IAC VOICE, Volume 4, Issue 37, July 2009, Circulation: 13,071
July 9, 2009
Linda
From the Editor
We made the Top 10! Our VOICE blog was a winner in IAC licensee School of Coaching Mastery's Best Coaching Blogs competition. I know I mentioned last month that we hadn't made the next round of voting, but since then there was a glitch that led to the contest starting all over again. Thank you to Julia Stewart and the School of Coaching Mastery for this wonderful opportunity to share our work with the greater coaching community, and others who want to learn about coaching.
In July's President's Message, Angela Spaxman explores another one of the IAC's primary values – collaboration – and she introduces a wonderful opportunity for both IAC members and VOICE subscribers to collaborate in determining the very future of the coaching profession.
UK Coach Richard Fox presents a creative tool for working with clients who are dealing with an issue that has multiple components.
Pamela Slim, author of Escape from Cubicle Nation, has a special question for part-time coaches or anyone taking the leap from a full-time job to a dream career. Whether it's for you or a client, this article is sure to spark some entrepreneurial ideas.
Andrea Lee is back at the helm of our Tools for Coaching Mastery column this month, with her unique ponderings on the passage of time.
For today's Inside Scoop – Lessons from the Certifiers, Nina East partnered up with another veteran IAC certifier, Karen Van Cleve, and they co-wrote an article that presents the simple (but not easy), straightforward (but not quick) route to becoming a masterful coach.
I love watching crime drama on television, and some of my favourite scenes occur in the courtroom. But a courtroom is the last place I would expect to find any Coaching Moments. Leave it to our Janice Hunter to bring her insights and integrity to a challenging situation like jury duty.
Submission guidelines for the VOICE are available on the website, including submission dates for our upcoming issues. I would love to receive your article submissions by July 20th for the August issue, or August 17th for the September issue.
The future of coaching – how will it be? And how do you want it to be?
Last month I described the IAC's values of diversity and innovation, and this month I want to mention another one: collaboration. Collaboration means working together towards common goals. It is a cornerstone of coaching and a gift for our field because upholding this value allows us to create a diversity of strong, specialized organizations to provide for everything we need as an industry.
Over the past few years, the creativity of coaches has produced professional organizations, schools, research institutes, local community groups, online forums, specialty services tailored to coaches, volunteer groups, and more. All of these groups have a unique place and value.
As our whole industry grows organically, the IAC will collaborate with those groups who share our values while we continue to tread the unique path that is our special contribution to the world of coaching. How can you collaborate with us to bring the gift of masterful coaching further into the world? Well, let me tell you!
In August we will kick-off the IAC's Strategic Planning process with a series of webinars where we will envision together what we want for the future of our profession and association. This is the first time we have initiated a conversation on this scale. I can hardly wait to get started in the fascinating conversations we are going to create together.
In the first six years of the IAC, we have created a sustainable membership association with the foundational systems and standards that express our values for mastery, ethics, diversity and innovation. Now we are inviting you, our members and subscribers, to share your ideals for the future of the IAC. As the whole world both struggles in adversity and reaches new heights of cooperation and compassion, it is appropriate and even imperative that coaches also join together to envision our best possible future. We will be looking at the whole industry first, before we turn our attention specifically to the IAC and the part we can best play in the world of coaching.
Please don’t delay to mark your calendars and register for the time slots that suit you. I am so eager to hear your voices!
Congratulations to Lorraine Lee from Central Hong Kong and Jacqueline Dunkle from Greensburg, PA, USA who recently passed their Step 2 Exams and became IAC Certified Coaches!
As the International Association of Coaching® moves into a deep strategic planning process, we invite you to participate in answering questions about the future of the coaching profession, and IAC’s role in creating that future.
With the assistance of Dave Ellis (internationally respected leadership coach, author, educator, and philanthropist), IAC invites its members to participate in a teleconference series. During three 90-minute phone calls Ellis will explain the process of multi-decade visioning, and assist you to think and say what you have never thought or said about the future of coaching. These calls are scheduled throughout our strategic planning process so that you can learn and provide feedback about what other IAC groups have created.
When was the last time you asked yourself … Where will I be in 25 years? What will I have created? Who will have benefited? What is now possible for those who have received my services?
Of course, we can not predict or control the future, but we are much more likely to influence our future when we know what we want and are clear about our dreams, visions, and desires.
