attention

ARE YOU A BETTER COACH THAN A LAMP POST? 1

 in Guest Post  tagged ask / attention / coaching / coaching ability. voice of doubt / confidence / focus / Laura Li / Michael Neill / Nancy Kline / silence

In today’s guest post Laura Li shares some of her personal experience and what she’s learnt as she has grown as a coach.

ARE YOU A BETTER COACH THAN A LAMP POST?

By Laura Li

"ARE YOU A BETTER COACH THAN A LAMP POST?" by Laura Li

At the time of writing I’m waiting to film an episode of the TV quiz show Pointless.

The audition includes a short mock version of the game. The test at the audition is not so much about getting the right answer, but how you interact with the other contestants and the quiz show hosts.

But I was so nervous. I just wanted to impress the producers. I forgot about the other people there. I was so intent on getting not just the right answers, but good answers, perfect answers, even. I didn’t really interact with anybody at all.

I wasn’t paying much attention to anyone else and was more focussed on myself and what I was going to say next.

And this is a trap we can fall into when we lack confidence in our coaching ability.

When I was coaching my very first clients, I would ask what they wanted to talk about in the session. And from the moment they started talking I was thinking about my next question.

What I was going to say next.

The Voice in my head started up, telling me there was a perfect question that would help the client.

And I wasn’t good enough to think of it.

Every other coach knew exactly what to ask. But not me. I was stumbling and fumbling around in the dark and soon someone was going to notice. The Voice told me I didn’t deserve to call myself a coach.

It was all about how clever my questions were. Not about giving the client the space to think things through for themselves. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I was still at the stage of thinking that coaching was all about me.

The Voice still whispers to me that I’m not good enough. But I’m glad to say I’ve built upon my initial training and I’ve learned that it’s not all about me. However, I’m still new at this and I do still worry sometimes about how I’ll manage a coaching session.

If, like me, you still worry sometimes about what you’ll say to your client or what questions you’ll ask:

Remember to ASK.

A is for attention.

Nancy Kline, author of Time To Think, tells us that “the quality of our attention determines the quality of other people’s thinking”. For us coaches that means we need to be focussed on the client.

Not on us and certainly not on what our next question should be.

Of course the quality of your questions matter. As coaches, questions are our stock in trade. But we need to let go of the need to look good.

And you know what? The irony is that when you focus on the client completely, and give over your attention to them, the right question will come. I say the “right” question. The beauty is there is no actual right or wrong.

It’s not like brain surgery. Then there’s a proper way to perform the procedure. Or a fatal way.

I love the rich diversity that is coaching. There are so many different ways of getting to awareness and action.

This is not to say that we don’t want to be good at what we do. Of course we want to take our clients deep and be excellent coaches.

I simply mean that for newer coaches, if you lack confidence around finding the right questions at the right time, moving the focus from you to your client will put the attention where it belongs – on them. And it will also give you the space you need – to tap into your coaching wisdom and intuition.

Even if the “correct” question doesn’t come, the right one will.

Michael Neil says that if a man tells his hopes, dreams, and problems to a lamp post each week, the simple act of unburdening himself and leaving his mind free and clear will lead to more inspired ideas and a better life.

So even without the perfect question you are still serving your clients just by spending time and attention on them.

S is for silence.

You need to be comfortable with silence.

Or if you can’t mange that, you need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable with silence.

One thing that used to make me really worry and lack confidence during a coaching session was long silences. As a client I love them. So much going on in my head, so much thinking, so much problem- solving, so much new awareness.

But as a coach I thought the silence meant nothing was happening. My client was waiting. Not only was she waiting, she was also wondering what the heck’s wrong with my coach? Is she even still there on the end of the phone? I rushed to ask the next question.

Silence is your best friend.

I can’t tell you exactly how long to leave the silence. I think Rich Litivin, author of The Prosperous Coach, suggests waiting until the client speaks again. But as with everything Rich Litvin teaches us, that is entirely dependant on each unique situation.

What I can say, is that if you’re very new to coaching, you should probably be leaving the silence for longer than you do.

Silence is actually another way of giving the client your attention. Who ever stays silent in normal conversation with them? When do they ever get the time and space to work out what they think?

Don’t be afraid of the silence. It’s usually where the magic is happening.

My coaching school taught me the GROW model and we had 45 minutes to get from Goal to Will. There wasn’t much time for silence in there. As a trainee coach I felt like I was galloping through the process so I could pat myself on the back for using the system correctly and a job well done.

I must have done a good job, right? Because we got all the way to Will and we even had 5 minutes to spare. How come my clients weren’t making much progress?

