This is The Coaching Inn, a podcast from 3D Coaching. Welcome to The Coaching Inn. My name's Claire Pedrick and today I'm in conversation with Stuart Reid. Stuart, you and I met a long time ago. Tell us about you. Tell you about me. I am a consultant. I work exclusively with chief execs and their teams and I focus on helping them make progress on the things they're stuck with normally. So their biggest challenges or their biggest problems.
And how, well, how we met, I was strongly recommended by a very wise person to attend your transforming conversations workshop two or three years ago now, which I did. And it did transform my conversation. So it certainly transformed my coaching conversations. Brilliant. And then we started having more conversations off the back of that, didn't we, I remember?
We did, because I remember on the days of the course, I sat there and occasionally you would talk about this thing called presence, which is always a bit mysterious. But the more you talked about it, the more I made connections with my own experience as an amateur theatrical improviser and the kinds of... things you have to do to be present.
I remember being trained or taught myself through improvisation, how to be present because the skill and I became convinced as I heard you talk that the skills that a good coach needs are very similar to the skills that a good improviser needs when they're on stage. Yeah. And I think I brought that idea to you and what happened next in your memory. Well, my memory was that that was beautiful bringing together of you raising that in conversation over lunch, I think.
And presence was the thing that I was really learning about and thinking deeply about. And I had been holding for a long time the question, can you teach presence? And I imagine that I said to you, well, can you teach presence? And I would have probably said, I have a hunch she can, should we try something out? Yeah. And then do you remember we went and we ran that day in Luton? gosh, yeah. It was something like three coaches, three psychiatrists and three priests and someone else.
It was an extraordinary day, wasn't it? It was, yeah. All people who normally help others who could come because they needed our help. That's really good. Yeah. Yeah, it was. Yes, in a fabulous building that you'd found as well. I think you had a connection with the building somehow. Yes. And it was a good space. And we were very open that we were experimenting and learning and piloting and trying something out and sort of following our hunch as well.
Yeah, my recollection was that I was a participant. And I also needed to just make the connections when we had a break. And I remember coming out of it having laughed more than I can remember laughing in years. And then do you remember just before Christmas, a mutual friend of ours was trying to say, can you teach presence on Zoom? And there was that let's try out thing. And we did that hour on presence on Zoom. And I had forgotten to tell my husband that's what I was doing.
And he was, he was, downstairs with the door open and a friend was there, they were having coffee on the doorstep and I was upstairs making the most strange noises and laughing, laughing, laughing. Yeah. And I came down for my coffee and they're going, what were you doing? I was just being present. Yeah. Yeah, we did. And that is part of, I think that's not... unconnected the fact that we laughed so much. And you just do when you do improvisation. But what makes you laugh isn't wit.
It isn't smart use of words and punchlines. What makes us laugh in improv is the moment when people are really honest and they just say the first thing that comes into their head. And when it's appropriate to the situation and the relationship they're playing out, whatever character they are, we love that. There's something in us that resonates. that expresses it in laughter. So I think there's something about honesty and commitment and transparency and vulnerability all come together.
And we respond, for some reason we respond with laughter. And vulnerability is so true, isn't it? Cause I remember being terrified about that first one. And then of course we ran it again and I was a delegate again. Yeah. Because of course you didn't, we didn't learn any content. It was all experiential. And I can remember knowing what I was letting myself in for. and sitting on the tube going, here we go.
Because there's something I think that I have learned from doing those, which is it is the best day, but also you absolutely don't know what you're doing ever. And you've got to be completely in the moment. And that is exhilarating and totally terrifying.
Yeah. Yeah. There's an improv teacher of mine, John Cremer, and he, His analogy is that when you become the improviser and you step on stage or you step into the center of the circle to do your improvisation, your IQ drops by about 50 points instantly. You can no longer see the obvious things or feel the obvious things that everyone sitting around you can see and feel. They know what you need to do next. They know your next line. They're aching for you to say it.
And when you're in the center with the spotlight on you, it's much harder to find that and to be aware of what it is. And that's what presence is. And that's one of the reasons we decided to run the training, wasn't it? Which was about how do you manage freeze? And I, as we're talking and as I, I'm remembering a whole load of things that I now know that I didn't know then that I realized came from that experience.
