Newton’s Third Law suggests that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Whilst this may apply specifically to the physical world we can see it too in a similar way within coaching conversations and it is something that you need to be aware of.

Push and Pull

When a coach is helping a client, the questions they ask provide a gentle “push” which encourages the client to consider the challenge they are looking to overcome or the thinking that needs further reflection time. The question provides a push and the client pushes back with a considered reply.

When such an answer fails to resolve an issue or provide a robust enough answer the coach may repeat a question or ask another question about the same topic, increasing the “force” being applied to the issue and the client can reply in kind, through deeper exploration of the issue with a fuller, more honest or clearer response. An increased focus through a stronger question is met with an “equally” strong response in return.

Breaking the Law

There is an instance in coaching situations where you see this Law broken: when the coach offers a solution instead of asking a question. Breaking of the Law is achieved with all the more certainty if the coach also happens to be the manager of the person being coached (the client).

How does this supposedly immutable Law get broken? Well, in the thousands of coaching conversations I have been a part of or witnessed on our coach development programmes, instead of a solution (force) being met with an equal an opposite reaction, you see no reaction in the opposite direction at all: you get submission. Well intentioned and even subtle forms of “Have you thought about trying …” are met with the merest hint of reaction in the form of hesitation or perhaps a “Mmmm, I could do that” but that is it.

The solution provided (especially when offered by the Boss) has so much force that it stops deep thinking happening. It has a tendency to be adopted wholesale and uncritically.

Resistance (thinking) stops, the force of the suggestion is too strong. At least it does whilst both parties are still within the coaching situation. I have always wondered if the force of a suggested solution actually dissipates pretty quickly when both parties move out of each others gravitational pull (OK I’ll stop the metaphor now!)?

Be aware of the Force

The point is this: if you can continue to promote thinking, creativity and sustainable learning through effective questions then you have done a good job as a coach. As soon as you weaken that element of a coaching-style conversation by providing a solution into the mix – especially before you have explored fully what the client can generate themselves – you have affected the dynamic interplay between the two of you. Restrain your suggestion-giving for significantly improved coaching results.

Glenn Wallis is an experienced Executive Coach and Coach Developer who will help you improve your own results and those of your organisation. When you are ready to  raise your performance to the next level, find out more here

This is post number 200 at The Executive Coaching Blog.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone who has kindly commented or supported this work here and on various social media platforms (You can find me on Twitter, G+ and Facebook).

I would like to pass on a particular thank you, to those that have signed up and receive the blog posts via subscription. I am humbled at the thought that nearly 100 readers get every post I write and publish, so thank you very much indeed.

In an attempt to continue to interact with you in a wide range of ways I have overcome some of my reservations about working on Facebook and have started a Facebook page. It would be really wonderful if you would do a couple of things to show your continued support:

1. Visit the site and “Like” it
2. Join in the debates and comments, make some suggestions of areas you want me/us to discuss. I’d love to engage with you more and I would be very happy to help answer any coaching/leadership questions you may have, if I can.
3. Add the Page to your own Facebook lists
4. Share the love and encourage those that might benefit and get involved to come and visit too.

Glenn Wallis Coaching Facebook Page Click HERE.

Here is to many more posts to come. And here is to helping you maximising your potential.

Glenn

In the previous post we looked at how using humour and seeing the funny side of things can be helpful in a coaching conversation. To illustrate how tricky a challenge it can be, this post will highlight some of the impacts of humour that you will need to be aware of and will definitely want to manage, in order to continue to get great coaching results.

Getting it wrong

At a fundamental level, one of your primary jobs as a coach – whether full-time or a leader who uses a coaching style as a way to get great results from your team – is to establish, build and protect the relationship that exists between the two of you. Getting humour wrong, can do some serious damage to that aim and whilst not always irreversible, it is likely to put the relationship back a bit.

Let’s look at some coaching scenarios to illustrate how humour may play out when you get it wrong:

1. You tell a ‘joke’ or make a comment that is meant to be funny. The person you are working with (known as the “coachee” but I’ll refer to them as ‘client’) doesn’t find it funny. You’ve created a bit of dilemma for them: should they laugh and be polite but not authentic?

Don’t we want our clients to be authentic during their coaching sessions? We need that openness and honesty and yet we’ve just created a situation in which our client may be dishonest to protect us in some way. That’s probably not going to be very helpful and may set a precedent for other times the client feels less inclined to be fully open.

