conversations

3D Juggling 602: Of Tandem Riding

February 8, 2013 By Claire 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)”

Filed Under: 2 Establishing The Coaching Agreement Tagged With: coaching skills, Contracting, conversations

3D Juggling 573: What are we here for?

June 18, 2012 By Claire Leave a Comment

It’s been affirming to have your emails asking where we have been for the last 3 weeks! Apart from taking a very long weekend for the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations, we have been planning a new way of working for 3D. After 3 years, Jane has been offered a great new role with Network Rail and will be leaving this Friday. A huge thanks to Jane for all she has brought during this time. We wish you well in your new role. Two new coach/facilitators will be joining us with a breadth of experience. We are already planning their diaries and will let you know more about them as soon as they have had the conversations they need to have elsewhere.

Claire writes: “I’ve just come back from Wales where I was training people in enhancing supervision skills. As in many organisations, these are people who have had one to ones themselves for many years and given them to others. Yet they have never had any training. So what we were actually doing was exploring some simple ways to have effective one to ones.

So what needs to happen to make sure that you both leave the room knowing that what needs to be done has been done?

Ask them! What do we need to do in this [hour] to ensure that you have something to go away with?
Think about other stakeholders: What’s a good outcome of this for your team? organisation?
How will you know you have got what you need?

And instead of starting with what interests you, try asking

Where shall we start?

And when you don’t know where to go next, ask them

Where are we now? What do we need to next?

It’s simple! And it leaves the repsonsibility for the conversation in a more appropriate place. And it takes a while to adapt to working so simply. Think about it…”

Filed Under: 2 Establishing The Coaching Agreement Tagged With: behavioural change, coaching skills, conversations, supervision at work

3D Juggling 571: Coaching a driver

May 11, 2012 By Claire Leave a Comment

Claire writes: ‘I love the thinking that springs from a conversation on a course. So thanks to Richard for a thought provoking question about conversations. Hawkins and Smith talk about four different levels of coaching conversations. Richard and I mulled over them in the context of someone learning to drive:

Skills – the basic skills are learned in the car. The environment is an inconvenient but necessary extra.

Performance – skills are refined on a journey – something needs attention eg braking distance and we work on that – but driver and coach are more aware of the environment and what is going on around us.
Developmental – the driver is really gaining in confidence and is beginning to go to new places, more confident that they have a companion in the passenger seat who will help them work out what to go when they encounter unexpected new things.
Transformational – the driver and the coach have time to get out of the car and look at the scenery and understand where they are, notice what is happening in the wider context and reflect on where to go next or where to revisit.

What needs to happen to make more of your conversations at work transformational? Think about it…”

And if you want to learn to work like we do, call us and we can talk over a coffee.

We are off to Little Gidding tomorrow on our team residential. It’s our fourth visit and we always go in May – which is when TS Elliot wrote his poem of the same name. Which sums up what we are here to do with those with whom we work:

“You are not here to verify, instruct yourself,
or inform curiosity or carry report…

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

Filed Under: Coaching Skills Tagged With: coaching skills, conversations

3D Juggling 559: Let’s start at the very beginning

February 13, 2012 By Claire Leave a Comment

Claire writes: ‘Let’s start at the very beginning. It’s a very good place to start’, sang Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. Except when it isn’t!

When we start at the beginning in an interview, the interviewers never find out what they need to know. What needs to be known by the end that is not known at the beginning? That will tell you where to start.
When we start at the beginning in a thinking conversation, the thinker may never get beyond the story and what they know already. Where do we need to start is a question that only the thinker can answer.
When we start at the beginning in an appraisal or review conversation, where the person has already done preparation on paper, we end up going over old ground and creating the movie of the book – or ratifying the paperwork. You have already started out on this journey, where do we need to start today will mean that things are known by the end of the conversation that were not known at the beginning.

So unless it is the story that needs to be told, next time you’re tempted to start at the beginning, ask yourself and the person you are talking with: where do we need to start? Think about it…

Filed Under: 2 Establishing The Coaching Agreement Tagged With: coaching skills, communication, conversations

3D Juggling 495: Big Conversations

September 20, 2010 By Claire Leave a Comment

Jane writes: “Do you remember when Tony Blair launched a ‘Big Conversation’ consultation exercise. Back in November 2003? Blair said that “We must engage people about the choices needed”. At the time critics of the idea dismissed it as a New Labour “gimmick”. The Conservative head of policy co-ordination said “I hope he really does listen. The trouble is all the evidence is he won’t”.

The idea of the big conversation hasn’t gone away – in fact it’s grown. At its international conference later this year the International Coach Federation is introducing five Global Conversations to be held concurrently over a two-and-a-half-hour period, taking the place of a traditional keynote address. These will be pretty big conversations!

So who does your organisation need to be having big conversations with? Whose voice do you need to hear in order to truly understand how to adapt and change in order to remain competitive and effective? Is it your customers, your suppliers, your competitors, funders? Or is it policymakers, politicians, local communities?

Big conversations need a purpose. They also need an appropriate environment and the right people need to be engaged. Here are some of the principles that you need to consider:

•    Create a hospitable place
•    Set the context
•    Explore questions that matter
•    Encourage everyone’s participation
•    Cross pollinate and connect diverse perspectives
•    Listen together for patterns, insights and deeper questions
•    Harvest and share collective discoveries

Imagine what you could do if you could see and understand all the connections, dependencies, synergies and opportunities which at the moment are hidden from you, or remain undiscovered. People like to be listened to, and heard, and understood, and they like to know that they have had some influence about things that are important to them. Why not take advantage of that?”

