www.limetreesroad.com

I am often asked the question and was asked it again last week, whether this stuff, coaching, works? Usually this is followed almost immediately with the question, can you measure the benefits to the individual and to the organisation in a meaningful way. Good questions! There is a lot of information in the public domain to support the assertion that coaching can have significant impact to business and achieve a significant ROI to boot.

My concern here is to provide an example of the kind of observer shift, as a coach I observe in my work with people. My assertion is that coaching can with will and practice achieve appreciable change for the individual concerned. Importantly if this change is aligned with corporate goals that get measured considerable gain can be achieved there also.

A colleague of mine presented as an organised, extremely efficient, work focused person. Her tolerance for ambiguity was negligible. In our initial interactions she demanded certainty and facts. Interestingly to me she embodied her MYERS BRIGGS type profile, an ESTJ. Many leaders in large global concerns also hold an ESTJ preference profile and many would claim their tenacity, determined focus and attention to structure and organisational goals is what gets them there.

In our current climate ambiguity and tolerance for the unknown is a prerequisite and lauded ability. There is no certainty but individuals and leaders need to be able to navigate and indeed perform in this uncertain climate.

Back to my colleague! An external event forced her to radically rethink her way of being. She recognised that her current disposition did not serve. Her ambition and thirst to succeed compensated for the relations she held on hold, the life she did not lead and the joy she came to know in the simple task of walking her dogs. She worked hard with her coach, not me, and the Leadership programme she was attending to emerge as a much bigger offer.

She recently attended an important work meeting where her presence, centred self and openness served to hold a conversation that yielded a significant change in direction for one of the top teams of the company in which she worked. Historically that same conversation would not have been possible in her old self. Her need for clarity, assurance and concreteness would have prevented the exploratory conversation for possibility that ensued.

I am in awe of this particular colleague. She has taken to heart the premise upheld by my old alma mater The Newfield Network that you have to change the observer you are to yield to change and get different results. We call it our observer, action, results model, O-A-R. It takes courage, practice and a good deal of patience and discomfort to really see an altered disposition.

Looking on from the sidelines I am reminded that this stuff does work. There is no magic bullet. It takes noticing first, recognising a need for difference and then a considered practice to re-wire our nervous system and embody a new observer. She did and I think with the support of a competent coach others can too.

It is heartening to witness the results this colleague has been getting in life and I wish her well to remain with the effort and conviction to her care. She is congruent in the body she inhabits, the moods she lives and increasingly in the new language she is adopting.
Well done.

As a coach I realise that I am the entity that has the conversation not the things I talk about or the intellectual reasoning I bring. That stuff is important but not the whole picture. I am an amalgam of the moods I live the body I inhabit and the language available to me?

This is what I was trying to say to a group of MBA students at a talk I was giving about coaching last night. MBA students of their nature are questioning, sceptical and able to stand off from a conversation to debate about it rather than be in the conversation. I say that with confidence having been an MBA student myself in 2002. There was a healthy mix of die hard sceptics, righteous characters, curious characters and thankfully and maybe selfishly for me given my predisposition a good section that seemed genuinely committed to a different paradigm for learning.

More than anything people want to matter, to add value and to be fulfilled. Being a passive participant is no longer a cool thing to do. I imagine that is why many of the people I was talking to last night were sitting in the seats they now hold at University.

I introduced the concept of care. The word care is a word that is not part of our lexicon, certainly in American and Western cultures, but it is a word that is gaining currency and I believe it resonated with my audience as well. For so long, we have been oriented by doing and having, not being. We have mused about why this has produced a feeling of deadness, a mood of limitation and ultimately career dissatisfaction. Identifying what you care about can bring clarity to your purpose, and when you align that with potential and remove doubt, you can get at true performance and hopefully satisfaction. This is my model and it seemed to make sense for the students listening to me.

Purpose + Passion + (Potential-doubt) = Performance

In addition to our inertia about being, we have also been gripped by our stories. They keep is where we are. We live as immutable creatures of habit buffeted by events and circumstance. We believe we have no control over the stories we perpetuate and live as true. Assessments, moods, limiting views and beliefs are what keep us where we are.

In some of the questioning from the students I could sense their angst about venturing into unknown territory such as the realm of emotions and indeed the territory of the body. I am not convinced I helped them “be” in their bodies for my talk. Doing so might have shifted the conversation.