So one of the things I talk a lot about is when you're asking a question, there's a real difference between an offering tone and a statement tone. And that either opens up the potential for the person to move into deeper learning or it stops them. And I can remember in both the sessions that we did where the clever part of us as delegates was you kind of want to say something that's witty.
But when you say something that's witty, you actually stop the process because the other person doesn't know how to respond. And you called it making an offer, didn't you, I think? Yeah, well, everything is an offer. So everything that you do or say or don't say, even a silence is an offer in improvisation that your partner can make something of. But the phrase I was thinking of, which I've borrowed from... from an improv teacher is drench yourself in your partner.
I love that phrase because if you are stuck and frozen, all you need to do is look at your partner and everything they're doing is an offer. So they could be stood there looking at you, waiting for you to speak. And you can just say, I can see you're looking at me and waiting for me to say something. That tells you what to do. They give you something and you can bounce off there. And getting out of your head will help unfreeze you.
And the easiest way to do that is to look at your partner and really see them. And then something will come. Look at your partner and really see them. And how much I think now, even more than before, that's part of how I develop people, really getting people to look. Yeah. Because we miss so much when we're not looking. Because as you say, look at them and they'll tell you what to do. Yeah. Yeah, in some non -magical way. It's just, it's not magic.
It's how we, we're so finely attuned as human beings to all the signs that other people are giving us all the time. That's how we've survived as tribes and as groups. And allowing, getting out of our own way and allowing ourselves to tap into that, whatever you call it, that's the key. Yeah. Yeah. And it's when I forget that. in my own practice as a consultant or as a coach, that I get stuck.
And then the automatic place for me to go is into my head, because I'm a thinker and I like ideas and I like clever things. So that's my go -to. And then I'm out of relationship and I'm not with them in any meaningful sense, I'm with myself. I'm not with them in any meaningful sense, I'm with myself. That's what a... presence is about isn't it being with them and not being in my head.
Yeah and in a meaningful sense so there's something meaningful happening between us as well when we're making meaning together that would that would be coaching that would be one definition. Yeah making meaning together. I can remember all sorts of interesting things that we did that you got us to do and it It really felt like getting us to loosen up and getting us into that place where we had absolutely no idea what we were going to do next. Yes, yes.
And I think over the course of doing it those couple of times, one of the ways we were doing that was by the early kind of practices and exercises that we were using, they were very much... about not being clever. So we used quite a lot that were non -verbal. If you remember those, something about mirroring people or leading. And that allows people to start improvising without even having to find any words. So you can't be clever or not clever.
You just have to act in the moment and physically act. And so I remember us sort of gradually building up the ask of the participants during the day. And... and ending with groups of four people on stage creating an entire mini soap opera that has never been broadcast before and never will be again. And maintaining two characters each in four different locations. What's an achievement for those people? And for us as humans to be able to do such a silly thing, but pull it off.
Yeah. We need more silliness in this current season, don't we? Yeah, yeah, I'm missing it now. I'm certainly missing in -person work like that. Yeah. Yeah, there's something you can do on Zoom and there's so much more you can do in a room together. So what can you do on Zoom, Stuart? Well, you can connect and you can still drench yourself in the other person. So you can watch, even with video off, you can listen. And it...
It is, if we can do that, it is still incredible how much we can relate across Zoom. Yeah, I agree. And it's a practice. I mean, improv is great because it's a practice. It's a thing you can pick up and put down. It's a skill that you can act on and develop and work on. So I think that is part of the answer to the question you were puzzling with two or three years ago. Can presence be taught? Some of it can be taught. I don't know, where are you on that question now?
I think it's that presence is very nuanced because it's something that you know when it's not there, but you can't tangibly define it. So if it's missing, you can go, my goodness, there's no presence. But actually to describe it, I think is quite tricky. I think what I experienced during those two days, because we did the same thing twice, didn't we? Was about. was enabling people to have the courage to get over themselves.
And I think one of the things that stops presence is when we get in the way. So there's too much me and not enough us. And I think that we did a good job, you did a good job, we did a good job learning together, all of us in the room, about stepping confidently into the unknown and seeing what would happen. Because one of the things that I say to coaches all the time is if you know what you're doing, you're not coaching.
