“Helen, you simply can’t do this to me, you are the steady one; you are the one who holds it all together. I need you to stay just the way you are.”
A systems approach begins when first you see the world through the eyes of another. Charles West Churchman
When Change Meets Resistance
Linda’s words stopped me in my tracks. It was 1987, the final year of my psychotherapy training. Vulnerability was essential for my growth, yet not everyone welcomed it.
That moment taught me something profound: personal change doesn’t happen in isolation. It ripples through the systems we belong to and not all parts of those systems want us to change. Continue reading “Wholeness: Looking at the Whole System”
“Helen, you simply can’t do this to me, you are the steady one; you are the one who holds it all together. I need you to stay just the way you are.”
A systems approach begins when first you see the world through the eyes of another. Charles West Churchman
When Change Meets Resistance
Linda’s words stopped me in my tracks. It was 1987, the final year of my psychotherapy training. Vulnerability was essential for my growth, yet not everyone welcomed it.
That moment taught me something profound: personal change doesn’t happen in isolation. It ripples through the systems we belong to and not all parts of those systems want us to change. Continue reading “Wholeness: Looking at the Whole System”
In the coaching community GROW is probably the best known and most popular coaching framework. Arguably, no coach training programme would be complete without it’s inclusion. GROW has been around since coaching’s early days and was popularised by Sir John Whitmore in his best selling book Coaching for Performance (1988). Since then it has been tried and tested across cultures and disciplines. So, what exactly is GROW? It’s an acronym that stands for:
G: Goals – aspirations and intentions
R: Reality – current situation, including inner and outer obstacles
O: Options – possibilities, strengths, and resources
W: Will, way forward and ‘what next’; actions and accountability
At each step a few powerful questions are used to structure the coaching conversation. Starting with the clients goals, identifying the gap between where they are, where they would like to be, along with actions they need to take to get there, GROW supports setting goals, solving problems, improving performance and unlocking potential.
It doesn’t take long to learn to use GROW, these four simple steps are easy to pick up, giving a framework that doesn’t take much knowledge or practice to apply. It gives beginners and more experienced coaches alike an empowering sense of direction, competency, and focus. GROW provides a simple and effective way to help the coachee identify what they want to achieve and a convenient way for coaches to navigate the coaching conversation, keeping it purposeful and avoiding the pitfall of drifting into a cosy chat. It’s not hard to see why GROW is so popular.
But if GROW is the only focus, our coaching will be limited and limiting. If as coaches we become lazy or cling too tightly to the structure, we can end up concentrating more on our ability to follow the steps, feeding the belief that asking questions is all there is to coaching. This is simply not true. When we fail to allow the client to fully explore what is important, they won’t be wholly committed to their actions and the result will rarely lead to meaningful or lasting change.
When this ‘slippage’ happens we need to shift emphasis away from GROW towards developing what is sometimes called ‘coach presence’ the underlying capacity to be with the client. This involves learning to listen deeply, understand and follow their energy and be in relationship, rather than racing towards the finishing line of ‘W’ – ‘will’. This shift is from ‘doing’ to ‘being’ and involves increasing both coach and coaches awareness about who they are, what they are noticing; ‘their being’. It involves coaching principles like empathic resonance, the ability to create the space for generative dialogue, and the flexibility to move between and beyond structure; holding tools and techniques lightly, using them sparingly, in the service of the client. This is where the true art of coaching flourishes, it takes time (maybe even a lifetime!) to cultivate and is a defining characteristic of coaching excellence.
Another criticism of GROW is that its emphasis on behavioural change, performance and business results limits the conversation. If this is the case, what might be excluded? Often the more ethical, philosophical or personal aspects of the coachees life. Topics like career change, wellbeing, personal transition, integrity, deeply held values, meaning and purpose. The relevance here goes beyond the individual coachee. Trust is a critical success factor in business today, questions of ethics, purpose and doing ‘better business’ have moved up the corporate agenda over the last decade. Though it remains important, performance alone is no longer the holy grail. Increasingly today success is not only a matter of what you do—it’s also how you do it.
