Making a website: The 'Deep Dive'

This is the second of two blogs about making a website to celebrate the launch of KellowLearning.com. The first blog is called ‘I made a website www.kellowlearning.com'

It took me more than six months to write the copy for my website KellowLearning.com. I don’t regret the time I spent because the act of writing about leadership and learning helped me to find out what I think. I also found out what I remember from the past two decades of working as a trainer, what I have learned, what I have achieved, what I care about most deeply, and what gives me joy. Writing about what I do, day after day, was a ‘deep dive’ into who I am, and what I do. And the benefit of the ‘deep dive’ is that I was able to make a far better website than I could ever have imagined. And, what’s more, I now know what to say when people ask me ‘what do you do?’.

Here is what I discovered, and how it has helped me to communicate what I do.

I wrote to find out what I think. How do I define leadership? What are the game-defining factors affecting sustainability leaders today?

The Benefit: Clients need to know that I know what I am talking about.

I wrote to find out what I do. What is my approach to learning and change, and what is special about what I do?

The Benefit: Clients need to know what I do, and why I am the right person to work with them / their organisation.

I wrote to find out what I remember. What do I still remember from two decades of delivering programme and projects? Why have some people and events stuck in my memory, and not others?

The Benefit: Identifying my most powerful learning experiences has helped me to connect with what I do well as a trainer, and to remind myself how I can re-create transformational learning experiences for others.

I wrote to find out what I have learned. What are my key learnings from designing and delivering training for different groups of people living and working in different contexts?

The Benefit: I can clearly describe my approach to training, facilitation and coaching, the principles I follow, and what informs the choices I make in the interest of helping people to have the best possible learning experience.

I wrote to find out what I have achieved. Recalling the people and the projects that I have worked on since the early 1990s, I became aware that the whole looks greater than the sum of the parts.

The Benefit: I am quietly proud of my achievements, and this gives me the confidence to be comfortable with risk and uncertainty. 

I wrote to find out what I care about most deeply. What are the most precious moments and experiences that I have shared with the people I have met, and why?

The Benefit: Telling stories about what I do, and why I do it, helps me to communicate what it is like to work with me.

I wrote to find out what makes me joyful How do I focus on what makes me healthy, happy, creative, and inspired? How can anyone working in a helping or enabling role if they do not look after themselves?

The Benefit: Paying attention to my physical and mental health helps me to be at my best when working with others.

What real leaders really do

What leaders really do?

Once upon a time, when I thought I wanted to work in HR, I read a much reprinted article by John P Kotter, called “What leaders really do” (Havard Business Review, May-June 1990). In plain English Kotter described a step by step approach to helping people deliver the organisation’s vision e.g. involving people in decision-making, being a good role model, providing coaching and feedback, and praising people when they were successful. At the time Kotter made complete sense to me, and I was grateful to him for making leadership seem so simple.

Years later...

Twenty years later, when I read the article again, I was nearly sick. This is a good thing, because it shows how much my ideas about leadership have changed since I began working in leadership and sustainability. How could I have imagined that this mechanical approach to managing people was the real deal? 

In Praise of the Incomplete Leader

Somewhere between my first and second readings of Kotter, I came across an article co-authored by Peter Senge, called ‘In Praise of the Incomplete Leader’. It began with the words ‘No leader is perfect’. I became very excited. ‘The Incomplete Leader’ describes four leadership competencies and why they matter: making sense of the world, relating to people, communicating your vision, and inventing ways to make it happen. 

Leadership beyond organisations

What I instantly liked was the framing of leadership as way of thinking and acting, a process of being and becoming. ‘Incomplete Leadership’ is not tied to an organisational setting. It can work in teams, partnerships, networks and communities. With its strong emphasis on creating shared narratives, ‘Incomplete Leadership’ is a joint quest for the best possible way forward. It’s OK not to have all the answers, provided we keep asking questions, and telling stories to raise our spirits.

What real leaders really do

Since I discovered the ‘Incomplete Leader’, I’ve thought a lot about what we can do to provide real leadership in a complex and uncertain world. The list that follows is incomplete, but that’s OK!

