12

Track Two: Working with Ourselves

In the first chapter we spoke about the importance of continuing to develop ourselves while simultaneously coaching our clients. By doing this, we stay out of the temptation to become experts, dispensers of advice and opinion who have no experience about what it really takes to change. We also stay grounded in the fact that when our coaching efforts fail, it can be because of our own lack of competence, as well as limitations with the client. Also, clients will continue to present new questions, breakdowns, and challenges to us as coaches, and if we are going to be of use to them it is important that we continue to become more skillful. Besides all that, staying involved in Track Two will keep our coaching alive, vibrant, and nurturing for us instead of becoming a rote, mechanical, deadening repetition of what we’ve done dozens of times before.

I haven’t found this aspect of coaching in any other text on the topic, but self-development seems to be a self-evident component of coaching. Besides working with yourselves, I recommend you find colleagues, friends, and yes, a coach, who can support you as you coach. Psychiatrists, physicians, teachers, and lawyers all confer with peers and mentors in difficult cases. Coaches are, it seems to me, no exception to this practice.

In this chapter, I’ll present a way for coaches to continually improve. First will be a series of questions to ask yourself while you’re coaching so that you can capture what you are learning and improve as you go. Next will be the creation of an action plan to improve your competence in the skills and qualities it takes to be a successful coach.

Truing Questions

Below is a list of questions I suggest you ask yourself while you are engaged in coaching. The questions are listed in a kind of chronological order. The earlier ones are most appropriate early in the coaching program and the later ones make the most sense near or at completion of the program.

1. What am I learning about myself and others in coaching?
2. What makes my coaching most potent?
3. What in coaching makes me most uncomfortable? (Probably the most growth can happen here.)
4. From my coaching work, what is becoming more mysterious about people?
5. What am I discovering about the relationships I form with people?
6. What ideas of mine are being challenged in the coaching program?
7. What mood of mine seems to work best in the coaching program?
8. What don’t I understand about my client? What does this show me about myself?
9. Am I modeling what I am coaching? If not, how am I justifying this?

   Questions to ask at the end of a coaching program:

10. What did I learn about coaching?
11. What did I learn about my competence as a coach? What are my strengths? In what can I improve?
12. What surprised me?
13. In what was I flexible? In what was I rigid? What does that show me about myself?
14. What can I take to my next coaching program?

Self-Development Process for Coaches: Skills and Qualities

Following, you will find a process you can use to continually improve the skills and qualities you’ll need as a coach. It’s also an example of a methodology you can employ in working with clients. It’s simple and it’s a process you can use over and over with yourself.

First I’ll describe each of the skills and qualities and, second, I’ll present a simple way you can do a self-assessment. Lastly, I’ll give you a structure that you can use to design a coaching program for yourself. As in any coaching program, it’s probably best done in partnership with a coach, and at some point as you work in Track Two you may want to call upon the assistance of someone else. The process has proven to be powerful and useful and I recommend that you get started with it.

Skills

Speaking

As I said earlier, the primary act you’ll do as a coach is speak with your client. Speaking means to point out to your client new distinctions that will allow him to make new observations. Also at times the coach must speak in a way that inspires the client to see some new possibility, overcome some obstacle, or stick with a program that is moving more slowly than anticipated.

The form of your speaking doesn’t matter as much as does your clarity about what you are intending. You may find yourself telling stories, you may cite examples, you might reveal something about yourself. As you continue to coach, you’ll find your own voice. What’s important is that you develop your competence in making new distinctions and inspiring your clients.

Listening

Sometimes people have the notion that listening means being a human tape recorder, that they’ve been really good at listening if they can repeat back what’s been said to them—and for some people that might be a useful initial step in learning to listen. Although listening as a coach includes hearing what’s said, it goes well beyond that.

The two main intents in listening are to understand the uniqueness of the client and situation, and to discern the root cause. Perhaps the biggest obstacle in listening well is being quiet enough and open enough ourselves so that we can sensitively be affected by what our client says and does. Our understanding is affected not only by the words the client says but also by the whole array of actions one can take while speaking, including posture, intonation, and facial expression. Besides all that, a coach must take on the openness of listening whenever observing the client.