The advantage and strength of GROW, the structure it brings to guide the process contains the seed of its weakness. Could this be otherwise? Any single tool or model brings its gifts and limitations. Used wisely, GROW offers an excellent framework for structuring a coaching conversation. It is particularly useful for beginners, helping them keep a session on track while they gain confidence and learn to embody deeper coaching principles. It’s in this context that we offer our introductory ‘Steps into Coaching’ session on GROW.
I can’t believe we are heading towards the Autumn equinox and the marking of the transition between seasons. There’s definitely that back to school/ work feeling in the air. This week I’ll be driving my son back to Brighton for the start of his final year at the University of Sussex.
This year it’s a transition that I have mixed feelings about, with news of a virus storm brewing on university campuses and knowing he will be returning to face more uncertainty, disruption and social distancing. Young adults generally are more likely to suffer the long-term consequences of economic downturn, more likely to have lost their jobs or been furloughed, more likely to live in cramped shared housing; more likely to suffer Covid related mental health issues. There’s been a lot of talk about impacts of the pandemic on children, the elderly and businesses but impacts on young people and how to support them seems to be largely ignored and this troubles me.
Given my concerns, a couple of days ago when I heard Matt Hancock laying the blame on young people for the Covid spike, I felt angry. I wanted to blame him.
My rant began something like this: “How dare you shift the blame. It’s your fault they took advantage of ‘eat out to help out’ and heeded the prime minister, who said it was a ‘patriotic duty’ to go to the pub. Your mixed messages made this mess, and so Mr Hancock, YOU are to blame for your governments chaotic, incompetent response to Covid19.”
My reaction got me thinking. In this tirade, the fact that quite a few young adults have been casual about social distancing, and the question of how best to do something about the risks is simply not part of my picture. I’m off, on my high horse, lashing out at full speed, sucked into the ‘Blame Game’. What just happened?
Blame it turns out, is contagious, it spreads like a virus. A 2010 study from USC into ‘blame contagion’ showed that pointing fingers at others is not only infectious, it is amplified when trust is low and seems to be eliminated when people feel valued and appreciated. In other words, being blamed for things that are not our fault and not receiving acknowledgement and the credit that we deserve are entangled.
How the credit/ blame game is played is a key ingredient of organisational cultures, for better or for worse. I often meet clients who work in organisations with rampant cultures of blame. These are places where dishing out blame, unfair attacks or credit grabbing hijack energy and distract from tackling problems. Teams and organizations with a culture of blame have an uphill struggle when it comes to encouraging learning, creativity, innovation and productive risk-taking. Blame is an excellent defence mechanism, by avoiding looking at our own flaws and failings, blame protects our self-image. However, research shows that people who blame others for their mistakes lose status, learn less, and have poorer performance compared to those who own up to their mistakes. The pattern is so destructive, whether you are a coach or a leader, blame is something to be alert to, because in the end playing the blame game never works.
The blame game is lazy. It’s easier to blame someone else than to recognise and accept responsibility for the part you play in a messy situation. Becoming blame-savvy requires effort, changing behaviour so you don’t repeat mistakes involves work. Creating psychological safety is one of the most important things a coach or leader can do to stop the blame game but this takes awareness, time and commitment. Here are a few potential places to start:
Avoid collusion. By setting the right example and not joining in with the game, you can help grow awareness and model collaborative problem-solving rather than defensiveness and finger-pointing.
Own up to your mistakes. When you make a mistake, it is tempting to shore up the illusion of our own self-worth and blame someone else. Instead, say sorry when you are wrong, you are not omnipotent, face up to the reality that you are not always right. When you don’t pass the buck, you gain respect and help to prevent a culture of blame.
Focus on learning and creating a ‘growth’ mindset. This is where learning from — rather than avoiding mistakes — is the priority. This helps ensure that people feel free to ‘own up’, discuss and learn from their errors.
Pause. Take a breath. Step back. If you’re facing a “blame-thrower” or “credit-grabber” a good first response is to pause. We all tend to cast blame; it is often a subconscious process; the blame game might not be personal. What is behind the game? What might be triggering your reaction? This is where talking to someone outside of work, a coach or trusted colleague will help you gain perspective and distance make strategic decisions about your response.