Real leaders:

1. Are motivated by serving other people, their community, their organisation, their favourite cause
2. Are curious about the future           
3. Scan the horizon for opportunities, innovations, and threats 
4. Question their assumptions and beliefs           
5. Listen and observe constantly           
6. Are comfortable with complexity           
7. Gather information from multiple sources. They talk to everyone they meet. They subscribe newspapers and magazines, have a twitter account, and read blogs
8. Invest time in building diverse personal and professional networks because they know the value of diversity
9. Explore many as many options as possible before making up their minds
10. Suspend judgment on hearing about a new way of doing things
11. They like to experiment because it is fun. They have courage, and they are willing to take risks
12. Take time out to think and reflect, perhaps go for walk or swim. They may keep a diary, a journal, or a write a blog
13. Encourage different points of view and involve people in decision-making           
14. Are open and honest about making mistakes. They treat mistakes as an opportunity to learn and share what they discovered with others
15. Take responsibility for their actions           
16. Want to learn and they want other people to learn, too. They give and receive feedback freely
17. Enjoy what they do. Real leaders make a positive difference to the lives of other people. People like to work with them because they are life enhancers
18. ?

 London, 18 August 2013

Thanks for reading my blog. If you liked this page, you might like to check out my business website which has more content on leadership and learning.

www.kellowlearning.com

How to choose a name for your website

Open the champagne. It's a website!

What shall I call it?

No, I have not had a baby. The only thing I am going to give birth to, soon, is a website about me. And I am trying to choose a catchy name for the eponymous website that will tell the world what a wonderful trainer / facilitator / coach I am. You see the problem? I have now used three words to describe myself, and they don’t explain what I do, or why you should read any more about me.

A catchy strapline

My name is OK. There are not too many Edward Kellows in the world competing for the attention of a search engine. What I need is an elegant strapline that will tell people how creative, flexible and fun I am to work with: how I always deliver on outcomes; and how I help people to discover stuff that they never dreamt they could do, and later helped them to transform their company / relationship / life. And, despite, or because of, my success, I am totally authentic and trustworthy, thanks to my deeply held, and hard won personal values. I sound so good, I think I might even hire myself.

What do I do in one sentence?

How do I explain what I do in one sentence? I google a few trainers and coaches I know, and they use words like facilitate, learning, and change. That’s what I do! I facilitate learning and change. So I think I should definitely say ‘facilitate’ because ‘facilitate’ is a verb, and a verb spells action, and what all my potential clients want is someone who can make change happen.

“Words, words, words” Hamlet II.2

But wait a moment. Everyone who works in learning and development facilitates change. I need to tell people what’s special about me. So, I am creative, and I am fun. I give people space to work things out for themselves. And the reason I do that, is I genuinely believe that change only happens when people get comfortable with who they are, rather than trying to be someone else. I learned that from Mr. Beisser on my coaching course, though I think I knew it already. And the reason why I think THAT is important is that I believe change will only be sustainable if people are given a chance to work things out for themselves. When they do that people tend to take more responsibility for their actions, see?

 Edward Kellow: Fifty Shades of Learning (It was late, I was desperate, OK?)

So I invent some straplines that I think explain what I do, while hinting at my creativity, energy and dynamism:

Edward Kellow: making learning happen (dynamic!)

Edward Kellow: making it happen (sexier, but what do I make happen?)

Collaborative Learning: Steps towards sustainable futures (Too much ‘togetherness’?)

Curious Futures: facilitating learning and leadership (hmm, I like this one)

Collaborative Futures: facilitating sustainable futures (This has a ‘does what is says on the tin’ feel)

Edward Kellow: Leaning into learning (oh dear, no).

And I google them, and each and every one is taken by somebody else. Even ‘Curious Futures’, which is the one I like most, because I have done a lot of thinking about the value of curiosity (see my blog!), and I want my strapline to ‘Lean in’ to the future. Finally, when ‘Fifty Shades of Learning’ pops into my head, I give up.

What about “Edward Kellow: facilitating collaborative learning and leadership”?

