Thanks to Richard who emailed to say how a recent session hadn’t gone brilliantly until he asked them ‘is this useful?’.
Richard writes: “I have just come off a 1-hour coaching session, session 2 of 5 + a review with a guy looking to change career.
He loves detail and is very analytical, and I have noticed that he seems to need to do the detail to feel he has addressed any question that arises. Today, he was indeed doing the detail, despite my ‘tell me the headlines on….’ questions. I began to wonder if it was really moving him forward, but was torn by his need to do detail. So, I just ran with it and we did move slowly forward. Then in the last 6-7 minutes, we got into some really big questions for him and he really started to think. I agreed with him to run over time to land the session well, and also to review.
His review feedback was, ‘I was thinking quite a lot today that maybe we weren’t really moving forward and that I was going over stuff I already knew, and I would like more of the time to be like the last few minutes and less of it to be like the first 40 minutes.’
Oh! So, I said, ‘me too’ and we had a really good discussion about how coaching works, the value of me interrupting and asking ‘is this useful?’. We fleshed out the purpose and value of the question so he really gets the concept. And we have contracted for future that I will regularly ask ‘is this useful?’ or ‘is this breaking new ground?’ and he has permission to confirm it is or to say no, so I can then ask ‘so what will be useful for you to think about?’.
Observations:
Just thought I’d capture it for myself and share with you.”
We need to check in if any conversation is going to be a real partnership!’
Ⓒ 3D Coaching Ltd 2020
May be distributed freely. Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com If you would like to get this by email every week, you can do that here!
Useful info: If you want to practice listening for themes and emotion, and listen to the impact of the tone with which you offer back (diagnostic or as a question) listen to this – there are loads of episodes so lots of practice!
Claire writes: “Great coaching is about people having insights that enable them to make meaning. And we can’t make meaning for someone else! They have to do that themselves.
Thank goodness for Maeterlink’s insight: “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.”
Teaching someone something in a coaching conversation can turn into an attempt to get them to make meaning. Lightly offering a model might be much more useful. For example, we meet a lot of people in transition. We could ask lots of questions to find out where they are in William Bridge’s transition model. When this happens we might draw his diagram quickly and say ‘does this give you some insight?’”
Ⓒ 3D Coaching Ltd 2020
May be distributed freely. Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com If you would like to get this by email every week, you can do that here!
News: Sue Appleton, our stalwart administrator will be leaving 3D Coaching at the end of October after 14 wonderful years. Our gratitude is immeasurable and we wish her happiness in her new life. Ness Callis is taking up the reins! Meanwhile, you’ll need to wait for the third blog on transformation because we have some of our own to share. Ruth has just completed a virtual marathon. If you’d like to donate to her chosen charity VICTA you can do that here.
Ruth writes: “10 years ago I couldn’t imagine running for more than 30 seconds at a time. Yesterday I ran my first ever marathon.
When I think of that, I still can’t quite believe what I have just done! I’m not the ‘right’ build for running and yet I made a decision that I would try it and bit by bit my perseverance has paid off.
My brother bought me a medal rack for my birthday that says “She believed she could and so she did”, I look at that and wonder what else I can do? We all achieve things in life we once didn’t think was possible. I never thought I could run, I never thought I could earn a living as a coach, I never thought I could raise (as of today) 2 teenagers on my own: we are so much stronger get than we give ourselves credit for.
So today, I am choosing to believe that I can. And my hope is that that will inspire my kids to grow up believing they can too.”
Ⓒ 3D Coaching Ltd 2020
May be distributed freely. Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com If you would like to get this by email every week, you can do that here!
Claire writes: ‘So this week’s insight about transformation also builds on Maurice Maeterlink’s comment that: “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.”
If coaching is about people getting new insights into their own stuff, the simplest thing to do is to ask them:
And of course not everyone has insights while they are talking to us. I work with someone who is a really pacy thinker. She does all the work the day before we meet because she can see we have a meeting scheduled. Our conversation simply lands the insights she had yesterday. For many people, the most significant learning or insights happen after the conversation is over… when we land the conversation well (and that is still part of the process!)’