As a valued subscriber to the VOICE, we would love to include you in our first call in August. You have your choice of two different call times.
Please click hereto sign up for our visioning process and participate in a stimulating dialogue with your peers, to discuss:
Where do we want the coaching profession be in 25-50 years?
What will we want to have created?
Who do we want to have benefited?
What is possible for those who have received coaching services?
Which unlikely alliances have proved most widely successful?
… and many more questions to expand our thinking, go beyond our current ideas, and take control of the future of our profession.
An opportunity like this doesn’t come around often. Not only will our conversation benefit from your creative mind, we know you’ll be enriched by your participation as well.
Aug 13, 1:00-2:30 p.m. Eastern Time (08/13/2009) OR Aug 17, 8:00-9:30 p.m. Eastern Time (08/17/2009)
Call #2 (IAC members only):
Sept 24, 1:00-2:30 p.m. Eastern Time (09/24/2009) OR Sept 21, 8:00-9:00 p.m. Eastern Time (09/21/2009)
Call #3 (IAC members only):
Oct 14, 2:00-3:30 p.m. Eastern Time (10/14/2009) OR Oct 22, 9:00-10:30 p.m. Eastern Time (10/22/2009)
P.S. The results of these meetings will feed directly into the IAC’s strategic planning process through its vision, mission and strategic goal setting and beyond this into actions that create the future of our profession.
Using objects as an aid in a coaching conversation by Richard Fox
In a coaching session where the coachee's topic contains several distinct elements, simple everyday objects such as a pencil, pen, cup, saucer or spoon can be used to great effect. Using objects in coaching can help to regain momentum with a fresh perspective or help a client who is a more creative thinker.
Benefits of using objects in coaching
An opportunity to unravel a problem, identify its separate parts and to see the relationship between them (spatial sorting)
The ability to look at the whole system
A way to get the issue or problem out of the coachee’s head and onto the table. This usually helps the coachee look, see and feel the situation more objectively and as an observer (disassociation and/or 3rd position)
More scope for the coach to detach and to play
The ability for the coachee to see how the situation is now, and how he or she wants it to be
A process that should appeal to people with a strong visual or spatial preference or a strong bodily (tangible) kinaesthetic preference.
A method for the coachee to reveal the root cause of an issue on a deeper level. The objects can represent intangible as well as tangible things, e.g., the component pieces regarding an issue around using time effectively might be: (i) love of variety, (ii) No time for myself and (iii) I never do anything properly.
An emphasis on awareness and insight, gathering and testing data or unblocking an issue, rather than on creating an action plan.
Process
The coach needs to start with some coaching questions focussing on the issue before inviting the coachee to work with the objects. Until you become experienced in using objects, I suggest that you restrict the total number of objects to between three and five. For example, one object could represent a work team, rather than having individual objects that represent each member of that team.
You can use the process at a variety of levels, and an object does not have to represent a tangible person or situation. For example, the coachee could use one object to represent his or her diary and, at a deeper level another object(s) could represent a fear, guilt, a belief, lack of self confidence.
Suggest to the coachee that they be open to anything that shows up and assure them that they can end the process at any stage.
As in any coaching situation, use your intuition and sense where the energy is flowing and what is working or not working. Also give the coachee the space and time to think and feel into the issue.
Suggested steps
Clear a table and sit opposite, alongside or at 90 degrees to the coachee, whatever is more comfortable for the coachee. The coach should not touch the objects on the table at any stage in the process.
Ask the coachee to focus on the current situation. Let the coachee choose the first object from what’s already in the room, e.g., a pencil. Ask the coachee to place the object thoughtfully on the table.
Ask the coachee the following type of questions as appropriate:
In which direction is the future, the past?
In which direction do you want your object to face?
Is there anything that springs to mind?
Repeat the above process with the other components or objects. With each object the coach should check what the object represents, e.g., my boss or my low self-esteem and ask questions like:
Where do you want to place [the object] in relation to the existing objects?
How far apart?
Which way is it facing?
What’s happening in that space?
What, if anything, is missing in regard to your issue or question?
Once the current reality is in place check that the coachee is happy with how the issue is represented.
Now ask the coachee to "let each of the objects have a voice and an emotion and let each piece talk to you and to each other." Ask the coachee to take each object in turn. For example, a work project might say, "I would like to benefit more from X’s expertise."
Ask the coachee questions like: What is the overall system telling you? What are you experiencing in your body? What do you notice that you were unaware of before?
