This is The Coaching Inn, a podcast from 3D Coaching. Welcome to 3D's virtual pub, The Coaching Inn. I'm Claire Pedrick and today my companions are Barbara McNish and Sandra Thompson. Together with John Oliver, Astrid McElwain and Ellie Clack, they emailed info at 3Dcoaching.com with a question. And here's the question. Since completing the Transforming Conversations training earlier this year, A group of us have continued to practice together on Thursdays once a month.
We've re -practiced all sorts of the tools you introduced us to on the course. And in October's session, we tried out matching for rapport and mismatching for change. We had a good laugh and discovered some great truths, but felt that we would really benefit from another go and if possible, a demo showing us how it's done. So I said, come to the coaching in and let's talk. So Barbara and Sandra, welcome. Thank you. Looking forward to this. Me too.
So tell us a bit about yourselves and about your questions. So tell us about yourselves first. Barbara, you start alphabetical order and all that. Great. Well, yes, I'm Barbara. I'm a coach and mediator and trainer and run my own business part time and have two kids that I'm partly homeschooling as well. and really have learnt so much from doing the training with 3D coaching and this practice group has been fantastic. Brilliant. Thank you, Barbara. And Sandra, what about you? Thank you, Claire.
Delighted to be here, by the way. I'm not mainly a coach, although I do do some coaching. I'm actually an accountant. How does an accountant end up doing coaching? But I think a lot of the tools and the skills you taught us, I'm finding very useful in all kinds of conversations, not whether they be labeled coaching or labeled something else. I found it really helpful course. It's like all kinds of things just fell into place and I thought, now I get it.
Fantastic. So I want to know all about your practice group. Well, I think that we got such a sense of camaraderie as we were going through transforming conversations together that most of the group wanted to continue in some way. So there were about 12 of us that continued together. And we've met more or less every month. I think we've met maybe five or six times. I haven't got the exact numbers to hand. About once a month since February when we finished.
And we've... been pretty good at being disciplined about doing coaching and spending time, but we've also taken some time to discuss our questions, to share challenges, a different context that we're all using this wonderful material in. And then we also decided we'd use your postcards as sort of inspiration to kind of pick one to work from each week, just to kind of push ourselves to grow. So we've looked at various of the themes that have come up there.
and you got to the one with the leaves about match for rapport and mismatch for change. Exactly. It's great to hear you're still practicing because actually we've had an idea on the boil for ages, which we're just going to publicize, which is for anyone who's done the transforming conversations training. We're going to have drop in practice so that you've got a try. Clearly, but not everyone has a tribe. And some people are going, well, I'm not sure where to practice.
So I'll put in the program notes how people can access that. And it's just for people who've done our training. And the reason for that is because we train you to work so simply and because we train you to shape a conversation in a way that where partnership is really present. it's fair on all the people in the room that they've been formed in the same way.
So we have other practice places, but that one, which we're not present at, we just open the door and let you in and let people get on with it, is just for, yes, the graduates of the Transforming Conversations training. I'll say, Claire, I think that's a fantastic idea. And I think apart from just our sessions being great times with great people, the opportunity to kind of practice in a safe space and with people who understand what you're doing.
I think I've grown so much more in those sessions. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it just keeps you fresh as well. I always go away having learned something with a new insight and new thinking. That's been really good. Good. And I trust it's all simpler. Absolutely. Just checking. Well, we do like to complicate things, don't we? Yeah, yeah, we do, don't we? Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry, it just made me think about something. So match for rapport and mismatch for change. What do you know?
And what were the great truths you discovered? And what are your questions? Do you want to go first, Sandra? Yeah, go for it, Barbara. So I think. It was actually another member of the group that suggested we try this and she'd been thinking about it and looking into it. I think you've done a session that she'd gone to, which included some thinking about it. But it's interesting because I don't think we practiced it, correct me if I'm wrong, on the Transforming Conversations course.
And I think when we came to practice it, we understood why. Because it's not something you, it felt like the most unnatural thing we'd ever tried to do. particularly the mismatching for change. And so I think our questions were, how do we know if we're doing this? And do you have to be conscious of it? And if you're conscious of it, does that make it manipulative?