Coaching is a learning discipline that seeks to help people achieve planned results with attendant learning and fun. It is however necessary to get out of our heads first to appreciate and embody the values inherent in this methodology.

I care enough to know that I will continue with this role, an ambassador for coaching and the next time I am afforded an opportunity to speak to students like last night I will endeavor to lift the conversation out of language and reasoning only.

That said I would like to thank the students involved for indulging my care and passion around this subject and wish them well in thier own personal exploration. My advice; enjoy the journey!

How often do you take a look at the commitments you are making in your life and work? How often do these same commitments get broken, re-framed, put off or cancelled? Is the condition of overwhelm something you recognise as being part of your company and perhaps part of the way things are done around here? Do you reside in a culture of “niceness” where saying NO is not part of the lexicon of organisational communication?

“Overwhelm arises when we have more to do than we think we can get done. To be specific, we have more or bigger promises than we can fulfil. It produces moods of anxiety, being frantic, a focus for working hard, but without satisfaction, because we are living in the interpretation that we will probably not complete what we told people we would complete.

We often overwork to try and fulfil the over commitments, and over time this produces fatigue, reduced vitality and creativity, and breakdowns with families and in other domains of life.” Bob Dunham, Founder the institute for generative leadership

I would describe the above definition as transactional overwhelm where we over commit to promises we cannot fulfil, where we are unable to determine our own capacity for work or we live in a condition or an interpretation of work that you have to please. Needing to please is indeed an emotional driver but it is a constituent part of transactional overwhelm, in this instance.

There is also emotional overwhelm. This is a condition that can also fuel overwhelm when we are not comfortable with the variety of emotions we generate in our lives or when we cannot cope with the implications of some of the more transactional moves we make in life. Being in emotional overwhelm can itself cause panic, resentment, fatigue and wasted hours. Ruminating over decisions, prevaricating over intended moves, analysing conversations, replaying conversations almost incessantly and doubting yourself all contribute to a feeling of overwhelm in the emotional sphere.

Emotional overwhelm is at least as significant as the language acts of promises and offers that contribute to overwhelm in the world of work and our consequent management of commitment.

How able are you or how able are those in your organisation to assess the extent of overwhelm residing in your companies today? What are the standards around commitments? Is it OK to say NO or to redefine promises with a more trustful outcome? Or are your promises made in a vacuum, fancifully or criminally with attendant disappointment all round.

I know from my own experience how annoying it is to be on the receiving end of a promise or commitment that is routinely broken, where the person was either weighing up their options or too uncomfortable to answer in the negative. Similarly trying to do more with less and not having the organisational muscle to stress test decisions or add capacity where necessary only serves to increase pressure and induce ultimate breakdowns.

Saying NO is not the only option in managing over commitment; you can consider adding capacity or redesigning your offer to re-fit a better outcome. Being vigilant, conscious and attentive to what is going on for your people and their portfolio of commitments is paramount. My own standards for transactional commitments are very high but my corresponding strength in emotional management could be better.

The condition of overwhelm is not trivial and in this current climate it is probably negligent to be blind to this predilection. The good news is that managing capacity and overwhelm is a skill and it can be acquired, the first step is to stop the organisational blindness and notice. Noticing behaviours and having conversations for clarity and understanding are other simple options to be considered. Clarifying what you care about in all domains of your life and increasing the distinctiveness of your offer so that more does not become the default pattern are choices to be considered. The question becomes how much is enough?

I would love to hear your views.

I make a claim on my website that as an ontological coach I serve clients by helping them be conscious and in choice. Big words or a big claim! I am simply trying to bring perspective and distinction to the views, beliefs and paradigms that we, as humans often live with as truth.

We are an amalgam of the moods we live in, the body we inhabit and the language we use. We live in language and it is all around us yet very often it simply slips into the background and becomes oblivious to us. I think there is scope to take a closer look at some of the language we use and our use of it, for better results.

Carol Courcy, NCOL, MCC , a coach whom I admire enormously and with whom I studied at Newfield once commented to me that we, as coaches or professional HR consultants could make a “nice” living simply by helping executives pay attention to the way they make requests or rather don’t! I think she might have a point.

