How stepping into a batting cage can help you hit home runs in the boardroom
One of the most rewarding and crucial components of my coaching and training role is when clients experience those special ‘a-ha’ discovery moments … When a perfectly practical solution strikes them so clearly, they immediately want to apply it to their daily business process.
It’s true that in most of our coaching and training sessions, we expect you to experience one or two of those special ‘key’ motivational moments … However, what we want to share with you for now is a unique training session that surprised me even more with how many ‘a-has’ or key ‘action’ tools were revealed.
Recently one of my clients expressed a huge desire to help him become more assertive and persuasive when communicating strategies, plans and budgets, particularly when presenting to senior-level management. The client’s deep thinking and intelligent and detailed responses were becoming severely challenged when faced with the need to deliver bottom-line information.
It was important to my client that he continued to deliver the tasks thoroughly while learning to improve his ability to adapt to the variety of situations that were regularly thrown at him and still take on board feedback and business responses from others.
Great learning to approach the boardroom comes from approaching new things outside.
While I knew I could ‘tell’ my client what behaviours to change in order to better handle these situations, we know the best way for people to embrace behaviour changes is to get them to experience them firsthand. Therefore, I wanted to recreate a fast-paced, high-pressure situation to which one needed to respond quickly in order to achieve success. So, we both took a field trip to a local baseball ‘batting’ cage: A machine that repeatedly and quickly throws baseball pitches from about 54 feet away at speeds ranging from 40 to 90 miles per hour!
We started with the slower pitches to understand the ‘basic techniques’ of our swing, gradually increasing the pitch speeds as we started to ‘understand the fundamentals’ of the necessary reactions. This eventually enabled us to hit that elusive 90-mile-an-hour fastball thrown by major league pitchers!
At this particular facility, we were hosted by a professional batting coach to help you improve your swing – ultimately getting more ‘hits’ at bat. What occurred next was a pleasant and extremely powerful lesson …
Even before stepping into that batting box, we began to see the parallels between my client’s performance in the office and their performance in the batter’s box. These metaphors kept coming at us almost as fast as the balls were! So, in the context of batting, I started to write them down, and it’s very easy to see how they provide obvious parallel limitations to the assertive and persuasive communications my client was striving to deliver. Keep in mind, these were the batting coach’s comments, not mine!
Relax. This was the first thing he noticed. In order to be as powerful and accurate as possible, you need to relax first because if you’re tense, your swing (your business communications delivery) will be limited.
Think outside the batter’s box. Act inside the batter’s box. This critique was a pretty clear metaphor for preparation. Preparation beforehand allows you to deliver succinctly and confidently during the meeting or presentation.
The swing plane should match the pitch plane. For non-baseball players, this means watching the angle at which the pitcher is delivering the pitch. Your swing should line up to match the angle of the ball being thrown. In business, this is a clear metaphor for listening to the ‘style’ in which the questions or statements are being delivered and responding in a similar style to improve persuasiveness, relevance, and clarity.
Don’t back away from the ball. Instead of retracting from the ball, stay firm in the box and move your body into the ball – again, a metaphor for standing your ground in a meeting, embracing the questions or comments and delivering your prepared responses with confidence and control. That’s where the power comes from.
Anticipate the pitch. You know it’s coming, so prepare accordingly. This is a perfect metaphor for anticipating, rehearsing and responding to likely questions or comments that might come up during a meeting, pitch, or presentation.
Be comfortable with being uncomfortable. This is another great metaphor. It’s okay to feel uncomfortable right now, but know that discomfort will lead to a quicker path to this particular behaviour and mindset change of being more responsive, concise, and confident in your delivery.
The First 10 feet are the most important part of the pitch. - This coaching tip reinforces the need to stay focused on the delivery of the message/question and respond accordingly. In other words, if you hesitate or aren’t focused, you’ll miss the ball or, in business, the opportunity to respond with credibility and conviction.
Watch the pitch's release. This is similar to #7, but the distinction here is to only watch the release of the ball from the pitcher’s hand and not get distracted from anything else. Again, this reinforces the notion of only focusing on the business question and your empowering beliefs and none of the other distracting thoughts or limiting beliefs.
Once I relaxed, the ball didn’t seem to come as fast. This was actually one of the first learned insights for the client after immediately applying some of the above adjustments. It convincingly demonstrated that when you eliminate all unnecessary distractions and/or limiting beliefs, it becomes much easier to focus on the incoming ball or business message/question. Also, as per #1 above, when you’re relaxed, your delivery will appear that way, in turn creating greater comfort with the audience and enhancing your credibility in their eyes – which is ultimately the client’s goal.
Getting into position. Again, this reinforces the preparation required, but it also visualizes the right ‘stance’ or mindset for you to be in when responding—firm, still, and ready.
You can be calm and assertive. Again, another client observation came from relaxing and hitting the ball more powerfully through stillness.
Step into it. In order to increase a hit's power, speed, and distance, you need to move your body toward the incoming ball—simple physics. In the boardroom, being proactive and embracing opportunities to share your knowledge and expertise will enhance your credibility.
Again, the coaching tips above were directly from a batting coach who was trying to help my client improve his swing and had no idea that we were using this as a business exercise. As you can see, not only was this a hugely successful outing and an innovative way to present simple-to-apply concepts, but we were both ecstatic at the glaring similarities between improved performance at the plate and in the boardroom … And it worked!
My client was quick to implement these principles and mindset immediately back at the office and quickly received favourable feedback from senior management. More importantly, he improved his credibility and ease at which ideas and recommendations were embraced.
So, I encourage each of you to step into your own ‘batter’s box’ and see what coaching insights you might gain. Then, transfer those lessons back into the boardroom to see how many more ‘home runs’ you’re hitting.
Let me know how it goes, or tell me when you’d like to experience a new way to improve your business performance.
Batter up!!!