2. You use humour the client doesn’t understand.

Whoa! What have you just created? A sense of your superiority and/or a sense of inferiority in the client. That is a serious mistake. I’m not suggesting you ‘dumb down’ everything you say, after all, it is quite possible the person you are working with is far more intelligent/quick-witted than you are.

When this happens in reverse, I’m very comfortable saying I don’t understand, as that maintains the dynamic where the client has more of the ‘power’ in our working relationship.

3. What about when you pick up on a theme your client has used at some point during your discussion and use that as a point of humour?

Well, this can be tricky. If you judge it right it will show you have been listening well and picked up on the “atmosphere” that surrounds that theme. Get it wrong however, and you’ve potentially just made fun of something your client finds serious/not funny. That’s a big mis-read and can strain a relationship.

4. How about when your client uses humour – say, about their boss (who happens to be paying for the coaching!). Do you join in or meet their comment with a straight-face?

I think this is genuinely difficult. If you sense that this is an attempt to ‘draw you in’ and you fall for it, then you are complicit in the even gentle criticism of the boss. (For more detail see Transference).

The way to deal with this situation, to an extent depends on what you know about the relationship with the boss, the focus of the coaching etc. In the past when this has happened to me I have tended to play somewhat naive and assumed the comment was genuine. I’ve tended to explore it as if it was not said in jest but something that may be worth investigating.

Intuition

Avoiding getting humour wrong in a coaching conversation relies in part on your ability to read the situation in front of you. It helps if you have developed a bit of a sixth sense with these things and can rely on your intuition. It also helps if your own emotional intelligence is well developed as not only will you be aware of your own “state” but you will be able to judge the ‘place’ your client is in more accurately, by tapping in to your empathy skills.

Glenn Wallis is an experienced Executive Coach and Coach Developer who will help you improve your own results and those of your organisation. When you are ready to  raise your performance to the next level, find out more here

Q: How many coaches does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Interesting question. How many coaches do you think it takes to change a lightbulb?

Sorry … It was the best I could come up with and that was after spending lots of time thinking about it!!

Coaching and humour

The question I wanted to ponder on, in this post and the next, is what place does humour (see my ‘joke’ above!) have in a coaching session, if any?

The thing about humour is it does some weird things to the dynamics of a relationship and if, as we have discussed several times in this blog, establishing, then building the coaching relationship, is at the core of great coaching, it needs to be handled with care.

In this post we’ll be looking at the possible benefits of using humour, or at least being able to see the funny side of things, in a coaching engagement.

Humour As a Relationship Builder

Although it can be a challenge to read a situation at any time, it is especially difficult when you first meet a new client**. In those first few moments you have no barometer to judge how the client will react to anything you say, let alone something that might be witty. However, humour can help break-the-ice and very positively help build rapport in the early stages.

In the context of coaching, I’m not suggesting that you arrive for your coaching meeting and greet your client with ten of your best “knock-knock” jokes: even if you are a stand-up comedian in your spare time, this is not the moment to share that hobby. However, if there was something that happened on the way to the meeting that you could use to put the client at ease, especially if it had a humorous element, that can be a really powerful way to start to build the precious golden thread of your relationship.

In my experience, clients themselves often try a “soft” approach at levity on first meetings, for the same reason. Be mindful of this and look to match your response to their anecdote or story i.e. don’t fall about laughing uncontrollably !

Lightening the Mood

Seeing the funny side of things can help your client get “unstuck” if they have been working on an issue for some time. It:

• changes the dynamic
• breaks the thinking rut that they may have been in
• may act as a good precursor to a break

All of the above are very good reasons for introducing a little lightness: “I don’t know about you but my head hurts from all this thinking. Shall we take 5 minutes then come back?”

There is a significant word of caution here though, which is don’t make such a break simply because you don’t want/can’t continue to think straight. It may be your client was just at the point of a useful insight which is far more important than your discomfort. However, if you genuinely think that a “break” to the atmosphere may help, think about trying to change the mood with a gentle “light” remark.

Using humour with a light touch and when sure that it is going to help cement the relationship with the client is often a very successful strategy. It does need to be handled with care, but it helps reinforce to your client that you, like them, are a human being and this can help dissolve barriers or concerns they may have had.

In the next post we’ll explore getting it wrong and the ‘dark side’ of humour in coaching.

(** I use the term ‘client’ rather than a formal term “coachee” to describe anyone that is receiving your coaching.)

