Claire writes: “Open questions encourage people to talk. Closed questions can be answered by yes or no. The books say that in coaching we should be asking open questions. I totally agree with that… except when closed questions are better!
If the person I am talking with has leapt ahead after an insight, a closed question is better: Do you know what you’re going to do next? Otherwise they will answer the open question and tell you what they already know! That may take them backwards. Do you need to say it out loud is a good supplementary when they say ‘yes’! It’s only useful to explore what next if they don’t know.”
Ⓒ 3D Coaching Ltd 2019
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Claire writes: ‘My year of fundraising taught me many lessons which will continue to emerge for some time. We raised about £4000 in the five days between the last walk and the deadline for the local paper… all because our journalist told me to let him know if we’d met our £50000 target by then. I’d been planning to lie down and recover. So I put the question to our community – ‘we have 5 days left, what do we need to do to hit the target?’
At the same time, we were exploring in our team whether marking that we had 5 minutes left in a conversation had a similar impact on getting to a great place. Sometimes the really great work only happens when we articulate clearly that we have 5 minutes left. ‘we have 5 minutes left, what do we need to do to get where we need to be?’
Of course it’s not over in one conversation, but as Amabile and Kramer say any progress is progress. And another £10,500 has poured into our team total in the same way that things continue to progress after a conversation at work is over. Especially if we ended well. More of that on another day.’
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Claire writes: “Two great reminders this week. The first is that either/or doesn’t always help us decide. Considering options as either this or that or something else (that I haven’t thought of yet) can enable more creative thinking.
Secondly I am still overwhelmed by the power of moving when someone is stuck and lacking ideas or energy or both. Thanks to an insight from John Whittington about place markers, someone on last week’s Transforming Conversations made a significant shift from combining these two simple insights
Claire writes: “I’ve written about real play before and am returning to it again because it is so powerful. Moving from ‘I would say’, ‘I might say’, ‘I wish I could say’, ‘I don’t want to say’ or ‘I ought to say’ to real play works. Trying out a conversation in real time is more effective than talking about talking about something to someone.The rules are simple
Claire writes: “Sometimes in a conversation we simply don’t have any ideas, are stuck, and would value some insight from another person. It happens in mentoring, in coaching and in many one to ones and if we like problem solving and/or are in a hurry, telling is quick.
Claire writes: “Every time we run training events, I hear most delegates say in the feedback on Day 1: ‘We would have been able to deal with that properly if we had had more time’.
Claire writes: “Acronyms help remember things. A group in Leicester challenged themselves to work out how to make a good ending to a conversation. They came up with CALF:
That final question is interesting. Notice where the responsibility sits when you say ‘Have we finished?’ rather than ‘I think we have finished’. It’s useful.
David Clutterbuck’s Four Is are also a useful end to a conversation – especially if notes need to be made together:
After all, a great end is as important as a great beginning.”
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Claire writes: “When we need to think through a slightly complex conversation, it’s common to find someone else with whom to talk it through. Talking about talking is helpful. What can be even more useful is to try it out. We call that real play.
All you need to do is talk to another as though they are the person – and hear yourself say what you’re thinking of saying. Unlike role play, they don’t join in – they just ask you how that felt. More often than not you will want to change the tone or the challenge – and can have another go. If you do that, moving a bit before you try again makes it easier to make the change. It’s astonishing how effective this can be.”
© 2015 3D Coaching Ltd
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Claire writes: “We judge ourselves on our intention. If my intention is good, what I say is good. Except that my colleague judges me on the impact of what I have said. If it lands badly, we may take some hours, days or years to get over that. That’s why real play is useful. This means saying what we are thinking we might say out loud and hearing it to get a sense of whether its impact is what we intended.
Invite your colleague to try it out at different temperatures – say it in a very safe way. Now try it in a really challenging way.
It might only take two or three goes, and it can make a significant difference to the quality of their conversation when it happens”
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Claire writes: “If you are of a certain age, you will remember the TV show Jackanory. A famous actor read a story for young children as it was heading towards bedtime. They would always start: ‘Are you sitting comfortably, then I’ll begin’. Their calm, slow pace, was designed to calm and slow their young audience and make bedtime easier. The change to a calm pace and tone was enough to slow down many tired and crazy children. It’s something instinctive.
Not changing means that we stay the same. So if you come to see me, and I create a slow, spacious ‘just talk’ environment, we will probably have a slow spacious conversation and take a long time to get where we need to be. That may be the right thing, but it’s interesting to notioce that if we were standing up looking out of the window, that same conversation is likely to be more pacy and over much faster.
Matching tone or body language or pace builds rapport. And it makes it hard to move things forward. Mismatching tone or body language or pace – or anything (but not everything) is more likely to facilitate change. If you’re getting to the end of a meeting and someone is not leaving, you’ll stand up – that’s mismatching. If you are interviewing for selection and it’s all a bit slow, you might lean forward to ask a question. That’s mismatching.
You will do it instinctively without noticing. It is also very useful to use intentionally particularly when a conversation needs to move from exploring to action. Try it!
Principle 11: Match for rapport. Mismatch for change‘
© 2014 3D Coaching Ltd
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