICF. Thank you very much. Where she served for six years. She was awarded the 2022 CEO Today Executive Coaching Award and named one of 2024's Top Coaches in America by Top Coach. Thank you so much for joining me today. I've been so looking forward to this. Great article, great reminders. Thank you.

Madeleine Blanchard 2:04

Thank you. Thanks for having me as your guest.

Garry Schleifer 2:07

Yeah,

When Coaching Needs To Share Tools

Garry Schleifer 2:08

no worries. So what inspired you to write for us for this issue?

Madeleine Blanchard 2:12

Well, I love to write for choice. I wrote an article. In fact, someone from choice asked me to write an article about the Breaking The Rules issue. Now, this is a long time ago.

Garry Schleifer 2:28

Wow.

Madeleine Blanchard 2:30

Yep. Because a lot of coaches who were ICF certified or becoming ICF certified were kind of bumping up against this rule, this law that coaches aren't allowed to kind of share. But a lot of people think coaching is giving advice, and we unequivocally know that that's not true, right? The idea is that we evoke the wisdom and the brilliance of the client, and sometimes you need to share information with clients.

Garry Schleifer 3:21

Right.

Madeleine Blanchard 3:22

It's almost like when you see people trying to solve a problem, and there's a beautiful problem-solving model that fits their situation perfectly, it's crazy not to share it, right? And we were working in these big organizations, and the clients were calling the sponsor saying, All my coach does is ask questions. This is not helping me. I thought I was gonna learn something. And to be fair, maybe the coach wasn't asking the right questions. That's possible, but sometimes you just really need to share some information that's really gonna help someone say, Oh, okay, if I use this model to think through the situation, then I'll get to an idea of how to approach it more quickly, more efficiently, more effectively, et cetera. So I wrote that article for Breaking The Rules, and I have to tell you, I've shared that article more than anything I've ever written. And so many coaches say, thank you. So thank you, Garry, for giving me the opportunity. But thank you for kind of telling the truth about what it's really like out there in real life, especially working with people in organizations who need to kind of cut to the chase because they got real problems, and they need to get as much out of their coaching minutes as they possibly can. So I've been grateful to write for choice. It's kind of the one place I feel like I can write about coaching and whatever's interesting to me in the moment.

Speaker 5:32

Yeah, well, and I get a lot out of reading it.

Madeleine Blanchard 5:35

I look forward to getting it, getting the magazine. I still get that hard copy.

Garry Schleifer 5:42

Old school.

Madeleine Blanchard 5:44

I think any minute I can spend not looking at a screen, where I can just sit and my eyes.

Garry Schleifer 5:59

Well, thank you for being on screen today. And

Eisenhower And The Sphere Of Control

Garry Schleifer 6:03

and you know, when you talk about that breaking the rules in this article, it's kind of like version 2.0 because you bring up some models in there, and it's so interesting because I've been introducing that Eisenhower model a lot lately, and I'm surprised at how many people don't know it, and how many people find it so so useful. And I also want to point out to our listeners and a reminder that it's about the sphere of control too. Like what I love is that you talked about, and it's a little off topic, we're all over the map, but that's okay. Is what do you directly control? And I did jump all over the place, but it so resonated that what do you directly control? What can you influence and how and what's outside of your control? And that really stuck in my head and had to talk about that over the Eisenhower model. So apologies to those listeners. But you're right, the first one and the second one we talk about all the time. What do you directly control? What's outside of your control? But that middle one, what can you influence and how is one that I don't talk about as much, and I need to talk about more.

Madeleine Blanchard 7:22

Right, and in the coaching technique, you don't even have to share that as a model. And same even with the Eisenhower matrix, you can just use the models to inform your questions, right? Like in the sphere of control, I mean, you say, Do you know this sphere of control model? I mean, you could do that, but you could also say, would it be interesting to you to just spend some time really of all the things that are making you feel cuckoo? Just spend some time really looking at, you know, where you're putting energy into stuff you have zero control over, and where how you might redirect that energy to places where you can you do have control, or you might be able to influence anyway. You're gonna ask that one question at a time, obviously. But if you propose the kind of exercise, it's still questions, right? But you are and you do have to get the clients to buy in to go down that road. And I've proposed that, and they're like, oh no, I don't want to talk about that. The thing I really want to talk about is something else. Fine. But I think I think the thing a lot of coaches don't maybe don't understand about using models and using tools is that you can just use them to ask better questions instead of the and a lot of newer coaches, you know, when I taught I mentor a lot of coaches will say, How how do I ask better questions? Well, the more models we know, the more it's gonna occur to us, oh you know, that model can inform a really good question. And then of course maybe it isn't a good question, but it often is. And sometimes it's just no, go ahead.