Glenn Wallis is an experienced Executive Coach and Coach Developer who will help you improve your own results and those of your organisation. When you are ready to  raise your performance to the next level, find out more here 

Answer these three questions for yourself:

1. How often over the course of a day, or week, or month do members of your team/business come and ask you for advice or to check over something they have done?
2. How often do you discover through such conversations, that what they’re proposing is good enough, or better than good enough?
3. If the answer to #1 is ‘more than necessary’ and the answer to #2 is ‘most of the time’, what are the reasons that prompt them to keep coming to see you?

Confirmation

Think about those questions and your answers to them, as you read on.

It is my experience, working with hundreds of managers/leaders from a very wide range of business sectors, that those at the point of delivery, often come to their boss to seek confirmation that what they are thinking is indeed the ‘right way to go’. They don’t really doubt their suggested way forward, they just want a little reassurance that they’ve got it right.

I accept that this doesn’t cover 100% of the instances where your team come to check-in with you but my suspicion is that when you reflect on it, it makes up a large proportion of the time. 

Human nature?

Think back to when you were at school and taking classwork you were pretty sure was correct to your favourite teacher for marking.  You were doing a bit of checking in for one, or several, of many reasons including:

• Checking in before investing more time in a given direction
• Positioning in the eyes of the teacher that you were working hard and were smart
• Positioning with the other kids in class you were capable
• Getting feedback that helped your confidence
• Wasting time by engaging the teacher when you didn’t want to do any more Pythagorus’ theorem

If you recognise any of these, which might also apply to members of your team that come looking to you for unnecessary support?

The only reason that seems to be “OK” in relation to checking in with you, is where someone genuinely is uncertain or ‘stuck’ with how to move forward. Anything else is using your time and their time unnecessarily. Worse than that, it can easily become a habit. Here’s the thing: they may not be aware they’re doing it. They come to you, you help out. Job done. It’s the way things have always been. But should it continue?

Leading by not supporting

I’m not suggesting you stop interacting with your team and I’m certainly not suggesting that you suddenly stop listening and helping or disregard all risks. However, instead of charging straight in with your views and suggestions the next time one of your team arrive at the edge of your desk or work station, you may find it helpful to do the following:

• Explore exactly the reasons they have come to you
• Help them evaluate any plans or ideas they have brought to you
• Help them become aware of shortfalls and risks to the business they may have overlooked
• Do all of the above with a bit of style!

If you regularly meet requests for your support in this way you’ll minimise the risks of things going wrong, and maximise the chances that over time, people that work with, and for, you will develop their own confidence and ability to produce great results without needing your support so often.

Glenn Wallis is an experienced Executive Coach and Coach Developer who will help you improve your own results and those of your organisation. When you are ready to  raise your performance to the next level, find out more here

I asked one of the assistants if it was ok if I drove my car round to where the bags of compost were located, load them into the car and came back to the queue. Before I’d finished he told me I couldn’t do that as I needed to pay for them before I loaded them. I half jokingly said that my wife was already in the queue and I was happy to leave her as a guarantee. He either didn’t understand my sense of humour or was just sticking to his company line and apologised but repeated that I would need to pay for the compost before I put the sacks into my car: the inference being I could easily drive off and not pay (and that my wife was worth less than two bags of compost …!).

I joined my collateral … sorry … wife, in the queue and waited until exactly 10.30 when the tills sprung into life and the people in front of us started to get served. When it came to our turn, we duly paid, and I asked if we needed to show the receipt to anyone when we went to collect the compost. The answer: “Oh no. Just put them in your car and you’re good to go.”

Alternative Universe?

Had I just unwittingly walked onto the set of a BBC sitcom? Was I being told that no-one was going to check that I only took two bags of compost when 10 minutes earlier a simple request to be trusted enough to take a couple of bags and then return to pay was treated like an enquiry from someone who obviously came from the planet “Naive-Bohemia-2″?

We laughed, oh how we laughed! Of course, actually we didn’t laugh. It was way too small a thing to get cross about but it just left us with a feeling that the place was not quite so well run as we thought it was. We understood the cautious approach in relation to not being able to take the produce before handing over our money. What left us very confused as a customer was the lack of quality thinking and the lack of consistency in the logic which made no sense.

This was somewhat confirmed by the evidence that I managed to photograph on my way out of the garden centre. The speed control sign welcomes you and you see it on your way towards the exit. It may be an attempt at humour or is it just another example of faulty thinking?