If you would like us to help you explore how to have big conversations, come out for a cup of coffee with us to talk about how we can help you. We’ll pay!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: conversations, influencing, listening, recession, thinking

3D Juggling 484: 70-68 In the Final Set

June 25, 2010 By Claire Leave a Comment

Claire writes: “Did you, like me, watch the end of the Isner/Mahut match more than once? On Tuesday, on Wednesday several times… and again on Thursday? 183 games with each player attacking and defending in equal measure. It was an impasse.

Isn’t that what happens at work sometimes? A colleague will comment or make a small criticism and the other person will defend themselves in a way that is aften received as an attack. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I meant….’ The dialogue continues. Except that it is not dialogue. It’s an impasse. And the longer an impasse continues, the more there is to lose. It becomes a battle of egos. Isner and Mahut were each representing themselves and their country. At work, we are all mean to to be working in service of the organisation and what it is there for! And time, relationships and even money are spent in battles which are being fought and lost.

The tennis match was always going to end in win/lose. Can you imagine them agreeing they could both win?! At work, we need to take a higher view, and consider what the organisation needs. And perhaps the dialogue comes out of the question: ‘How can we…?’”

Filed Under: 6 Powerful Questionning, 7 Direct Communication, conflict Tagged With: avoiding grievance, communication, conflict, conversations

3D Juggling 472: Digital Danger?

April 1, 2010 By Claire Leave a Comment

Jeremy writes: “I saw a chilling powerpoint slide at a well-respected business school yesterday. Divided into four quarters, it displayed the 20 or 25 different types of communication technology available in modern life and business today and allocated them to quartiles according to their suitability for various functional requirements.

All the things we use were there (emails, mobiles, texts, social networking, tele-conferencing etc), plus several I had never heard of! There were many additional web-based ones, some only appropriate to international corporate life. It made an impressive, colourful and complex display which took several minutes to absorb!

So why was it chilling? Because the simplest and most direct communication medium was nowhere on the slide. The possibility of a face to face conversation was absent. Even the “resolution of conflict” section didn’t include it.

You might argue that it was obviously meant to be assumed as an alternative… and that then becomes an issue we must face. The danger nowadays is that we categorise a personal conversation as a luxury, the medium of last resort and not the first.

The original slide was about making good choices of technology, and that is fine. However, there is a “use it or lose it” dimension to replacing simple, straight conversations with electronic alternatives. If we choose, through cultural or peer pressure, or convenience, or even fear, to habitually choose to exchange digital messages rather than facing people to both listen and talk, it could all become very addictive, and the choice element might oh-so-gradually disappear!

If there are really important conversations you need to have, or difficult messages you need to pass to the real people with whom you live and work, don’t rule out the face to face option without careful consideration.

If you lack confidence in this arena, why not talk to 3D about Coaching for Excellence or other appropriate and helpful interventions?

Love this? Do us a favour and send it to five people. Who thinks like you? You could send it to someone who is totally techie.

2010 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: conversations, listening, slowlyness, working with people

3D Juggling 463: Customer Service

January 29, 2010 By Claire Leave a Comment

Claire writes: ‘Why is it that I have just received the best customer service ever from the doctor’s receptionist? And I’m still annoyed? I had to book a blood test this week and went to the counter to book an appointment. The first response was: ‘You’ll have to wait for two weeks.’ When I asked whether there was anything I could do to speed that up, I was told: ‘You could go to the hospital and queue.’ I think I must have pulled an ‘Oh, no’ face. Then the receptionist said: ‘Or you could go to the cottage hospital in 2 days time. They have an appointment at 2.33pm and I can book you in now.’

At work – and at home – we only get one go at having a conversation well. If we don’t communicate well, then we begin the next one with a level of negativity on both sides. That lady gave me what I wanted and more. But after two interventions which I received as negative and unhelpful I am still left knowing she was excellent. And feeling that she was grumpy.

That’s why we advocate real play – when you have the conversation you need to have with a colleague or a customer out loud. In advance. Then you can listen to how it will be received and change or modify what you will say. Because live on the day, you only get one go. Had she given me choices from the outset, I could be telling you how great that receptionist was. But I am still left with the impression that she was grumpy.’

Love this? Do us a favour and send it to five people. Who thinks like you? You could send it to someone who would benefit from real play.

Filed Under: working with people Tagged With: communication, conversations, real play

3D Juggling 447: That Monday Morning Feeling

October 2, 2009 By Claire Leave a Comment

Claire writes: “In last Saturday’s Casualty on BBC1, the plot unfolded by different players telling their part of the same story. At work, how often do we tell the story for someone else through interpretation, assumption, presumption or simply for speed? The same facts can look completely different when told from different perspectives.

Last Sunday, I woke up in the night to hear Mike make a terrible noise, and saw him sit up and fall out of bed unconscious. Once I had established that he really was unconscious and not asleep, I dialled 999. Until we arrived at the hospital, he was still very incoherent and so I told the story of what I saw and heard to the ambulance crew and the medics. Once he came round and said he had cramp in his leg, it was a couple of hours while they made sure he hadn’t had a stroke. All the tests were fine and home and the cool light of morning revealed a large bump on his head. Recovered from the shock of the night’s events, he had remembered his side of the story. Woke up with awful cramp, sat up to stretch, fell out of bed and knocked himself out. Same facts. Different perspective. And far less serious although painful.

How can we empower people in our organisations to tell their own story?”

Filed Under: working with people Tagged With: conversations, different perspective