When you do blame, do it constructively. Accountability is important and there are definitely times when people’s mistakes need to be raised in public. In these cases, make sure to emphasise that the goal is to learn from mistakes, not to publicly humiliate those who make them. As a manager, peer or coach, be careful not to use feedback as a sneaky way of dishing out blame.
Author of The Blame Game Ben Dattner summarises it like this: “We all want to be recognised for our effort and accomplishments, and we resist being blamed when things don’t go right. This leads to habitual patterns of credit and blame at work. […] The most successful leaders are able to see their role in the blame game, admit mistakes and focus on fixing rather than blaming.”
Many of us struggle both with the giving and receiving of feedback, so a big ‘thank you’ to Josie Sutcliffe for this post. Josie is one of our trainers for the online Foundation Course (starting at the end of September) and will be leading the session on effective feedback skills.
We can learn to both give and receive feedback in ways that are enabling, that do not wound but instead energise. Is now the time for you to begin your exploration into the freedoms feedback brings?
When someone says to you, “I want to give you some feedback”, what do you think – I mean your first uncensored thought…? What do you feel, what do you do?
When someone says to you, “I want to give you a gift”, what do you think – I mean your first uncensored thought…? What do you feel, what do you do?
I’m willing to bet that the responses would be very different!
I studied Photography and Graphic Design at Art School and then later, Theatre Studies. In both these areas of the Arts, feedback was considered a gift and vital for the development of your practice as an artist. How could you progress without enabling, encouraging and effective feedback? How could you learn that you had made mistakes that might (easily) be rectified? It seemed implausible as a student to continue into a career without opening yourself up to sometimes challenging feedback or criticism.
Of course, we soon learn that there are more than mere challenging criticisms that inhabit our worlds of work and life. ‘Killer feedback’ can be hurtful, wounding, humiliating, shaming and contribute little to someone’s learning, although it seems unfortunately it is still alive and well and commonly used in business/professional situations.
Of all the skills that coaches can possess, giving and receiving feedback is perhaps the most sophisticated and difficult. Many of my clients are already fearful of receiving feedback because historically it has caused them pain. And yet sometimes it may be important to challenge a client’s strongly held beliefs.
Do you see feedback as a potential threat to your sense of yourselves as valuable human beings?
We can learn to both give and receive feedback in ways that are enabling, that do not wound but instead energise the Wise Goose Foundations will help you to begin your exploration into the freedoms feedback brings.
At the third of the rhythmic set of cries I stop, push the garden fork into the soil and turn. Of course, I know it’s a rook, but somehow there’s a depth in this particular call that makes the familiar strange, she has my attention. The tone and the rhythm have drawn me out of myself, out of the business of preparing ground for spring planting.
I scan the still-bare trees at the edge the allotments looking for the owner of this loud but surprisingly warm, almost mellow voice. Behind the trees the sky is empty, a cloudless, bottomless blue. I stand, squinting into the brightness, quiet, waiting. One patient breath; another, two more, long and slow. Then a rolling shuffle along a high branch catches my eye; there, I see you now. Out of the seamless ground of sky and woods where ‘rook’ is simply part of everything, a figure is pulled out by my curious senses and insistent urge to know and name. Then, almost as if she knows she’s been spotted, she takes flight, air whistling whhsh-whhsh-whhsh through beating black wings, heading towards the rookery above the nearby cemetery.
Left behind, I close my eyes for a moment, listening to the presences of this place. Over there high in the cherry, intense, confident warbling of a robin; somewhere to my left , darting between the cover of the beech hedge and bramble brash, a whirr of wren’s wings; very close to my ear the drone of a bumble bee. From the direction of the apple trees, tits call back and forth ‘tsee-hu, tsee-hu, tsee-hu’ and there’s a gentle mystery song too; long, low and burbling like a softly blown referees whistle. It’s late March and the world is filled with twitters and caws and coos, I’m hearing the voice of ‘ten thousand things’ as they briefly emerge into manifest existence then fall away again into nameless, formless, generative emptiness. For a few moments eyes still closed, enjoying the warmth of late March sunshine, I know I am also and always woven through this place, whether conscious of this truth or, as is more often the case, not.
