Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of

executive coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the

way you want to be perceived. I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and today we're talking

about when learning makes things worse. Roland made no bones about the fact that he hated our coaching. He introduced me to people on his staff as his torturer, his devil, the grand pest, and annoyer extraordinaire. But he never canceled an appointment or showed up one minute late.

Like an accident survivor committed to painful physical therapy, Roland endured me like a dose of

foul medicine. Roland's attitude didn't surprise me.

A rising superstar in his organization, he wasn't used to feeling incompetent, but the work

we were doing together was making him feel just that. But I also noticed

that Roland often left our workouts exhilarated. The cause of all the fuss was Roland's

habit of beginning every thought, every comment, every answer with a hearty,

well.

Barry, his boss, told me his staff, made it an openly secret sport to count the number of times Roland said the word during meetings.

Barry said he is never going to hit his potential if he can't stop this.

To eliminate this verbal tick, Roland was going to go through the same process that other clients go through

to eliminate explosive emotional behaviors or an inability to listen, or extreme introversion.

The process incorporates first awareness, then acknowledgement of incremental success.

On our website there's a tip called how behaviors change that explains the process in

detail.

I told Roland that in order to build his awareness,

I would snap my fingers every time he said well.

Nothing else I would simply snap.

In short order, this instantaneous feedback made him so

...