Resolving Breakdowns

If you’re going to coach people, you’re going to have to deal with breakdowns. The main task in resolving breakdowns is to stay out of emotional reaction yourself. Allowing yourself to become upset, frustrated, angry, or regretful does not add anything useful to your work to resolve the breakdown.

Can you imagine visiting an emergency room and having the physician become as upset as the parents of an injured child? At such moments, it’s the calmness of the physician that is most important. Otherwise, judgment will become clouded and scattered. The second important task is to generate many possibilities—the more, the better—because many of them may already have been entertained and disregarded by the client.

Assessing

Assessing means observing with distinctions in mind. To be competent as an assessor, you must take time to observe, know what the standards are, and keep out your own prejudice as much as you can. It’s a delicate matter to keep separate what we observe from our interpretation of the observations. For example, when we see a loud conversation between two people, we might add the interpretation that he was bullying that clerk or she was abusing that secretary. Without a lot of comprehension of the whole context of the situation, we can’t come to a conclusion like that. On the other hand, just saying “I observed someone speaking loudly” usually will be useless in terms of coaching.

In order to make a coaching assessment, we have to understand what the person being observed was attempting to accomplish, what it means to succeed at that accomplishment, what action she took, and the outcome of that action. By addressing these four points precisely, you will keep your prejudice at a minimum and you will be able to present your assessment in a fair way to your client if necessary.

Designing

Designing means making the connection between current reality and the desired outcomes in the coaching program, even when the program consists of only one conversation. The first step in design is to understand the current reality of the client, thus the importance of assessment. Next, describe what competence the client will have at the end of your coaching. For example, what new action will he be able to take, what better decisions will he make, in what way will his sales efforts improve? Describe the outcomes in a way that can be observed by both client and coach.

The last element is designing the path between understanding the client and achieving the desired outcomes. The path will consist of three elements: practices the client does, a network of support the client can call on, and a time frame by which the outcomes will occur.

Qualities

Rigor

Being rigorous means upholding the highest standards of a tradition and applying them fairly. Mathematicians and scientists are examples of people who must be rigorous in order to succeed. In those disciplines, the standards of excellence are well established and they are applied without exception to any and all new discoveries. Mathematicians and scientists don’t change the standards according to whether or not they are friends or enemies with the person whose work they are assessing.

As coaches, it’s necessary that we be rigorous so that we are seen as scrupulously fair and as dedicated to the highest standards. If we’re only rigorous as a coach, however, we will dissuade many potential clients from working with us. If we’re the best coach of a particular discipline, then our clients may have to put up with a high level of rigor. If, for example, we are the best violin teacher in the world, clients, usually called students in this tradition, may even have to audition to work with us, but in most situations you will find yourself in as a coach, you won’t have this luxury.

At work, you’ll find that you’ve inherited a team of people. If you are a parent, you don’t get to select your children from a pool of eager applicants. And as a school teacher, your class each year is randomly assigned to you. Consequently, most of us must balance rigor with the other qualities listed, such as patience and flexibility. As you assess yourself, see which side of the equation most needs balancing. Are you too rigorous and perhaps even harsh, or are you too patient and sometimes even wishy-washy?

Patience

Patience is waiting without complaining. In coaching, it’s important to remember that people change in biological time, not in electronic time. In these days of powerful computers, we can flip through screen after screen after screen and become impatient when it takes more than a third of a second to pull up a document. We rush through life. But no matter how quickly life moves, we are always working with a biological phenomenon when we approach people.

As was said in the chapter on openings, our habitual actions take on a neuromuscular structure within our bodies. Long-term change requires that we address this structure, and this process is not immediate. Even after moments of profound insight or transformative inspiration, it still takes time to integrate the change into your life; otherwise, the moment of change can be like a mushroom that grows mightily during one night but, having no roots, perishes during the heat of the following days.

