Building Learning Networks Online

 Some while ago, when describing how I was a convert to online workshops, even including skills development, I wrote:  I was clear that some of the key skills I see myself bringing to that process, such as the creation of a safe but rigorously challenging atmosphere, rely on physical presence; likewise, some of the benefits of the workshops I run, such as building connections and networks (and to some extent, I stand by that).

And now, perhaps, I am standing a little back from that.

We had a review session this week, following the first of the online version of my Negotiating Skills Workshop.  It was an opportunity for participants to get together again, to compare notes on what they had done and learned since the workshop, by trying the learning out in the workplace, and to re-commit to continuing to learn.

It was heartening to hear how enthusiastic people were about the learning, but what really impressed me was that they concluded the review by committing to keep working together as a learning community. So they are all going to read Getting to Yes, and get back together to talk about their learning (and how they have further applied it) in a month's time.  And then decide what next to read (I have given them a few suggestions) and so on.

That strikes me as very significant, not least as the feedback from many programmes that we have evaluated over the longer term is that the building of networks has proved to be one of the most valuable aspects.  Indeed, quite by chance, I heard from someone who had left the University where she did a leadership programme, but still continues to meet with her cohort regularly - ten years on!

It is not just chance that this happens. The Thinking Environment approach to facilitation (follow the tag if you want to know more) will reliably engage people in ways that create high levels of trust and therefore the likelihood of a continuing relationship.  But what is interesting to me, and what I had not expected, is that this works even online.

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With thanks to  Chris Montgomery and Nicolas Picard for sharing their photos on Unsplash

On Contracting

Sometimes a particular issue arises again and again over a short period of time: it is almost as if the universe is trying to tell you something.  For me, that has happened over the last few weeks with the business of contracting. In a number of supervisory conversations, I have found myself thinking 'How did you even get into that situation?' and in each case, the answer was poor contracting. Likewise, in another conversation, a colleague had had a consultancy project terminated because the CEO's expectations were different from hers - not about the work to be done or the importance of it, but how it was to be undertaken. He was expecting her to have done stuff, whilst she was still awaiting his more detailed brief. Poor contracting! And again, I have had an intake session with a new potential coaching client, at which we got to know each other, and discussed his expectations and mine; but also what I needed from him for the coaching to be a success: not just chemistry, in other words, but also, and importantly, contracting.  

Strangely this doesn't seem to be well covered in the coaching and supervision literature, or training, that I have encountered. Instead, I go to Peter Block's great book, Flawless Consulting, (about which I have blogged before, on more than one occasion: see here, for example).

Block states that a contract is an explicit agreement of what the consultant and client expect from each other, and how they are going to work together. So this is not so much about the legal aspects of contracting (though they are important) as about all the other aspects.

And Block provides a lot of clarity, as ever. The business of the contracting phase, as he sees it is:

• Negotiating wants 
• Coping with mixed motivation 
• Surfacing concerns about exposure and loss of control 
• Triangular and rectangular contracting 

Clearly, this is a conversation, and agreement and an understanding to develop, not simply a document to sign. Negotiating wants is perhaps obvious; though in my experience many consultants and coaches focus only on client wants and not their own.  That sets things off on the wrong foot, as it implies that the client is the superior in the relationship, rather than a colleague on a joint endeavour.  It also risks the consultant or coach failing to articulate those things that he or she knows are critical to success, such as the client's full engagement with the work.

Coping with mixed motivation is also interesting: the client both wants help, but may also want you not to be able to help; as if you can sort this out, when they couldn't, what does that say about them?

Resistance, in Block's understanding, normally springs from concerns about exposure and loss of control: so surfacing those concerns early is extremely valuable.

And, of course, there may be several parties to to the contract, not all of them obvious; so clarifying and addressing that is also vital.