The coach may comment on anything that may be significant to the coachee, e.g., "I notice that your deputy is standing in front of you and is facing you. What are the messages regarding this?"
The next stage is to ask the coachee one or both of the following types of questions:
What object(s) would you like to move to help shift your perception/feelings about the current situation?
How would the objects need to be arranged for the situation to be more satisfactory to you?
The coach could then deepen what this might mean in terms of the steps she or he could take, and then end by asking questions like: How do you now see, feel, or think about the issue? What has changed for you? What insights have you had? To what extent has this process been helpful?
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank and acknowledge Meike Buegler, Constellator and Organizational Development Consultant at Syngenta Crop Protection AG, for introducing me to Organizational Constellations, using people as well as objects. Thank you also to Lesley Pugh, an executive coach and NLP colleague, for contributing to this paper and to the case study.
Richard Fox, ACC, qualified as a coach in 2001 to complement his role as an experienced business mentor. He works mainly with executive, middle management and team leaders, helping them create and sustain an environment in which they can express themselves, optimise their potential, and lead purposeful lives and purposeful organisations. For more information or to review a related case study, you may contact him at rjfox@tlc.eu.com or www.tlc.eu.com.
Are you ingredients looking for a recipe? by Pamela Slim
As a career and business coach, I spend a lot of my time working with people who are trying to figure out what to do for a living.
I usually start by sending them on an internal expedition, examining the nuances, thoughts and feelings of their body, mind and spirit for clues about what interests them.
They carry around notebooks in which they furiously scribble insights, they create vision boards, they bookmark websites like crazy, they make spreadsheets and they stuff files with pictures and magazine clippings.
Then they get back in touch with me, feeling a bit perplexed and overwhelmed, sharing a summary list that looks something like this:
My interests: old rugs The Pittsburgh Steelers organic farming my family writing code drag racing web 2.0 speaking Russian salsa dancing small business marketing space travel old episodes of Friends yoga photography
They say “I sure love all these things, but how in the world can I make a business out of them?”
To which I reply:
You are ingredients in search of a recipe.
Or perhaps many recipes.
A common misconception about the process of entrepreneurship, and specifically a coaching business, is that you have to fit all your interests into one neatly tied up and integrated business which will allow you to express all of your passions.
Instead, I like to think of skills and interests as ingredients to use selectively in different business models, depending on the opportunities and market.
So you could help your clients formulate a plan like this:
“I think I want to use salsa dancing as the main staple for my next venture. I will round out the flavor with a bit of coding, by creating a killer website that hosts great instructional videos for novice dancers, and will sprinkle in a little bit of photography so I can take stunning photos of professional dancers that they can use in their promotional materials.”
or
“I would love to spend some time in Pittsburgh so I can catch all the Steeler home games live. I think I will focus on organic farming in the northeast, using a few cups of marketing to help local farmers expand their offerings in the slow winter season. I hear that there are some amazing rug dealers in the area, so when not doing small business marketing, I will try to find some great pieces and sell them on eBay.”
Using this simple framework, you can help your clients see that they don’t have to use all their “ingredients” at once, in the same measure, in the same recipe.
All they need to do is to continually refine their list of ingredients, and combine them in ways that interest them and taste great.
As for your own coaching practice, when you feel like something is lacking in your business model, experiment with adding shakes of ingredients to liven things up.
“My coaching business is really boring at the moment. How could I add a touch of Burning Man to the mix and make it more interesting?”
“My clients seem to be getting really stuck and bored with phone sessions. How might I combine my love of art and children’s camps to make a unique coaching retreat?
“I love working with clients but am bored to tears in my small town. What would happen if I added some location independent to the mix and did my coaching from Burkina Faso?”
Try it!
What is your list of ingredients?
Pamela Slim is a business coach and author of Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur (Portfolio May 2009). Download a free chapter of the book at www.escapefromcubiclenation.com.
The calendar as a coaching structure by Andrea Lee
Though a lot is made of the end or beginning of a calendar year, funnily enough not much is made of the halfway point, where we are right now. And yet, isn’t that one of the trickiest spots along the trajectory of any project, or even life? That big fat middle of the bell curve, where the data is the least clear. Perhaps the dreaded sophomore year at college, where the going gets tough, and many students drop out. Or even, of course, the mid-life crisis, now said to span as early as the thirties – "early middle" – to the fifties – "late bloomers."