Garry Schleifer 9:52

It's funny what we think are sometimes we ask a question and in our head, we're like, okay, that was pretty lame. And the client lights up and is off and running because they get they hear something else, or it resonates with them in a different way.

Madeleine Blanchard 10:10

Yeah, it's true.

How Models Create Better Questions

Garry Schleifer 10:16

So in the article you mentioned a few models, and again this is beyond the page. What other models would you like to talk about, or do you use often?

Madeleine Blanchard 10:29

Well, I'm a lover of tools, you know. I just am. My husband teases me because I have a pair of scissors, you know, where we open the mail, two different kitchen scissors. Because trying to open a package or do something where scissors is the best tool, you know what I'm talking about. And I'm a cook, so I don't know, I don't love a ton of kitchen gadgets, but I do like the exact right tool for the job.

Garry Schleifer 11:06

Right tools.

Madeleine Blanchard 11:08

And I just I love tools, so I love models. And the whole tools models thing started for me because I was trying maybe it was a mentoring situation with a coach, I don't remember.

The Johari Window For Self-Awareness

Madeleine Blanchard 11:25

But I brought up, I was like, oh, that sounds like you know, you might want to share the Jihari Window with the client. And the coach said, What's the Jihari Window? And this person was not 25, right? This person had an advanced degree, probably in business, not in OD or so they didn't know what the Jihari window was. And I was like, You gotta know that. It's really old, to be fair. It's an oldie but goody. No one's created anything, in my humble opinion, that's better. So, pop quiz, do you know what the Jihari window is?

Garry Schleifer 12:15

I know of it, but I couldn't recall it instantly. In my head, I'm going, oh, I better look this one up. And it'll resonate, but it's not obviously not one of the tools that comes to mind when I'm coaching.

Madeleine Blanchard 12:28

Fair enough. And I was just like, how many? And so I started asking all of our like Blanchard coaches, do you know what the Jari? And I don't want to make people wrong or catch people out, but I was curious. And a lot of people didn't know it. And you know what? I didn't know it at one point. And obviously, and someone told me about it, yeah. And now all you just Google it, yeah, and there's a million versions of it because the people who created it did not try to protect their intellectual property, God bless them. But it's another classic four-box model, and it's basically what do I know about myself that I'm willing to share with others? What do I know about myself that I really don't share with others? What do I not know about myself that other people know? Like it's obvious to everyone but me. And then what do I not know about myself? Well, now I can't remember the four things.

Garry Schleifer 13:50

Google it, Madeleine. Google it.

Madeleine Blanchard 13:52

But the yeah, perfect. But the idea is you want to expand that window, the box that is what I know about myself that I'm willing to share with others. Yeah, kind of the because it especially working in organizations with leaders, does this matter to everyone we work with? Probably. But it's like the more congruent we can be, like what you see is what you get, you know, without allowing our flaws, moods, unmet needs, right, to interfere too much. And people are like, oh, you're so authentic. I'm like, I'm so glad you think so. But it is true. It's like if you're able to show most of yourself to the people you're working with and trying to accomplish things with, there's just a much more likely, greater likelihood that people are gonna trust you and forgive you. Right, your sins, your flaws. Yeah, especially if you apologize, which I happen to do a fair amount. Oh so that's such a hard window. Yeah, just I apologize for having woken up today and being myself.

Garry Schleifer 15:40

Yeah.

Madeleine Blanchard 15:41

But so that's one, that's one of the all-time great tools. Yeah, you know, of course, the Blanchard Companies, Blanchard Leadership. We changed our name like four years ago, and I still can't get get my head around it to just Blanchard. But you know, one of the things that's made our company so great is we have some of the all-time great, simple, so very complex ideas expressed in a simple way. Do you know how hard it is to get thinking through the complexity and to simplicity? And that's what I love about models.