Requests are one of the six speech acts that ontological coaches pay attention to. The others include assessments and assertions, offers and promises and declarations. For language to serve, it needs to be generative not passive. It needs to be creative not simply descriptive. Consider the humble request for a moment.

We make requests because we make the assessment that the future is going to unfold in a certain way unless we intervene. Requests are profoundly creative. All requests however are not created equal. Some requests are the starting point for a solid working relationship, with clear understanding and commitment; others lead to misunderstanding, resentment and poor results. To have impact however they need to comprise of the following six elements

• A committed speaker
• A committed listener
• Conditions of satisfaction
• A timeframe for completion
• Mood of the request
• Competence of the listener
• Context

How many of us pay attention to these particular elements? How many of us are really clear about our conditions of satisfaction or will we rely on simply knowing it when we see the request completed?

What about the beauty of a clearly defined time frame? I know that when I first looked at the construct of this language act I was struck by how often I neglected to put a time frame on my requests. I have observed others confuse or simply forget to articulate their conditions of satisfaction. Worse they assume something will be done in a particular fashion only to be disappointed.

I often notice business colleagues especially leaders make statements in meetings assuming they have made requests. Big mistake! “This project is not working” is not a request to fix it. It is simply an opinion, shared as a declaration and confused as a request. Uncertainty abounds. Similarly “the bins have to go out” is not a request either! Some of you might identify with this particular statement veiled as a request!

Making a request is one thing, getting commitment is another? A request can have four defined responses and all are legitimate. You can get a resounding No, a committed Yes, a Commit to Commit or a Proposal to Negotiate. Very often people are reluctant to make requests for fear of getting a no. Equally listeners are often reluctant to say no for punitive reasons. Both are confused. Requests are legitimate language acts that need a speaker and a listener and are not power plays.

Only recently I made a request to my learning group where I encountered very different responses. Surprisingly amongst a community well versed in the making and hearing of requests one of my listeners was offended. He later told me that he was attaching conditions and expecting rapprochement for non-fulfilment, that I had not communicated.

Requests if made with the elements above are quite clean acts and we need to pay attention to what we are overlaying to these powerful language moves.

Getting clear on what you want, by whom and when is often a good start in making a clear request for satisfaction and ultimately peace. There is elegance in the seemingly simplicity of this language act.

Are you confident your requests in meetings or in conversations are clear and unequivocal?

I was in conversation recently with a colleague whom I respect enormously. I told him I was about to write my first blog and his reaction floored me. He wondered why I would bother. He reminded me of the plethora of information already surfacing the net and why would I make any difference. I listened but undeterred I wrote my piece any way. It struck me later how infectious our moods are and how debilitating they can be both for the owner and those with whom he communicates. This is especially so when the people involved are employees, people who admire, trust, respect or are influenced by you. As leaders we are responsible for the moods we convey.

Moods generally can be categorised into four big pockets, the basic moods of life. They include; Resentment, Resignation, Acceptance and Ambition. The latter two I would posit are the moods that best serve organisations.

Resentment is that mood which says I have a story that claims I have been a victim of an injustice. My possibility for action has been closed. The mood of resentment is very close to anger. Resignation in contrast is a mood where a person opines their actions cannot result in change. Curiously resignation is often interpreted by the owner as grounded realism. It gets translated as I don’t know what to do therefore I will do nothing. We characterise the mood of acceptance as the very opposite of resentment. We are able to come to terms with what we cannot change. This mood is extremely important for this moment in our economic history. We have just been assaulted by a tumultuous economic down swing or recession. We can be angry about that and feel like we have to blame the banks, institutions and our respective governments for not navigating us away from this economic blood bath. Or we can choose now to be in acceptance and close the chapter on our immediate past.

This does not mean we are in denial or we are not mindful of the mistakes we have made but we simply choose not to blame and be stuck. And finally ambition is that mood which is the opposite of resignation, a mood which identifies possibilities that can change the way things are at present.

Moods are twinned with assessments. That is they are linguistic constructs and are malleable. In other words with every mood you adopt or live in there is a corresponding story or assessment that you make to keep you invested in that mood. In listening to others we can detect their moods by the language they use and the assessments they make.

Following a really tough economic year that was 2009 and venturing into what may prove to be an equally tough time for business in 2010 it is important for Leaders to check the moods they are spreading in their respective organisations.

