Poetry and memory

Those of you who have been following my musings for a while may remember that in the second lockdown, Mike, Liz and I all resolved to learn a poem a week. We kept it up for the best part of a year, and I learned some thirty poems off by heart.

Of course, my intention was to keep learning more, and to remember those learned.  I did not do either.

I was lamenting that recently to my patient and long-suffering wife, Jane, who suggested that I could re-learn those I had learned, as a start.

When I had calmed down sufficiently (after a few weeks) I realised the wisdom of her suggestion, so I have started to do so.

And here's the interesting bit (I think, at least).  Although I thought I had forgotten them all (and even forgotten that I'd ever learned some of them) they are coming back extremely quickly. It used to be a bit of a struggle to learn one a week (and that in lockdown, when time was much less committed than it is now).  However, In the last 10 days I have re-learned the first six poems I learned, and found it easy to do so.

So four years on, the residual memory (if that's a suitable term) is actually quite strong, which says something interesting about the endurance of learning even when not used for a while.

And the other thing I am remembering is the great pleasure I take in having poetry available to me in that way, when I am walking the fells, out on my bike, wakeful at night or whenever...

And lest you think this post is not relevant to you, I will end with a Call To Action as all the gurus on Linked In recommend: learn a poem off by heart!

The Rush to Judgement

In this week's episode of Desert Fathers in a Year (ab
out which I have written before), +Erik Varden reads the story of Isaac the Theban, who had judged a fellow monk. On returning to his cell, he found his way blocked by an angel, who rebuked him for judging, which is God's prerogative. Isaac of course repented. And the main point of the story is that we shouldn't judge others, and that when we fall, we should repent. 

But Bishop Varden, with his characteristic passing comment that adds so much, and reflects the depth of his own wisdom, adds: 'a penchant for judging in this way may remain with us even when we have made some progress in the spiritual life, when our eyes are open to behold God's angels.'

Which brought me up short. Why are my eyes not open to behold God's angels? Or to put it another way why is it that I could happily return to my cell having judged someone else, and thought no more about it. Why is my conscience so dulled? (For surely, conscience is another way that God's voice might speak to us in such a situation).

And I think the answer is that I am not sufficiently recollected, or living with ease (in Nancy Kline's terminology). Kline sees ease as a freedom from urgency (internal and external) and from interruptions (likewise, both internal and external). We keep ourselves so busy that we don't notice when we have casually passed judgement on someone. And knowing what we do about the Fundamental Attribution Error (that tendency to overemphasise a person's personality or character as the cause for their behaviour, while underestimating situational or environmental factors) our judgment is likely to be erroneous and unjust anyway.

+Varden goes on to say that my rush to judgment may well be an act of self-defense by means of attack, and cites another story, told by Dorotheus of Gaza in the 6th century, about three people who see a man standing on a street corner at night.  Each reaches a different conclusion about him: the first thinks he is about to do something lecherous; the second that he is a robber, and the third, that he is waiting for a friend to go and pray together. 

Projection, as we call it now, was clearly recognised back then.

So rather than rush to judgement, I need to slow down, and recognise what such an impulse to judge, and what the judgments I am inclined to make, tell me about myself. 

Or to put it another way, to slow down until I see the Angels.

Coaching Bots, Heuristics and Schemata

I attended (or logged into, to be more strictly accurate) a fascinating talk hosted by the EMCC, and presented by a research team who had compared the effectiveness of three coaching bots. 

They had build prompts to get ChatGPT to simulate three different coaching approaches, and had a fairly large sample size of coachees to interact with them.

The results were fascinating.  The team were Jonathan Reitz, Rebecca Rutschmann and Nicky Terblanche, and the three approaches they were comparing were GROW, Solutions Focussed and Cognitive Behavioural Coaching. 

Their initial hypotheses included that the GROWBot would perform best in terms of goal attainment and the goal aspect of the working alliance and would be perceived as easiest to use; and that the Solutions Focussed Bot would be most highly rated for the bond and task aspects of the working alliance, and for the working alliance overall, and would also be perceived as more effective in improving performance, more enjoyable to use, and leave users with a more favourable attitude overall and a higher likelihood of using it again.

None of these hypotheses were supported.

Instead, the analysis showed that all three bots scored similarly for goal attainment, and for every other measure the CBCBot outperformed the other two, and by statistically significant amounts in all but one case (the bond aspect of the working alliance). 

