Claire writes: “I’ve been listening to some great conversations this week – coaches coaching and thinkers thinking. Whatever your profession or craft, if you have conversations with people there is much to be learned from listening to recordings from time to time. Don’t focus on what you say or do – listen to them responding to what you say or do.
What I notice is that the facilitator of the conversation is always doing a great job… and then they use too many words. In conversations, challenge increases as we say less. Imagine walking with someone to the window and as we look out together, they see something that is significant and uncomfortable. Noticing that and remaining silent enables us to keep them company in the discomfort as they stand with it. Too many words means we pull them away from what they saw, the challenge decreases and the moment of insight can quickly be lost. Discomfort and discovery are important parts of learning.”
“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.” Mark Twain
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Claire writes: “Rapport is an important part of conversations – enough rapport – because too much rapport building, I think, can set a tone to a conversation where it’s more difficult to get the work done. Pre-conversations can help here. What I mean by that is that we chat first and then ask ‘are we ready to start the work now?‘
It’s interesting to notice, having just started off a number of Transforming Conversations courses in different organisations over the last few weeks, that many people see rapport-building as good and challenge as bad/difficult/uncomfortable.
Kim Scott, in Radical Candor, talks about caring personally and challenging directly (her definition of radical candour) and she describes high personal care and low direct challenge as ruinous empathy. Sharing this insight in organisations has caused a number of people to ask ‘are we too soft?’. Challenging doesn’t have to be scary especially when it is based on real observable data with no judgement. Saying what you see without judgement is a skill worth refining which makes those difficult conversations much easier to navigate.
You’ll be aware that we work across organisational cultures. A recent conversation with colleagues in the USA has led to us hosting a ‘Are we too soft? How did Jesus challenge?‘ in November for people from churches globally. We hope to run a secular version of ‘Are we too soft?’ in the future.
© 2018 3D Coaching Ltd
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Claire writes: ‘Some of the people who are developing with us were practicing coaching this morning. Stuart began his conversation by saying: ‘I’m looking forward to being useful to you’. Great words, in the light of some of the blogs we have written recently. I’m reading Kim Scott’s book Radical Candor at the moment. She talks about the value of conversations that are supportive and challenging and describes them as ‘radical candor’. Her take on conversations which are supportive and not challenging enough is to describe them as ‘ruinous empathy’. Empathy is a wonderful gift… and it’s not enough on it’s own if the person coming to the conversation would find a bit of challenge even more useful.
It also reminds me that we can get so focussed on the training we deliver, that we forget to say that we are always available if you think a bit of coaching like that would be useful?’
© 2018 3D Coaching Ltd
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Claire writes: “Call them Freudian slips, or mistakes, or what you like… but sometimes what slips out can be useful information. At a recent training day, one of the delegates observed that learning about our strokers acronym was really useful.
STOKeRS is about supporting another person to take responsibility. It’s ironic that STROKING is what happens so often in organisations – we fear saying what we see, we want to make someone feel better, and we want to be liked. What emerges may look supportive but in reality what the organisation needs is support and challenge together.”
© 2016 3D Coaching Ltd
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Accredited ICF coaches who want to renew their ACC need 10 hours mentor coaching over 3 years. Why not make it fun and join our Master Coach Claire and a group of renewing ACCs in a virtual group. Call or email to say yes!
Nick writes: “A coach friend commented recently that he keeps annoying people he works with and is not sure why. He likes to challenge people’s thinking and they don’t always respond well. I asked, ‘Have you contracted first with them about how you will work together?’ Great questions at the outset can be, ‘What are we here to do?’ and ‘How shall we do this?’ It creates opportunity to discuss and agree what to focus on and what kind of relationship and ways of working will be most useful. These are the S, the O and the R in STOKeRS.”
© 2016 3D Coaching Ltd
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Nick writes “Often when we are using a coaching style, we challenge how a person is thinking, feeling, behaving or making sense of their world. Sometimes, this can feel exciting and liberating. At other times, it can feel uncomfortable and disorientating.
In order to gauge what level of challenge the person is open to, what level they can cope with healthily without it evoking defensiveness, it’s good to ask the person what they would find most useful from you in that conversation.
‘On a scale of 1-10, how challenging would you like me to be today?’
‘What would that look like?’
These questions invite the person to be honest about where they are at, what they want from you and what would
achieve the best outcome for them.”
© 2015 3D Coaching Ltd
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Claire writes: “We have been doing a lot of work around challenge in the last few weeks. The big recognition is that challenge is abnormal for most of us, and at work it usually comes up when people push back or challenge or criticise – usually when they don’t agree with something. Trust may be low and challenge is often not received with the intention with which is delivered.
The big learning about challenge in a coaching approach is that people are a lot less challenging than they think. When you ask people who are being coached how challenging a question was, they will always score it lower than the person who asked it. Interesting. In a coaching approach, when someone trusts you and trusts the process, challenge is often about saying what you see without judgement – or performance anxiety. It takes practice to get there, and it can lead to transformation. Shocking can be healthy!”
© 2014 3D Coaching Ltd
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