Perhaps it’s a rather unorthodox tool for coaching mastery, but I’m of the opinion that sometimes the best things are the simple ones staring us in the face. As the poet Rumi puts it, it is troublesome to ask a fish about the existence of the sea. Perhaps one of the most simple and abiding tools that Mentor Coach Barbra Sundquist helped me learn was the power of the calendar, and even the seasons, to become a dynamic force in my life – a support environment that buoys me up like the salt in the sea. And of course, as soon as I learned that, I was happy to pass it along to my clients.
It’s no surprise then to notice that Barbra also leverages support structures like membership sites to support coaches to achieve Certified Coach status, or that she so carefully crafted a structured home-study program that takes each mastery one step at a time, ever supportive.
Truth be told, out of all of them, I find IAC Coaching Mastery #9 the most difficult to manifest. Is "Helping the client create and use supportive systems and structures" the last mastery for a reason? I can’t say. But I do know that focussing on it has helped.
As of July 1, 2009, we have an opportunity to raise the grain on the mid-point of the year with our clients, and perhaps choose to highlight the calendar as a support system.
Is the middle a challenging spot in the lives of you or your clients? How or how not?
In what way might you be leveraging key moments on the calendar into coaching conversations, programs, or products?
Are you confident in your ability to speak to supportive structures? Just because it’s the last mastery, let's not leave it to last to mastery, alright?
The Coaching By Example 9-CD Series features 55 audio tracks of demo coaching and commentary with Mentor Coach and former IAC certifying examiner Barbra Sundquist. To find out more about how the CD series can be a support structure on your journey to IAC-CC certification, click here: http://www.learncoachingbyexample.com. And for your IAC member discount, log into your IAC member page and scroll down to the new member benefit.
It’s often said that when you hear masterful coaching, you’ll know it. When you listen to truly great coaches, they seem to sense what is going on with the client before the client even knows. They come up with the perfect question or perfect exercise, seemingly out of thin air. They help the client shift their entire perspective, and it seems so easy for them.
Because it appears to be so effortless for the masterful coach, you might get the impression that coaching is easy, and therefore should be easy for everyone. But that would be wrong. The truth is that masterful coaches have done things quite differently than those who do not reach the masterful level.
In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell studied what it takes to become masterful – at anything. What is surprising is how little talent and luck have to do with whether someone becomes a world class expert, regardless of the field they are in.
While natural talent or affinity affects whether you end up being drawn to a particular field –if you have a natural talent for engaged listening you may have been drawn to coaching without thinking about it –it will not determine whether you are a “success” as a coach or become masterful. And though opportunity and luck play a role in your journey toward mastery, they are not reliable indicators either. Talent and luck are not enough.
The key distinction, according to Gladwell, is that world-class experts have already put in 10,000 hours of practice BEFORE they “burst on the scene.” Yes, you read that right. Ten thousand hours. Gladwell provides many examples in his book, but here are just two we think you will be familiar with.
When The Beatles “burst on the American scene,” they had already banked more than 10,000 hours of performance time. Performance time, not just practice time. They credit those hours – which sometimes came in the form of 8-hour performances – as perhaps the most important factor in their success. Playing those long sets required them to improvise and entertain at a level far different than if they were playing a couple of one-hour sets. Long hours of being on the spot and having to do their best forced them to get better.
Another example is Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and clearly a world-class expert in computers and programming. He was lucky that he attended a high school that invested in computer access – but so was every other student who attended that school. He was fortunate that the university he went to kept their computer center open 24-hours a day – but every other student also had that same access.
What set Bill Gates apart is that he USED that opportunity and access to log hours and hours of computer experience. In one 7-month period he logged 1,575 hours working on programming. That comes out to 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. There’s no doubt Bill Gates was blessed with a great mind and some great opportunities. But the real difference is that he put in tens of thousands of hours “practicing” before he “made it.”
Now think about your own expectations of mastery. If you are new to coaching and you think that taking a couple hundred hours worth of classes will bring you to mastery, you will to be disappointed.
Nina East, IAC-CC, is the IAC’s Lead Certifier and the founder of www.PersonalGrowthPrincess.com, a site for women professionals and business owners who are enthusiastic about personal growth but don’t have the time to read all the books they buy.
Karen Van Cleve, IAC-CC, ACC, has been an IAC Certifier since 2005. She is also a Results Coach for the Anthony Robbins coaching organization. She speaks on a variety of coaching topics and provides personal coaching for a wide range of clients. Her website is www.KarenVanCleve.com.