Garry Schleifer 16:24

Yeah.

Madeleine Blanchard 16:25

Right.

Making Feedback Useful Without Defensiveness

Garry Schleifer 16:26

Well, and in that Jihari window one, just describing those four quadrants were the questions. That's you don't even have to say it's a Jihari window. You can just say, curious, you know. Well, I hate saying I'm curious, that's overdone, but you know, what do you know? What do you think others know about you that you don't know? What a great question to ask a leader.

Madeleine Blanchard 16:48

Right? And so many times the clients have gotten feedback. This is the topic of a session. It's like I got, well, often it's the results of some kind of multi-rater 360. I mean, we could do a whole conversation about that. I'm a fan-ish, but I think they're often overused, misused, poorly used, etc. Because often feedback says write as much about the person giving it, if not more, than the person receiving it. But when people get feedback, the conversation is so what? What does that mean to you? What can you do with that? What if it were true? What would the implications of that be? How why would it matter? What would matter about that to you?

Garry Schleifer 17:52

So Yeah, what if it were true? What if it were not true?

Madeleine Blanchard 17:56

What if it were true?

Garry Schleifer 17:57

Well, for what if it were not true? What are you making it mean? What could you make it mean? How could this serve you? How is it not serving you? Oh my gosh, it's those assessments.

Speaker 18:11

Right.

Garry Schleifer 18:11

You don't need to be an expert in assessments, you just need to be an expert working with your client to ask them what they think about the darn assessment.

Madeleine Blanchard 18:19

It's so true. And many of us, including myself, we spend a lot of time and a lot of money getting certified in these assessments. And some of them are opaque enough that you actually do need to get certified. Not always a huge fan of those. And the the sponsors and organizations kind of feel strongly that they want the coaches to be certified and whatever instrument they're using, blah, blah, blah.

Garry Schleifer 18:58

Yeah.

Madeleine Blanchard 18:59

But we're not gonna go down that road. But what is one of your favorite coaching tools, Garry, that you tend to you know what's come up lately that's weird?

Garry Schleifer 19:12

Acronyms.

WIN And WIT For Daily Focus

Garry Schleifer 19:14

And it really stops the client. So we'll be talking, and they'll say, Well, you know, I'm not good with silence, and I want to keep telling my employees what to do rather than ask them because they're looking for a coach approach for themselves, let's say. And one of my clients, and I get this all from my clients, wait, WAIT. And then you go, What? Why am I talking? And then the one that resonates for the Eisenhower model is WIN. What's important now? And we've had some fun with that with a client yesterday, and what was concerning him was that he was carrying these thoughts and all this work stuff home, and he wasn't able to be fully present. But he bought into the win, so we created WIT, we created it, and so WIT is what is important today, and what is important now, and so it was kind of like the end of the it worked out that it was an end-of-the-day closure piece. Oh, sorry, what's important tomorrow? Wit. What's I knew it didn't sound right. What's important tomorrow? So basically, pause, take a moment to go, what what do I think I need to focus on tomorrow? Great, write it down, do whatever. You can now try putting that aside, go home and then the next day take a look at that list and say, okay, so what was important yesterday? Is that now important now? So we go back to win. So win at the beginning of the day. So he's gonna try this little game. And I guess when you ask that question, I'm more like having games with clients.

Madeleine Blanchard 21:10

Yeah.

Garry Schleifer 21:11

Right? Then, you know, so how many times in the next two weeks between our calls will you be able to leave work at the hour you wish? And they'll make a game of it, and I'll say, remember, we'll celebrate success and we'll have a conversation about whether or not it didn't work. And there's beauty in both.

Madeleine Blanchard 21:37

Yes.

Garry Schleifer 21:38

The worst thing I want to do is set up a client to be scared to come back because they didn't accomplish what we agreed they were gonna accomplish, right? And I always say yes. Yeah, I always like to say this is yes, no, renegotiate time.

Madeleine Blanchard 21:52

Yeah. Yeah.

