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, I'm Claire Pedrick and today I'm in conversation with Stephen Jenkins and Julia Hill. Stephen put a really interesting post on LinkedIn about really wanting people to come to conversations to think and it made me think a lot about do people come to the conversation with an expectation that they'll be doing some good work.
And I love the fact that Stephen picked up the word thinker. And Stephen, thank you for the shout out in your post. That was really lovely. So welcome to the Coaching In. So Stephen, tell us a little bit about you and your journey and then I'll ask you, Julia, to introduce yourself. Yes, I came to coaching entirely by accident. I have been working over 40 years. I started my corporate life at Mars in selling and marketing.
And then I ran an advertising agency for 15 years and then moved into consultancy advising people who wanting to raise funds, who were struggling to get through glass ceilings. So I guess that was a type of coaching. Didn't see it in that way.
And then two and a half years ago, the gentleman who acted for me when I sold my agency to an international advertising group, who's become a sort of serial chairman, asked me to come in and act as a role model for one of the senior managers in the group, which I did. And within three months, I was coaching 25 people. I'd never done that before. I absolutely loved it.
And at my stage in life, I'm... at this crossroads where I've really struggled with the idea of retirement, really struggled with it, it just doesn't fit me at all. And here I was, the opportunity to use my 40 odd years of experience in sales marketing to help people in a completely non -competitive environment and getting a massive buzz when people got the light bulb moment.
Wow. thought about that or I did what you said what we were talking about last week and do you know what this has happened or do you know I got my promotion last week thank you so much that means so much and so it's it's come late to me completely not by design but I did actually take the PC EC course at Henley. so that I could get some kind of structure, which was extremely valuable. So that's me. And the curiosity about thinking, Stephen? Well, I have to say, Claire, that's down to you.
thank you. No, entirely down to you. But then I reread Nancy Klein and she talks a lot about the thinker. And I suppose as a recent graduate of Henley, you come out with your tool kit and your grown model and Stokers, of course, which was care of yours truly, or yours truly. And when I read your book after listening to the Henley... webinar, I thought this makes a lot of sense. To go into a coaching session without an agenda is quite frightening, but also very liberating.
And if you can just shut up and let someone talk and reveal their innermost thinking, it's unbelievable. And I have found that... probably the biggest aha moment since joining the Henley course. Wow. Because it is honestly, I mean, there's a lot of things about it that matter to me. And one is, if I go into a conversation and do all the work, why ever would the other person do any?
Yeah. And that's where the whole concept of what's the least that I need to do in service of them being able to do some good thinking came from. Well, thank you, Stephen. Julia, you come from a completely different space. Tell us your story.
Yeah, so like many people, I suspect possibly like many women, I've had a weird range of jobs ranging from stately home management to secondary school teaching, long period at home with kids, then a period working in museums, got into volunteer management, then got into working. in volunteer management with areas of high multiple deprivation index.
So, and as on part of that journey, I did the transforming conversations course and I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember when I did it, but it might even be as much as 10 years ago. I think you're right. I know I can remember where it was and we could use that venue for a long time. Yeah, so it might have been as much as, anyway, there were all sorts of things about. doing that transforming conversations course that were a revelation to me.
But one of the most shocking for me that has been almost the most useful thing is realizing how absolutely hopeless I was as a trained secondary school teacher at asking open questions. I thought I was really good at questions because I used to check whether people had been listening to me by asking me questions.
And it was only when I did the transforming conversations course that I thought, my goodness, I've spent all this time asking lots of closed questions and I find it really hard to shift my head into asking open questions. But that has really stayed with me ever since. And at the moment I'm working in a church context in Somerset and I do a lot of work with our team on helping churches who are in periods of transition. So they need to be in a thinking space.
It might be because they've got a vacancy or it might be because they want to refresh their vision. might be conflict, it might be all sorts of things. And in that situation, what we found, apart from the Stoker stuff, which I also come back to endlessly, is the power of an open question that allows the space for people then to think is amazing. But it's a bit of a high wire act, isn't it?
