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3D Juggling 615: What do people come to you for?

June 17, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Claire writes: “The more we work with people changing jobs, the more I realise that many of us don’t know what we can do.  We get on with our jobs and our lives without giving much time or attention to noticing the skills and gifts that we are using every day. Which is fine until it comes to changing tack on our career path and a CV that says I have done a job quite like the job I am applying for is no longer enough.  And whether we are thinking about what other kinds of role might be suitable for someone like us, or trying to get short listed for a job that we know deep down we could do, we suddenly need to be fluent enough in describing our skills – with evidence.

Last week I heard a coach ask a great question – “What do people come to you for?”.  That gives some helpful insight into the gifts and skills and style of working that is valued by others.  Another useful tool might be to say – if I was applying for a job alongside someone who had a very similar biography to mine but was not very good at the job, how would I describe what was different about the way I work?  Because in the end, we need to understand what we can do, and be able to describe it enough, if we are going to be able to discern what a job move might be, or help a potential employer decide that we are the person they would like to do the role.”

© 2013 3D Coaching Ltd
May be distributed freely.  Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com
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Filed Under: 6 Powerful Questionning, Career Change, Career Change 3: Know your purpose Tagged With: , ,

3D Juggling 614: Cookie Stealer

June 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Claire writes: “There’s a great story in Alex Grimley’s Vital Conversations about a businesswoman who picked up some cookies as a treat at an airport.  She sat down at a table to eat them, have a cup of tea and read a magazine.  The airport was busy and so she shared the table with a Japanese businessman.  As she read, he helped himself to a cookie. She got increasingly frustrated especially when he then took the last cookie, broke it in half and gave her one piece and ate the other.  As he left the table, she went to chase him in fury.  And noticed her packet of cookies, unopened, in her bag.

It’s all about perception.  And we jump to conclusions like that all the time.  The only reliable data is what we might see through a video – not what we interpret.  Yet we often, like the businesswoman, give feedback based on what we interpret.  Next time you feel your hackles rising, it might be worth asking – what did I notice? And say what you see without without adding the voiceover commentary!

If you want to understand more, have a look at the Ladder of Inference

© 2013 3D Coaching Ltd
May be distributed freely.  Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com
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Filed Under: 7 Direct Communication, 8 Creating Awareness, Coaching Skills Tagged With: , ,

3D Juggling 613: Secret Service

May 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment

There’s still time to email the office and book onto our telephone Masterclass on Powerful Questions at 5pm today – for anyone who has done some coach training.  And How to Be Heard at Work on 4th June still has spaces – if money is an issue, make us an offer!

Claire writes: “I have always loved that Monty Python sketch – Why do you want to join the Secret Service?   Which reminds me that why isn’t always a helpful question.  I can remember a friend telling me that he had got stuck in an early interview when they asked him why he wanted a job – and he couldn’t answer!  Often we don’t know why – and in selection – ‘What has happened to…’ or ‘what are the reasons…’ can often allow candidates to answer more easily.

In a coaching approach, we talk about the importance of curiosity – and yet curiosity can lead the questionner to learn a huge amount – and their companion to not learn anything new!  Because a questionning approach is not interrogation in the style of Monty Python, and it’s not problem solving.  A coaching approach needs us to ask questions to help the other learn.  Senge talks about suspending our view – and simply listening – because that is where creativity happens. Takes practice!”

© 2013 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: 6 Powerful Questionning Tagged With: ,

3D Juggling 612: Not Knowing

May 13, 2013 By 1 Comment

Claire writes: ” “The more serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong question.” said Peter Drucker. That’s food for thought in a world where the greatest challenge of our time is about holding uncertainty.  What is the question when you have to make 4% cuts? Or redundancies? Or serve the needs of paymaster and service user? Shareholders and staff? or donors and partners?

Asking questions takes time, and can bring a vulnerability because realise that we are showing we are not in control.  Yet true wisdom can hold the not knowing – and often the way forward emerges from the waiting. Can’t resist a quote from TS Eliot’s East Coker -

 

“I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought”

Holding uncertainty is also about holding your nerve in that in between waiting time, I think.”

© 2013 3D Coaching Ltd
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Filed Under: working with people Tagged With: , , ,

3D Juggling 611: Out Of Body Experience

May 3, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Welcome to all our new readers this week – we’ve met a whole bunch of lovely people who have signed up in the last few weeks. Hot off the press, there will be a Team Coaching Masterclass in Milton Keynes on 4th July.  Alan and Claire will be unpacking some of the interesting things about working with teams.

Claire writes: “There’s a lot of change going on and we are meeting an increasing number of people who are looking to change jobs and finding the interview process a challenging thing to navigate.  If you have been brought up with humility as a value, an interview can feel like a shameless exercise in self promotion.  The conflict that this creates in people means that some people take their body to the interview and leave the real self outside the door – like an out of body experience.  The same can happen with introverts who are only just arriving as the interview is ending – and who come up with the best answers out of everyone – two days after the decision has been made.

What can be done?  Firstly, it’s a mindset.  It doesn’t have to be self promotion but if you can’t describe how you do what you do, no one else will speak for you.  Secondly, good preparation and identifying stories that demonstrate that can really make a difference.  It’s worth thinking through what evidence the panel is looking for and noting key words that will remind you what story might illustrate that.  If you can answer with an example and then say what happened you will find that it feels less arrogant.  Often people we work with jot down names of people to help them remember their stories.  Then instead of going in alone, you will be going to the interview with a cloud of witnesses who will help you describe how you do what you do.  Because in the end, although the panel are looking to see that you match the person profile, almost every candidate will.  They will probably appoint on what’s different and your stories will help them see what that is.”