Garry Schleifer 21:53

So another game, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll take that one on. And they come back sometimes and they're just. I remember one client and he had to challenge, and he worked from home and was on the road. So he didn't have an office to go to. And the office, the computer, and the work phone were separate from the rest of the house and his life. And he said to me, I want to spend more time with my girls. And they were like eight and ten at the time. And I said, Okay. So when would you like to not be doing any more work anymore and leave it all behind? Because he can leave it in that room and just go away. And he told me, I said, Okay, great. I would like you to allow your daughters that at the set hour they can say, Dad, it's time. Well, he did that. He said, We had the most amazing time. We had fake snowball fights. We did this, we did that, and basically just said, thank you.

Madeleine Blanchard 23:01

Yeah.

Garry Schleifer 23:01

So you make it a game, you play with what's around, and oh, the joy, the joy for for them and for me to try something it's simple. Hold on, did we not talk about simple? Just like really something simple. You want to spend time with your girls, help them be accountable.

Madeleine Blanchard 23:24

The ultimate accountability buddies.

Garry Schleifer 23:29

Yeah, cuz because they're like, I'm watching, Dad. We're watching.

Madeleine Blanchard 23:36

I love that. I love that so much.

Garry Schleifer 23:39

Yeah.

Turning Accountability Into A Game

Madeleine Blanchard 23:41

And you're right, I think you're right about I love the idea of setting the whole thing up as a game and because the last thing we want to do, right, is have our clients feel like all the coaching stuff is just more stuff to do and more stuff to fail at. And a lot of people think that's what coaching is. I remember a client, I met a client kind of outside of outside of his company, outside of a coaching environment. I don't maybe it was a like an industry thing. And he introduced me to someone who said, Oh, this is Madeleine, she's my coach. She kicks my butt. But I know we're not editing, so and I looked at him, I was like, What are you talking about? I have never ever kicked your butt. That's crazy talk. And I said, Well, okay, just because that's the way you feel . I said, then that's fair enough. But I said, the person kicking butt here is you, not me. And he laughed. And you know, these are distinctions our clients don't actually care about if they want to make it that we're kicking their butts, fine. We're not, they are, but they want to make us the bad.

Garry Schleifer 25:31

Well, it's like how many times I've had clients come back and go, I took your advice a nd I'm like, uh? And it turns out that they heard our conversation and themselves agreeing, or came to a conclusion, and they saw that as advice. And I've stopped even trying because it's just like it's you know.

Madeleine Blanchard 26:02

Because it doesn't really matter as long as they get the outcomes. And sometimes I'll say, you know, your idea,

Garry Schleifer 26:18

Yes, earlier about favorite, yeah. What back to coaching? Favorite, you wrote it right in the article. Coaching questions. Just simple and the whole article is about classic coaching tools. Well, hello, questions. And so we've evolved around, circled around, and added this into our conversation today, but it just boils down to what did you say that really oh, one of the first things a coach can offer a leader is uninterrupted time and a quiet space to hear themselves think. And I think you know, when we're talking about some of these clients, that you know, it's like coaching is just another thing to do. I had one client yesterday, he said, I had three other things booked on top of this. And I said, Well, I'm honored that you chose me. Why? And he explained to me that this is almost the same thing as you wrote here to hear themselves think, to pause, to reframe, to just get away from the noise before they go back into the noise. I love our job, it's not a job, that's the thing. My mom says, My mom stopped asking, my mom's 94. My mom stopped asking me when are you gonna retire? And I said, Well, I'd have to have a job before I could retire, and I don't have a job. I coach.

Madeleine Blanchard 27:44

I know it's true. It's good work, it's good work, and we're lucky to do it.

Garry Schleifer 27:51

It's good work if you can get it. There's a jingle from a TV show or something.

Madeleine Blanchard 27:58

I'm glad you sang it and not me, because I'm done. Well, musical theater dorks.

Garry Schleifer 28:08

Yep. Always an audience, never the participants. Love it that way. Madeleine, we could talk forever about all this, but we're gonna have to start wrapping up.

Book Recommendations And How To Connect

Garry Schleifer 28:20

What would you like our audience to do as a result of the article and this conversation?