Because if you go into a meeting with a group of people and you ask an open question, it doesn't look as if you're doing any work, which if you're being paid can make you feel a bit inadequate. But in my experience, it's where the transformation happens because you're doing all the things that you talked about in the transforming conversations course, which is you're not taking the responsibility away from people.
You're creating a framework in which together we can do the work that will do the work that they need to do. So I've just, it's very wonderful to have done that course so long ago and to still be reaping, I think almost increasingly the benefits of it actually. So yeah, trying to go into meetings, particularly with groups. Most of my work is with groups and restraining myself from seeming impressive, which, you know, it's always a trap, isn't it?
Doing less, but doing it more thoughtfully, creating the space for other people to do the thinking they need to do, and then trusting that something good will come from it. And that's about not being in control completely, isn't it? Which is a bit scary. Yes. And one of the interesting things we've done is we've developed a set of questions to use with churches. And I found it very interesting because we developed them, we could totally see the sense of them.
But of course they require facilitation. And many leaders are... used to leading, they might even be used to chairing meetings, they're probably good at directing people, they're not always gifted facilitators and actually having to name to people that if you want to use these effectively in your context, it's asking for facilitation, not direction. And that is as much about tone as it is about facilitation, I think. Because you can ask a question in a statement.
Yes. Yeah, so when we use questions like that, it usually requires an enormous amount of reassurance. You have to be really explicit that this is not a trap. that there's not a right answer that your secret, it's a bit like when clergy go into school assemblies and the children realize that the answers of the question they're asking always should be Jesus. You know, it's not an open question. Whereas you do the opposite, don't you?
You say, there is no right answer here and we don't know what the answers are going to be. But if we listen to each other and to the answers we give, we will learn some really wonderful things and that will help us to move forwards. Yeah, but it's risky, obviously. Yeah. So Stephen, what's been the inner journey for you moving from consultant advisor wise man to facilitating other people to think? A big change.
I'm a naturally outgoing extrovert, like to be in control, used to being in control, used to leading and managing. And I've had to learn very different strategies in being a coach. First of all, you have to recognize the imposter syndrome. Having been successful in running an agency and used to being called in for your expertise, you're then a newly qualified coach. You've got the badge, but it's still bright and shiny. And you think, my God, can I do this?
And then your book says, and don't go in with an agenda, let it flow. This is really tough because surely if they're paying me to do this, they're gonna want me to lead them all the way through it. So to answer your question, the journey has been to learn to... Be quiet. Not easy for me. To learn to listen. to learn to suppress my ego.
And one of the things I've read in a number of the books that I've read is to believe that the person you are coaching has all the abilities to crack their problem. And I think that's the most liberating thing. And in your book you say, Stay forward focused. It's so easy when you sit down with someone to say, well, Claire, what are you bringing to coaching today? Well, I'm having a problem with the board that I work on. tell me how is that? At which point it's all about me and not about you.
And I think that's what really makes it difficult. And we're shooting into the past. Yeah. So I'd say that's... That's my change. It's a massive vault fast for me. Yeah. I thank you for your honesty and thank you for talking about the word ego because I don't think we talk about that enough because we have to do something with our ego because otherwise it just gets in the way. And I think that's one of the reasons why frameworks are so helpful.
Because for us ego driven, gobby, opinionated people, without a good framework, we will default to our bossiest self, which in my case is quite bossy. So I really, really need that framework. And it's a liberation. It's not just a liberation for the person that you're providing the framework for. It's a liberation for me as well, because without it, I would be dashing in and solving everything in the most inappropriate manner. So yeah, I think it's fascinating how that works.
And I really love what you say, Stephen, about that whole business, that people have what they need themselves. So we talk in our context a lot, and I did in my previous job, about it being asset -based. We're so often tempted to be deficit -based. What is the problem that we're trying to solve, rather than what assets do we have here? And it's... And it's quite good sometimes to say to people, well, in our context, we'd say, do you believe God is present?
