Yours Truly witnessing the Quiet Strength of the Pacific Ocean

Some insights come from serendipitous occurrences.

Like this one I just had: that “Solution-Focus” has the quality of Quiet Strength.

This insight was triggered by three unrelated events:

- via @dChickadee4Life, stumbling upon this blog post: Three Keys to Mindful Leadership Coaching. The three keys mentioned by Douglas Riddle are: an open mind; non reactivity; permissive attention. These are all characteristics of  the “Not-Knowing” Stance which is one of the distinctive features of Solution – Focus. One particular sentence by Douglas Riddle resonated deeply in me: How does a coach do that? By creating in the conversation with the coachee a sense of open, reflective exploration. The coaches who expand my mind, emotions and performance come to the coaching relationship from a place of inner calm. They have quiet minds. They are not beguiled by fancy techniques or elegant coaching models.

- reading the book: Quiet. The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. I had a profound sense of recognition while reading it. I made peace with my style of coaching – I am definitely not a Tony Robbins. I do not talk much. I do not raise my voice. I am not “in your face” and I definitely do not pump my fists in the air!  I like to create space for reflection. Gently but purposefully. There is strength in quiet and deliberate effort.

- having to confront  the same misunderstanding about Solution-Focus three times in the past week. I discovered, in 3 separate conversations with fellow Executive Coaches, that “Solution-Focus” is understood as task-focused. One Coach characterized “being too solution-focused” as going straight to the solution and prescribing a task as opposed to patiently listening to the Client first. I was taken aback – because this is the opposite of what “Solution-Focus” is! But, alas, that is what those words evoke, apparently. So I had to articulate what “Solution-Focus’ is.

These 3 separate events listed above made me realize that Solution-Focus is Quiet Strength.

Quiet strength in the “Not-Knowing” stance and curiosity of the Solution-Focused practitioners; in our  faith that Clients have already experienced bits and pieces of the solution.

Quiet strength in not adding anything to what Clients bring, yet keeping them accountable. Leading from behind, gently but steadfastly, in the interaction.

Quiet strength in being a witness to the Clients’ strengths – and honoring those strengths with our compliments.

Quiet Strength.

I think I like that.

Tags: being with the client, coaching, creating space, deliberate practice, executive coaching, Introvert, leadership, listening, mindfulness, misunderstanding, not-knowing stance, Quiet, quiet strength, reflection, Solution-Focused coaching, strength, Tony Robbins

Dr Atul Gawande

Very often, in explaining what I do, I need to clarify what Coaching is.

People who sell New Agey mumbo jumbo by calling themselves Coaches do not help.

I tried to set the record straight in this post, where I state that Coaching is simply a purposeful conversation designed to help clients improve their performances and move forward with their life/career.

Now, Atul Gawande, in a recently published article in the New Yorker, talks about Coaching and makes the same point – only better, and from the perspective of a Client: “no matter how well trained people are, few can sustain their best performance on their own. That’s where Coaching comes in.”

Granted, he is not talking about Solution-Focused Coaching but about what I called Behavioral Coaching in the above mentioned post.

Still, the article clearly defines what Coaching is, and it is a very interesting read.

This quote from the article should be framed and put in any office where Coaching is delivered:

“The sort of coaching that fosters effective innovation and judgment, not merely the replication of technique, may not be so easy to cultivate. Yet modern society increasingly depends on ordinary people taking responsibility for doing extraordinary things: operating inside people’s bodies, teaching eighth graders algebraic concepts that Euclid would have struggled with, building a highway through a mountain, constructing a wireless computer network across a state, running a factory, reducing a city’s crime rate. In the absence of guidance, how many people can do such complex tasks at the level we require? With a diploma, a few will achieve sustained mastery; with a good coach, many could. We treat guidance for professionals as a luxury—you can guess what gets cut first when school-district budgets are slashed. But coaching may prove essential to the success of modern society.

There was a moment in sports when employing a coach was unimaginable—and then came a time when not doing so was unimaginable. We care about results in sports, and if we care half as much about results in schools and in hospitals we may reach the same conclusion.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/03/111003fa_fact_gawande#ixzz1ZvPXXuJD

Note: I already posted about Atul Gawande, specifically about his Checklist Manifesto book, here: http://www.briefcoachingsolutions.com/checklists-solution-focused-coaching/

Tags: Atul Gawande, behavioral coaching, coaching, coaching client, definition of coaching, mastery, performance, professionals, society

You have a filter that makes you see the good in people and so…

The sentence above was said in a simulated Coaching conversation that took place during our recent Solutionsurfers Brief Coach Training.

A student of mine, a seasoned Coach, made that comment as he was role-playing as a Solution-Focused Coach.