If you lack a little confidence in your coaching it’s easy to see the silence as robbing you of precious time to move the session along or “do” the coaching. You can see it as failure on your part to provide value to the client. After all, they’re not paying you to just sit there and say and do nothing, are they?

But they’re not paying you for the coaching session at all. The session is simply the vehicle by which your coaching takes place. And in that session you can use space, attention, questions and silence.

The old cliché is true, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. They are paying you for whatever result it is they came to you for. Lose weight, change job, get married.

And silence will get you to that result much quicker than talking too much.

The lamp post doesn’t talk back. It’s all silence from the lamp post. And while that’s going too far the other way, your client needs the silence to reach clarity.

Silence is a necessary a part of the whole.

K is for keeping the space.

Keeping (or holding) the space for a client means letting them know that the coaching session is a time for them to be with themselves. It’s a luxury they won’t often get in today’s fast paced world.

It’s a time for them to think about themselves and their life. To indulge in an hour when they can think, often for the first time, about what they really want. And what’s holding them back. When new awareness can happen in an instant.

The lamp post exists for the “client” in a space where he is in between work and home. Where he has for a short while left behind the pressures of work and before he has crossed the threshold back into the bustle of home life.

Create that same space for your clients.

It can take courage to create that space for someone else. It’s an honour and a privilege to be witness to someone else’s innermost thoughts. It can be scary to lead your client into that space.

But rather than pulling back, believe that your clients want you to lead them into this space.

And they need you to.

This is not a linear 1-2-3 step process.

These are principles that have guided me (and still do) when I find that I’m getting too much into my own head and worrying about not being a good enough coach. It’s part of a way of being to help me be the best coach I can be in any given moment.

Remembering to ASK has helped me to improve as coach. Both in terms of technical skill and my confidence. I hope there is something in here that is useful for you too.

We can be sure you’re a better coach than a lamp post.

So be with the client, ASK, and trust your own intuition.

And theirs.

About Laura Li

Laura Li is a Certified Life Coach who works with people who fear they’re not good enough and helps them change their thinking to change their life.

To find out more about Laura or her work you can contact her at laura.li@btinternetcom

Rapport and beyond…. 1

 in Guest Post  tagged attention / Brainbank presents / coaching skills / curious / Deborah Tannen / listen / Lynda Russell-Whitaker / matching / memory / mirroring / NLP / rapport / sense

Lynda Russell-Whitaker shares some of her thoughts and knowledge in today’s guest post on a topic that many coaches spend time developing:

"Rapport and beyond…." A guest post by Lynda Russell-Whitaker

Rapport and beyond….

By Lynda Russell-Whitaker

“For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships … For most men, talk is primarily a means to preserve independence and negotiate and maintain status in a hierarchical social order.”

Deborah Tannen, linguistics professor and author of “You Just Don’t Understand”

I’ve seen rapport described as ‘trust + responsiveness’, though this is primarily amongst NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) practitioners. One dictionary definition says rapport is ‘sympathetic relationship or understanding’. However, I believe that good relationships develop over time and rapport is an important foundation of building a good relationship.

Establishing rapport starts with a genuine interest in and curiosity about the other person, along with mutual respect and trust. It doesn’t always mean collaboration or co-operation, and it certainly isn’t about acquiescence or capitulation.

Rather, good rapport implies a willingness to stand in someone else’s shoes; when it is present, we experience being ‘in sync’ with the other person. It is the ability to be on the same wavelength and to connect mentally and emotionally without necessarily agreeing. Simply, that you appreciate the other person’s point of view.

When you are in rapport with someone, it may be that you have intangible things in common, like values and aspirations. Or you may share similar accomplishments, interests or educational background. Perhaps your children attend the same school. Or you might admire the other person, need to work with them, or would love to have them as a client.

As a pitch and presentation coach, I find evidence of rapport between members of a pitch team (or for that matter, on a playing field!) can be impressive; perhaps because I rarely experience it. It comes across as a kind of ‘chemistry’ that’s hard to describe, but is obvious.

Can you recall a time when you witnessed a really impressive pitch? You probably perceived a higher than average appearance of strong rapport between members of the team. It’s often what distinguishes a good pitch from an excellent one.

Rapport, though, is about communication – connection even – between individuals. Some of these will be people you work with on a short-term basis, such as in a pitch situation or a software development team for a specific project. In other situations, deeper connections and relationships will need to be created and built, such as with those people you work with on a daily basis. Back to my point about it essentially being one of the foundations of a solid relationship.

A word of caution! There are some behavioural (or, if you prefer, personality) types that have little or no time for rapport and I’m sure we all know a few of those. If you are one of these people (sometimes known as the ‘director/driver’) please bear in mind that many people you interact with will be put off if you appear uninterested in seeing their point of view or knowing anything about them personally. It suggests a coldness and lack of empathy. This may seem trivial to you, but to other types such as ‘relators’, personal interaction and rapport building is anything but.