Besides all that, complaining doesn’t help your coaching effort. If you become impatient, ask yourself if the source of your impatience is your client not meeting your expectations, and how long you think it should be taking. Ask yourself how long you think it would take you to do the same thing. Most of us are not adept at being patient. But by understanding what it really takes for a human being to change, and by reflecting on our own attempts to alter a habit, we can begin to have more realistic notions. It’s within these notions that patience can take root.

Self-Consistency

When we apply the same standards to ourselves that we are applying to our clients we are being self-consistent. Probably nothing will undo your credibility as a coach more quickly than being inconsistent. You probably have seen examples of this many times yourself. How often have you seen leaders of an organization instruct people to initiate a process that the leaders themselves never follow? In such cases, people disregard what’s said to them and follow instead what’s shown to them by actions.

In one-to-one coaching of people, there’s no escaping close scrutiny by our clients. I’m not saying that we have to be taking the same actions as the client, but we must apply the same high standards to our actions just as we are applying them to the client’s actions. No amount of personal force or organizational power will replace the necessity to be self-consistent.

Creativity/Flexibility

Our coaching efforts, however well designed, will almost never turn out as planned. At such moments, it’s vital that we be creative and flexible, and that we find a way to have high standards somehow fit the individual client. Imagine being a Little League baseball coach and insisting that the seven- and eightyear-old boys on your team perform like big league “all-stars” because, after all, those are the standards of excellence in that tradition.

Maybe none of us would do that, but we do the equivalent when we require someone we are coaching to immediately and unconditionally perform as an expert. We do the equivalent when we only point out what’s missing, what’s wrong, or what’s inadequate. Different people learn at different rates and in different ways, and to succeed as coaches we must find ways to have our coaching fit without diluting our commitment to the outcome.

The Process: Working with Yourself

Here’s a way to work with yourself with these skills and qualities. First, assess yourself according to the descriptions. I suggest you make a scale of one to five and then take time to calibrate the scale. You calibrate the scale by describing in exact behavioral terms what a five would be or by putting a person who you know as the embodiment of that skill or quality at the five level. To make it possible for you to succeed, the goal must seem possible to you. Be rigorous with yourself but also be flexible.

If you are working on patience, for example, don’t put Mother Theresa as a five on your scale, because then there is going to be either a gigantic distance between a one and a two or you’re not going to be on the scale. Naturally, if you are a saint this doesn’t apply to you. After you have assessed yourself on each of the skills and qualities, move on to the next step. For use in the process, select one skill or quality to work on.

The next step is to write out a description of your current reality regarding that skill or quality. That is to say, what are the specific actions you are taking that display your level of competence with that skill or quality? Also, what are the hindrances to your improving? What’s getting in the way?

The third step is to describe your intended outcomes, again in behavioral terms. What actions would you be doing as an expression of that skill or quality if you were as competent as you would like to be? The fourth step is to design the path between current reality and the intended outcome. The path consists of practices, a network of support, and a time frame.

Practices are behaviors done again and again with standards in mind, the purpose of which is to improve a skill or quality. Only when all the component parts are present will a practice succeed. Simply doing the behavior over and over again doesn’t ensure that someone will become more competent. Are you really becoming more competent in brushing your teeth? You must also self-observe your behavior in terms of standards, and continually correct your behavior so that it approximates the standard more and more closely. Even if we want to become more competent, if we are not correcting our actions according to observable criteria, we will never improve.

A network of support is a group of people who we can call on when we need information, emotional support, or assistance during a breakdown. No one has ever mastered anything on their own. Picasso had Braque and Eliot had Ezra Pound. At some point in your program, it’s very likely that you will become stuck or discouraged, or you may even forget about what you are working on. It’s at those moments that a network of support will be very useful to you.

A time frame puts sufficient structure and rigor in your program so that you can have a sense of forward movement. At the outset of your program give your best estimation of how long it will take. If necessary, correct your time frame by speaking to your network of support: people who have committed themselves to your success in the program. These people will make it more difficult for you to fool yourself or endlessly postpone. Below is an example of how to use this process (see Figure 12.1).