I was less surprised than the researchers (and indeed wondered how they had developed their initial hypotheses). CBT is very well researched and its efficacy is well-known (though not, of course universal) so I would have expected its coaching cousin to do well. 

And it lined nicely to the most recent module of the Psychology of Coaching Programme that I am studying, which was on Cognitive Psychology.

This was fascinating as ever, albeit rather familiar territory to me. My book Shifting Stories is a simple (though of course powerful and sophisticated!) application of cognitive psychology. And what this module did was to provide some depth and some fancy language (heuristics and schemata for example) for concepts I work with quite frequently.  But it is always good to refresh one's understanding and re-visit the assumptions and biases that underpin one's approach. And of course the future modules will probably take me into new territory, so it is quite reassuring to start from a feeling of moderate competence, before launching into the unknown.

It is also interesting that it is in the field of cognitive psychology that the coaching Bots seem to be effective (at least in terms of the aspects measured by the researchers on this project). But my hope is that I will learn more about the relational and other aspects of coaching to understand whether my hope that I am irreplaceable as a coach is well-founded or self-deluding.

My initial hypothesis, for what it's worth, is that the human aspects of coaching that Bots will not be able to simulate generative attention, nor the intuition that is born, perhaps of parallel process, nor compassion.  But how we measure the impact of these is a problem for the researchers...

A Deceptively Simple Diagram

One of the simplest models I use in my work is this diagram. It is a way of looking at the difference between junior and operational roles compared to senior and strategic roles in an organisation.

The basic idea is that at the very lowest level, people come in to work to do a job, and do it. As one gets more experienced and is promoted, one starts to have some responsibility for planning how the work is undertaken, and checking that it is in fact done.

And with further promotions, the proportion of time dedicated to planning and reviewing increases; until at the very top (say non-executive director) the role is entirely about planning and reviewing - and getting involved in operational activities would be mistaken.

What is interesting is inviting senior people to reflect on where they see their role - which nearly always results in their deciding that they are operating at a lower level than they should be. That is, they are doing too much, at the expense of planning and (in particular) reviewing. 

They tell me there are many reasons for this, which include:

• Doing is what they are good at, and indeed has led to their promotion; 
• Doing provides an immediate and visible sense of accomplishment;
• They have a strong habit about doing, and feel guilty when they stop to think.

However, they recognise that they are effectively demoting themselves; and also being overpaid for doing work that could and should be done by someone drawing a lower salary. Moreover, they are demoting, rather than growing, those below them in the structure.

Ideally, one encourages those below to work at a higher, rather than a lower, level; so that even those at entry-level are given some responsibility for planning and reviewing. Of course, under pressure, organisations tend to do the reverse: seek to increase productivity by micro-management.

Because the approach I advocate clearly means that less work gets done, if those at the bottom are 'doing' less. However, my contention is that it will probably be less unnecessary work.  For if proper planning and reviewing take place, people will learn as they go - errors and busy-work will decrease. Whereas micro-management may provoke an increase of activity but it is a mistake to equate that with productive activity. And there are other consequences: negative impacts in terms of motivation, well-being and retention of good people that will undermine long-term productivity.

Further, this model helps people to understand what it means to be 'more strategic' - a term that is often bandied about without much definition. Dedicating proper time to serious planning, and then also (and possibly more counter-culturally) to serious review is the start of a more strategic approach. Because serious review will include questions such as:

• Did we actually do what we planned to do (and if not, why not)?
• Did our activity actually deliver the results we desired (and if not, why not)?
• What are we learning?

and the answers to these questions inform our planning, which again will have some fairly simple questions that set and adjust strategic direction:

• Where are we now (honestly...)?
• Where do we want to be in the medium- to long-term?
• What do we need to do to get there?

But of course, such thinking is difficult and offers no short-term sense of accomplishment, so it is much easier just to get on and do something... 

Freshest thinking...

This morning I started my latest CPD: a 6-month programme on Psychology for Coaches, run by Marie Stopforth for the Curious Coaching Company.

One of the points Marie made in this introductory session was the importance of holding theories lightly, engaging with them with curiosity, and always as a means to an end - the client's increased self-awareness. As an example, she mentioned Self Determination Theory (SDT), and how an understanding of the three components of motivation that it suggests (perceived autonomy, perceived competence, and perceived relatedness) might inform the questions one explored with a client who declared he or she felt unmotivated; but also that one should not be so wedded to the theory that one believes one knows what is going on for the client.