And if you're, so we sort of, how do we put this tool in the right place in the toolbox was sort of the questions that were coming to mind for me around this one. Do you want to add anything, Sandra? I think I very much agree. It feels so unnatural. It's like trying to fold your arms the wrong way. I just find it so much easier to kind of be the rapport, the matching, the empathy.
And I think when we practiced it, and I've tried it since in other conversations, I've realized it can be enormously powerful. But perhaps because of that, you need to be a bit careful. how you use it. So I wouldn't mind a conversation that explores that a bit. Okay. So I want to start by saying that you use it unconsciously in your normal everyday life.
So if somebody is shouting at you and ranting, either you choose to fight back, in which case you'll probably shout and rant, but most likely, particularly in a professional context, you're likely to come back with a different tone and a different pace. So they go, and you go, shall we sit down and have a cup of tea and talk about it? So what you're doing there is you're mismatching.
So, so my learning about matching and how matching isn't always useful was that I was invited to go and benchmarks and coaches for their credential. And they were practicing in small groups like you've been in your small group. And one of them brought the subject about being stuck about something. And she said, of course, I only remember the bit that said I'm stuck. But I think the coach said something like, you know, what would you like to think about? And she said, I'm stuck.
And the coach went stuck. And she said, yeah, I'm really stuck, really, really, really stuck. Stuckness. Tell me about your stuckness. So she's going, well, I'm very, very stuck. And as I was watching, they were really still. They were singing from the same note and they were using the same word. And they got stucker and stucker and stucker. And eventually the coach turned to me and she said, She said, sorry, it still makes me smile. She said, we're stuck.
And I thought, yeah, because you've glued yourselves to the subject and to each other by so connecting that you've just, you just can't do anything about it. So she said, I don't know what to do. And I said, well, try moving. And of course, I'm not breaking any confidentiality because I don't know who it was now. And also, I can't remember what their thing was they were talking about because of course, that's never the bit you remember.
But what I do remember is that we were in a hotel that had a kind of a quadrangle. So they started walking and I was meant to be observing and somebody else was also meant to be observing. And she said, we need to follow them. And I said, no, that will be weird. They're walking around this quadrangle in this hotel. And I said, we will be able to notice the quality of the coaching by standing where we are.
And you could see that the person who brought the thing to think about had unlocked because what she'd done was she'd mismatched. So a change of tone, a change of speed, a change of position had changed everything. And she didn't actually say anything. It was the mismatching that unlocked the thing. So that's an example of deliberately doing it. And then we unintentionally do it or unconsciously do it when we come back at somebody in a different tone or you say to somebody, let's sit down.
You seem very agitated. Shall we sit down? So you'll be doing it naturally. But I think that's... The way I like to describe it now, because I've been thinking a lot about the musicality of coaching and the flow and the tone and all those things, it's like resonance and dissonance. And if you're resonant, if you play in the same key at the same speed for the same length of time as the other person, you get into kind of harmony with them.
but dissonance can make a change, but you've got to be careful about the volume of your dissonance and how long you do it for. So if you think about music, you can be listening to a song and then you can play one dissonant note and then the person could choose to go with it and change the key or they can choose to go back to what they were doing before. But if you play your dissonant note for too long, you've actually abandoned that tune now you're playing your own tune.
And that's, I think what I'm hearing your fear is. I think that totally hits on that fear of manipulation, but that, you know, that sense of it being a, I love your dance analogy as well of sort of finding that space where you are offering something, but. always with that responsibility in the middle, always in partnership. And so you can be taken or left. You're not directing, you're not pushing.
Yeah. I love the idea of the musicality of coaching, which is something that I've been thinking about a lot as well, since I went to a seminar of yours and you mentioned it. And it's strange, I have a daughter -in -law who's studying music therapy. So I thought I'd find out a bit about music therapy. And I think they had, in some ways it's so parallel to coaching and the idea that you are creating music together. and that can be incredibly liberating for the other person.
