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

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www.kellowlearning.com

Dancing with pirates: how to build teams that listen

The Pirates of Penzance

“Better be a pirate than join the Navy” Steve Jobs

Lost in translation

A few years ago I was interviewing a young man from Eastern Europe who had applied to join a leadership programme. As I listened to him talking about his experience of working with communities, I had the feeling that he could easily have acquired his knowledge from one of the courses I used to deliver in CIS countries. He described the very tools and methods I used to teach. But from the tone of his voice it seemed to me that the western approach to community development with its emphasis on stakeholder engagement meant nothing to him. It dawned on me that I had made a living from peddling expensive training programmes that did nothing to help the people for whom they were designed. This made me feel very uncomfortable.

“It’s only a game”

Painful as this was, I put my learning to good use recently while working once again in Eastern Europe with a group of senior managers. This time, instead of delivering a set programme, I found myself dancing with pirates. On the first night the trainers and the participants sat across a table, sizing each other up like rival gangs. By way of an informal ice-breaker I tried a simple ‘getting to know you’ type exercise. “Is the training beginning already?” said Pirate Jenny, suspiciously.  “It’s just a game”, I said. The game took so long that it felt like the 30 Years War. “It’s just a game!” said the Pirate King, with a twinkle in his eye. This was the first of many skirmishes between the navy (me and my co-facilitator) and the pirates (the participants). Would the pirates play the game, we wondered, or would they make us walk the plank?

Forming a working alliance

On the second day, we danced a number of rounds using different methodologies. These included postcards, tennis balls, a hoola-hoop, a walk in the woods, and a visit to a local winery. Little by little, we persuaded the pirates to dance with us, and with each other. It was the week-end, after all, and who wants to work on the week-end. The process was similar to what some coaching professionals call “getting alongside the client” and “forming a working alliance”. We, the navy, moored our ship next to the pirates’ galleon. Very quickly they invited us on board. We got to know and like each other. How did this happen?

A picture says more than a 1000 words

I remember a number of breakthrough moments when the conversation flowed naturally, and it seemed to me that we were really learning together. The first such moment happened when we asked the pirates to choose a picture that said something to them about leadership. The pirates chose their pictures carefully, and all of a sudden they were talking to each other and to us about their personal visions of leadership. They shared some quite personal reflections and insights into leadership. Then, without any prompting from the facilitators, the participants volunteered the fact that we had got them talking and listening to each other. Lunch felt a lot more relaxed than supper the previous evening. We had begun to form a working alliance.

Into the woods

In the afternoon the navy and the pirates made up a joint reconnaissance party, and sashayed into the woods. Spring was turning into summer. The bees were buzzing, the sheep were grazing and tiny red flowers refused to be identified in the thick long grass. We sat on a hillside and talked sporadically like characters in a Chekhov play. That night the navy and the pirates partied until 3.00 am. We danced together for hours. This time the dancing was real.

Dancing in our heads

On the final day of the workshop we threw out large parts of our carefully designed workshop. We kept one methodology and one game that we thought fitted perfectly with the group narratives about storytelling, inspiring people and working less while earning more. The high point for me was the moment I noticed we had been standing in a circle in the garden for a long time. We were talking about how to inspire and engage people and somehow it felt completely natural and learner led. No-one sat down, and no-one left. We were dancing in our heads.