All of us have to deal with a variety of personalities in our business life, whether colleagues, superiors, subordinates, suppliers or clients. There’ll be times when others won’t always want to adapt to your style, so no matter what behavioural type you happen to be, the ability to build rapport – quite quickly sometimes – is a useful social skill to learn.

On the flip side, taking the point of view of the director/driver, it’s important to be able to interact without making what they consider irrelevant ‘small talk’ sometimes. This is unlikely to be personal! It is simply their style of behaviour to dispense with the niceties and get on with the business in hand.

Of course, there are many aspects at play with respect to who sets the tone and who follows and this is definitely not always about hierarchies. Modern life is not that simple. This isn’t about repeatedly subjugating your personality to someone else’s. It’s about reading each situation as it occurs and judging the best action to take at any particular time. Otherwise, there’s a danger of getting stuck in outmoded patterns of behaviour; something worth being vigilant about in our personal as well as our work lives!

Building on rapport, the ability to convey collaboration rather than antagonism and competition is an important skill in business, as is the ability to balance involvement with independence. We also need to establish our boundaries; particularly so in a longstanding client relationship where some sort of intimacy has often been developed.

However, this doesn’t mean that you are friends necessarily (although you may be that too). There are times when sharing something particularly personal might cause embarrassment or pain to either or both parties. If you have a really good rapport with that person, you’ll make the judgement that it isn’t appropriate to share that information at this time.

Are there people you wish you had better rapport with and do you think it would enhance your relationship with them and therefore improve your working life either because there is potential to do business together or because it’s a colleague you work with closely and you just feel you don’t gel?

If so, below are five tips for you to try:-

  • Turn up the volume on your senses. Experiment with this in the mornings on your journey to work. This will increase your awareness of others and your surroundings.
  • The NLP tool of mirroring and matching someone’s body language can be very useful, though be careful not to use this without empathy – it can come across as insincere.
  • Be curious. Ask questions and listen to the answers. You might try this with someone in your office who you know very little about.
  • Pay attention and listen actively. Sometimes more than an ‘uh huh’ or a nod is required. Give candid feedback and converse but take care not to interrupt; it can seem inconsiderate.
  • Commit what you learn about a person to memory. If you can’t do that, do what Onassis did – keep pertinent notes on anyone who is important to you in business. It clearly worked for him, and however contrived it might seem, it does show how much he cared.

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About Lynda Russell-Whitaker

Since 2000, Lynda has provided presentation and business development coaching to teams, team leaders and business owners, as well as to individuals on a 1-1 basis.

Her specialities include coaching and advising clients on delivery of their presentations and pitches, alongside helping clients to refine and express their key business messages. Her passion is working with people and organisations out to make a positive difference in the world.

With over 25 years’ experience in marketing and training, Lynda was in on the very early days of digital media development in the UK. She has created bespoke interactive (e-learning) training tools, training seminars and development programmes for media professionals in major companies across a variety of sectors.

Lynda sat on the Validation Panel advising the University of Westminster on their revised MA in Hypermedia Studies in 2000. She has been a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art (RCA) and was a member of the original expert working group for the first pan-European MA in Interactive Media. She recently (November 2013) gave a lecture to the faculty and students of the new MRes in Rhetoric at the Centre for Oratory and Rhetoric (COR) at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Last year she worked with several Year 6 classes in Hackney primary schools, coaching them on how best to pitch their ideas and inventions in their own versions of Dragon’s Den during ‘Work Week’ as well as featuring as a ‘dragon’ on the judging panels of two schools!

Her commercial clients include The Aldersgate Group, Big Picture TV, Channel 4 Automotive, Chase Manhattan Bank, The Coca-Cola Company, Eleco plc, Global Action Plan, GSK, Inspire!, KPMG, Orange, Positive Money, Waitrose, Wired Sussex and Zolfo Cooper.

Lynda learnt a great deal about voice production and visual presence during her 12 years training as a classical singer. She reads and writes Greek well (having lived in Greece for three years) and French passably. Her intermediate Spanish is much improved since she resumed salsa dancing, preferring Cuban to ‘cross-body’ style. She still performs regularly and is happy to sing in any of these languages, as well as Italian and German!

A licensed NLP Business Practitioner, Lynda is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Manufacture (RSA). She has recently gone through a rebranding exercise and her company, Brainbank presents, will be launched before the end of January 2014.

If you’d like a confidential chat about how Lynda can help you with delivering your message powerfully, please email her on lr*@***********co.uk mentioning Coaching Confidence.