transformation

3D Juggling 612: Not Knowing

May 13, 2013 By Claire 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
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: working with people Tagged With: confidence, good questions, thinking, transformation

3D Juggling 597: Coffee – real or instant?

January 7, 2013 By Claire 1 Comment

Happy New Year! We hope that you had a good break. We are delighted to announce our new line up for 2013. Alan Gyle and Nicola McGinty will be joining the 3D team. Both have extensive experience working with groups and team and individuals. This is also a chance to say thank you to Nadia Evans who is now living in Dubai, and Liz Ford who will be leaving before Easter. It’s been great to have them both as part of our journey.

Claire writes: “I have switched off so completely over the Christmas break that it’s taking focus to reengage – and I thought I had nothing to say. But inspiration came over the expresso maker! As a coffee snob, I like the real stuff and love the way you pack the expresso maker and then leave it to do its work.

Sometimes in conversations, I notice, we hope for great results while we are in dialogue with the other person. On occasions real results come much later – perhaps days or even months – and are of a greater depth and quality than those that come in the moment. Here’s an email we received just before Christmas from someone we worked with a couple of years ago: “…one of the things it made me really understand is just how long learning can go on for – even after the actual ‘learning’experience. A lot of the things we talked about when we were working together made a certain kind of sense at the time, but they’ve come to make even more sense in the [time since]… I’ve been able to make a different kind of sense of them”

Real coffee takes time to brew. Not all learning is instant! Think about it…”

Filed Under: Coaching Skills, working with people Tagged With: behavioural change, coaching skills, learning and development, thinking, transformation

3D Juggling 592: Don’t work so hard!

November 16, 2012 By Claire Leave a Comment

Find out more about our Coaching Masterclasses starting by phone in January 2013 for people who have already done some coaching skills training. There is still one space on 27th November at the Action Learning Set Facilitator Training in London. Would you like to join us?

Claire writes: “Often when I listen to people talking about one to ones I want to say – ‘Don’t work so hard!’ The facilitator of the conversation – be it line manager or coach often takes more than their fair share of the responsibility. We want our colleague or client to buy what we are saying. And then we might say it again, or in another way just in case they didn’t!

Conversations work most effectively, I notice, when responsibility is shared appropriately. And sometimes noticing something is enough. Maurice Maeterlink said: “It is far more important that one’s life should be perceived than that it should be transformed; for no sooner has it been perceived, than it transforms itself of its own accord.”

Next time you’re in a conversation and find yourself working too hard, think about it…?”

Filed Under: 8 Creating Awareness Tagged With: coaching skills, noticing, transformation

3D Juggling 587: Daring Greatly

October 9, 2012 By Claire Leave a Comment

Claire writes: “I have spent the last few days at a global coaching conference in London. There was lots of learning that will emerge for me over the next few weeks and months as it settles and connects. One of the speakers was a poet who offered his poems … and let them have their own power.

This isn’t his. It’s a quote from Theodore Roosevelt and is the inspiration behind Brene Brown’s new book about vulnerability. But it speaks for itself, as I doscovered when I read it to a great group of internal coaches in the NHS:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt

What’s it saying to you? Think about it…”

Filed Under: leadership Tagged With: emotion, risk, transformation, vulnerability

3D Juggling 561: Through The Looking Glass

February 20, 2012 By Claire Leave a Comment

Claire writes: “‘I didn’t mean it’. How often have you heard that – at home or at work? We judge ourselves on our intent. Yet we measure others by the impact which their communication has on us.

And that’s where most communication problems arise – where the impact is different from the intention. Especially when we are communicating with people whose style is very different from our own.

Think about it…”

And if you want to understand it even more, talk to us about how DiSC can help you be more confident that your impact is what you intended.
© 2012 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: communication, DiSC, transformation, working with people

3D Juggling 560: Engagement

February 10, 2012 By Claire Leave a Comment

Claire writes: “If you are involved in any kind of training, you’ll know the energy that comes from an engaged group. You will also have an opinion about happy sheets and evaluations and ongoing learning.

We notice that there is always a dilemma about the balance between a performance that people will rate and learning that will transform. We also notice that, too often, the trainer takes responsibility for making the event work! Transformation comes when the responsibility is shared – even if the delegates may need to work harder!

Some questions we like are:

What needs to be different by the end of the day so that you go home and say it was a valuable use of your time?
What do we need to do to make sure that happens?
What do you need to do?
How will you know you’ve got what you need?

We write them up – and then at half time, we do it again – asking them to tick off if they have already got what they need – and amend the contract if we need to deliver different material or material in a different way.