Maybe it’s not so bad after all.

Becoming a coach: me and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme

I’ve got a permanent sugar rush of thoughts and feelings about coaching and training. I’m like Monsieur Jourdain in Moliere’s ‘Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme’, who discovered that, all his life, he had been speaking prose without knowing it.

Fifteen months ago, I started a serious executive coaching programme. Two days ago, I attended a final assessment day. Soon I will find out whether or not I have met the standard.

To get to the assessment day, I had to notch up one induction day, four residential training modules, four tutorials, dozens of practice coaching sessions, much reading of coaching texts and articles, four required learning logs, two unplanned blogs, and one theoretical essay. Having gone through all of that, it’s no wonder I am having a rush of thoughts and feelings about learning and coaching. 

What lies beneath my training approach

I’ve made a connection between Gestalt based coaching and my approach to delivering leadership training. Like Monsieur Jourdain, I have discovered that, all my life, I have been using Gestalt methodology to underpin my training courses, without knowing it. 

Instinctively, I design training programmes as participative learning journeys. I encourage learners to:

• listen and observe
• notice what they are thinking and feeling
• gather and make sense of data
• keep an open mind, and
• work together to make sense of challenges and dilemmas.

From a Gestalt coaching perspective, this is about being and learning in the moment, and noticing patterns and connections. It’s about raising awareness of real needs, and mobilising energy towards appropriate action. 

I’m still processing what I have learned. I can’t wait to review my training practice through a Gestalt lens. Meanwhile, here is the 'before' and 'after' of my approach to coaching.

How I coached before the course	How I coach now
Took responsibility for solving the client’s dilemmas and problems	I work in partnership with the client
Analysed what the client was telling me	Observe, reflect, summarise
Tried very hard to be nice	Not afraid to challenge appropriately
Asked lots of unhelpful (dissonant) questions	Comfortable with silence
Talked about my experiences	Appropriately disclose if the client is interested in hearing about my experience
Believed I must have the answers	Not afraid to say ‘I don’t know what to do with this’
Pushed the client into action	Create space for the client to discover what they want to do
Made assumptions about what the client was telling me	Form working hypotheses AND keep an open mind
Thought ahead constantly which affected my ability to be present	Stay fully present with the client
Relied on listening and questioning	Invite the client to experiment Gestalt and Cognitive Behavioural methodologies
Felt awkward contracting and closing	Am more confident when contracting and helping client to identify what they have learned

It’s been quite a journey. I really must apologise to all my friends who volunteered to be coached by me, when I didn’t know what I know now.

16 March 2013

Thanks for reading my blog. If you liked this page, you might like to check out my business website which has more content on leadership and learning.

www.kellowlearning.com

Who was that person?

‘Who was that person?’

Who did you meet recently who made you feel glad to be alive? Who made you laugh out loud? Who shared something with you that made you want to do more / learn more? Perhaps they shared an experience, an insight, a book or a film, or even a dream they had last night? Like the lady in the cheese shop who told me that she had dreamt she was cutting cheese. In her dream she could feel the texture of the cheese as she was cutting. "That's unusual", she said.

‘I just met a wonderful girl / guy…’

I’ve been meeting a lot of new people, recently. I can’t help noticing there are some people I am really glad to have met. They leave a warm impression. I think about them next day, and the day after. I tell my friends about them.  And there are others, who, though I spent time with them, I just didn’t meet.

Block Button Blues

The people I didn’t meet are ‘the blockers’. There are at least two types of blockers: conscious and unconscious. The conscious blockers don’t ask, or tell, because they don't need to. They know everything. The unconscious blockers are not aware that they could ask, but they do like to tell. Conscious blockers have their block button permanently set to 'On'. Unconscious blockers talk ‘at me’ about themselves, until I can find an excuse to move on. I prefer not to use the block button, if I can possibly avoid it.

It’s all about connecting

The reason why I am thinking about good and bad conversations, is that I am learning to be an executive coach. One of the things I have learned is that coaches don’t need tools and techniques. The key to being an effective coach is to focus on what is happening in the space between the coach and the coachee. Coaches have to be fully present, and be willing to disclose their thoughts and feelings, provided they do this in the service of their clients' learning. It’s all about connecting.