© 2013 3D Coaching Ltd
May be distributed freely.  Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com

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Filed Under: Interview Preparation Tagged With: , ,

3D Juggling 610: Siloes

April 26, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Claire writes: “I’m not sure where the term silo working comes from, but we hear it all the time – in all kinds of places.  You hear it in the NHS, in business, in the church and in almost any place where you have people responsible for parts.

I heard a great idea this week, attributed to Michael Langrish: You’re not wholly responsible for a part. You’re partly responsible for the whole.

What might that look like?”

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Filed Under: leadership, teams Tagged With: , ,

3D Juggling 609: Going Round in Triangles

April 19, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Claire writes: “It’s not often that a day goes by without hearing someone talking about what has been done to them or hasn’t been done for them.  Whether it’s about parents or children, partners, colleagues, volunteers or bosses, it happens.  It can sabotage adult to adult relationships. We hear it in organisations all the time.  People perceive that others have power over them and are ‘doing to’ them (persecutor). Others feel that they have less power than others and experience feelings of being victims.  And often managers or leaders or vicars or parents or friends or coaches want to or are invited to take the role of rescuer and we end up going round in circles.

Karpman drew from his experience in transactional analysis and noticed that when these three positions are taken, it’s not long before people change roles.  The victim becomes the persecutor, the persecutor is invited to rescue, and so on.  Karpman called it the Drama Triangle.

If you are a manager or leader or vicar or parent or friend or coach and are asked to – or tempted to – step into the rescuer role, remember that you could make the situation worse by taking that power.  It’s not that complex to make a difference because instead of doing that, you can share the power:

  • How can I help you work out what to do now?
  • What can I do now to help you think through that conversation you need to have?

In some teams and organisations, there are many victims, persecutors and rescuers and it is costly in time and money and relationships.  You can begin to shift that one conversation at a time.  In fact, that’s not too difficult.  What is harder is to do that consistently. That’s where culture changes.  But some of us rather like being rescuers.  And in the short term, it is quicker.

© 2013 3D Coaching Ltd
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Filed Under: Coaching Supervision, conflict, leadership, working with people Tagged With: , , ,

3D Juggling 608: Rock, Paper, Scissors

April 15, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Claire writes: “Rock, paper scissors the game – whatever you do, it’s not clear which is the most important – it changes all the time. Whether we are coaching, or doing any other kind of one to ones, many of us are working in complex organisations or situations where it is not clear what is the most important thing. Complexity is complex.  Michael Carroll says that ‘everything we do in our work has an ethical underpinning’.  It’s about the values we hold and the choices we make.  We notice that professional bodies have great ethical codes which focus on the encounter with the room – trust, confidentiality, appropriate behaviour etc.  But when we solely focus on the person we are working with, we can miss some important understandings

  • Who IS the customer or client? The individual – or the organisation – or other stakeholders?
  • How do you keep the needs of the organisation in the room – as well as the individual?
  • we don’t know what we don’t know

We notice that there are particular ethical issues that emerge in this complexity.  That’s why I am speaking tomorrow about the ethics of working in organisations. It would be great to see you at the University of Hertfordshire at 6 if you are able to come!

Particularly if you are an external coach or consultant – or if you hire people in for training, coaching, consulting or facilitation,

  • where are you asking the joining up questions?
  • how do you challenge the organisation to embed learning from diverse places when many different solutions are being bought in – even if it means that you will lose your work?
  • where do you explore the thics of working with many individuals in the same organisation?

Of course there are no clear rules, but in his book, ethicability Roger Steare raises some great questions

  • What are the RULES?
  • Are we acting with INTEGRITY?
  • Who is this GOOD for?
  • Who could we HARM?
  • What’s the TRUTH?

We have contributed a case study about this to the new book Creating a Coaching Culture for Managers in your Organisation – and of course our thinking is developing all the time!

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Filed Under: 1 Meeting Ethical Guidelines Tagged With: , ,

3D Juggling 607: Riddles and Risk

March 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment

If you’ve been waiting for our next day for people wanting to work on communication, conflict and confidence using DiSC, we have now booked this at the Goldsmith’s Centre in Letchworth on Tuesday 4th June.

Claire writes: “I heard David Clutterbuck talking at the University of Hertfordshire recently where he described no less than six levels of listening – ranging from listening to argue to listening to help the other person understand.  Many of us are eager to listen to problem solve – especially at work or when someone comes with a thorny issue. His sixth and highest level is listening with the human eye and without intent – which is what we endeavour to do in coaching.

Listening is often more about listening to mystery and riddles than it is to making total sense and coming up with fully formed solutions. Rilke describes it well in Letters to a Young Poet (1934): “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now.”

Many of the challenges we encounter at work and in the world are complex.  As an article in Smithsonian magazine puts it, we would do well to know whether we are exploring a mystery or solving a puzzle.

© 2013 3D Coaching Ltd
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Filed Under: 5 Active Listening Tagged With: , , ,

3D Juggling 606: We’re both right

March 15, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Claire writes: “Clare wrote about receiving feedback the other day, which got me thinking.  Sometimes we receive feedback supportively and choose to see it as a learning experience.  And sometimes it seems to push our buttons and we struggle to make sense of it – and probably take time and energy defending it.  It may be inappropriate, but often it’s just hard to receive and we want to be right.  To do that we feel that we need to make the other person wrong.

The concept of both being right is useful here. You’re right that you have one perception.  And your colleague is right that they have a very different perception. So the most important question is that if I am right and you are right, how do we take this forward?  It’s also great where there is conflict in meetings.”

© 2013 3D Coaching Ltd
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Filed Under: 8 Creating Awareness Tagged With: , , ,
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