Sharing responsibility appropriately in the training room can also mean that responsibility is shared more appropriately back at work. Think about it…”

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: behavioural change, coaching skills, responsibility, stakeholder management, transformation, working with people

3D Juggling 554: Receiving

December 18, 2011 By Claire Leave a Comment

Claire writes: ‘For the second time in 3 years, we have had a leaky pipe and water damage at home. This time two of us had to move out for a month and we are now left with no kitchen for the next few weeks at least.

We are learning so much. People, mostly, are wonderful when we give them the chance to be! And to allow people to give, others need to receive. How often in the community or at work do we settle into the role of giver or receiver? And how often do we label others?

Being rather dependent on others for cooking meals for several weeks has been a wonderful experience of conversations. And huge learning about the power relationships surrounding giving and receiving. Simon Walker writes that ‘Receiving involves placing yourself in someone’s debt and accepting with humility the service of another. It takes away your control and invites you to allow someone else to love you and have power over you.’

How often have you said ‘You can’t’ ‘You shouldn’t have’ ‘You mustn’t’ when someone gives to you. I have – even though I first learned not to say that a very long time ago in Kenya when a very poor family gave me 4 eggs – which was all that they had. To have refused would have disempowered them. And now the lesson has returned. What a gift it can be to others when we receive thankfully and graciously – and allow others to have power.

So if you’re a giver who doesn’t like receiving or if you always say – I couldn’t possibly accept… what will you do differently this Christmas?

Think about it…”

Filed Under: working with people Tagged With: behavioural change, community engagement, transformation

Keeping out of the way and making a conversation transformational

November 8, 2011 By Claire Leave a Comment

When you start saying: ‘Help me to understand’, you are no longer coaching or reviewing. You are looking for information for yourself. TS Elliot described coaching/ review in his poem Little Gidding

’You are not here to verify, instruct yourself, or inform curiosity or carry report.’

Here’s how:

Filed Under: 8 Creating Awareness Tagged With: coaching skills, transformation

3D Juggling 546: Ker-plunk!

October 31, 2011 By Claire Leave a Comment

Claire writes: Our kids used to love Kerplunk – where you pull out sticks and hope to keep the marbles in the container. Pull out the wrong one and they all fall. Sometimes learning can feel like Kerplunk. We wonder why some things are difficult and tinker round the edges tweaking here and there. And then one day a small tweak produces a huge amount of understanding that can sometimes be overwhelming.

I’ve just spent 3 days coaching leaders as part of a course to review and renew their work and their vocation. We were using the DiSC communications profiles to help us. Several people’s had two strongest preferences which could, at worst, be in conflict with each other. And at best be very creative.

As I was leaving, one person came to feedback how these new understandings made sense of his whole experience through his working life. He was feeling slightly overwhelmed by the task now ahead and asked what help he might need to process these. Over 100 years ago, Maurice Maeterlinck said: “It is far more important that one’s life should be perceived than that it should be transformed, for no sooner has it been perceived than it transforms itself of its own accord”.

Coaching may be helpful, but it will not be the first option. The first option is to see what happens. Think about it…”

Filed Under: working with people Tagged With: DiSC, transformation

3D Juggling 543: So What?

October 3, 2011 By Claire Leave a Comment

Jane writes: “Sometimes when a client has a ‘light bulb’ during a coaching conversation they feel ready to stop. Their sense of relief at understanding something that they hadn’t understood before may suggest to them that they know exactly what they now need to do. And they may. But check this out. Sometimes the transition from understanding what they need to do to knowing how to do it needs some support.

Ask what they are going to do. Ask them how they are going to do it, what they are going to say to who, and when. Invite them to rehearse the conversations they are planning – saying things out loud is very different to saying them in your head or writing them down. Ask them who else needs to be involved or will be affected. Who could put a spanner in the works and what can they do to mitigate this? Ask them whatever it takes to help them to move from thinking that they know what to do to knowing what they need to do and how to do it. And then ask them how confident they are that can/will do it and get the result they need, and, if necessary, what they need to do to feel even more confident.

These are also great questions in a conversation with a colleague, or even your children. Think about it…”

When you take this approach you will be reflecting the ICF Core Competencies number 8, 9, 10 and 11 Creating Awareness, Designing Actions and Planning and Goal Setting, Managing Progress and Accountability

Filed Under: 10 Planning and Goal Setting, 11 Managing Progress and Accountability, 8 Creating Awareness, 9 Designing Actions Tagged With: coaching skills, transformation