FIGURE 12.1 The Developmental Path

The Process: An Example

The selected skill is listening. On a calibrated scale of one to five, our imaginary coach Peter has assessed himself to be at level two.

Current Reality

Description of Current Reality

• Interrupting people in the middle of what they are saying
• Stop listening when I have the answer to a question that is being asked
• “Zoning out” for unknown periods of time during meetings

Hindrances

• Not enough time at work to work on this skill
• A history of social identity as an expert who must quickly solve problems and answer questions

Intended Outcome

• People who are speaking to me report that they feel that they are heard, understood, and honored.
• I stay attentive and focused during meetings.
• I continue to listen even after I have an answer to someone’s question or a solution for their problem.

The Plan

Practices

• Voice echoing: saying quietly to myself what other people are saying to me as close to the moment they’re saying it as possible. The standard here is to be exact in what I say, so hopefully saying it right away will make this easier.  This will keep me focused during meetings.
• At the end of conversations with people, take a moment to tell my conversational partner what I understood from what she said and also that I appreciate what she said. The standard here is to continually correct my report until my conversational partner agrees that I really understood her.
• Keep a listening journal in which I record both my successes and my failures in listening. I can do that by answering the following questions in my journal several times a day:

  1.  When did I listen attentively? How can I tell?

  2.  When did I stop listening to the meeting or conversation?

  3.  What distracted me from listening to the conversation or meeting?

In the journal, I will be able to discover patterns, such as people I stop listening to or topics that I don’t listen to, and alert myself before entering into conversations with those people or on those topics. The standard here is to recognize the patterns and to eliminate their repetition.

Network of Support

• My network of support will be three people I trust and admire whom I will call on when I see myself unable to break a pattern, or when I don’t know what to do in my program.

Time Frame

• The time frame will be three months.

I suggest that you work on one skill or quality at a time. Pick the one that you consider most urgent in your development as a coach. You can repeat the process to work on the other skills or qualities. Working with this process, along with addressing the questions in the beginning of this chapter, will allow you to stay alert as a coach. Keep coaching a learning experience for yourself and improve your competence as a coach.

Often, in the initial stages of being a coach, designing practices is a daunting challenge. Below are some questions you can use to help you design a practice.

1. What observable behavior will be part of the practice?
2. What are the standards for performance of that behavior?
3. What will you ask your client to observe so that she/he can tell how well she/he is performing?
4. How often will you have the client do the practice? How long will each session last?
5. How long will the practice itself last?
6. How often will the client stop and assess progress? What will the criteria be for assessing progress?

Definitions

Practice

Behavior done again and again with the intention to improve. It’s done with standards in mind and corrected according to those standards.

Structure

Specifies the following:

• when practice will be performed
• duration of each session
• when progress will be assessed

Feedback

A time for reflection and self-assessment. Describes what it is to be selfobserved in terms of standards and timeline. Corrections are then made in behavior.

Network of Support

People and organizations to call on when there’s a question or breakdown.

Timeline

How long the process will take based upon the gap between current reality and intended outcomes; also includes interim goals (milestones).

How Bob Turned Out

By following the self-observation exercises and practices shown in Chapter 9, Bob was accepted into the pool of potential executives at his company after about 10 months of working with the coach. Since then he has employed his own version of these exercises to continually improve his competence.

Through his rigorous commitment to his program, Bob accomplished his goals, and beyond that, became a long-term excellent performer who is self-correcting and self-generating. He turned out to be an exemplar of the power of coaching.

Suggested Reading

These books are for the coach to work with herself. They introduce a level of rigor that keeps the coach alert and focused on the principles and values of coaching. If you’re only selecting a few books, here are my recommendations, in suggested reading order:

1. The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt
2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey
3. Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore

Abrams, Jeremiah, and Connie Zweig, eds. Meeting the Shadow. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1991.