Marvellous meetings

Some of my best conversations recently have been with complete strangers: a very cool Jamaican grandfather, who I met with his daughter, and granddaughters, in the queue for David Hockney at the Royal Academy; a funny, original Turkish businesswoman on a flight from Istanbul to London; a straight-talking Scottish fundraiser in Oxford who, like me, loves St Andrews in Scotland. There was a kind of energy and openness between us that made the time pass quickly.    

Memorable meetings

You can’t expect to connect with everyone you meet, I hear you say. And yet, one of my beliefs is that it is important to be curious about the people around you. You never know who they are, what they do, or who they know. You don’t know what opportunities there might be for something new and good to come out of conversation with this person. You might learn something. You might be able to help each other in some way. Or you might just spend a few very pleasant moments in a queue, on a plane, or a train. And days, or months, or years later, find yourself remembering.

Dance with a Stranger: how do you nurture talent?

Earlier this year a young dancer from the Ukraine resigned abruptly from the Royal Ballet. He was scheduled to dance a number of leading roles, and had recently been described as “better than Baryshnikov”. “Now I know how it felt when The Beatles split” tweeted one of his fans.

“Where were you when you heard the news?” asked a journalist. Like many people, I read the news on Twitter when I was settling in for a performance of new works by some of his (now former) colleagues. Monica Mason, Director of the Royal Ballet, looked grim in the bar afterwards. It was reported that the now ex-Royal Ballet soloist had gone up to Dame Monica at the end of a rehearsal and told her he “didn’t want to dance anymore”. In a press release Dame Monica said, “This has obviously come as a huge shock”.

A Star Turns

I was shocked, too. Not want to dance anymore, he who could land on a sixpence and give meaning and purpose to every gesture? I, who know nothing about ballet except that I find it rather a challenge to maintain the ‘Dancer’s Position’ in my yoga class, had identified the Ukrainian as one of the most exciting dancers in the company. Other dancers might get name checked more often by the critics, and on Twitter, but I was always rooting for the Ukrainian. Like a fond parent, I glowed when he was given new roles. I basked in his reflected glory. When he became a world star, I, for one, would not be surprised. 

Stage Twitterers

What happened after his departure was interesting. Regular Twitterers from the Royal Ballet said almost nothing. One well-known dancer tweeted that the Ukrainian needed a spanking. A number of journalists and bloggers speculated why he had resigned? Was he rebelling against years of discipline at the Royal Ballet? What was known about his family, education, health and hobbies was sifted for clues about his emotional and mental state. Some of his tweets were discovered to be alarming. Were his tattoos really misspelt? Had the golden boy become the Amy Winehouse of ballet?

‘I think I jumped a little bit higher than Ivan!’

So far, so painful. What to make of the whole affair? Should one feel sad that someone with so much potential left the company that nurtured him so abruptly? Or should one be grateful for the joy that his dancing has given already, and be glad for him that he jumped? What is the real story? How do people at the Royal Ballet feel about his resignation? What was done to help him? What is going on in his head? We know from his Twitter account that he still takes pride in jumping higher than Ivan.

“4 controversial years left!!!!”

I work in learning and development as a facilitator and as a coach. One of my main pleasures is to watch people grow in confidence, and to see them become the person that they want to be. I want the people I work with to be happy and successful. I think this is what troubles me about the Ukrainian: that he may not know who he wants to be, that he may not reach his full potential and that he may not be happy.

What is the best way to support people with exceptional gifts, and how do you nurture talent in a hothouse environment like the Royal Ballet? I don’t have any answers. Maybe my reaction to the Ukrainian’s departure is selfish. If he wants to be a tattooist, then let it him. But please let him learn to spell.

“I was impressed to watch your stage in Tokyo”

The good news is that the tattooed one has danced recently in London and Tokyo. He is scheduled to dance in London again, though not with the Royal Ballet. I will go to see him for as long as he wants to dance.