Today I read a blog from Criticaleye the network of leaders predominantly but not exclusively based in the UK. They were acknowledging that Britain had moved out of recession but because of the anaemic last quarter growth statistics were mindful of the hard road ahead. Essentially they were espousing management and leaders to rally behind teams and organisations with energy but realism. They encouraged honest communication without spin and even went as far as saying that Leaders should be grateful to the followers who had helped industry survive over the course of the previous year.

Comments from Leaders themselves echoed these sentiments. They recognised that acceptance and recognition of our current reality is the place from which to build recovery. Dwelling on what was or why only serves to perpetuate a mood of resentment and fuel anger. It is all moods dependent.

I accept that we are not well equipped to identify the moods we inhabit. Like words like care, or softer expressions in language we are not accustomed to challenging our moods or indeed recognising them and choosing an alternative. The most expedient way of shifting a mood is to change the story. Watch for the assessments that spring to mind when you are speaking. Pay attention to the language you use because your followers are. External factors trigger moods but we choose to live them. Be in choice.

I was facilitating a team recently on a dedicated team building day that comprised of a bunch of senior leaders running a sizeable portfolio affecting many. I say this because the question I subsequently asked them was not an easy move. We were concerned to exercise our minds around the key objectives they wanted to focus on over a horizon of three years. We managed to articulate and create what I esteemed was a beautiful vision statement and we articulated a compelling position statement as well. When we got to identifying the 4/5 key objectives that would support this purpose they immediately resorted to considering what they “ought” or “should” be focused on and not what they wanted to do.

I asked them to approach the question from a different angle. I asked them to consider the question “what do you care about?” This is a perspective to which, I admit, I have only recently been introduced through the Institute of Generative Leadership. They have a model of Leadership that considers care above anything else. By focusing on what you care you can access commitment, yours and others, have conversations and ultimately drive action that is focused and produces satisfaction.

Back to the group I asked this question, which to be honest is not a trivial question, what do you care about?. Some were stopped in their tracks, others were bemused and even a bit uncomfortable but I resisted surrendering to their immediate discomfort. The results, however, were really profound, meaningful and in HR language, produced SMART objectives. You could tell by the energy in the room that we had accessed commitment too.

I wonder whether you or your team could pose the same question and get at those illusive objectives that somehow seem to hang in the ether or on walls of your respective offices without any chance of fulfilment.
The word care is not a word often used in business. It is not common in our society either but I continue to be amazed at the different conversations I have with business people when I ask the question.
It takes courage but I think it is worth it.

You could say this approach is an alternative way of surfacing values and I am sure there is room for debate here but for me asking the care question seems to be an expedient way to activate an alternative routing system to surface values efficiently and with relative ease once the question really lands.
If you can access your care it is important then to challenge yourself to see if your mood, language and actions are congruent with that stated care, and if not what can you do about that? If your care is rooted in your actions you get commitment and attendant results as well.
So the question is what do you care about?

This is my first blog, launching my first website and new business venture called Lime Trees Road. It is nerve-wracking and exciting in one breath. The business is a company offering 1:1 Executive Coaching, Team Development and Leadership Development as well as facilitating large group interventions and action learning groups within organisations.

I am keen to communicate my thoughts and perspectives on learning and in particular my approach to coaching. I am hoping my audience will be HRD and OD folk interested in hearing about coaching as a learning discipline. I am interested too in sharing views and ideas expressed by others on these subjects.

I am new to the realm of social media but thrilled that I have ventured to operate in this space. I am encouraged by the amount of virtual support there is out there about building businesses and in my case executive coaching businesses. With so much support, so many views on what works and what should be avoided, it is comforting, but I imagine I will still have to discover and experience by doing.

I am an ontological coach so you will hear me speak about the philosophy underpinning this approach to learning and to the experience I am having in walking my own talk. I would really appreciate that this blog become an interactive place for you to give me feedback on my comments and your thoughts on subjects I raise on this page. Similarly I would welcome your thoughts and views about what you would like to discuss in the domain of learning in organisations and in life. My ambition is to achieve, learn and have fun, and I wish everyone reading this first blog success in whatever goals you have for 2010.

I look forward to sharing and being in conversation

Tara Nolan