A collection of essays examining the dark side of human nature. Educational, illuminating, and deflating of ego. A doorway to wholeness and serenity. (“I would rather be whole than good.”—Carl Jung.)

Almaas, A. H. Spacecruiser Inquiry. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2002.

Accessible presentation of A. Hameed Ali’s (writing as Almaas) thorough Diamond Approach work for personal transformation and development. A unique blend of depth psychology (especially object relations theory) and spirituality (especially Sufiism and Buddhism).

Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.

A classic text that takes on the big issues of being a person. Many powerful insights and much brilliant analysis. Very quotable. One can work for years from the ideas presented.

Bateson, Mary Catherine. Composing a Life. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989.

The author is the daughter of Margaret Meade and Gregory Bateson, a former dean of a university and an anthropologist. She writes about her life and the lives of five women friends. She beautifully shows the way they compose lives of meaning and caring without force or egotism.

Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.

A presentation of seven habits (which in the context of coaching would be called practices) that lead to private and public victories. Easy to follow. Many examples. Each chapter has recommendations for moving into action.

Dass, Ram, and Paul Gorman. How Can I Help? New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1985.

A practical guide for people who have dedicated their lives to service. Written with immense heart. Provides powerful context within which one can serve without either becoming the center of the activity or burning out with exhaustion and disillusionment.

Fischer, Norman. Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.

A guide to genuine maturity written by a former zen abbot, poet, father, and mentor to teens. Rich, kind, wise, and inspiring.

Goldstein, Joseph. The Experience of Insight. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1976.

A flawless gem that’s an invitation to meditation practice. Clear instructions, helpful hints, and an explanation of traditional teachings.

Gutman, Huck, Patrick H. Hutton, and Luther H. Martin, eds. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988.

Foucault’s last book. He addresses (in this text from a seminar) the traditional ways people work on their own development. Helpful in its historical perspective, rigor, and tracing of trends of thought and belief.

Levine, Stephen. Guided Meditations, Explorations and Healings. New York: Anchor Books/

Doubleday, 1991.

The author provides soothing, calming, and healing passages and meditations that address many occasions of suffering: death, illness, pain, addictions, etc. Indispensable for working skillfully and compassionately with the human condition.

Mezirow, Jack, and Associates. Fostering Critical Reflection in Adulthood. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 1990.

This book is a collection of essays in which the authors present many different ways to realize the goal expressed in the book’s title. By taking on one or more of the suggested practices, coaches can become more skillful in self-reflection and critical thinking.

Moore, Thomas. Care of the Soul. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.

A lyrical, metaphor-rich book about how one can bring depth and meaning to everyday activities and circumstances. The soul has its own language. This book alerts readers to that fact and invites them to listen.

Nicoll, Maurice. Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff & Ouspensky, Volumes 1–5. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1984.

Fabulous introduction into the importance of self-observation in bringing about personal awakening. Unflinching, opinionated yet deeply compassionate.

Nozick, Robert. The Examined Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1989.

A collection of essays (that form one argument by book’s end) addressing in a Socratic fashion important issues in human life, such as what is love, emotion, happiness, and so on. The author is a philosopher and the book is hard-selling from time to time. Useful in examining one’s own views and probably not so useful in adapting those of the author.

Palmer, Parker J. Let Your Life Speak. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 2000.

Very good introduction to uncovering our vocation by quietly, patiently listening to what we are called to do with our one precious human life, the one that’s unfolding right now.

Riso, Don Richard, and Russ Hudson. The Wisdom of the Enneagram. New York: Bantam Books, 1999.

Fabulous presentation of a powerful, comprehensive, coherent traditional method for understanding and developing ourselves. Full of useful charts, questions, and practices. First rate.

Trungpa, Chögyam. Cutting through Spiritual Materialism. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1973.

A death blow to using spiritual values or powers to get ahead in life. A razor for separating the egotistical from the compassionate.

Zimmerman, Michael E. Eclipse of the Self. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1981.

A philosophical examination of Heidegger’s notions of authenticity. An opportunity to investigate one’s own values and explore the basis of one’s life.