The comment was meant as a compliment for the Client, as affirming Client’s strengths.

Yet it felt to me as a piece of chalk screeching on a blackboard.

That comment vividly highlights a key distinction between Solution-Focus and other Coaching models.

Mainstream Coaching models are based on more or less explicit theories about how the mind works and about how change happens.

So, depending on which Coaching school you are training with, you might learn we have “filters” in our minds: or that we have “orientations“; or that each person belongs to a specific “personality type” with a set of characteristics and preferred ways of behaving; you might learn that some people are  inclined to specific “defense mechanisms“, each one with its own dynamic. You might learn people have different ways of “processing information” so you need to tailor your communication in specific ways.  It is very likely you might learn that we have “blocks” or “obstacles” to overcome, “patterns” to defeat. You might also learn that people need “motivation” or more “willpower” – as if they were specific “things” that can be acquired, used and depleted.

All of the above are constructs which have an intriguing explanatory power. They make sense.

They are based on underlying metaphors for understanding the mind: the mind as a computer, the mind as a mechanical (or hydraulic) machine, the mind as a theater of different characters…

Notice that no one ever observed a “filter” in the mind, or a “block” or a form of energy called “willpower” – they are just ways to make sense of how  we think.

I am not saying that they are not scientifically legitimate constructs; some of them might be – all I am saying is that they are constructs, not observable entities.

And in Solution-Focus we stay on the surface. We do not deal with mental constructs.

We encourage Clients to focus on observable behaviors in specific situations; we ask them about events and their context; we ask about what they might notice and what other people might notice.

If a Client wants to have more “willpower” the classical Solution-Focus response would be: “How would you know you have more willpower? What would you be doing differently? What would other people notice you doing differently?…” Everything is brought back to observable behaviors which make a difference.

This is because of the way Solution-Focus was born and was developed: not deduced from a theory but built empirically, inductively, from the bottom-up, by slowly figuring out what worked and what did not work in conversations designed to help Clients.

In Solution-Focus there is no overarching theory about change. We have some tenets, which have been found inductively. We might have different clues about why SF works, but we do not have a coherent theory. That is the unique characteristic of SF, its pride and maybe the main obstacle to a wider diffusion. It is tempting to offer an explanation. It is sexy to have a Model of Change: with neat graphs, diagrams, arrows and fancy names. But in Solution-Focus circles we like to travel light in the realm of assumptions and explanations. We like to stay in the conversation, as it happens, without adding anything.

The student  of mine who was playing the Coachee in this role-play was relating some specific episodes of her life and her positive, upbeat attitude in dealing with them – she never mentioned having “filters”.

That is something the Coach added.

And now the dynamics of the conversation changes. From a Solution-Focused perspective, it becomes more difficult.

Instead of having richness of details, and maybe some seeds of solutions, some useful exceptions, we have a generalization – unique perspectives have been swept under the rug of “filter”.  Useful behaviors already happening have been swallowed by a concept, by a rationalization.

Note that this is a standard approach in other Coaching models: the Client has to learn the theory of the Coach and the language of the Coach; only then, the Client can appreciate and use the “expert solution” handed down by the Coach.

It is not a formal learning, but an implicit learning that Clients go through – with comments like that, Clients learn about “filters”, and “styles” and all sorts of mental constructs.

We do not do that in Solution-Focus.

We do not add anything. We do not have anything to add!

We stay on the surface.

We use the words Clients use and we try to make their meaning explicit, to us and to the Client.

Our intent is not to explain things and offer interpretations (adding stuff); rather, our intent is to help clients see what is there (describing, showing), hoping they find something useful.

So it is the other way around: it is the Coach who has to learn the language of the Client.

Because it is in the Clients’ worldview, expressed in their own words, from their unique perspectives, based on their experiences, where sustainable and long-lasting solutions are found.

Tags: coaching, Coaching Models, deductive vs inductive, description vs explanation, distinction, filters, mental constructs, Model of Change, not adding anything, Solution Focus, staying on the surface, Theory of Change

Solutionsurfers’ PURE Brief Coach Training – participants busy in coaching conversations

“Embodied Learning” Coaching, “Limbic” Coaching, “Emotional Intelligence” Coaching, “Law of Attraction” Coaching, “Somatic” Coaching… and what about “Solution-Focused” Coaching itself?  So confusing!!  Too many names, too many claims.

But Coaching is simplicity itself.

Becoming an effective Coach is a different matter – if Coaching is a simple concept, that does not mean it is easy to execute.