You're not really conducting or leading. Sometimes one will lead, sometimes the other, but really you are creating what's a wonderful creative piece of music together. I just love that analogy. And I think I recognize what you say. Sometimes that dissonant note is almost like an invitation to change key. But also I'm very wary of doing too much for too long. because it feels like I'm going off in my own direction, I'm not in there, I'm not with the thinkers conversation anymore.
Does that make sense? Invitation. Yeah. That's the invitation or the offer that needs to be our style, our stance, the way we do the thing. So for example, somebody says a lot of words. And then you come back with one word as a question. That's mismatching. Say they go, and you go, and? That's an example of mismatching. So there are so many examples and you can play around with your pace and your tone and your position.
So one of the issues about COVID, is that many people have spent many months sitting in the same chair, in the same rectangle, with the same things around them, looking at the same people with the same backgrounds. So another way of mismatching is to invite somebody to move or to switch off their screen or to walk and talk or to do something or to move a little bit. But I think we can get stuck when we get still, we kind of freeze into the same frame as somebody else.
And you kind of get more and more focused and actually you get so very close that you can't see a thing. So the mismatching gets a little bit of distance as well. I love the idea of moving itself can be a mismatch because you're getting out of that same chair and that same screen. Yes. And I've found that moving physically seems to move people's thinking on. It's true to me as well. If I have a difficult issue, I may well just go for a walk. And that's mismatching. Isn't it?
That's doing something different. It's mismatching. So Barbara, what are you thinking? I am thinking that I love how connected to a lot, like it feels very connected to many of the other principles. So that sense of being connected to moving, connected to thinking, asking questions from a different place. And I think where I went was actually how naturally, I sort of thought that I match very naturally. I can match for rapport. That I don't think is too much of a problem.
What I thought I had a problem with was mismatching for change or contrasting for change. But actually, I think I do it all the time. And the more I've thought about those micro ways that you can mismatch, the more it's felt, actually, this is really natural. And I think one does it instinctively. without even recognising it. So that led me on to the thinking about the conscious competence moving towards unconscious competence.
And that's perhaps sometimes your starting point, there is unconscious competence, but you have to become conscious of it, which makes you feel self -conscious for a little while. But then you can move back into that unconscious competence, but with a better sense of skill. and actually being able to pull it out when you need it. Let me give you another example.
So we all make noises to encourage, it sounds so weird, but we all make noises to encourage somebody to keep talking and to demonstrate that we're listening. So often that noise is a low noise. But what happens is if the person that you're talking to has an insight and doesn't notice it, and you say, which is the same tone. You're not acknowledging the thing. So you can mismatch the tone then and you go up. And they go, yeah, I just understood something I didn't understand before.
So it's about having a range of, so it might be a huge thing, but I think, I hope that what we're exploring in this conversation is it can also be a tiny thing. Yes, that's helpful. I think there's a whole book to be written on noises. I really do. Because noises can be very controlling and they can be very liberating and it depends how we use them. Do you think there's a role for humor?
The reason I ask, I was in conversation with someone who'd been putting off something they needed to do and finding every conceivable reason why they wouldn't do this, which culminated in the measuring the pH of the soil in their garden so they could grow carrots. And I just started laughing at this point. And... I don't know, I sense that was a kind of a turning point in the conversation. I think there's a huge place for humour.
Because what I heard, as you said that, and I'm hoping Barbara and our listeners also heard that, was that you were laughing with them. Yes. Yes, very much. That's beautiful. And that's a mismatch, isn't it? Because it unlocks something to move on. So we don't want to kind of stay in a zone. And you can stay so easily in the talking zone or the moaning zone or the lamenting zone or the 20 million ideas zone.
So, I mean, that makes me think, you know, your person comes up and they go, well, I could do this and I could do this and I could do this and I could do this and I could do this. And. Again, that's a mismatch. So the repertoire is huge. And I think the potential for using it all over the place is enormous. And we all use it subconsciously all the time. And we don't know.
And I think one of the things I love about transforming conversations is I don't think we teach you anything that you don't know somewhere deep in your soul and haven't used once or twice or many times in your life. It's just that you don't know you're using it. And what we're trying to say is let's focus on this.
Because this thing that you use sometimes, but not all the time, let's remember that you can use it more because now you know you've got it, you can use it intentionally and not just accidentally. like the muscle memory in a dance again, isn't it? Any of us could dance, but we're not necessarily good to dance with until we learn what order to put our movements in so that we're working well with our partner.
And I think that that's what's so helpful about this, that it's sort of pulling things up so that you can pick them and see what needs to take place at each point in the dance. Yeah. And going back to what you said earlier about moving to unconscious competence is that you need to try it out. And then it will become unconsciously competent. And then you will be able to do it more flexibly. I think there's always an element of self -consciousness, isn't there, on the journey?
Yes. And it's so uncomfortable. But don't you think when it's uncomfortable... you're probably learning something quite valuable. Yes, probably. We had a beautiful illustration though of this. For me, it was very powerful when we were practicing because it was actually Sandra who coached me in that moment. And we decided for whatever reason that we were going to only give ourselves five minutes to try this out. And so we split into two groups.
The other group very sensibly described decided to bring very lightweight things to that five minute conversation. I, however, brought sort of the whole mess of my life to this five minute moment. But I have to say it was been one of the most transformational coaching conversations that I've had in the last six months. It just was amazing because by the end of it, Sandra had got me from a stuck place to finding one short phrase that I could use every day.
And she made me practice it or helped me practice it. Invited you to practice. Invited me to practice it. And she did it with me and she was moving, she was dynamic. And she invited me to sort of grab it with more conviction. By the end of it, I felt different and I've used it ever since. So just in those five minutes, just using this tool consciously, even though it felt uncomfortable in some ways, it made a huge difference. Yeah. Yeah, because five minutes is plenty of time, isn't it?
Yes, I'm constantly astounded how much you can do in five minutes. Yeah. When you're positive about the time, right? Yes. I guess back to what Barbara said about feeling incompetent, because it felt so unnatural to me. Yeah. And it was not the way I normally would have had a conversation, but I could see it just worked for Barbara in that circumstance.
Yeah. And there's another little nugget there, isn't there Sandra, that you've just described, which is actually sometimes we need to do something that's going to work for the other person when it may not be personally our preference. I'm just thinking about that Einstein quote that said, you can't solve a problem in the frame in which it was created. I think you also can't solve a problem in the chair in which somebody sat for the last 24 hours worrying about it.
And yeah, so moving is another version of mismatching, isn't it? So moving from still to movement, but it is about permission. It's about invitation and it's about not enormous. Yes. And we were over -exaggerating in our practice, which now that we've recognized how naturally we do actually mismatch sometimes, we can scale it down. But it was actually really helpful to see that. exaggeration.
And I think the other piece that I felt in that is, even in that context, it was fine, because we really trusted each other. So there was already that rapport, out of which we could dare to try this. And they call that pushing the envelope, don't they? I mean, it looks like you went to the extreme practice lengths, but then you can come back from that to find them a middle way with the people that you work with normally. Sounds amazing.
So what are the big insights that you've had so far in this conversation? I think it's that it's the little things can make a powerful difference. And I think for me it's perhaps not being afraid to try something that feels unnatural if you're genuinely doing it in service of the other. Yeah. and the accountant can have somebody prancing and dancing around. That's great. It's amazing.
I think the comment that Barbara made about already having the relationship and the rapport that we've built over a number of months, I think is really, to me, is really key. And that's another thing about trust though, isn't it? Because sometimes people come to us for coaching conversations and they trust the process or they trust what they've heard about us. And the trust is actually quite high even from the very beginning of the very first conversation.
Whereas other people might be much more cautious about the process and then we have to be much more careful about doing weird things. Because what we're talking about here really is including in your range of conversation, some things that are not conventionally used in conversations. So it's not conventional to suddenly say to somebody halfway through a conversation at work, would you like to stand up? But equally, we know that often in coaching that works really well. Shall we walk?
So it's toleration of oddness. And it's so true because many of the people I have conversations with, they are used to sitting in the chair staring at a screen and talking. And some of the things that sometimes unlock not sitting in the chair, turning the screen off and perhaps not talking, doing what you call changing the medium, you know, using objects or pictures or silence. Yeah. So silence is another way of mismatching, isn't it?
So if somebody's talking a lot, to be silent is an opposite thing. but not for too long. Yes. And not in a way that makes them uncomfortable. Yeah, I just saw your face there. Not in a way that makes them feel uncomfortable. You don't have to outstair them. Or that just enables them to keep talking. Yeah. So when you go back to your group, What are they going to say? I wish you talked about this. I can't answer for them, that's the problem. That's true.
I think... I think they pleased with some of what we've talked about and the different ways. I think that's it. The different ways that you can mismatch for change. It's been really helpful to talk about those and to kind of pull out quite a few of them because there's so many different ways. And I think we haven't really thought about all of, well, couldn't think about all of the ways, there's too many, but you know, to think how broad it can be.
I think I. I totally agree with that, but also how small it can be, because we practiced it in an exaggerated form, but actually it doesn't need to be that big. Hmm, totally. Maybe one thing they might ask, or I might have asked is, if you were advising a group in how to practice this, what would you suggest?
I would suggest that next time you, when you are observing and noticing in your small groups, that you notice or observe where somebody could have mismatched or matched, probably mismatched, because that's when you'll notice the opportunity, which you might not have noticed when you were in the coaching chair or in the thinking chair. And the other thing to do is to tweak your feedback. You might do this already around the around the thing that you're practicing.
So actually, the one thing that you did well about matching was this. And the one thing that you could develop about matching is this. And the one thing that you did well about mismatching was that. And the one thing you could develop about mismatching is the other. So really notice when you're in the noticing chair where it could have been used.
So for the benefit of our listeners, what we've realized over the years is that when you train people to ask questions, we often don't give people enough time to learn how to observe and to listen to what comes back. So in 3Ds practice, we have somebody who's noticing, which is basically where you learn how to do the coming back stuff so that eventually when you're in the coaching chair, you can integrate offering and knowing what to do with what comes back to you.
And if you want to know more about that, do come on one of our practicums, which is eight hours of noticing or seven and a half hours of noticing and half an hour of coaching. Well, so Claire, have you had any new learnings or insights from our conversation? That's such a good question. I have. And I wrote it down. It was something about the musicality. And it was something about not doing it for too long. because dissonance becomes really horrible if it feels imposed.
And I'm really struck by your words, Sandra, about invitation. So I talk a lot about offering, but offer is me to you. Whereas invitation is me inviting you to come back, isn't it? And that's not the same as offer. And that is going to show up, Sandra. And you need to know that came from you. Thank you very much. Thank you for spotting the insight I had probably missed. I think that's an absolute gem.
I think the other powerful thing about invitation is the person can say, well, it's not quite this, but it's that. Yeah. Because an invitation asks for a response, whereas an offer doesn't. So the invitation is the next step. my goodness, I need to go and ponder deeply. Wow. Well, thank you, Sandra and Barbara for joining us at the Coaching In today. It's been really lovely to have you.
If people want to get in touch with you about the coaching that you're doing, how do they get in touch, Sandra? How do they contact you? Best way is on LinkedIn. You'll find me Sandra Thompson on LinkedIn if you search for me. Brilliant. And I'll put that in the program notes. And Barbara? I'm also on LinkedIn, Barbara and MacNish. And email, barbara at triquesta teams .com. Fantastic. Thank you very much. Wonderful conversation. It's been just such pleasure.
So listeners, if you have a question about an aspect of coaching where you'd like to dig deeper, let's talk at the virtual pub. So email us on info at 3dcoaching .com. Because thinking about this together out loud like we have today will enable other coaches to learn and to make their own meaning. Thank you. Bye bye. Thank you. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today, please share the podcast with a friend who might also be interested.
And if you'd like to become one of our regulars at The Coaching In, you can subscribe at Podbean or on iTunes. We look forward to meeting you on the next podcast. You've been listening to The Coaching Inn. Find out more about us at www .3dcoaching .com.