Because you've got to plan and that means you're leading and there's something about the leading and following thing that matters. And that quote, that T .S. Eliot quote that says, at the still point of the turning world, neither from nor towards. And that was what we started out by thinking about that, didn't we, in relation to... to enabling people to get to that place which was neither from nor towards. So I think you can teach it and I think you can enable people to move forward.
I guess the question that comes out of that is can you teach anyone? Well, when you were talking about getting out of our own way, I remembered one or two of the people who had a psychiatric background found some of that harder. And I'm wondering if that's because of the professional distance that you have to maintain in that role. You're not a friend. You're not someone that people can come to know intimately.
So there's a lot of training, I would imagine, about how you keep a distance and how you get in the way a little bit. And to unpick some of that, if you're starting from there, unpicking some of that is harder. I would imagine that's a hypothesis to be tested. And as you say that, what it makes me think is that at the end of the day, on one level, we didn't know any more about people than we did at the beginning of the day. Yeah. And yet we knew each other deeply.
Yeah. So delegates probably couldn't name anyone else in the room and they wouldn't be able to tell somebody else's story. But they would, if you remember the one in Luton, be able to say, and those bricks. And those bricks. And they would be able to jump into the middle of a scene with anyone else in the room and know that they would be safe enough. Safe enough for it to go well or safe enough for if it fails. doesn't matter, everything's disposable is another improv phrase.
So if a scene isn't working, you just find a way to end it quickly, get off stage and let other improvisers come in and take place. And isn't that a good thing to do with questions that aren't working? Yeah, yeah, stop it. And I think what you've just described there, Stuart, is about, it's about presence and it's also about trust and it's about intimacy. And it's such a great demonstration. that you can build trust and intimacy and presence without exchanging information. that's interesting.
That's interesting, yes, because in improv, you're playing a character. That character might be close to who you are, but you're representing someone else. You're standing in for someone else. And although you're not exchanging information, you are making yourself vulnerable because you stop censoring yourself and thinking before you speak. So improv encourages you to blurt out the most obvious thing that you would say, or that character would say.
And that can be very, that can be deeply revealing about the person behind the character. But they're not sharing it directly sharing information. That's very different to other kind of trust building exercises where people might reveal something about their own history or their past or experiences. It's interesting. I hadn't thought of that before. See, this is, you say you were a delegate. And that's true. And also you had a role as my equivalent of a spirit guide on the day.
You were, we were doing the exercises and then we would stop and debrief with the group. And what you were doing was making connections to the world of coaching and making the analogy. So this is like this and helping us have a debrief and then a coaching, what's the coaching learning here? I do remember you doing that. Yeah. But that was all about trust and intimacy and coaching presence. Yeah. Actually the new one, they've called it embodies a coaching mindset.
Well, I mean, how do you teach people to do that? You do it improv. Because actually, seriously, it's about, it's about letting go. You know, that Jung quote that says, learn your theories as well as you can and put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul. Yeah. I think the thing I loved about that is that metaphorically speaking, we all came naked. So we didn't know what we were coming to do.
Our qualifications and experience were totally irrelevant except when they got in the way of us. And we just had to show up and be courageous or not and do things in the moment. And I think that often in professional conversations we feel as though we need to arm ourselves in our pockets. with all of our gadgets and gizmos and tools and knowledge and qualifications and everything else.
And on one level, they're important because they make us, they are part of who we are, but we are much more than that. And it's the human to human interaction that actually is the thing that makes the difference. And we got down to human to human interaction, didn't we? Fueled by coffee, I remember. And that's so like how I experienced my work as a consultant anyway, because I do have my theories and I have models that I bring to my work and they're part of my value.
But in the moment, in a conversation with a new client, none of those models tell me what to do. They just give me ways of thinking or they might give ways of... suggesting a range of different moves, but the move I choose in the moment to do is the one I choose to do. And then that closes off other doors and opens other doors. So in my work, I'm always improvising, but improvising doesn't come from nowhere. You improvise with stuff that's around you.
I improvise with my models, but also with the other person I'm in conversation with. I drench myself in them and they give me ideas about where we could go next. And I try one of them and see what happens. So in that sense, improv just is what we do, what I do anyway, in those moments and what we do all day. We're making everything up as we go along. We don't have scripts for anything that we do in our lives. So what value do you think the formation in improv that you've done?
brings to that moment? What's different about what you bring because you've done that? That was a multiple question, Claire. Yeah, what do you want, what would you like to drill down into of all that? Or shall I make a pick? Make a pick. Okay, I'll make a pick. Well, so one of the things I'm thinking is about everything is disposable.