Here is my own take on Coaching:

1. Coaching is a purposeful conversation. Nothing more, nothing less.
   According to the ICF (International Coach Federation), the purpose of a Coaching conversation is to “help people improve their performances and enhance the quality of their lives.”
   To do that, Coaches are trained in different “protocols” (i.e. sets of assumptions, questions, communication strategies…).
   I use ‘Solution-Focused‘ protocols: they are well supported by research and they have at their core the assumption that is featured in the ICF definition of Coaching:   “the Client is the expert in his/her life and work and … every Client is creative, resourceful, and whole.”
   What kind of change can a conversation bring about? As Liselotte Baeijaert brilliantly put it, a Solution-Focused Coaching conversation “leaves the client changed: with more hope, with more creative ideas, with a feeling of competence, with a clearer view on possibilities“.
   No quantum mechanics or spiritual laws need be involved.
2. Coaching can also be Observing and Giving Feedback (i.e. constructive comments on the performance observed, with the aim of improving the performance itself). This kind of Coaching is often referred to as “Behavioral Coaching“.
   ‘Behavioral Coaching” is not that different from coaching in Sports. It is at the root of “Deliberate Practice“.
   Clients might want to develop some specific behaviors or skills (e.g. public speaking, interviewing skills…) and the Coach helps Clients practice. By simulating and observing the Client’s performance and by giving appropriate feedback, the Coach helps the Client acquire the desired capability. Think a tennis / swimming / ski… instructor. With a sprinkle of psychology.
   Again, there is an art in observing and giving feedback and the Coach is an expert on that.
   But that’s it.

   A good conversation. Strategic and scripted in the mind of the Coach, but naturally flowing (if the Coach is good) from the Client’s perspective.
   Or a keen eye and a good checklist.
   I know, no glamour here – in terms of marketing appeal no competition with terms like  ’energy boundaries” or “somatic matrix”.
   But conversations and checklists have something going for them – they work.

Tags: back to basics, Checklists, coaching, Coaching Definition, deliberate practice, ICF, simplicity, Solution-Focused coaching, the Art of Conversation, the Art of Giving Feedback

It is not coaching.

And it is definitely not Solution-Focused.

However, the concept of parental guidance put forward by psychologist George W. Holden in his research article Childrearing and Developmental Trajectories: Positive Pathways, Off-ramps, and Dynamic Processes does remind me of coaching.

From Physorg.com:

In his conceptual framework, Holden hypothesizes that parents guide their children’s development in four complex and dynamic ways:

• Parents initiate trajectories, sometimes trying to steer their child in a preferred developmental path based on either the parents’ preferences or their observations of the child’s characteristics and abilities, such as enrolling their child in a class, exposing them to people and places, or taking a child to practices or lessons;

• Parents also sustain their child’s progress along trajectories with encouragement and praise, by providing material assistance such as books, equipment or tutoring, and by allocating time to practice or participate in certain activities;

• Parents mediate trajectories, which influences how their child perceives and understands a trajectory, and help their child steer clear of negative trajectories by preparing the child to deal with potential problems;

• Finally, parents react to child-initiated trajectories.

Tags: coaching, George W. Holden, guidance, parenting

Since I am taking a short vacation, I will not be posting again in 2 weeks (my usual interval between posts) but in 4 weeks. To compensate for it, here is an extra-long post. Enjoy!

I am going to contrast and compare two different books: Dan Ariely’s latest, The Upside of Irrationality; and Daniel Pink’s  Drive.

Both books are terrific. They read very well. They are very engaging. The authors make an extra effort to illustrate their concepts in the simplest and most understandable way. They both use metaphors that are clear and effective in their power to explain. Not only these two books are a pleasure to read – they are also very informative.

Ariely’s book is sort of a sequel to his hugely successful Predictably Irrational: the Hidden Forces that Shape our Behavior. However in The Upside of Irrationality Dan Ariely’s takes a more compassionate stance towards the bias that make us irrational decision makers, a.k.a. humans. In keeping with this softer perspective, the book shines with many personal stories that are going to touch the reader. And it is no accident that the focus of this book is not “the consumers’” behavior but how people behave at work and in their own personal life. So we have 5 chapters about “how we defy logic at work”, and another 5 about “how we defy logic at home”.

Dan Pink’ s Drive feeds on the work of Ariely and many others on the science of motivation. Pink is a master in making the insights gained by recent research  understandable and readily usable by managers and businessmen. Drive is a call for a general and comprehensive rethinking of the ways in which we organize what we do.  Pink’s metaphor of assumptions that societies have about human behavior as being their operating system is brilliant and enlightening in and of itself! Moreover, the second part of the book is a treasure trove of practical advice - simple strategies to implement the ideas illustrated in Drive.
Continue reading…

Tags: book review, brief coaching, coaching, Dan Ariely, Daniel Pink, Drive, epistemology, marketing, motivation, psychological bias, science, The Upside of Irrationality, training