Madeleine Blanchard 28:25

Well, I think coaches who were excited about these tools, the tools we talked about, and who want more, I think there's there are a couple books that I've stumbled over, you know, in my many decades. I hate to date myself too much. One of them, and I joked earlier about the field, The Fifth Discipline, the actual book by Peter Senge, which it's a little more complicated than we want things to be for normal people of regular intellect, aka me, but they did create The Fifth Discipline Field book, and it's an old E, but it's a goodie. There are amazing tools in there, especially for people who work with leaders and people who work in organizations. So that's one thing. That's one of the great kind of texts that I would recommend. There's also on total opposite side a teeny weeny little book like this big, and it's black, and it's I think it's called the Little Book of Models. Again, it so fun. And I couldn't even tell you the authors because the authors are barely even, they're more like the editors, they just collected all these. Yes, that's the word, and it's just I mean, it is my idea of fun, and they actually in the fly leaf, they create a an XY continuum, you know, the classic four box model, and they put all the models in the book in different places in the models. Uh, like, is it about self-awareness or awareness of others or something like that? It's very tongue-in-cheek, but incredibly useful. And then the other great book, oldie, and I hang on and I share these older books because they go out of fashion, and so goes the knowledge, and some things need to be kept alive. So they just did the 25th anniversary edition. Now I really am dating myself of The Artist's Way.

Garry Schleifer 31:11

Oh, right.

Madeleine Blanchard 31:12

Do you remember that? You might not be old enough.

Garry Schleifer 31:15

Oh, please, it's been around for that long, and so have I.

Madeleine Blanchard 31:19

Right. And I was just starting coaching when that book took the New York artistic community by storm. We were doing artist wake groups, we had so much fun, and Julia Cameron does a it's like a 12-week program to reclaim your own creativity, and you know what? It's just as relevant today as it has ever been, right? And it's genius. And I use a bunch of tools from that, from her 12-week program, not all of them, but many of them for myself and for my clients. So those three resources I highly recommend. Go order them from your secondhand bookstore, right?

Garry Schleifer 32:21

Local bookstore, your local bookstore. Yeah, I always try to buy local first.

Madeleine Blanchard 32:31

I know.

Garry Schleifer 32:33

Yeah, yeah, I have a rule. If I can't find, I try three local places. If I can't find it on my way out, I'm on my phone to that place we don't name.

Madeleine Blanchard 32:46

Okay, good, good rule.

Garry Schleifer 32:48

But books, we have a still have a Canadian book conglomerate called Chapters Indigo.

Madeleine Blanchard 32:53

Oh, yeah.

Garry Schleifer 32:54

So we can still buy Canadian, even though the books are from all over the world.

Madeleine Blanchard 32:58

So I like that.

Garry Schleifer 33:00

Yeah, cool. So cool. Madeleine, thank you so much. What's the best way for folks to reach you should they want to know more?

Madeleine Blanchard 33:08

Oh, I'm on LinkedIn.

Garry Schleifer 33:14

Oh, perfect.

Madeleine Blanchard 33:15

I think I'm still Madeline Homan on LinkedIn. I was an early adopter.

Garry Schleifer 33:19

Okay. Don't they let you hyphenate your name later.

Madeleine Blanchard 33:23

They might, but you know, yeah.

Garry Schleifer 33:26

As long as you get two of the three names, you're good, right?

Madeleine Blanchard 33:31

I think yeah, you can find me Blanchard website, my name madeleine.blanchard @ blanchard.com. It's it's pretty straightforward.

Garry Schleifer 33:42

Yeah.

Madeleine Blanchard 33:42

Yeah.

Garry Schleifer 33:42

Awesome.

Madeleine Blanchard 33:43

So thank you.

Garry Schleifer 33:44

Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for joining us for this Beyond the Page episode. I really appreciate it.

Madeleine Blanchard 33:50

Happy summer.

Garry Schleifer 33:52

That's

Subscribe And Get A Free Issue

Garry Schleifer 33:53

it for this episode of Beyond the Page. For more episodes, subscribe via your favorite podcast app, Apple, Spotify, they're all there. If you're not a subscriber to Choice Magazine, you can sign up for your free digital issue by scanning the QR code in the top right hand corner of my screen. If you're listening and not watching and you're no longer driving or off the treadmill, you can get your free issue by going to choice online.com and clicking the sign up now button. I'm Garry Schleifer. Enjoy the journey of mastery.