This is part of 3D’s philosophy of coaching. You can get them all as a postcard set from our shop.
Ⓒ 3D Coaching Ltd 2020
May be distributed freely. Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com If you would like to get this by email every week, you can do that here!
Claire writes: “If we aspire to work transformationally, how do we do that? I’ll be sharing some ideas over the next three weeks. They are all built on Maurice Maeterlink’s perceptive comment that: “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.”
Saying something out loud might be enough to catalyse transformation. That is why I often say to people ‘You’ve said it now – that might be enough’. Optimistic, realistic and demonstrating that I believe they can do this. If more work or deeper work needs to be done to reach more significant change we can talk about that later. Let’s see what happens first.”
Ⓒ 3D Coaching Ltd 2020
May be distributed freely. Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com If you would like to get this by email every week, you can do that here!
Claire writes: “I don’t know about you, but the combination of covid and on-demand TV this year has provided me an opportunity to indulge my love of forensic pathology. I have watched every episode of BBC’s Silent Witness over the last few months. Only two series to go! Our daughter has been living with us for some of this time. She hates it! When we are together in the evening, we have to find entertainment that works for us all.
We all have preferences. In conversations, some of us love exploring. Others enjoy pinning down actions, or indeed creating numerous ideas and possibilities. A coaching style – whether you call it coaching or something else – is about having a conversation that is in service of the other person. It needs to work for them. If we stay in our preferred part of the conversation, that’s not partnership!”
Ⓒ 3D Coaching Ltd 2020
May be distributed freely. Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com If you would like to get this by email every week, you can do that here!
Claire writes: “There’s lots to learn in training events. Delegates make observations or ask questions that get me thinking. I have a sheet on my desk to catch them so that I can process them later without forgetting.
We were talking about staying in connection with someone as they are thinking, and the importance of looking as well as listening. A. used to be a translator and shared with us that you can only translate if you have your eyes on the speaker all the time. As soon as you look away, you lose connection. (I’m smiling now because I ran a session on active listening on Friday where I was being translated into Russian and forgot to share that insight with them!)
In conversations where the purpose is that we are keeping someone company while they do useful thinking, connection is everything. Connection is different from control. It can look like this. How can you keep in connection in conversations?”
Ⓒ 3D Coaching Ltd 2020
May be distributed freely. Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com If you would like to get this by email every week, you can do that here!
Claire writes: “It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it sang Ella Fitzgerald. You can try hard, Don’t mean a thing, Take it easy Then your jive will swing.
Try too hard in coaching and it becomes all about you. Take it easy, ask questions with a less is more mindset and you’re on the way to getting them to do the work. One way of doing that is to ask questions about what we are doing (process questions) unless a more wordy one really is going to be useful. Which it usually isn’t!”
Ⓒ 3D Coaching Ltd 2020
May be distributed freely. Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com If you would like to get this by email every week, you can do that here!
Claire writes: “This morning was the final module of Transforming Conversations. It’s the moment when people start to see everything they are unlearning come together and they grasp their courage in both hands. Twice this morning, even more courage would have looked like saying half a sentence as a question and leaving it with the thinker to respond.
Stuart emailed to ask if I have ever noticed a moment when you almost bottled it, but instead held your nerve and it paid off? Here’s his example:
Thinker: “x is something I suppose we’ll need to come on and talk about.”
Stuart: “Shall we go straight there?”
Thinker: “I suppose so.” [Launches into X]
Courage pays off!”
Ⓒ 3D Coaching Ltd 2020
May be distributed freely. Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com If you would like to get this by email every week, you can do that here!
Claire writes: “It’s interesting, I think, that the closer we are to something the less we see. People often talk about coaching as being a place to see the wood (or in the USA, the forest) for the trees. It’s the ability to facilitate someone else getting a different perspective that makes it work.
To facilitate their thinking well, we need to leave our opinions out – in our heads as well as what we say… or we both get too close to the trees.”
Ⓒ 3D Coaching Ltd 2020
May be distributed freely. Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com If you would like to get this by email every week, you can do that here!
