You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching's virtual pub where we enjoy conversations with people who engage in the world of coaching. Welcome to The Coaching In and today I'm in conversation with Alice Sheldon. Alice has written a book which I must have said this phrase a million times. Why weren't we taught this at school? So Alice, we'll find out all about your book in a minute, but do tell us all about you. What's your story? Thank you so much Claire for having me.
So, I guess that after a career which involved a variety of things, including teaching, about 13 or 14 years ago, I came across the body of work, which is what this book is rooted in. At the time, I had an eight month old and it is the thing that has most helped me with my parenting.
But over the years of teaching it, it was true of my own experience, but also the clients that I worked with that often they would come in on session two or session three and say, my goodness, this has completely changed my world at work. For me, it's these principles that some people can find very, very helpful that could be applied in all kinds of ways. So once I had a teen and not a one -year -old, I was really ready to throw myself back, you know, full time professionally.
And that's where pulling this book together came from. And so that was just published last October. So I'm still really enjoying that. that's the work that I do when I'm not publishing my book is I go into organisations and offer trainings for organisations who want to find more compassion and more empathy and create happier working environments and need some help to do that.
How fantastic and I love the fact that you took that time to take what was inside you and pour it into a book and share it. It was a real, it was a real labour of love. Unlike some authors, Claire, I cannot say that I enjoyed almost any of the process. Writing is not my thing.
And in fact, when I read wrote the first when I wrote the first draft, my publisher, who we were talking about just before we started this call, and a couple of other people with with varying degrees of tact, told me it was completely unreadable. And so I write from the beginning, this was a collaborative enterprise, and I had a most wonderful ghostwriter writing alongside me and I had a team of people reading and editing.
And so the book that you see has the input of, you know, many, many tens of people and very directly, which has been a lovely process. How inspiring that is for people who know that they're not great at writing. Because I think there's a fantasy, isn't there, that the words that we read in the book are the words that the author wrote first and not the millions of words that ended up in the bin. Yeah. Yeah, there really is.
And I did find as I went through this book, actually, one of the things that I really discovered was that when I hear people on Radio 4 saying, you know, I had such a difficult journey, people who are famous in inverted commas, successful, you know, and they tell you about their failures. It's very easy to discount that because you know where they got to in the end. And of course, when you're going through the failures in the middle, you don't know you're going to get to the end.
So I really discovered that power of resilience in a way that I have never done before and needed a lot of support as well just to walk that journey. I think that seems to be common to many, many authors I speak to. Yeah, definitely. And that's what editors are for, I think one of the things that I've learned from writing books is that, I just say to the editor, you're better at this than I am. So I'm not really attached to what I give to you.
Yeah. So I'm not going to say, you know, you can't change that comma and you can't scrap that paragraph. I give you a sense of what I want to write and then we'll work it out together. And actually they say that's a gift because I know I've heard often that, you know, people will hide themselves away, won't they, for 10 years and write the book of their lifetime book.
And then when they present it to the publisher, it's like they're presenting it to the world and they go, well, I don't want you to change it. And the publisher goes, well, this is all very well, but actually the reader isn't going to want to read this. Yeah, that's absolutely right.
And there's a lovely sense when you describe that partnership, I guess I would describe it, that you're setting up with your editor, there's a sense for me and energy of expansiveness, Claire, whereas the sort of, you know, I recognise in myself, no, you know, you can't trace that cover. There's a constriction and a closing down, which I guess doesn't lead to the same richness of the final text. Yeah. Yeah. And that's interesting, isn't it?
Because I love the fact that your book is so much about partnership and it connects so much to the world of coaching and yet it's slightly different. Will you say a little bit more about that, Claire? Well, we talk about people feeling heard, we talk about partnership, we talk about facilitating conversations. And I loved what you wrote because that was very strongly connecting with what you wrote. And yet what you wrote was very different from what I wrote. And I love that too.
Yes. Yeah. And I actually thought, my goodness, the people, that's why I asked, you know, I said, let's talk because I thought actually our listeners are going to really want to hear a different take, which isn't exactly coaching, but is very like coaching and does the same thing and does a slightly different thing. Yeah. But it's in the same kind of mood. Yes, that's really interesting.
