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Today's CPD event at Cumbria Coaching Network was a session on Clean Coaching by Sioe Lan Tjao. I had come across clean questions many years ago when I did some NLP training, but either they weren't well explained, or I failed to understand the underpinning ideas.
And in my subsequent disillusionment with NLP, I approached today's session with some scepticism. It all seemed very interesting, and at one level, quite sensible: if as a coach one avoids introducing one's own stuff into the conversation, one is likely to be able to help the client to pursue his or her thinking further, without distractions.
However, the particular questions suggested (there is a bank of twelve of them) didn't seem to me to be the only way to do this, and indeed I found it hard to understand why they had been chosen. I suspect it was limitations of time, and the challenge of trying to cover a lot, and include some experiential work, that meant we didn't cover as much as Sioe Lan had hoped.
However, in getting home and following some of the links that she pointed to, I realised that the background to Clean Questions was an assumption, founded on the work of David Grove, about clients' use of metaphor, and the value of exploring that.
And as I read this explanation by Lawley and Tompkins, pursuing my curiosity about metaphor, I found something very interesting. The final example given, From Bombs to Batons, was remarkably similar, in effect, to the work on Story that I have been developing. That is, where I would see myself as helping a client to discover and strengthen a more helpful story, Lawley and Tompkins would see themselves as helping their client to change his or her metaphor.
That may sound like a very slim distinction; and indeed it is. But what I find fascinating is that although we are seeking to do essentially the same thing, the way in which we reached that point is very different; and so is the process we use to help the client. Which is just as well, or the book I've just finished writing would have been a complete waste of time.
Part of me is sorry that I had not come across their work before finishing mine; but part of me is very grateful indeed! It has already taken quite long enough, and there is plenty of scope for taking my thinking further, beyond the book.
At a supervision meeting of volunteers I work with, the issue of Unfinished Business was raised. One of the least satisfying parts of our work is that we often never hear the end of our clients' stories. When they are no longer in crisis and no longer need support, our involvement can end. That can be very unsatisfying, and sometimes unsettling: we know we left them on an upwards trajectory, but rarely is everything sorted and perfect.
That issue of unfinished business reminded me of a story a friend told me over dinner a week or so previously. He had suffered from adult-onset epilepsy. The medication he was given had an unfortunate side-effect. He started to suffer from troubling flashbacks/daydreams. These were all of a similar nature. He would remember some past encounter, of a trivial nature, with someone whom he had only met once, when the encounter had ended unsatisfactorily from his point of view. Many of these dated back years, and he had not consciously thought about them since.
One example was a time he had been stopped by traffic police and one of them had been unnecessarily sarcastic, some twenty years ago. But what troubled him was that each flashback ended with an imagined scene in which he beat up the other person. Needless to say, he is not given to violence, nor even to violent fantasies. So he found these flashbacks/daydreams very troubling, and at one stage was having several a day.
He went for a couple of counselling sessions, and his counsellor suggested a very simple idea. He should re-visit each of these encounters in his mind, and re-write the story by imagining an ending with which he would have been satisfied. So in the case of the police, for example, he imagined that he had had a word with the non-sarcastic police officer about the other's behaviour. He further imagined that the non-sarcastic officer had returned to the patrol car and given his colleague some uncompromising feedback about his sarcastic behaviour.
As he was telling me this part of the story his wife chipped in, to say that she had been extremely sceptical of this idea when he returned from that counselling session. It sounded too easy, too simple, to be effective. Yet effective it was!
From the moment he imagined a better ending to each of these stories, which I suppose must have been lurking unresolved deep in his unconscious mind for years, the flashbacks stopped.
Just when I thought I had completed my book on Story, too...
I am a fan of Goleman's work on Emotional Intelligence, and particularly as applied to Leadership (see The New Leaders).
One of the many reasons it appeals to me, is that it starts with the self. Rather than describe what a leader should do or say to others, in order to lead, it starts with the leader increasing his or her self-awareness: noticing, and then learning to regulate, what is going on for oneself emotionally.
However, recently I was talking with a leader I know. He is, I think, a good leader and manages his emotions effectively most of the time, which also enables him to lead others well, in the way Goleman et al suggest. However, he was telling me of a recent occasion when he 'lost his rag' in a senior meeting.
The occasion was relatively trivial: and indeed that was what infuriated him. Senior people seemed to him to be squabbling about something of little or no consequence. It was silly and it was a waste of time, in a meeting when there was much serious work to be done.
All of which prompted me to think that it is not sufficient to notice and regulate one's emotional responses, important though that may be. Under pressure (or for other less obvious reasons, in this case probably a combination of overwork, exhaustion and exasperation) the emotions may leak out and one may lose one's rag.