So like you said with the questions earlier, if I try a line of inquiry, if I make a suggestion and it lands flat with my client, that's fine because we can try something else. It'll be okay. Not everything has to work. And the other thought that was coming was if it's a relationship, then it's not entirely up to me. It also means I'm not entirely responsible for whether this goes well or not. That they've got a part to play in it too. So if I'm meeting with a client, it's not going very well.
I'm not getting very much from them. That might be about them too, an ambivalence or an ambiguity in them that's being surfaced in the conversation that we're having. So there's a lightness. Well, it's making me think about what does it mean for it not to go well? Because one not to go well could be that we decide not to work together. And that could be the best decision we make that day. Yeah. That this isn't right. So let's not do this. Now that could be a failure.
That's a failure on my part to sell. But actually, it's a success for both of us if we're not going to be good partners. So there's something about honesty and courage and vulnerability and a bit of lightness about that's a bit less than controlling. The lightness is good, I think. The not caring too much is good. And for me, what that does is it relieves me of a tendency to take on too much responsibility on myself as if I could control.
the outcome if I was smart enough and clever enough and quick enough and experienced enough and hadn't had enough qualifications, it helps me with that perfectionist tendency that I have to always see what more I could do. But the fact it's not within my control and is jointly produced takes away some of that burden. Feels like TS Eliot's coming back, teach us to care. Yeah. Teach me to care and not to care.
Yeah. I think that's something really important about presence and stance between people. I need to care and I need to not care. Because if I care too much, I'm too close. And if I'm too close, we can't do good work together. That makes me think about if I'm too close, I'm potentially taking the work off them and bearing their burden, which is not my job to do. And you're right, in that position, I can't help them. I'm the one that needs help at that point.
And your word stance I like, and I was thinking of the word intent as well. So what's my intent going into this conversation? Is it to sell a piece of work or is it to have an exploratory conversation to see whether we could work together? And then my success is judged differently as well against my intent. So being clear what we're there to do. without letting go of our own hopes and expectations for how the conversation will go. We can't let go fully. We can hold them more lightly.
I think that's what Elliot might be saying. So I can't remember. What were the other principles of improv that we talked about? I remember you had them on circles around the room. Yeah. Yeah, there's a bunch. And one I've stolen from you. I've now added it to a circle that was there in the second workshop, which is one that just says move. Yes. So that's another, it's another answer to I'm stuck as a coach or I'm stuck as an improviser. Both the thinker and the coach could choose to move.
Yeah. Get up, take a different stance, take a different position, see things from a different angle. I think that's been always important. I think now in this world of Zoom, when we're sat here in front of a screen and, you know, I've been sat in this chair for a year now. The great news is that we keep moving the table from region to region around the country, but this chair, this computer, and actually the value of moving is so important.
You know, Stuart, when I started teaching people to use coaching in 2003, half a day was spent on teaching coaches how to manage stuckness. Right. And it was, well, I dread to think what it said in the handouts and what we taught. I can't imagine what we taught now, but actually the reality is if somebody's stuck, ask them to move. Yeah. And my amazing learning the other day, I was on a call with people from Southeast Asia.
And I'd never met them before and they wanted to know some simple stuff about coaching. So I was just sharing some really basic stuff and I said, well, probably the best way to teach you this is that I'll have a coaching conversation with somebody who would like to have some coaching. And this woman who had, she was able to speak English, but her English was quite basic, which is fine because as you know, I never ask anything complicated.
So. Anyway, she said she wanted to think about me, about this thing with me. And I said, what is it you want to think about? And she said, I feel stuck. I can't remember what she said she felt stuck on, but that was her opening sentence. And I said, can I ask you to stand up? And she looked a bit surprised and she stood up. And that was the last thing I said. She took it from there. She took it from there, five minutes. And at the end of it, she said, what did you do? That was amazing.