And actually, just as I was washing my hands just now, I remembered that one of the people who came and sought this work out early on and actually ended up endorsing the book is a supervising coach who, totally unbeknownst to me, had been using this framework, the needs understanding framework that I describe in my book in her coaching practice, and she'd adapted it.
And she she said that with certain clients, it was just another string to her bow of way, a way to frame the problem and to work through it and just having that, you know, it's another tool, I guess. in, in, in, it could be another tool in the coaching toolbox. So yeah, so I love that you found that. So for the benefit of our listeners, what is it that we weren't taught at school?
Well, well, it turns out that there is this way of understanding the world through a lens of our universal shared human needs. And if you write them out, there's a sort of a four page of them. And you can test if it's a need, because if it's something that every human being shares, it fits on that list. So that's everything from connection, belonging, food, you know, includes the physical ones, but it goes far beyond that.
And if we understand that whatever anyone is trying to do, they are seeking to meet one of those needs, then that's can be very powerful in terms of our empathy for the other person, our empathy for ourselves. If we really believe that when we're acting, that's what we're trying to do. We might regret what we've done, but we were doing it for, in inverted commas, good reason.
But also interpersonally, in terms of solving problems, if we get away from the strategies that we're fighting over to the needs underneath them, we can come up with really more helpful solutions often. Yeah. Yeah. And as you're talking, I'm thinking about values based organizations that often have conflicts. We think we believe the same thing. We think we have the same values and then we discover that we don't, but there's also something really strongly there about needs, isn't there?
That's really interesting, Claire. That's really interesting. Yeah. I haven't considered that piece before. I do know I'm finding already in this conversation that I could quite happily at every question sidetrack with you down a path which could take us to next year. yes, I'm I'm that is a very, very interesting thought on the values one. That sidetrack. Okay, cool. So I want you to I want you to tell me more about the conflict with values.
So I think that when you're working in an organization where people work and they're not particularly bothered by their values and they're not gathered around a shared set of values. When they go home at night, if there's been conflict at work, you can leave it behind.
But I think if you have gone to work in an organization because you believe that their values are the same as your values and therefore you believe that everybody else's values are the same as your values and then you discover that They're not quite. When you go home at night, the values that you have in the workplace are also values that you have in the whole of your life.
So if I make canned spaghetti, Then I make canned spaghetti and actually when I go home I'm not very bothered by what happens, you know I might be impacted by what happens at work, but it doesn't matter, whereas if I. am campaigning for justice for. Whoever exactly people are mining the metals for the cat or whatever it is. Yeah. Or people who are like me. Yeah. When I get home, I'm still me. Yeah. And therefore when there's disagreement in the workplace, it's much deeper.
Yeah. Because because you're not challenging that I think that the label should be yellow and you think the label on the spaghetti should be blue. You're actually challenging. the deepest part of what I think is really important. you know, coaches have endless values exercises, but actually I think values are the thing that we'll fight for if somebody presses our button. That's interesting.
So it's almost like they're sitting, they're these very deep things and perhaps one could reduce them even further to the layer below might be the needs sitting underneath. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But I think I think it's really interesting, isn't it? Because, you know, there've been a few things going on in politics in the last few weeks. And, and I've got unbelievably angry about one or two things. And that's when I think to myself, that's because that has pushed my values button.
And it and when it's pushed a series of values buttons all at the same time, I am then very activated. Absolutely. Yeah. And some people are activated. Some people get by that don't they? But that's when we know actually that's not some theoretical thing. That's at the heart of my being and I'm going to fight you for this one. Yeah. And I think that's what happens in organizations. But I think actually those needs and values are connected. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right.
And I think I think that's right, because I think actually it would be very difficult. We might prioritize different needs at different times. But actually the whole point of looking through this framing is that we're not going to be in disagreement over needs. So I noticed in the book that you were talking about parenting. And in the last couple of weeks on the podcast, we've talked about working with young people and working with parents has been sort of slightly touched on.
So what do parents need to hear? Don't tell us everything, because of course we want everyone to read your book, but just give us a bit of a top line. Yeah, you'd also like to finish this podcast at some point, Claire. So I get emails asking you to come back. So, one piece that I really love from this book and that parents seem to find particularly useful is the idea of fingerprint needs.
So this is the idea that each of us has somewhere between around two to five needs that are particularly important to them. And I'll give you the example that I use at the beginning of the book, because I do use a parenting example to kick it off. And I talk about how I am trying to shoehorn my daughter aged, I don't know how she is six or something, out the door to go to the cafe after a morning of inside play and me desperate to get out and have some connection and so on.
And there is a level of, again, probably many parents would recognise there's a level of anger that comes up, which I describe as murderous rage, in my case, just overpowering red mist anger, that seems totally disproportionate to the situation in hand, which is that my daughter doesn't want to go to the cafe completely normal for whatever, but I lose after trying my varying, you know, parenting techniques, I lose my
rag and it was really, really eye opening for me to understand that through needs to unpick that and to say, you know what, these situations where this keeps happening have something in common. And what I realized was that there was the same need, and in my case, it was a need to matter being triggered, that unreasonable as it was, again, in inverted commas, I felt like I didn't matter. my, you know, it's all about my daughter.
And the reason that that is particularly significant is that in my family of origin, I had the sense that I didn't matter quite regardless of what my parents did or didn't do. But my experience was that my needs didn't matter. So when in adult life, I meet that situation, and it can be in a work meeting, it can be in the parenting situation I've just described, it can be with a friend. Like you were talking just now about your values. that button for me is hot wired.
So it's not that I then want to try to make my daughter make me matter, but if I know what's going on, then I can take much better care of myself. And that's what I would really say is that in parenting, the more tools we have to take care of ourselves, be gentle with ourselves, understand, because I could easily beat myself up when I shout at my daughter in that situation, but actually we can. more effectively change if we meet ourselves with compassion and then make shifts to what we're doing.
And that applies whether you're parenting a three year old, a 10 year old or an 18 year old actually. Yes, what are the needs that are causing us to be activated or it goes back to what we were talking about, wasn't it about pressing our buttons? Yes, and is there any echo of that in our lives, usually in our original care receiving situation? Sometimes it's older, sometimes there's trauma that happens, but often that's a helpful link. Yeah. So are you trained in family constellations?
Cause you're talking about a family of origin and the behind you stuff. I'm not Claire. I mean, I would say I have a deep understanding of psychotherapy, but no, I'm not trained and, and I wouldn't, you know, take people on that depth of healing journey. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it influences massively how I practice. yeah. And actually constellations aren't only used in therapy. Is that right? Yeah. So constellations are also used in coaching where you take a glance back.
So if therapy is traveling back. So my friend, Vanessa Wynn Stanley talks about therapy means that you and the therapist travel back through your journey and have a much deeper look at it over time. Yep. But in coaching, we might just glance back. And the family of origin stuff is an interesting thing to glance at. And it really is glancing in a quite short amount of time, 20 minutes, half an hour.
And not spending too much time because if you spend too much time, actually, need to go through, you need to visit it in a different way. So it's like looking at a photograph or kind of jumping into a virtual reality and looking. I really like that. I really like that because it sounds like exactly what I do. And I absolutely understand that sort of container need when you're when you're doing a deeper dive. So again, another note to self to to read up on that.
Well, I was talking I was I talking to Vanessa last week, actually. And and it suddenly made me think about about it as being I'm a bit of an addict of makeover shows. And there've been a couple of house shows on the BBC in the UK, where they virtual reality your house as it can be, and then you drop in and one of them you can actually walk around it, the other one you just stand and look at it.
But you can virtual reality your family system in a constellation that doesn't expose you to actually unzipping everything, but it's safe enough to have a little look. Very good, very good. Well, that's excellent. My, as I say, my bedtime reading list is getting longer, which is good. Good. Coaching Constellations by John Whittington. Great. On the list. And then there's a constellations teacher in Salisbury called Lynne Stoney, who does family constellations in that kind of style.
Okay. So she's not a therapist. Okay. And Vanessa is also a family constellations practitioner, Vanessa Wyn Stanley. there's, so there are different ways of looking at it, but it, but it's interesting, isn't it? Cause we are impacted by what's happened. And I guess in coaching, the stance I like to take is to say, so that's behind us, so how do we move forward? So it's recognising without really turning back and walking backwards.
Yes. It's acknowledging what is behind us rather than digging up what's behind us. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And there is a, I think it's very, it's very possible without going into the depths of stuff to adopt. often sort of imagine adopting the stance of a very loving parent or friend towards myself. know, when this stuff is coming up, there is a holding that can be given again, you know, without the sort of deep dive stuff.
I think it's, I think for many of us, know, we do ourselves a disservice if we don't have some mechanism for taking account of the impact the past is having in the present. Because if it plays out unconsciously, then we're a bit stuffed. Whereas if we can recognise it and just take loving, good care of it, and as you say, move forwards. In my experience, we're likely to be able to journey whereas without doing that, we can get stuck and not know why. Absolutely.
Yeah, there's so much to learn, there? And self -awareness also has a huge impact on our capacity to engage at work. Yeah, that's absolutely right. And I think that's why things like needs understanding and other frameworks are helpful just because they give a very concrete way and hopefully a non -overwhelming way of making sense of of things. And I think that's the thing I most enjoy when I look back at the book that I've created is what actually there are many, many things I enjoy.
But one of the things I enjoy is that finished it. Yes. I finished it. I am. But also just that the structure, the structure is really that we can really be intellectually robust as well as emotionally and psychologically and spiritually robust. Yeah. Wow. So What kind of impact is this having in organisations, Alice? Well, so I having worked with parents for 10 ish years, my organisational work is in its relative infancy.
What I'm seeing is that what I've completely nailed and I'm loving is the impact that training is having on the people who I am working with. And what is lovely about this kind of work, and I imagine you find it all the time with coaching as well, is that people who are in an organisation which buys me in to come and work with their people, is that they go... they go away feeling like they've sort of had a party bag because it's something they can take home with them and use.
So it's something of real value, unlike, you know, often workplace training, it needs to be very focused on the job in hand and might not be so widely applicable. so that's very, very pleasing and happy. And I'm enjoying that my growth edge, I think it's all about how to make systems change in organizations.
And I'm looking forward to that because I've just you know, had the first couple of organisations who are saying, right, you know, now we want to work out how to take this way of seeing the world and, and make it organisation wide. And I've got no clue how to do that. So it's going to be a, it's going to be a partner, another partnership and a good, a good, a good learning and yeah, looking forward to seeing what, what that creates. And you'll work it out together. Exactly.
So Some of this comes from nonviolent communication. Yeah. So I'm just interested around that and conflict. Yeah. So this way of working in conflict, what, what does that look like? Yeah, I mean, So if we just take it at the very kind of simplest level of mediating a conflict between two people, I mean, it can be that they self -mediate, but let's imagine for a minute that they're not self -mediating. So you've got a conflict that you're trying to mediate.
Essentially what it looks like is inviting those people to look at the situation through as always, their needs glasses, the lens of needs and understand what's going on at that level. you know, time and again, what can happen when people do that, once people have seen themselves, there's then a much more, there's much more capacity to walk over and understand what the other person is seeing and understanding.
It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to end up in agreement But it might well be that you end up with a real understanding of where the other person is coming from and a resolution that you can both embrace going forwards. I really remember, I remember working in a classroom again, most of my training state has been in that environment. And I was in a school working with some 10 year old kids and we got them to play, they'd had a conflict.
of them with some boy in the supermarket and they had all these, you know, things to say about this boy and he'd been, you know, chucking stuff at them and really, you know, they were feeling on the outside full of bravado but actually inside quite scared. And so we got half the class to empathise with the boy as they imagined him and the other half to empathise with these two boys and then to role play it out.
And it was quite quite astonishing how quickly those two boys, once they were heard and seen for their fear, and actually, you know, they were really wanting to behave in a loving and compassionate way, and they didn't know how to, and they were frightened of breaking rules. And once they'd been seen, it was so speedy for them to say, I think the other boy just needed friends. You know, before the rest of the class had done it, it was like, as soon as that's settled.