Glenn Wallis is an experienced Executive Coach and Coach Developer who will help you improve your own results and those of your organisation. When you are ready to  raise your performance to the next level, find out more here

TPP Survey 2013

We have constructed a survey to find out what businesses need from their people to help them succeed.  We would love to get your insights into what you consider important attributes in your talented performers. So, if you are:

1. A Human Resources Professional
2. A Learning and Development Professional
3. A business owner with staff
4. A leader or manager of a business team

it would be great to hear what you think is current and important in today’s business context. If you don’t fall into any of the categories above we would

The survey is short – just five questions. It’s anonymous – so we’re not asking for your contact details or for you to identify your organisation.

The commitment

If you do complete the Survey – perhaps leave a comment below to let us know how you found it – we’ll also commit to sharing the results.

We are very grateful for you taking part.

You can find the Talented Performer Survey 2013 by clicking here.

Glenn Wallis is an experienced Executive Coach and Coach Developer who will help you improve your own results and those of your organisation. When you are ready to  raise your performance to the next level, find out more here

I was given my first Swiss Army Knife over twenty years ago as a birthday present. I don’t go out hunting wild boar or fishing for marlin – not much cause for either in London – but I’ve certainly changed plenty of plugs, cut my nails and taken the lid off a beer or two. I’ve even adjusted what’s got to be the world’s smallest screw in the arm of spectacles with the additional little screwdriver that can be stored in the thread of the corkscrew.

The thing about doing those tasks is that the quality of each of the attachments on the Swiss Army Knife is of a very high standard. The size and robustness of the scissors or screwdriver etc seem to be just right for the job. It’s clear each isn’t the same as having a specific tool just for the task at hand but as a one-stop-shop, to me, they all seem fit-for-purpose. I’ve been bought imitation Swiss Army Knives too and you can’t even cut open a letter with the scissors!

The Coaching landscape

If you read any of the key literature on coaching you will very quickly get the picture that there are at least two schools of thought on the theme of specialist vs. an all round approach to coaching. Those with a formal psychology or psychotherapy background often apply an additional label to their title so it is clear which “school” of coaching they belong to, e.g. Gestalt coaching or Psychodynamic coaching. These coaches will underpin their work with psychological theory.

Those with more of a generalist background tend to apply the context in which they work to their title e.g. life coach, executive coach or performance coach. This gives those that purchase their services an idea of the sphere in which they operate. (To complicate things further you could go hire yourself a “Gestalt executive coach” !!)

Fit for purpose

I don’t get involved in the politics of coaching and there will certainly be plenty of politics around, as coaching begins to become a recognised profession and organisations jostle for positions of importance to lead it. Specialist or generalist? I don’t care as long as you work effectively and ethically with your clients. I know that is what I try hard to do every day. I am confident that there are great coaches who work and succeed in helping their clients from both of these camps.

The key question is perhaps less about what you call yourself and more about whether you can bring the best tools for the job, to the situations that your clients bring to their coaching sessions. Importantly, are you well versed enough in the tools that you use, to provide the best service for your clients?

I have no data to back this up but logic suggests to me that the majority of coaches will not have had formal psychology training therefore they must, by default, be generalists. They are the multi-tools of the coaching world. The question is, as a result of their own levels of training and development, will they be the Swiss Army Knives of coaching or the cheap imitation?

(BTW – no affiliation to Victorinox, the makers of the Swiss Army Knife!)

Glenn Wallis is an experienced Executive Coach and Coach Developer who will help you improve your own results and those of your organisation. When you are ready to  raise your performance to the next level, find out more here

One of the elements that distinguishes certain styles of coaching from others is the fact that that the person receiving coaching (the client) will have created some action steps to take away to work on between sessions. Unhelpfully, in my view, this is often referred to as “homework”. I think it is an unhelpful label for several reasons:

• If it is relevant to your work, you are unlikely to be completing it at “home”
• It can reinforce any suggestion of teacher (coach) and pupil (client)
• Many people have negative thoughts and feelings associated with homework they will have been given as pupils/students
• It suggests written work
• Homework was always set by the teacher

In relation to the last point listed above, the idea of “homework” in coaching has, in part at least, stemmed from the place that homework has in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) – one of the many disciplines from which coaching has taken skills and exercises.

In CBT the therapist more often than not is in charge of creating and setting the homework (Helbig & Fehm, 2004). The relationship between therapist is quite different from that of coach and client. In coaching the relationship is much more even, in terms of the relative importance and involvement of the two roles. Clients who come to coaching don’t need the same support that people who attend therapy often require.

Got the red pen handy?

The other suggestion that can emerge from using the word “homework” is that someone – the coach – is going to mark it. Perhaps even give the client a Gold Star for doing really well? In fact, reviewing the actions that the client has taken since the previous meeting does indeed happen but you can forget any ideas of teacher-pupil. I tend to work with the client to help them review their own actions since we last met. They can make sense of what that have achieved or have not managed to complete.

Indeed there is often more to learn from “homework” that has not been finished than where it has. If the client has not completed what they said they were going to do in between sessions then that is worthy of investigation and some challenge from the coach. Was it:

1. The client, in their view, genuinely did not have time 
2. The client took an active decision not to engage
3. The client “forgot”
4. The homework became redundant due to changes
5. The cat ate the homework

All of these, including number 5!, are well worth spending some time exploring as they have implications for the next coaching session. Incomplete assignments may suggest that the client is not fully engaged with the coach or coaching at this stage and can be an early warning system that the relationship is not where it needs to be.

The important thing to bear in mind as the coach is not to judge the reason that homework has not been completed, doing so changes the dynamic in the relationship and can put a barrier between you both. Limit your role to that of co-explorer of homework, whether completed or not.

Change the label

It may not surprise you to know by now, that I don’t use the word “homework” in coaching. I have used ‘actions’ or ‘commitments’. The former is fairly neutral, the latter has more of an onus on the client taking full responsibility for the steps they will have created through the coaching conversation. Whichever term you decide to use when discussing the work that goes on between coaching sessions – if it needs a label at all – I would suggest you leave all thoughts of the classroom alone!

Glenn Wallis is an experienced Executive Coach and Coach Developer who will help you improve your own results and those of your organisation. When you are ready to  raise your performance to the next level, find out more here

Often we make such decisions and promise ourselves we’ll start next … Monday. It doesn’t really matter what day of the week it is now, many people delay starting projects for all sorts of reasons:

• Some practical set-up or prep work needs to be completed before setting off
• Delaying starting something we may, deep-down, not want to begin
• Lack of energy or focus to start it right here and now

Decision made

But I have been interested for some time in then what happens – in the period between deciding to make a change and the official “start date”.

When it comes to dieting, I usually allow myself to indulge (or over-indulge) because I know come Monday, all “bad” food is off the list so I better make the most of every opportunity to eat the ice-cream, cake etc now. If it was a new fitness programme people may end up not moving far from the couch in the days leading up to the start date … in order to conserve energy for the “Big Push”! At work? Slacking off or hiding yourself away -  doing all that face-to-face “stuff” is just sooooo exhausting.

It turns out, according to recent research, much of which is quoted in an excellent book called Willpower by Kelly McGonigal, that humans have a great psychological trick we play on ourselves: once we have made a decision to be “virtuous” i.e. get in touch with our team on a regular basis, just the decision alone is enough for us to give ourselves permission to act in a way that contradicts that decision. We seem to self-sabotage our effort as soon as the decision is made. We pretend tomorrow will be different.

Start Now, Decide Forever

Two pieces of advice about how to overcome this tendency to trick ourselves and to help you move forward in a consistent way from today – whether it is in fact Monday, or Thursday – are as follows:

1. Start immediately. Even if all you do is put the meetings with your team in your calendar and send out invitations, this small step gets you started. You are no longer only thinking about better communication with your team, you are already doing it!! Plan another small step: book the rooms etc. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can breakthrough the resistance to start.
2. According to research by Rachlin (in McGonigal) a good way to get consistent behaviour in line with how you want to be, is aim to reduce the variability in what you do day to day, rather than just changing the behaviour. Therefore, if you decide not to meet with a member of your team this week, ask yourself “Do I really want the consequences of never meeting with a member of my team?” That choice now becomes a commitment to all future choices, rather than convincing yourself that it will be different on … Monday.

Delaying a change may be grounded in good intentions but it also may just be a way of your mind tricking you into never starting, or doing so, only to find that later you give up the change effort. I hope that this post has helped you find some ways of overcoming the Monday blues! If you have other tips for getting and keeping a change alive, it would be great to hear from you.

Glenn Wallis is an experienced Executive Coach and Coach Developer who will help you improve your own results and those of your organisation. When you are ready to  raise your performance to the next level, find out more here