3D Juggling 566: Where do good questions come from?

March 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Claire Pedrick writes: ‘Ten years ago I was planning to write a book – The Art of Powerful Questionning.  It would have been full of well crafted phrases which I was hoping other people would use. But there is no A level or degree in questionning!  Questions are our craft at 3D.  That’s what we do and what we train others to do.

On a coaching skills course last week, I abandoned the session on powerful questions because too often we can create an environment where people ask complex questions which lose their impact in the wording that is formed between the brain and the mouth.

So where do questions come from?  In selection, they may come from the paperwork, in education they may come from gaps in what is heard – or a desire to clarify.

In good coaching, powerful questions, I think, come from three places

  • what we hear
  • what we see
  • what we sense

If you want to start asking simpler questions from today – start there.  Don’t over analyse or over interpret – it loses the impact.  Say what you see! And don’t worry about grammar.  A gesture or a word can often be the most powerful question of all. Think about it…’

And if you want to learn to work like we do, have a look at the different ways we might be able to work with you

© 2012 3D Coaching Ltd
May be distributed freely.  Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com

There’s lots more about asking questions on our blog.  And if you are young and think your questions to older colleagues go down like a lead balloon, read this

And if you’re older and frustrated by younger colleagues look at this 

Filed Under: 6 Powerful Questionning Tagged With: ,

3D Juggling 565: Incubation

March 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Claire writes: ‘”Great leaders have time to think” – an observation I made whilst facilitating a day with some NHS leaders last week. It landed far more powerfully than I expected.  They were extremely resourceful in the way they worked together on the day.  The gap in their leadership capability is not ability. It is thinking time.

We are in an emerging world at work, where entrepreneurial skill is increasingly required by leaders and others as they engage within and outside their organisations.  I try and spend two days a week on business development and reading. And from time to time I make sure that we also spend time with people who are creative thinkers, and with whom conversations will spark off ideas and creative thinking.  We call them incubator friends – where seeds and ideas are planted or germinate. Whether we need customers or a future of any kind with our stakeholders, we need to think.

So how much time do you need to commit to thinking?  And who will help you think at your best? Think about it…’

© 2012 3D Coaching Ltd
May be distributed freely.  Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com

Time to Think?
You can’t over-recommend Nancy Kline’s Time to Think
And a complete tangent: If, like us, you like making up words, you can now sponsor your made up word to help children with communication difficulties. Our word for 2011 was disfluent.  This year’s may become robosity – the ability to be robust!

Filed Under: leadership Tagged With: ,

Positive Deviance

March 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Su writes: I’ve been caught up in an interesting book: “The Power of Positive Deviance” by Pascale, Sternin and Sternin. Positive deviants, as outlined in the book, are those people who are working and living in the same set of circumstances and constraints as the rest of us, but that manage to succeed where others don’t. Immediately, possible scenarios spring to mind where this thinking might be applicable. This whole workforce is working under the posible threat of redundancy: how do some individuals still manage to be productive while others aren’t? All churches face similar constraints in terms of resources, time and money: how are some flourishing while others struggle? The key examples described in this book are about serious healthcare problems: malnutrition in children in Vietnam, female circumcision in Egypt. Rather than going in as the hero of the hour with education programmes and pamphlets, the authors instead worked with the communities in order to support them seeing who was doing things differently, how they were doing it and  allowing the community  to take responsibility for enacting these practices .

It sounds simple. But it isn’t done enough in organisations. The “top” feels the need to identify problems and find solutions, investing money in whizzy ways of communicating these. But actually devolving this responsibility to those actually doing the jobs is more effective. Scary, possibly, for those at the “top” who would like to control things, but far more effective in identifying the need for change and really making it happen. Do you remember the “our people are our greatest asset” mantra that companies used as a strap line in the nineties? Well I think this consideration of positve deviance may well be a way of making that aspiration live.

I wonder how it would in your organisation?

Filed Under: Change and transition Tagged With: , ,

3D Juggling 564: White Cliffs of Dover

March 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Jane writes: “Last week a section of the white cliffs of Dover collapsed into the sea and I noticed how clean the new face of the cliff was.  When something familiar and comfortable changes, maybe a relationship, or a role at work, there is the potential for a fresh, new beginning.  We were talking to someone this morning who works in the city.  She was noticing that there are too many people whose default is to stay in a job that is dissatisfying – just for the money.  It’s only when the company downsizes that you think about what you really don’t (and do) want to do.

Maybe the change that took you by surprise offers you new possibilities.  What could they be? Think about it…”

Talk to us about a Career Makeover if that would be useful as a way of looking at future possibilities in a different way.

© 2012 3D Coaching Ltd
May be distributed freely.  Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com

Filed Under: Career Change Tagged With:

3D Juggling 563: Active seeing

March 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Claire writes: “The latest Coaching for Excellence course is underway.  One of the exercises on Day 1 is to listen without responding and to say what they heard and also what they saw.  So often we are listening whilst forming a question, a hypothesis or even a shopping list!

Coaching is about noticing not about diagnosing.  And learning to listen even more effectively is a key skill – in all aspects of life.  At the end of Day 1 we asked the delegates what they had learned.  One person referred to the listening  exercise: Active seeing is as important as active listening. Think about it…”

© 2012 3D Coaching Ltd
May be distributed freely.  Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com

Filed Under: 5 Active Listening Tagged With: , ,

The Power of Introverts

March 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Introverts need to watch this – and so do extroverts who are interviewing or working with introverts!

Filed Under: recruitment and selection, working with people Tagged With: ,

3D Juggling 562: Enough is Enough

March 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Claire writes:  “When have you got enough information to be useful?  And when does being a learning junkie actually prevent you from applying what you do know?

I was running a training event on Saturday and, as commonly happens, the delegates wanted more and more data while I was asking them to try out what they knew already!  The real learning came once they started using it!

Enough is enough!  Too much knowledge can mean that we don’t know what to apply.  The greatest learning comes when we have enough to use and then can balance the application of skill and the aquisition of knowledge.  That’s what surgeons do. Thank goodness!

So next time you feel yourself becoming a learning junkie, consider the balance of aquisition and application – and when is enough enough.  Think about it…”

In what circumstances do people learn most of what they need to be effective?  Is it worth investing in training courses? If you manage a budget it would be useful to know the best way to invest in activity that will really make a difference. Lombardo and Eichinger’s 70/20/10 Model said that the odds are that development will be:

  • about 70% from on-the-job experiences, tasks, and problem solving (getting our hands dirty and dealing with things)
  • about 20% from feedback and from working around good or bad examples of the need (via conversations with more experienced people)
  • about 10% from courses and reading

So maybe courses aren’t a good investment?  We recognise that development typically begins with a realisation of a need and motivation to do something about it.  If you come on any of our courses you will be working on real issues that you want to resolve, and rehearsing real conversations that you need to have.  You will be applying what you discover and learn to real situations so that you can approach them with confidence.  Feedback from participants tells us that this approach works.

© 2012 3D Coaching Ltd
May be distributed freely.  Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com

Filed Under: working with people Tagged With: