When some of us think of coaching we mostly think of it from a business sense of view, whereby you have direct reports. I have come to learn for me, coaching is a life skill that I can use at work, at home with my gorgeous children, to support and help my friends, just about with anyone in the right situation!
So how does one learn more about coaching? Well as they say “success leaves clues”. So go and find some-one who is a master coach and learn from them. So this is what I did. I enrolled in a two day coaching mastery course run by The 7 effect to start my coaching journey! The above photo left to from right is happy Dianne (from the ultimate goals club), myself and Jodie the master coach!
There was so much great information shared throughout the two days with a great bunch of 9 people that we could practice the tools on! I have only picked the below 7 areas to share:
1.10 Commandments of Coaching
2.Mastery
3.Distinction between Why and How
4.Active Listening
5.Constructive Questioning
6.V.A.K cues
7.Reading between the lines with NLP
1. 10 Commandments of Coaching
I really love the below 10 commandments from The 7 effect. At the beginning of the course we were asked to stand and repeat these commandments! We came to understand that a coach does not change lives, our roles are to be facilitator’s and to ensure that we are neutral and adopt a curious mindset.
2. Mastery
As a coach your purpose is to add value to others but if we want to add value to others we must first learn to add value to ourselves. I have learnt from the course that If you want to change the world around you, you must first change yourself. As Jodie explained becoming a master is about finding confidence and clarity in learning a few critical skills really well and therefore growth coming from working smarter not harder or longer. She shared with us that author Malcom Gladwell recommends that true mastery required 10,000 hours of practice! I reflected on something I remember Tony Robbins saying about mastery. 1. It was to model someone who’s already achieved what you want. 2. total emersion of the skills and 3. ensure there is spaced repetition that is scheduled.
3. Distinction between WHY and How in coaching
In the situation of coaching others to get past their obstacles or problems we are not looking for the “Why”, as in the why they do what they do (the past). A more effective question to shift their behaviour is to ask How? When we ask why, we get stuck on this roller coaster of why and give the behaviour significance. By focusing on the how, we can better focus on solving the obstacle or the problem (the future). Jodie mentioned that this is more in line with modern or positive physiology via the work of Martin Seligman.
An example Jodie gave was from a sitcom program called “Mums”. In one of these episodes, one of the Mums had just stolen $100,000 dollars from the bank! A comment made by one of Mums was, OMG! why did you steal that money. While another says, who cares why I want to know how….!!!
4. Active Listening
I loved the learning’s around active listening. I always thought that active listening was all about being present, establishing rapport, monitoring body language and repeating back. It is and more. I learnt what can get in the way of active listening is:
1.Judgement – thinking I know what the person is saying is either right or wrong. This comes from a place of fear.
2.Assumptions – thinking I know what the others person means and wants.
3.Meaning – attaching my own meaning to another person’s experience. I could be blinded to the truth and miss great signs to explore further if I do this. Tony Robbins says, Divorce the story and marry the truth!!
4.Mind reading – I could be guessing I know what will happen next. I know where they are coming from.
5. Constructive questioning
Expanding on active listening, if you can remove judgement, assumption, meaning and mind reading and instead have a genuine and open curiosity this can also support you with asking the most effective questions. Asking the effective questions is what will help the person you are coaching to make break throughs. I learn ‘t that it is not long complicated questions to ask. But simple questions. Curious questions. These questions will support statements like, “Well everybody says this? “Things will never change”. Effective questions to ask for these type of responses are:
•Really?
•Is that true?
•What makes you think or say that?
•Which people?
•How do you know?
•Says who?
6. VAK cues
Before I go into further detail, let me say that that are always exceptions to every rule and this is one tool that you can use with others to validate the situation and improve your questioning. I can see how you can apply VAK awareness to solve problems in an effective way.
VAK is the abbreviation for our representational system. VAK stands for Visual, Audio and Kinaesthetic. They are also referred to as modalities – these are ways we re-present the world through our five senses and how we typically communicate them back to the world.
When information reaches our brain the way we give it meaning and interrupt it can be either visual, audio or kinaesthetic. We learn that when we access these V’s and A’s and K’s, we predictably move our eyes in specific directions, which seem to correspond with the neural pathways in our brains that process/store these kinds of sensory information. You can discover how people are thinking based on their eye movements. The picture of the eyes above outlines the cues for a right handed person.
When we look up, we generally are connecting with pictures. Moving the eyes down seems to connect us with kinaesthetic sensations, feelings, and our own self-talk. Moving eyes left and right horizontally at the mid-line of sight seems to invoke our auditory channels. If some-one does look up – a question to ask may be, what does it look like? Versus if they are looking down, you may ask how does it feel?
If you would like to practice it with some-one at home here are some questions to ask and see where their eye movement go?
What was it like at your 10 birthday?
Can you hear your favourite song?
How do you talk to yourself?
Imagine what a banana that could sing and sound like?
Tell me a time when you had a feeling of being happy?
Here is also a 1 minute video showing the eye movements after asking certain questions – I found it fascinating!
7. Reading between the lines with NLP
NLP stands for Neuro-linguistic programing. Neuro – it involves our thinking, Linguistic – our use of language and Programming – our strategies for getting our outcomes. It was created in the 1970’s by John Grinder and Richard Bandler. I won’t go into any further detail here, as I have no experience or knowledge about NLP, only to say it is something I want to know about!!
What I did want to share was the presuppositions of NLP that we were exposed to. They can assist you in life to expand your own beliefs and to be more patient, open and aware as a coach.
The Map is not the Territory – The map is the picture we have created based on our perceptions, we can be in the same territory but all have different maps.
People work perfectly – No one is broken.
People make the best choices they can given the resources they have – We all do what we do based on what we know as of today!
People have all the resources they need – the answer is within you. Resources mean the internal responses and external behaviours needed to get a desired response. Often people have resources that they haven’t even considered .
The meaning of communication is the response you get – the onus is on you to communicate as effectively as possible. We think that if someone misunderstands us there is something wrong with him or her. I loved a quote that was shared during this discussion “Holding on to resentment or being angry is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die”
You cannot not communicate – We are always communicating either verbally or non-verbally. Even if some-one doesn’t respond it is information.
People have all the resources they need – the answers are inside them.
Every behaviour has a positive intent in some context – even if some-one gets angry, it is positive as they are protecting themselves. They are staying safe to protect themselves. Positive intent is safety & self-preservation.
Mind and body are connected – Each affects the other. Behavioural cues are speech, tempo and breathing rate. These cues can affect the functioning of our mind. For example slumping in your chair, bowing your head can make you feel tired.
Possible in the world, possible for me – believe everything is possible!
The person or element with the most flexibility in a system will have the most influence – Some people get caught up with that’s just who I am! You are limiting your potential, as you need to stop reflect and learn to do alternative, in many different ways. You need to be flexible on how you operate to be able to make a change.
Summary
In summary coaching is not about me! and to be a coach who can add value I must first value and add value to myself!
There were so many other great tools explored in this course which I didn’t write about today, for example:
•SMARTA goal setting
•T-GROW model
•Ladder of emotions
•Skills tests
•Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
•Meta Model (generalise, delete, distort)
•7 Neurological levels
As I am on my learning and growth journey I’m sure I will have the opportunity to explore and share some of these models in the future. If what I have written in this blog gets you interested, I recommend your check out this course!! On that note, let me leave you with one last quote…..
Commentaires