Direct Communication sounds easy. Try saying what you see without judgement or attachment! It's almost as challenging as getting someone to speak what they really think instead of keeping it in their head.
3D Juggling 493: All Motherhood and Apple Pie Su writes: "A puzzled colleague appeared from a meeting. What does ‘Motherhood and Apple Pie’ mean? A manager had used this phrase a couple of times in passing, without explanation and with the obvious expectation that those present at the meeting understood what on earth it was she was talking about.
3D Juggling 486: Rook's Nest Su writes: "When I sit and work at home I often (maybe too often!) have to look up from my desk for inspiration. Out of the window I see houses opposite.
3D Juggling 428: Show the working out Claire writes: "One of the few things I remember from my first career as a Maths teacher is the importance of showing the working out. When the girls ask me to look at a piece of homework and it only has the answer, I have no idea how they got there. It's hard to help them work out what to do next, and they won't get any marks for getting the method right either. Showing the working out is equally important in one to one conversations. Especially if it's an encounter where there is one conversation going on out loud and a second in your head.
3D Juggling 392: Just Say It We are often very wary of what response we believe we might engender by a truthful answer to an honest personal question; the result is that time is wasted on inconsequential pleasantries and a degree of obfuscation. My point is that sometimes it is really important to say what we think rather than always give in to a predilection to think what we say.
3D Juggling 390: Washing Machine Head My biggest learning this year has been to say what you see - with neither judgement nor attachment. So I reflected to one of them that it felt like she had a washing machine head full of stuff - and on a 1000rpm spin cycle. She paused, looked at me and said: 'That's it!' And it was that understanding that allowed her to press pause and decide how to take her multiple commitments and concerns forward. It must have been pretty uncomfortable in there, because she had also taken into her spin cycle her manager and her professional organisation as well as her clients.
3D Juggling 367: Say What You See Claire writes: "The technical term is dissonance. The reality is that sometimes people will say one thing and their body language and whole demeanour will be saying something else. Sometimes there is just a mismatch, but usually something else is going on. The skill of the coach or, in fact, the good friend or colleague is to say what you see. No interpretation. No inference. Just to say what you notice. I have seen huge power in simple interventions like that in coaching which I have observed over the last couple of weeks.
3D Juggling 319: Of Jigsaws and Teams Using metaphors in training and coaching can have a dramatic effect on unlocking insights and sometimes on unblocking stuckness. A jigsaw is not exactly like a team - the shapes of the pieces are fixed and rigid, it is incapable of development, the vision (picture) is static to name but a few. Metaphors are about two things having a lot of similarity but some difference. The fit is not perfect and that is what makes metaphor so useful...