And then (and this is why I really like his work) Block gets very practical:

The specific skills involved in contracting are to be able to: 

• Ask direct questions about who the less visible parties to the contract are 
• Elicit the client’s expectations of you 
• State clearly and simply what you want from the client 
• Say no, or postpone a project that in your judgement has less than a 50/50 chance of success 
• Probe directly for the client’s underlying concerns about exposure and vulnerability
• Discuss directly with the client why the contracting meeting is not going well, when it isn’t. 
  

All of which are pretty self-explanatory, but many of which, I find, people don't do - and that mainly because they haven't been offered such a clear framework and understanding. 

And that's all for now, as I have a conversation booked about some new work with a new potential client in a few minutes - so I may be able to put all this wisdom into practice, once more.

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With thanks to  Cytonn Photography and Christina @ wocintechchat.com for sharing their photography on Unsplash

Experimenting with Journaling

As I mentioned in my post a couple of weeks ago, I have been experimenting with the Genos Journalling App.  I have now done that daily for a fortnight, so (as promised, fearsome Reader) I am now reporting back.  (And for those following this saga attentively, I did find an old blank hard covered book in my stationery cupboard, and my handwriting isn't quite as illegible as I pretend).

It has been a useful and interesting experience.  I chose Self Awareness as my focus for the fortnight (the other options on the app are Personal Vision and Gratitude).  The various 'prompts' to which I responded include: I need to ask for help when... I am at my happiest when... I tend to sabotage myself when... I enjoy myself best when... and so on.

The discipline is then to write for the chosen length of time (3, 5 or 10 minutes, without stopping, and with no self-censorship, until the buzzer on the app goes.  In many ways, it is similar to working with a Thinking Partner using Nancy Kline's Thinking Partnership process (regular readers will know I'm a fan.

As to what I wrote, that will remain between the covers of my journal: that is rather the point. But the interesting bits are always when you write something that surprises you, or that you have always known but somehow lost track of, and so on.

One thing that is valuable is to go back over what you have written a while later and mark up what is particularly important

There was one prompt that I rejected (you always have the option to choose another prompt, if you don't like the one offered). The one I rejected (twice) was: One compliment I know that I deserve is... You may speculate and draw your own conclusions about what that says about me, should you wish to do so.

With regard to the Genos tool, it works well, apart from a few typos (particularly in the Gratitude prompts), and I would recommend it as a starting point. It's weakness, of course, is that it only has the three topic areas (and a finite number of prompts, of course).

For myself, however, I am now going to choose my own prompts, focusing on some different areas of my life that particularly want to attend to over the coming months.  I may report back further in due course.

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With thanks to Aaron Burden for sharing his photography on Unsplash

A Little Poetry

 This lockdown has been grimmer, in some ways, than previous ones.  Maybe it's the winter; maybe it was that we were just getting hopeful again...  Whatever the reason, it seemed to hit harder. So my younger children decided that it would be a good idea to learn a poem a week, and to swap poems every Saturday morning via Whatsapp.  And they recruited me, too.

So for the past several weeks, I have been learning a poem off by heart every week, and enjoying Mike's and Lizzie's recitations of their poems. And we have covered a lot of ground already: Shakespeare, Hardy, Eliot, Elizabeth Jennings, Stevie Smith, and even Geoffrey Bache-Smith, whom I hadn't come across before.

There are some obvious benefits, of course: exercising the old cerebellum as Bertie would say, and refreshing the soul. And also, for me at least, addressing that feeling that I really ought to know more poetry (by the end of the year, I should know a lot more than I do now!) 

But one that I hadn't foreseen was how pleasant it is to have access to all this different verse in my head for those moments - out walking, or waking in the night for example - when one might otherwise drift into unhelpful rumination or worry. I'm not especially prone to these, but as I say, this lockdown has been grimmer...

I'm particularly keen to remember all the poems I learn this year, so I try to say them through to myself most days at some stage: often when returning from a walk on the fells.  By the end of the year, of course, I'll have to go for much longer walks, if I am to sustain that habit.  And that, too, would be no bad thing...