This is The Coaching Inn, a podcast from 3D Coaching. Hello and welcome to The Coaching Inn. I'm Claire Pedrick and today our podcast is The Book Group. At the moment we're reading Simplifying Coaching and this week we've been reading Chapter 3 about simple beginnings. So I'll be sharing with you some of the things that people have said, things they've learnt. questions that have come in over the week.
And feel free to add yours in the comments on the podcast or on our other social media channels as we go. Firstly, a shout out to Josephine, who's messaged in on LinkedIn and said, Stokers has changed my life. Well, Josephine, we're really pleased and happy to hear that. It's made such a difference in the conversations that you're having. So I'm just going to pick up a couple of things that came in at the end of the last chapter, chapter two, which was about simple listening.
And then I'll dive in into simple beginnings. So Liza sent her in a message and she said, in my role, I have to notice, but I don't always say what I see, either because it's not my place to say. Therefore, I'm waiting for someone else to say it. However, on reflection, saying what I see would definitely help some of the interesting meetings that I facilitate between people.
I think, Liza, what's interesting about that is how much we don't say what we see because we don't know what we're going to do next. And therefore, we hold back from even saying what we see. And that's particularly true in meetings. And I really encourage you to try that out because there's something about how do you say what you see and then share responsibility for what happens next.
And Susan sent in and she said that it's interesting to have a visual insight about that coaching container, that lozenge that holds the work and how much when it fills up with too much information, it's difficult to see the headlines. or feel the underbelly. And absolutely, Susan, because I think we can get very swamped with information. And often we're having conversations with people who are also swamped with information.
So reducing the amount of noise in the conversation can make a significant difference. So chapter three. simple beginnings is about really beginning the conversation well so that we don't start doing the work until we're clear what we're doing, how we're going to do it and how we're going to know we've done it. And I think this is the thing that forms the partnership.
So of course the International Coach Federation like this because they call it Establishing the Coaching Agreement and they see it as what they call a core competency of coaching, but actually it just makes things more efficient. It gets us to the heart of the matter earlier and it allows us to really work out which bit of the work is it that we need to be paying attention to.
Because I think when we don't begin well, what happens is that the person in the conversation who is perceived to have more power, tries to pull out the thing that they think is most important and run with that. And almost always, that's not actually the most important thing to the person who perceives themselves to have less power. So kind of laying out on the table and working out what we're doing is a great way of kicking off. It's important, it matters.
And for those of us whose tendency is to dive into the most interesting thing that comes up in the first three or four minutes. We need to wait. And these simple beginnings, and I've offered you in the book those questions that spell the word stokers, which are one way of doing it, the simple beginnings make all the difference. And they are iterative. So this isn't you saying I can't possibly do any work with you unless I'm clear what we're doing today. That's not what it's about.
It's saying we need to be clear what we're doing today. And do know, sometimes that beginning takes almost the whole conversation because as you iteratively go through those questions, people are gaining insights into their own stuff that are moving them forward. And what a delight that is. So don't get obsessive. I must finish those right sizing questions before we do anything. Use them as part of the person's emergent learning and their thinking and their developing.
So here's some feedback from some of our readers this week. So Mark says that he absolutely loves right sizing the conversation. So that's about making the work the right size for the time that we have so that we're paying attention in the right place and doing the thing that's really useful. He also loves the focus on what's your question for today. And remember that what's your question for today really enables us to be facing forwards in the conversation.
And it also means that it's much easier to interrupt as we move on. So when somebody is talking a lot, lot, lot, lot, lot, and you don't sense that they're getting any insights, then you can say, and today. or and the question we're focusing on is or the question we need to focus on or that you want to focus on.
So those things can make a significant difference for you and also being clear about what direction you're headed in, even if subsequently, which will be covered in another chapter, we decide to change direction. and being positive about time. It is a fantasy to believe that we have all the time in the world in any conversation.
And I think culturally, many of us feel we can't talk about time because it's rude, but also it's really rude to cut somebody off in mid-flow because we've run out of time. And time, you'll discover, is going to come up right the way through the book as being a really, really important thing. As is... timekeeping. So in order to be able to use time in that beginning bit you need to know what time it is all the time. That means that a countdown timer on a phone isn't going to serve you.
It means that looking to the side at the time on your computer is also not going to serve you. You need a time device in front of you so all the time you know what time you need, what time it is. Mark also said he loves making explicit the pre-conversation. I agree with you, Mark, and interestingly, the more it was just a crazy idea that came up like most of the things in the book.
But actually what I observe is encouraging people to do the bit they need to do before we can do the work can make a really significant difference. He also, Mark also says he loves that the Stokers is used in a partnering way and creates the context for the partnership. And then he's got a question. Does Stokers sufficiently emphasize the partnership?
and he said potentially it's easy to respond to the how are we going to do this in terms of the thinking question rather than in terms of the nature of the partnership. How important is it to explicitly design the nature of the alliance, the space between us for the thinking partnership? Actually, Mark, that's such a great question.
And what you're describing here is perhaps the difference in the questions that we use when we're going to be working with somebody over time versus the questions that we might use in a single session. And you can use the Stoker's questions. to co-create your relationship for the whole of the coaching process. And those questions that you bring here are fabulous in relation to that, and then would make much more sense if you said, what kind of an atmosphere do we want to co-create today?
Brilliant. And I also think that the role question, how are we going to do this, sets us up for checking in later on in a way that's going to make a really significant difference. Because what we're doing is we're saying we don't have to do it my way. And then you can say, let's do it a different way. But I love the question that you're asking there in your email, Mark, that says, how do we want to be together? when things get difficult.
That reminds me of a conversation I often have in organizations when we're working with people as they begin in the organization, when we meet line managers and colleagues together and we say to them, what are you going to do when things go wrong? Because your question, Mark, how do we want to be together when things get difficult? Absolutely nail it that Maybe things will get difficult and if you've pre-thought that it means that you'll address the difficult much more early.
So Richard, thank you for your question about what's my role that doesn't quite make sense. And I agree with you. So when the Stokers questions were co-created with Adrian Hawthorne all those years ago in that training room, what role do you want me to take was the question that we used. But actually, I now say instead of what role, I say, how should we do this? And most people say, I don't know.
And I hope that the thing that I've just said about it opens up the possibility to change direction later on. I hope that's begun to answer your question. The other thing is that many of us are in hybrid conversations. So as much as pure coaching says you don't put in, most people in normal conversations at work will put in sometimes. So if you say, how should we do this, Richard, at the beginning of the conversation?
You can say, because it sounds as though there's some stuff here that I need to put in and there's some stuff here that might be me helping you to think it through and there may be some stuff here that you need me to hear so I can share that somewhere else. So then you can keep changing hats as you go through the conversation. So it just allows us to be a bit more normal about There being different power differentials in different phases of the conversation when we're in hybrid conversations.
So happy to pick up more questions about that, Richard, and others, when we get to chapters seven and eight, where those kind of questions will come up again. I wonder what your insights were from chapter three. What have you learnt that's going to make a difference in your work? And where can you apply it? Straight away. Next week we're going to be thinking about simple questions. so that's chapter four.
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