And that's what you see in adult conflicts as well. And in various sort of situations, it's that being seen that then allows a sort of capacity, if you like, to step forward and understand the other. There's a man called Maurice Miterlink, he was a Belgian about a hundred years ago. And he said, well, he's said to have said, It's far more important that, because you never know do you, it's far more important that our lives be perceived than that they be transformed.
For once they have been perceived, they will transform themselves of their own accord. And that's what you've just described. Yeah, it is Claire. That is so impressive though that you have that quote at your fingertips. Is that one that means something to you or are you someone who is able to just access things like that? If I use them all the time. Yeah. They're at my, they're at my fingertips. Yeah. If I don't use them all the time, I have to read them.
Yeah. Okay. But that, that's probably the quote that most informs the way that I work and the way that we work in our, 3d coaching. Okay. And therefore, of course, you notice when people are describing something that's similar to what you do, don't you? Yeah, that's right. That's that resonance. yeah. yeah, that sounds right. Yeah. But what's a really quick way of enabling them to see something differently? Those boys.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how, you know, what what possibility there is, what possibility there is with that. And how often the traditional way of managing something like that is to tell them what they should have done. But, if you look through the adult lens of what, what I know in coaching is that I can't make meaning for someone else. They have to make meaning for themselves.
So, you know, so often I think in lots of interventions, people do a much more sophisticated version, but I love the idea that you're talking about 10 year old boys, cause it makes, cause you can see that, that it's happening everywhere, which is to say, you really should do this. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that sometimes it's because, certainly thinking of my 10 year old boys in schools, it's often just because there isn't the resource there.
There isn't the time there to stop for long enough to have an alternative really. But I think it's I can't remember what I was going to say, Claire. it'll come back if it's important. Yeah. So how fascinating. So which bit of the world do you want to change? that's a great question. In fact, I'm just applying for the book is going in for its first award. And I just wrote a very grandiose piece, which someone has told me I need to take out which is about changing the world.
think that's, I think it's right, needs to come out. But you can tell me and you can tell our listeners now and then take it out of the paper. My name is about changing the whole world. So that's why I'm particularly enjoying your question. I mean, I, know, for me, I am the thing that I really love is the thing that I really love is getting people excited about these ideas and quickly conveying. tools that will, you know, that can actually start to make a change really, really quickly.
And of course there are depths that you can go to.
But when people ask me who I would most like to read the book, it is always people in power because, you know, it doesn't matter if they're in power within their family system or their community or, you know, UK politics or whoever it is, but those are the people that I'm really particularly interested in because, yeah, I just want, I just want people to I want people to have the practical tools for a compassionate world view that doesn't require them.
Because I think so often people think that being compassionate is about giving up their views. Whereas actually it's totally not that. But it is being able to stand very firmly in our view and at the same time be willing to be open to someone else's. So I think our leaders could do with a bit of a dose of that really. I agree. So I could talk to you forever. I'll definitely have to have you back on Alice. How do people find your book?
So my website is needs -understanding .com and there's a page on there with the book on it. I'm having a lovely time challenging myself to get to a hundred Amazon reviews. So for those people who use Amazon and who would like to the book, that would be really super lovely. I would like to encourage people who've read the book to review Alice's book because getting to 100 I picked up from your LinkedIn feed and now I'm trying to get to 100 on my book. That's really great.
Well, we're we're we're at about 69 or 70. So just a little way to go. I'm on 62. You can have a collaborative competition in some way. Great. they can contact you through the website. Contact me through the website is the easiest. Yeah. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for your company on this podcast. It's been an utter delight, Claire. Thank you so much for having me. So I'm Claire Pedrick and I've been talking to Alice Sheldon about her book, Why Weren't We Taught This at School?
So thank you, Alice. Bye bye. Bye. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today, we'd love you to share the podcast with a friend or leave a comment on social media. And if you'd like to become a regular at The Coaching In, you can subscribe on Podbean and all major podcast channels. We look forward to welcoming you next time. You've been listening to The Coaching In, 3D Coaching's virtual pub. For more information, check out 3dcoaching .com.