So many models of coaching, 3 step, 4 step, 5 step, even an 8 step model. Whilst I do appreciate that all these have their place, and especially for new coaches, are extremely useful for the purposes of ‘navigation,’ I worry a lot that they detract from the basic premise that coaching is a conversation, a focused exchange that is going somewhere, and uses some fundamental skills that seem to me to be key to our unique ability to communicate with each other, to care about each other, and do a great and useful service to/for each other of facilitating thinking and decision making. I do so wish that we would simplify and get back to basics. Some of my thoughts, some quotes and some reflective questions are below:
Fundamental skills of coaching:
- Building trusting relationships; where the absolute focus is on the customer / client / coachee / colleague.
- Listening beyond the words with full attention; a special quality of listening, a creative force that can evoke new ideas
- Expert question asking, to discover what’s important, and support the creation of new possibilities
- Ability to put our own agenda aside
Quotes
“Something fundamental changes when people begin to ask questions together. The questions create more of a learning conversation than the normal stale debate about problems.”
Mike Szymanczyk, Chairman and CEO, The Altria Group
“Good questions ………….. like all good conversations, succeed or fail based on what we’re talking about. Good questions – ones that we care about and want to answer – call us outward and to each other. They are an invitation to explore, to venture out, to risk, to listen, to abandon our positions. Good questions help us to become both curious and uncertain, an this is always the road that opens us to the surprise on new insight.”
Juanita Brown, “The World cafe: shaping our futures through conversations that matter”
“True learning organisations are a space for generative conversations and concerted action which creates a field of alignment that produces tremendous power to invent new realities in conversation and to bring about these new realities in action.”
Fred Kofman and Peter Senge, “Communities of Commitment”
Questions, Listening, Conversations and Reflections
Think of a time when you felt heard and really listened to. What were the conditions that enabled that to happen?
Consider an upcoming important meeting, how might you create a special quality of listening, to and for others, so as to evoke new ideas?
Knowing you …. how does your ‘special quality of listening’ need to change to be more effective?
What are your challenges to having better quality conversations?
Consider the conversations you are currently having with customers, and/or those that are important to you in any context. To what degree do they create frustration and fragment efforts, OR offer new insights and ways to work collectively and collaboratively?
If you were to accept the perspective that conversation really is a core process for accessing collective intelligence and co-evolving the future, what practical difference would that make in how you can approach conversations?
New Behaviours
Pick an upcoming conversation that matters:
What one specific thing might you do, or what one choice might you make that would improve the quality of that conversation for all parties involved?
How might your success in this drive success in your business, your life, your friends and colleagues, customers, coachees and just about everyone you meet?
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