So there is a prior discipline: of considering how we are making sense of the world, and doing so in a way that does not lead to us having to manage sudden emotional responses. There are many approaches to this, including CBT based approaches, for example, and my work on Story (did I mention, I have finished the book - there is just a little editing to be done now...?). So as well as the emotional component, we have to attend to the rational. But the other component, I think, is the spiritual: the cultivation of serenity, through a spiritual discipline to match the intellectual and emotional disciplines.
That, I think, is what meditation has to offer, and why it is being rediscovered as an important part of the repertoire for those seeking to be truly effective. I have blogged before about my own developing discipline, here. I was reminded of the impact that this practice is having once again, when a couple of fairly major issues popped out of the woodwork, and I found that I was not only able to cope with them calmly, but also to feel calm throughout - which meant there was no danger of inadvertent leakage of inner turmoil.
Meditation is one of those things for which we feel we never have time: after all, it feels as though we are doing nothing - a terrible waste of time! But increasingly, I am convinced that investing time in meditating (a little, regularly) is saving me huge amounts of both time and energy.
I have mentioned last year's Change Fest, Cumbria in a previous post, and am delighted to be involved in organising this year's.
I twill take place on on 19 September 2015 at Brathay, near Ambleside. The full programme is available on the CCNet website.
The basic idea is that several change practitioners - mainly but not exclusively, members of the Cumbria Coaching Network - get together to offer a rich variety of sessions at a very modest price (£25 in advance, £30 on the day).
Here's the blurb:
Practical workshops to help you bring about change in yourself and others with
opportunities to work on your own real issues.
Who is it for?
- Anyone experiencing change at a personal level.
- Leaders & managers of change, eg HR professionals, team leaders and managers.
- Those supporting others through change eg counsellors, teachers, health professionals.
What’s on offer?
Workshops will run throughout the day - you can attend 3 workshops as well as plenaries.
Feedback from last year was very positive, and included comments such as:
'Lovely, positive friendly atmosphere''The workshop leaders all really knew their stuff!'
And as if that isn't enough inducement, I will be running a session on Stories for Change, similar to the one I ran when I made a Rare Public Appearance at the Change Camp in Gosforth in March, which (with all due modesty) I can declare to have been a smash hit.
So rush on over to the CCNet Website, have a look at the full programme, and book yourself on!
Due to the nature of my business, most of my work is commissioned by corporate or institutional clients: which means that unless you are employed by the relevant one of them, you will not be able to attend my workshops or programmes.
However, due to popular demand (hem hem) and coincidentally around the time I am gearing up to launch my book on an unsuspecting world, I am making a rare public appearance, to which all (and indeed sundry) are invited.
This will be at the ChangeCamp in Gosforth, on Saturday 28th March. For full details of Change Camp, visit their site.
My session will be on Stories for Change. We will explore the model I have developed and describe in my book, in the context of coaching, with a short case study on video. Then participants will have the opportunity to apply the model in practice in pairs: one coaching, the other being coached. We will then review their experience and seek to draw some conclusions. Finally we will discuss different applications for the model.
It will be a stimulating and highly practical session, so do come along. At £25 (or £10 for concessions) it is a real bargain - and that includes several other sessions of your choice through the day, as well as excellent networking.
I look forward to seeing many friends, old and new, on the day.
I spent three days last week involved in media training as part of the Cardiff Futures programme. Our media experts, Karen and Kevin from Mosaic were excellent, as ever. They started by pointing out the time and attention constraints that mean that in a media story, you have to present your key messages as early and as concisely as you can. In fact I was reminded of what Andrew Derrington has been drumming into me about Assert-Justify in my writing.
My natural style is to use more of a narrative approach: crafting a tale with a start that intrigues, a middle that develops ideas and escalates the tension, and then a satisfying ending that, I hope, delivers a memorable message with some impact. This is closer to the approach of the novelist than the journalist. The difference is clear if one considers how The Times and John le Carré would tell the same story: one would use the name of the traitor in the headline, the other only reveal it in the final chapter.
Both approaches have their place, of course. But what I was reflecting on is that the use of the word story seems to obscure the differences. And that led me to think about the other way in which I use the word story, particularly in the book I am writing. In that context, I use it to refer to the understandings we construct from our experience to make sense of the world.
I use the word story very deliberately, to emphasise that these understandings are a construct, an interpretation, and thus are malleable. But that is not the only link. Every now and then, the story we have created in this manner is so good that we feel we have to share it, and we do so in one of the two styles mentioned above: either in brief headlines, as it were, or as a well-crafted narrative. It is these stories that fuel the organisational grapevine, and their tenacity is a tribute to the power of story as a way of communicating.
Today's CPD event at Cumbria Coaching Network was a session on Clean Coaching by Sioe Lan Tjao. I had come across clean questions many years ago when I did some NLP training, but either they weren't well explained, or I failed to understand the underpinning ideas.