******
Back at home I’m at my desk, during the first couple of weeks in a strange pandemic world of social distancing, hand washing and self-isolation, lethargy stalks me. After an initial burst of activity, most of my work has come to a standstill, groups postponed with no sense of when I can re-schedule, no indication of when or how this lockdown will be lifted. My car stands idle in the drive, coated with tree pollen and spiderwebs. Much is restricted: ‘non-essential journeys’, more than one walk a day, meeting friends for coffee, a meal out. Daily, I cross the playground on my way to and from the allotment, slides, swings and climbing frames cordoned off like a crime scene, plastic incident tape fluttering red and white in the breeze. In this alien new world, where we stand patiently two meters from neighbours in straggling queues and streets fall silent after 2pm I have felt bestilled. Fragments from a poem memorised in childhood surface and run as if on a loop through my mind:, “Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion, As idle as a painted ship, Upon a painted ocean.’
Expectations of how the world works have been disrupted, my plans, and the plans of so many others, abandoned, or placed on hold. This is disruption on a grand scale, my sense of myself as a productive person doing meaningful work has been upended. Though unhappily passive, I resist the frantic activity I see ‘out there’, a flurry of lockdown blogs with seemingly endless advice on how to cope, survive or leverage ‘opportunities’, the competitive churning of performance and productivity goals, or heartless pontification about the ‘purpose’ or ‘meaning’ of this pandemic. My reaction to all this ‘noise’ has been a bristling, guilty anger. I want none of it. What is happening is unbearable, people are dying, isolated and alone, so much of everyday life lost. I wonder, could it be, in part at least, denial, a grasping for an illusion of control or a filling of the void created by self-isolation through frenzied activity. Nevertheless, I measure ‘their’ busyness against my loafing, finding myself wanting. I pause and potter, unsure of how to make good decisions about how far to postpone course dates, what options to offer students who need to complete their programme, how to include their voices as well as listen to my own. Maybe I should reschedule to June, maybe September, or maybe neither, there are so many unknowns.
So, I do what I must: respond to emails, coach online, buy zoom pro, offer virtual seminars, postpone meetings and retreat to the allotment. The only place where I feel fully ‘myself’ is on the allotment. Blessed with sunshine, it’s there I’ve been spending most of my days; days punctuated by a tally of new coronavirus cases and deaths. Though the human world is in lock-down, time does not stop. Spring sends out its own messages. Each day the buds on the cherry tree swell a little more, I watch for flowers knowing that not long after apple blossom will follow, each tree knowing its time. Every morning in the grey light before dawn, birds fill the air with song, in the evening, they fill it again. Days lengthen. Most days as the sun sets, you’ll find me still on the allotment sitting in the evening sunshine drinking tea.
Towards the end of the third week of lock down I start to wonder: Is this stillness is a form of action? I watch spring unfurl, quietly turning over questions about the foundations, givens and patterns of everyday life. Perhaps something of the world can be revealed in a time like this when we have been forced to abandon so many old habits to find new ones.
Day after day, day after day my new ritual is to spend time on the allotment, it’s a small ordinary, beautiful place, not a mountain, or a forest, definitely not wilderness, though there are plenty of wild beings there. I immerse myself in its particular ecology and it teaches me about what it means to be human in a world that extends beyond human concerns. It’s a world where fellow citizens include oil beetles, orange-tip butterflies and carder bees, deer, badgers, mice and squirrels, celandine, dandelions and a robin who follows me picking up an easy supper as I clear the beds of couch grass, buttercups and bindweed. I see more clearly than usual how wider processes, these non-human neighbours keep me connected and sane, the anxiety, anger or powerlessness sparked by this virus coming to rest within something wider. This isn’t to ignore human suffering and death, who I am, who we are can’t be disentangled from each other. But neither can who we are be disentangled from how we relate to these many beings. Four weeks into lockdown and I begin to find a balance, a place that is open to the awfulness of what’s unfolding and can be sustained by everyday simple joys of life, a sunny day, hands in earth, sowing seeds.
