Claire writes: “I was with a group of NHS Managers the other day and we were thinking about colleagues who have worked in the same way for many years and ‘have always done it this way’ and see no need to change. It reminds me of the words of Marshall McLuhan (born over 100 years ago): “Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools and yesterday’s concepts.”Claire writes: ‘The world and the workplace don’t need coaches. We simply need people who can think and think creatively. Some of us can get there more easily is we are in the company of another.
I always think that the most value in conversations I have with people is what happens in the hour (or week) after they have left… when the flow of their thinking starts making the most difference.
The real coaching happens after the session is over!’
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Congratulations to Kirsty who has been awarded the Associate Certified Coach credential from the ICF! We are hoping to hear results back soon from a bunch of internal NHS coaches who have been through the credentialling process to add value to the coaching they do at work.
Claire writes: “There are 5642 books on Amazon about mastery. The dictionary talks about mastery either as expertise or as domination. I have to say I prefer the former.
Mastery as ‘knowing it all’ is quite a disabling belief for those of us who don’t feel that we know it all. I’m a Master coach, and in conversation with a colleague with the same qualification this week, we were noticing that mastery is quite definitely a journey and certainly not a destination.
This week I have been observing some people in a charity who are trying to develop using coaching at work. They were facilitating great conversations far more effectively than I observed last time we met. They are masters. They don’t know it all, but they are getting enough confidence in what they are doing to be able to be effective.
It’s the same with the end of term music events for those of you with school age children. Mastery comes from the developing of inner confidence – not just from knowing the right notes.”
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Claire writes: “Have you ever read The Water Babies? I can remember Mrs Do-as-you-would-be-done-by and Mrs Be-done-by-as-you-did.
It’s worth thinking about whether I manage my own time? Can I manage a meeting? If I can’t, how can I expect anyone else to? Noticing others struggling to do things that we too find difficult can be a good learning.”
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Claire writes: “My daughter is learning to drive. I’m sure that she would love it if, one day, the instructor just told her that he had changed roles and become the examiner, and that she had passed her test without even knowing it was happening. At work, we change roles all the time without saying anything. We flip from manager to mentor, supervisor to friend, non directive to directive.
When we take responsibility to change roles, without asking, we take the power. If I am doing an appraisal or review and decide that what you really need in response to what you are saying is some deep listening around a specific issue, and I do that without asking, I have sabotaged your review. I may be right. But I need to ask or I deny you your review of the last year. Working out between us what we need to do today and how we will do it is harder work that just doing what we normally do takes more time. And it is more transformational for all parties. If you agree with this, and find it hard not to change roles, try sitting in a seat where you don’t normally sit. It’s amazing how that can help us stay in role!”
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Claire writes: “The more we listen in organisations, the more we hear how much people are passing responsibility to others, taking too much of it for themselves or refusing to pick it up. It’s as though organisations and businesses are full of bouncing balls. When people catch them, they pass them on really fast to someone else. And then the music stops, the ball turns into a bomb and explodes, and everyone else steps back while the one left holding it carries the can. One organisation we work in describes it as throwing cats over walls.
And yet, if we work in a team, it’s not about MY responsibility or YOURS anyway, it is about OURS. Consistently changing the language of conversations can really help to begin to change a culture.
That means a shift to we language from
Shifting from I/You to we can stop there being quite so many unexploded bombs. It’s part of the coaching toolkit”
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Here’s an interview Claire did with Val Hastings MCC – about creating awareness. It’s for clergy but is relevant across sectors.
More about goals in coaching in this afternoon’s telephone Masterclass at 5pm – call the office on 01462 483798 to register.
Claire writes: “Some people love to set goals for home and life and everything. Some don’t. Of those that do, I notice that some people or organisations measure goals, make mini goals and work towards them and others simply make them and abandon them. We are all different. David Megginson has a book coming out shortly called ‘Beyond Goals‘. He says that fixed mindsets favour SMART measurable goals and others prefer more scruffy outcomes. David Clutterbuck’s research has found that people are more likely to change their behaviour if they think they might do something that determine that they will. Interesting.
None of this is rocket science but a helpful reminder that when we are working with people we need to make space for them to do what they need to do – whether that is to regoal or degoal.
I’m not a great one for goals for myself, but as I restart the 5:2 eating plan today it’s more about feeling more energetic than targets and milestones – although I hope that some of those might emerge on the way. So taking advice from Clutterbuck, I might have two fasting days a week!
A great way, of course, of finding what’s helpful for someone is to ask them!’
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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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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:
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.
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