This is The Coaching Inn, a podcast from 3D Coaching. Hello, this is Claire Pedrick. Welcome to The Coaching Inn and this week's book group. And we've just been reading chapter seven. And thank you so much to everybody who's travelled on this journey with us. And a big shout out to the people who are on Transforming Conversations at the moment, who I know you're talking about this. in your WhatsApp group.
So a big shout out for you and for everyone who's asked questions or commented on our different social media applications. So chapter seven is all about presence, it's about partnership and it's about power. And this is where I know I have still so much to learn. And it's the thing that I'm focusing on really in the next phase of my learning journey. Great question from Joe's who said, favourite chapter by far.
I wondered why this wasn't earlier in the book as it's such a mind shift and foundational understanding to the rest. That's a great question. And I need to tell you, Joe's, that it moved up and down the book until the very last minute. Because I agree with you, I wondered where it needed to be too.
In the end, if it's useful for you to know, we made a choice to put it at the end of the foundation, the beginning, the middle and the end, because I think that seeing partnership in action in the other chapters makes it makes what could be a difficult read because it most challenges how we do what we do. I think it makes it easier. to understand when we've seen the kind of working out in the previous chapters. But you're right, because it is absolutely foundational to the rest.
And there's something about partnership that I think we forget. And I think that when we're paid to do a conversation with people, we can collude with needing to be expert or needing to lead. So one of you said, it's not about you is a wondrous gift to the world and absolutely it's not about you. We need to work together with somebody else because it's all about them. And unless we work in partnership, we're leading. And when we're leading, they're following.
And when they're following, they're not doing the work. Another great question, how does gender and race intersect with power and partnership? What dynamics might we need to be aware of in a coaching partnership? What about our own privilege? Well, where can I start? There was a great article in Ink Magazine a couple of weeks ago about privilege, and I'll put a link to that in the program notes for this blog, because that might be useful.
I think that maybe it's me, maybe it's that the world is waking up to the fact that we need to have more conversations about privilege and we need to talk about privilege in conversations with others. I had a really interesting conversation with somebody yesterday who's a person of colour about how we're just late to the party as a society. about things that have been endemic for so many generations and yet we are unwilling to name them.
So probably you need to listen to the blog about presence, partnership and power that I might come to in two or five years time if you want to know where my thinking is on this because it really is a journey and I recognise that for me I'm quite close to the beginning of it.
And there is much to learn and there is much to tweak in the way that we engage with others in order to have the most effective partnerships and in order to acknowledge the privilege that I come with and the privilege that you come with. Great comment from Mark, partnering is central to coaching. Perhaps it's at the heart of coaching. And I love what you said about what helps me, said, is realizing we can partner with different roles, thinker and facilitator of the thinker. Absolutely.
We don't need to be doing the same thing to partner because in a dance, you're each doing slightly different things. If you're doing the same thing, yeah, that's a certain kind of dance, isn't it? So here's a great question. Can I maintain the relationship? Whilst right sizing the conversation, checking in and ending well, can a focused conversation still be relational? What do we do if people experience this as too tight and constraining?
What I want to say to you is that right sizing is an iterative process that goes at the speed and in the direction that most usefully serves the thinker. So if you go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom at the beginning of a conversation with those right-sizing questions, then of course the other person won't experience it as partnership. But as you become more confident with them, you can begin to slightly tweak them to a way that feels, that is and feels more relational.
So for example, at the beginning when you're learning to be clear about those things, what are we doing? how are we going to do it and how are we going to know we've done it, you'll say, what would you like to be different by the end of this conversation? How will you know that? But as you begin to soften and to have that kind of in your muscle, you might say, so by the end of this conversation, you'll know that because...
So you can lighten it and you can, and that's what really keeps the relational relational. I think the other thing that's really interesting is that in the Stoker's questions, that question, how should we do this? Which I would call the role question really matters because what it's saying is, because this is in partnership and we don't have to do it my way. And people are so hardwired to follow the leader. They're so hardwired to...
You, when you're perceived to have the power, are hardwired to believe that you need to know what to do and have a cunning plan. People who are deferring power to the person who they perceive to have the power are hardwired to follow the leader. So we need to challenge this. And it takes a bit of getting used to. But if you can have a transformational conversation the first time you meet somebody... then they're going to love it and they're going to want to do it again.
So thank you for listening. The next book group podcast will be about chapter eight, which is about simple conversations in real life. And that will come out in the next two or three weeks because we're just taking a bit of a break for a little while. And we'll be back by mid July with that podcast. So enjoy reading. Do feel free to share or recommend the book to others if you found it useful. And thanks for listening. Have a good week. Bye bye.
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