And I thought, actually, what I did was I asked you to stand up and then I leaned against the radiator in here and watched you do amazing work. Yeah. Moving really does work. And that's one of those things that will look like magic. Yes. To others that will look like magic. But you were recognising a pattern and responding to it and making an offer. Yeah. If that offer hadn't worked and she hadn't said anything, you'd have had another offer you could have made.
it wouldn't have mattered that it didn't work, but it did work. Yes. Yes. And I think the skill is not planning plan B. Because I think that if you, if you, if you say, is it okay for you to stand up and move and you know what you're going to do if they don't, I think somebody can sense that in you. Yeah. You've got to be kind of playing your only card, haven't you? That's right. So then, then they can say, well, show me what more have you got? What's the other offer that I could have had?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a few of those mantras that were on circles and one, I think one of the best that if you just did this, it would help your coaching and help your improv is slow down, notice more, do less. Slow down, notice more, do less. And I think that's a good fit to your 3D coaching style as well. I think that's what it's about. Slow down, notice more, do less. And I think the slowing down is don't ever have a fully formed plan.
Cause in improv, if you have a fully formed plan, it doesn't work, does it? Because you offer and then they do something else altogether. So I remember that exercise where you had to, you told us to be something, didn't you? You said be a tree and then somebody else had to come in and be something else. and then someone else came in and was something else. So you might think that you're, I'm a tree and therefore I want someone to come in as an apple.
Yeah. And they come in and they say, I'm a chainsaw. Yeah. And, and that, and so that's a really good example of an exercise that, that involves three people. So when the third person has come in, the scene is complete. Yes. And, and the most satisfying third people to join the scenes. are people who make a connection between the two other objects, the tree and the chainsaw, it's already been offered.
But people who come in who already had a plan, they'll just come in with the plan and they'll say the third thing that they had in mind. And that was - I'm washing up liquid. Yeah, because they've missed the second one. Yeah. Came in. They had a funny compliment to tree, but now there's a chainsaw and they haven't responded to the chainsaw in the scene. And that's really obvious to people outside. that they haven't responded and they've missed it because they weren't present.
So timing really matters and disposable. And noticing. Yeah. It's that net. Notice the chainsaw in the room. You would as a coach. Yeah. We'd hope you would. So what else did you have on your stickers on the wall? You've got another one that you're happy to share. Well, the most classic and best known improv mantra is yes and. And that means that means when one improvisers made an offer, the other improviser accepts that offer and doesn't try to block it or cancel it or deny it.
So one improviser says, I saw your mother the other day. And the second improviser says, what do you mean? I don't have a mother. She's been dead for years. That scene's not going anywhere now. Now it's an argument about whether someone's mother's alive or not. But the response from the second improviser has to be to accept the world that the first improviser is creating for them and to build on that world. And that doesn't, that's not the same thing as agreeing with them.
They don't have to agree, but they have to accept that for that first improviser, that's part of the world that they're living in. and go with it and build on it. And that's that connection. The connection I've just made to coaching is just that it's about the world of the thinker, that we have to come into their world and accept the world as they're seeing it. It doesn't mean we have to necessarily see it the same way.
And we might challenge, we might ask challenging questions, but when I challenge, I am at least accepting that the thinker sees it that way. for now, I'm building on their reality. As you were talking, I was thinking that that's the difference between future focused and backwards focused. Cause in your thing where you said, I saw your mother the other day and the other one goes, I don't have a mother. That's a backwards focus thing.
Whereas you're talking about building, which is about moving forwards and it's about future focus. And I think one of the things that often happens in coaching is that we go back and investigate the past. which is a backward focus thing. And actually what we need to do is to say yes. And which is what you've just said, which is actually, this is where we are now. And so what's the learning? What's the insight? What you noticing?
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Well Stuart, what a great conversation to have with you on a Friday morning. Thank you. Thank you. You've lifted me today. That's been good. My goodness. I'm not planning to do much on -site work when lockdown is lifted, but I'm really hoping that you and I can do this improv thing again, because that'd be such fun. I will be there in a shot. Yes. Yeah. I mean, what's not to like to spend a day in a room with a group of interested people laughing hard and long?
and learning something along the way. And signing it off as professional coaching. Thank you. Thank you Stuart. So if people want to talk to you about working with CEOs or improv or anything, how do they contact you? So probably my website would be the best place to check me out www .stuartread .org .uk and Stuart Reed is S -T -U -A -R -T -R -E -I -D. Brilliant. Thank you, Stuart. So I'm Claire Pedrick and I've been in conversation with Stuart Reed. Thank you, Stuart. Thanks, Claire.
Bye everybody.