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
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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

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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
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Filed Under: 6 Powerful Questionning 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!

© 2013 3D Coaching Ltd
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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.

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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.”

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Filed Under: 8 Creating Awareness Tagged With: , , ,

3D Juggling 605: Choose to choose

March 8, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Thanks for all the email comments about the powerpose in last week’s Juggling.  It’s been great to have conversations, and some of you have used it.

Claire writes: “We have been in the public sector again this last week where there is so much change going on that it is easy to feel stuck.  Yet even in stuckness, we all have choices. A friend on facebook commented last week on her timeline that she is in the departure lounge of life.  Her choice was to say goodbye and allow others to say goodbye to her before we hear through a third party that she has died.

When we feel stuck, we can choose to do nothing.  That is a legitimate choice.  Recently I have been struck that we may know what our choices are and still hold back from exercising them.  If that’s happening to you, do you know how you will choose how to choose? Or even when to choose?”

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Filed Under: 8 Creating Awareness, 9 Designing Actions Tagged With: ,

3D Juggling 603: Busy busy

February 15, 2013 By Leave a Comment

There are still spaces on the Masterclass on 25th Feb on helping people look at their situation from a different perspective; and on the next open Coaching for Excellence starting on 4th March.

Claire writes: “It’s Lent.  And there’s talk of who has given up what, and who isn’t interested.

The people at ‘I’m not busy’ are encouraging us to give up busyness for Lent.  It’s a bit like the art of slowlyness.

Even if that’s for 15 minutes out of your working day, it’s a great idea.”

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Filed Under: Silence Tagged With: , , ,

3D Juggling 602: Of Tandem Riding

February 8, 2013 By Leave a Comment

The next coaching masterclass is about creating awareness – 25th Feb at 5pm on a teleconference call for an hour.  Are you joining us?

Claire writes: “The start of a conversation is, I think, critical.  Are we clear enough about what we are here to do, how we are going to do it, and how we will know we have?  Even if that is to be clear and transparent that we simply need to talk, with no agenda.

That’s what we encourage on all our courses.  A delegate on a recent course said that an acronym would help him remember, and he came up with STORS.  Developing that, we have started to use STOKeRS which is what I introduced on a course yesterday, when someone said – ‘Did you know a stoker is the person on the back of a tandem?’ Their role is as a motor. They should be able to generate more power than a rider on a single bike – either keeping some in reserve or with a burst of power for the climbs. And the stoker never steers!  STOKeRS can help in many different 1-1s – not just coaching conversations:
S – what subject/s are we talking about today (managers can add some of their own as well as colleagues)
T – in the time we have, what is it we really need to talk about (especially useful if subject is large or complex)
O – Outcome – what would you (we) like to be different by the end of this conversation
K – how will you (we) know we have done that?
R – what’s my role?
S – where shall we start?

It feels artificial, but we notice if you get enough clarity, the conversation is easier and more effective for all.  Try it!  And feel free to share it (…we’d appreciate if you credited 3D)”

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Filed Under: 2 Establishing The Coaching Agreement Tagged With: , ,

3D Juggling 601: Feisty Feedback

February 1, 2013 By 2 Comments

This week our guest blogger is Clare Norman who works in Leadership Development for a global professional service firm.  We have been learning together for about ten years since she participated in our Action Learning Set Facilitator Training.

Clare writes: “I am about to embark on a new period of study, learning how to be a coach supervisor.  As I get prepared, I have been reminding myself that there are going to be periods of discomfort, as I learn this new skill.  We don’t go on courses to do things that we already find easy, after all.  We go to stretch ourselves and discover new ways of doing things.  And discomfort will be a side-effect of that process.

Brene Brown, in her book Daring Greatly, talks about why we often don’t give feedback.  One of the reasons is discomfort.  We shy away from things that are hard.  But she rightly points out that we need to normalize what’s difficult.  Giving feedback isn’t a comfortable experience for the most part.  But that doesn’t automatically make it a bad thing, or something to be avoided.  On the contrary, it helps the receiver to learn and grow.  If you want people around you to think critically and to change, you need to get used to the discomfort of giving feedback.  It might get easier over time, but don’t expect that – expect discomfort, see it as normal, and start communicating more directly with people around you.

If you’re comfortable, then you are not teaching and others are not learning.”

If you liked this post, hop over to Clare’s blog Being a Sunbeam, and sign up to receive her posts.

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Filed Under: 7 Direct Communication Tagged With: , ,
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