"Coaching Moments" takes a thoughtful look at how coaching can be interwoven into our daily lives.
Journals and Juries by Janice Hunter, IAC-CC
All things and all men, so to speak, call on us with small or loud voices. They want us to listen. They want us to understand their intrinsic claims, their justice of being. But we can only give it to them through the love that listens. ~Paul Tillich
The day I received it, I let out a despairing, wailing “No!” My husband rushed in and asked what was wrong. I handed him the summons to jury duty, my third in three years.
I’d been allowed exemptions in the past because of my health and my children’s ages, but this time there was no escape; it had to be done. The letter warned of possible overnight stays. Friends told me of the nightmares they still had after hearing evidence at murder, rape and child abuse trials. I believe in democracy, but every day that passed, I grew more and more anxious, dreading the prospect of being separated from my family or having to sit in judgement on another human being, perhaps after listening to harrowing details I would never be able to forget.
The day came, and I arrived at an imposing, Victorian building, its entrance flanked with columns. I walked up a flight of stone steps, crossed the cold, echoing floor of a musty foyer and announced my arrival to a grim-faced receptionist, barricaded behind a high reception desk of polished dark wood. I smiled and asked for help and directions. He barked at me that I wasn’t needed but would have to come back the next day. I stood there stunned, not knowing if I felt angry or relieved. How much vitriol had this man been subjected to for this to be his default?
I drove home, hugged my family, told them it wasn’t over.
Another sleepless night. A morning of strained goodbyes, the children wondering if I’d be home that night. Once again, I drove through the hills to our nearest big town, barely registering the rain clouds hanging heavy in an inky sky. This might be an innocent person’s last day of freedom. I might be about to set a murderer free. I’d deliberately arrived early, and decided to clear my mind by doing some writing in my favourite French café in the cobbled square next to the old church, just round the corner from the County Court.
As I sat, sipping strong black coffee and listening to French accordion music, I visualised the proceedings, mentally preparing myself to tap into every single one of the Proficiencies™ (and any relevant Clarifiers™, Stylepoints™ and Frameworks™) to make sure I was my best self in court, with my fellow jurors and with any court officials I was expected to co-operate and communicate with. Here's what I was aiming for:
To go in with all my own stuff cleaned up.
Not to judge or assume or be forced into any tricky lawyer's manipulation of paradigms while in court listening.
To listen well and carefully.
To respect everyone's humanity.
To relish truth – in many different ways.
To enjoy my fellow jurors immensely.
To ask very good clarifying questions, if necessary, while deliberating with other jurors.
To remind myself, constantly, that everyone's doing the best they can with what they've got.
To recognise the perfection in it all.
This is what emerged in my notebook:
1) If you’ve been invited to do jury duty, it means you’re alive.
2) That letter you were sent means you have an address, a home. 3) You’re not the victim. 4) You’re not the accused. 5) You’re anxious because you care. 6) You’re eligible because you can see, you can hear and you’re healthy. 7) Like it or not, you’ll learn something about your legal system. 8) You live in a country that has a legal system. 9) It’s a perfect chance to listen, really listen, without prejudice, assumptions or malice. 10) You’re not in this alone.
I finished my coffee, put my notebook away, paid, and crossed the square to the County Court, feeling stronger and more serene than I had for months.
I heard and learned a lot that day, but it was those café thoughts that turned my jury moments into coaching moments.
Janice Hunter is an IAC certified homelife coach who lives in Scotland with her husband and two children. She created and co-wrote Sharing the Certification Journey: Six IAC Coaches Talk About Their Journeys, and her blogsite, www.sharingthejourney.co.uk, provides soul food and support for coaches, writers, parents and home-based workers.
Janice has compiled all of her Coaching Moments pieces from the last two years into a free 46-page ebook, 'Coaching Moments: A Collection of Articles about Coaching in Everyday Life' which can be downloaded here or from her site.
We'd love to get your feedback on any issue related to the IAC. Do you have any questions, concerns, encouragement or ideas for improvement regarding membership benefits, certification, the VOICE, the direction of the organization or anything else at all? Please send an email to feedback@certifiedcoach.org. Please help us improve.
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I know I mentioned last month that we hadn't made the next
Karen Van Cleve, IAC-CC, ACC, has been an IAC Certifier since 2005.