I think again of the rook, cronking in the woods that back onto the allotments, I’m trying to imagine the unimaginable multitude of processes beyond human worlds that sustain me, sustain us all, making us the beings we are. We humans are a social species, being forced to keep physical and social distance from each other. It feels wrong. Along with many others I feel that loss of human connection deeply, but at the same time I wonder how our habitual crowding together might crowd out all the other voices. If we let voices from our wider kin seep into our everyday lives how might they help us understand our fragility, limits, strengths and place in the world differently? I wonder, if we paused to listen, how they’d shape who we may become?
Written in the 13th century, this poem an oldie, but goodie. Though overused in mindfulness circles to the point of becoming a cliché, it’s still a beautiful reminder to meet, accept and respect the myriad of visitors I’ve been entertaining as COVID19 lock-down sweeps my house empty of furniture. So here’s a virtual cup of tea for our uninvited guests. With all my love, Helen
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Jellaludin Rumi Rumi: Selected Poems, trans Coleman Barks with John Moynce, A. J. Arberry, Reynold Nicholson (Penguin Books, 2004)
It’s Monday and it’s definitely not business as usual …
My desk is the same, I was due to work from home today, so being here is no different, but I’m feeling very, very different. Priorities have changed, uncertainty seems to be the order of the day.
This time last week I was in London delivering the training course in the Story Garden as scheduled, enjoying watching the group coaching in March sunshine we’d all been hoping for. What a difference a week makes. Much of our lives has changed, for everyone. Living in a pandemic is outside our experience, there are no (or very few) reference points, it makes life confusing, especially as advice is changing from day to day.
At the end of last week, I had a burst of energy, exploring options to offer to groups who are mid- training, especially the Devon cohort who were looking forward to mid- April and the last 3 days of a year of training. I had a quick look at the accounts, cash flow is OK for now. The good news is we don’t have a lot of fixed overheads here at Wise Goose, one of the upsides of being a small, ‘boutique style’ training provider, but I have decided to stop paying my salary from April. I’m lucky, my husband can work remotely and as a professor of health care modelling is in demand.
Even so, this is hitting my survival buttons. Our ‘Steps into Coaching’ free taster session was cancelled last week, and others scheduled unlikely to run. This means that even if ‘social distancing’ restrictions were lifted in time, which is not going to happen, given all the uncertainty it would be hard to fill the new groups scheduled to start later in the summer. No new groups = no (or not much) income.
On the surface I’ve not been feeling particularly stressed, but though not intense, I know I’m anxious, I notice I’m not thinking so clearly, it’s harder to focus, I’m no neuroscientist, but surely this is a sign of a busy amygdala; the limbic system in action. I probably should be sending out an upbeat, typically ‘positive’ coaching style message, but I’m not going to lie. Truth is, this morning I’m sluggish and feeling dull and unmotivated, perhaps a sign that the adrenaline boost at the end of the week is giving way to the stress of higher levels of cortisol in the bloodstream. This isn’t a good thing, prolonged, chronic levels of cortisol don’t support clear thinking, it raises blood pressure, lowers immunity and even, eventually will help make me fatter around the middle, something I really don’t need!
What to do? Well,
I’ve decided to be kind to myself and to not expect myself to be on top of my
game. The sun is shining and I’m going to go up to the allotment where I plan
to sit and soak in the peace of the place and sow seeds. I’m not going to try to crunch figures, or read
anything too demanding; an easy read, maybe even reread something I love just
for the familiarity of an old friend.
I’m going to pause and give myself space for wondering about ‘all this’
and where I am in the midst of it. I’ll
deal with what must be dealt with, take care of the calls in the diary but
mostly my strategy for the next few days is to breathe, listen and feel my way
back into action from a more settled place.
I know it’s not time wasted but time well spent, I’ll be more effective
when I return to the desk.
As I reach the end of this post I realise I’m being kind to myself, and as I sign off I’ve started wondering about the power of kindness, which reminds me of something; I wander over to the bookshelves in my office. I’ve decided on my book ‘The Power of Kindness’ by psychosynthesis friend Piero Ferrucci. It’s coming with me to the allotment. Take care and keep well. With love Helen
I myself am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me. Issac Newton
Earlier this month I said goodbye to my son who is off on the next leg of his ‘gap’ travels before starting university in the autumn. It’s time for him to step out into the world, widen horizons and explore who he becomes as he encounters different places and people. A few days later I said goodbye to our first London cohort, it’s been a rich and enjoyable year with an enthusiastic and engaged group. They are stepping out now and their perspective on coaching will change as they encounter new situations and new clients. Continue reading “Widening Coaching Perspectives”
Many thanks to Wise Goose graduate Lucy Weldon for this post. Lucy is a career coach who specialises in the development of sustainable careers.