And of course that makes sense; it might be a useful framework in that context, and holding it lightly is a good approach. 

But what also occurred to me, as we reflected in small groups, was that SDT might additionally offer an insight into the effectiveness of Kline's Thinking Environment - an approach I favour.

Famously, this involves a much less directed approach to questioning (so the questions would not be informed by SDT). However, I think the Thinking Environment process is designed to strengthen all three of these areas.

In terms of perceived autonomy, the Thinking Partner's (ie Coach's) belief that the Thinker can address their own issues without any input or directive questions from the Thinking Partner maximises the Thinker's autonomy. The same is true of perceived competence: the Thinking Partner champions the Thinker's ability to resolve their own issues, believing in it even when the Thinker may start to doubt it. And the experience of being listened to with the quality of attention that the Thinking Environment is famed for, along with the other components of Appreciation, and Encouragement, tends to result in the Thinker feeling valued, which speaks to the heart of the Relatedness aspect. 

And that's one of the reasons I am doing this programme; to help me to think afresh about what I do and why it works, as well as what might be the limitations of my approaches, and what else I might do.

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(Image from Wikipedia: Creative Commons Licence)

When cultures collide...

I was talking with a colleague the other day about coaching a young woman from another culture. In passing we touched on a question that has been haunting me ever since.  Does our coaching implicitly teach or assert that the assumptions of our culture are better than the assumptions of hers?

I am a great advocate of, and great believer in, individual agency coupled with individual responsibility.  Much of my coaching involves helping people to think through what their goals are, what options they have in pursuit of those goals and what actions they will therefore take (or what experiments they will run to establish what actually works in their context).

This coachee came from a culture that places a much higher emphasis  on deference to the wisdom of parents, teachers and older people more generally. The underlying assumption being that those with more life experience may have more wisdom than those with less; and further that tradition is the cumulative wisdom of the lived experience of those who have gone before.

Yet when as coaches we hear someone say they need to do what their parents, boss, or indeed tradition instructs them, our instinct is to ask: 'But what do you think?'

Is this a form of cultural imperialism? Are we not implying that the Western liberal understanding of personal responsibility, autonomy and agency is superior to their culture? And given our current Western liberal concerns about de-colonising our educational offerings, should we not be giving this more thought?

I find these difficult, but important, questions...  What do you think?

Coaching as a Confidence Trick

One of my more unhelpful stories about myself (read the excellent Shifting Stories  for more on this concept) is that I am really a bit of a fraud and my coaching is all smoke and mirrors. I don't really believe that, but if I want to depress myself, I can wallow around in it for a while, with some skill.

So I was surprised to hear myself say to another coach: 'Of course in a way, coaching is a confidence trick,' and more surprised to hear myself justify the assertion. 

I was struck by the explanation of the short con in David Mamet's House of Games: it's a confidence trick because the con artist gives his confidence to the mark, not the other way around.  (Though I still maintain that The Sting is the best con movie - I remember the first time I saw it when everyone in the cinema sat in silence for a minute or so at the end, catching up with what had just been played out...)

Anyway, the point I was making, albeit in a provocative and playful way, is that as coaches we often lend our confidence to our clients. In the Thinking Environment approach to coaching, for example, when we give our client that quality of attention that is at the heart of that approach, we are implicitly asking the Incisive Question 'If you knew that you had more great thinking available to you, what would you think?' By embodying our belief in the client's capability, we often help him or her to find it. Other coaching approaches also have the coach as an implicit cheer-leader for the client.

That, of course, raises a second-level issue for the coach. We can't lend people our confidence if we don't have any to lend; yet most coaches I know are rightly wary of being too confident. Big egos get in the way of building an effective learning alliance with the client - but the same is true of excessive self-doubt of course. 

As so often, we need to navigate a tension - on this occasion between arrogance and self-doubt. For me, this is about practicing humility (in the way C S Lewis described it: not thinking less of oneself, but rather thinking about oneself less often...) and simultaneously holding fast to my belief in the process: the value and efficacy of coaching. This enables me to talk with conviction about the probable success of the work that we are going to undertake together, whilst keeping my ego in its place. And that is a position from which I can lend the client a well-grounded confidence, along with that sense of hope that is one of the key aspirations I have for my clients.