Have you thought about what living to a hundred will be like? It will soon be unremarkable to live that long. Many societies, including the UK, are rapidly ageing. There’s lots of discussion about the funding challenge butnot enough about the decades that precede our twilight years and what we do with our longer lives.
In the book, The 100-year Life by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, the authors talk about this extended life and working life as being a gift. It’s certainly a positive way of looking at it. However, it depends on your individual circumstances. If you live in the USA without health insurance or you depend solely on the UK government pension with little personal savings, the extended working life is a worrying and onerous necessity.
We’re seeing already that the simple career path of a ‘job for life’ is losing its currency. The vertical career ladder of ‘onwards and upwards’ needs to change to what I call a multi-staged climbing wall model. Now, more than ever, we need to look at our working lives differently and to manage them more proactively. Luck will always play its part, but it won’t necessarily get you to where you want or need to get to.
My focus with clients is on having a ‘sustainable career’; by that I mean having a working life that brings in the required financial reward as well as fulfilment, purpose and balance. How do we achieve this? It won’t just happen.
Here are some aspects of career management to think about. They are not necessarily age specific. Responses to them will be rooted much more in life stage:
Re-framing the working life. Given extended lives, the potential exists to look at our careers differently. Experts now talk about the career as being a marathon, a long journey, a series of short sprints with essential holding patterns in between. I see it more as a climbing wall.
Multiple careers. Because the choices exist and the imperative is growing, we will have a number of careers or career paths. This will require us to be flexible, resilient and creative. And to keep on learning and investing in ourselves and our working lives.
Re-thinking your working identity. ‘I’ve always been a ……’. That may change and may have to change. What you will also need is a clear understanding of your skills and strengths as well as the kind of work that you find enjoyable and stimulating as you go through your working life.
Work life balance. It’s critical to talk about work life balance. Will we be like the Japanese and have a word that sums up the worst extreme of this imbalance? ‘Karoshi’ is a Japanese word that means death through overwork. The UK is known for its long working hours.
Financial reward to fit your life stage and lifestyle. Unsurprisingly, money can dictate conversations about working lives. It is an important
consideration. Whilst money can be a short-term motivator, poor financial reward is a sure fire demotivator that sets in quickly. Establishing what you want and need is vital, and it typically changes with lifestyle and life stage.
On-going personal development within your current role and the future direction of your career. Finishing your education in your younger years reflects the old working life model. Investing in you, your future working life and a different career direction may well depend on a period of acquiring new knowledge, skills, credentials and qualifications. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Yes, you can!
It’s the ‘whole you’ not just the ‘working you’ that needs to be looked at and considered. It’s also about making our extended lives more a voyage of discovery than a haphazard, hoping for the best kind of experience. When you have choices, when you can get on the front foot, why wouldn’t you?
Many thanks to Mark Hunt for this post. Mark had recently finished his first training weekend with Wise Goose where we’d been looking at questions in coaching when he had real life opportunity to put the theory into practice!
Recently, after a visit to Wise Goose, I was travelling back to Exeter along narrow Dartmoor roads. I had an important meeting to get to and had allowed myself a whisker’s breadth of contingency to get there on time. It was mid afternoon and the roads would be quiet. What could possibly go wrong?
All was well until I tried to join the main road. In front of the junction was an enormous articulated lorry and in both directions cars as far as the eye could see. It was clear that the lorry was blocking the road, and my first thought questioned what the driver was thinking of bringing that great metal behemoth down these skinny lanes. And then – I realised it was an agricultural lorry and – tail between my legs – wondered who had more right to be there. Continue reading “Questionable Intentions – Intentional Questions “
Many thanks to Mark Hunt for this post. Mark had recently finished his first training weekend with Wise Goose where we’d been looking at questions in coaching when he had real life opportunity to put the theory into practice!