But that obviously doesn't work in every context. But, you know, do you believe things are possible? And if you do, well, OK, let's see what's possible then. Yeah. Well, in my whole of my. working life, particularly the last 30 years, I've been in charge. When I was running a direct advertising agency, I'd go to see a client who said, we have a problem of this. How do you resolve it? And my job was to say, here's a strategy. This is how we implement it. This is what it'll cost, right?
Get on with it. When I was advising clients who wanted to raise money or to... sell, they would want me to hold their hand and do it. So coaching is, you know, you instinctively take that in with you and think, well, you wanted me to coach, why? Because I've got a problem with my career, I've got a problem with what I do next, who helped me through it. It's the same thing, but you go about it in a radically different way. And it's very difficult to change the habits of a lifetime.
Yeah. So why did you do it, Stephen? Well, I did it because I fell over it, as I said. It came to me. And thank goodness that it did, because it's one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done. Because in Mars, where I started working, an intensely competitive environment, full of really smart people. So you have to fight to get to the top. you know, sink or swim.
And then when you go out in the outside world fighting against other agencies, being pitching, whatever, for once in my life I'm not competitive with my coachee. I'm there to help them and that's wonderful. Yeah, but that's a learned behaviour isn't it? Because I think lots of coaches are competitive with the person who's in the thinking chair. Really? Yes. So I listen to hundreds of recordings of people having conversations.
And one of the biggest issues is where the coach wants to run over the winning line first. So you know that thing where, you know, for me in a coaching conversation, there's probably one question that is the game changer. And it's never the one we expect and it's certainly never the one we thought about before we went in the room. And usually it's really meaningless, but it is the game changer. So it might be you go and, or you are silent and they fall into the revelation.
But the thing I noticed most about coaches, particularly the more experience they get, is the capacity to notice when the thinker is about to do that push, that final push forward and the coach jumps in and makes the meaning. And I think that's competition. And of course, if the coach runs in and makes the meaning, now it's not meaning anymore because the person didn't make it for themselves and we can't make meaning for somebody else. And it is really annoying.
It's really annoying because you can hear this most amazing, highly skilled conversation just claps. It's a bit like when I was managing a sales force and the rule... The absolute golden rule is do not interrupt the sales conversation. So I used to say to my salesperson, introduce me as someone from human resources. here's Stephen, he's out from HR to learn what the real world's about. Then I could just blend into the background.
And I watched this interaction between the customer and the salesperson and he was playing games with her. And I could see that all she had to do was ask for the order. And it was so painful, I said, whatever name was, maybe you'd just like to ask him for the order. And the customer smiled, reached for the order, signed it. She gave me the biggest king you've ever imagined in the car. And I learned my lesson, you've got to let someone die, but you don't interrupt.
And that is what you were saying, that when that... critical moment is coming, you've got to be mindful that it might just be the bombshell that changes their life and you don't want to talk across it. And I think that I know that when I used to do consultancy, back to what you were saying, Claire, I think that often it's the unexpected thing that turns out to be the... So I remember once doing some work with an organisation and there was a completely incidental question.
that I felt actually was beyond my area of expertise and therefore I was quite uncomfortable even getting engaging with it. But it was the thing that made the most difference. So in an odd way, that all the stuff that I was paid to do was less significant than the one thing that just came out of me observing what I noticed. And it's back to that noticing thing, isn't it? And I think that's a lot both what I think.
our team try and do when we're working with groups is to notice what's going on, but also to encourage people to notice each other and to notice things like where the energy is in the room and what makes people smile and it just to notice a bit more. So be a bit less task focused and a bit more, a bit more noticey. And I guess I suppose that in order to notice stuff that does require some space, doesn't it? So, yeah, so it's creating that noticing space.
Yeah. And it's about being not so close and not too far away. So that, that kind of metaphorical position of the coach and the thinker, I think also is really useful because when we're too close in, we can't see a jolly thing. No. In one of the contexts we work in, a group that we work with calls that the balcony view. Yeah. So yeah, I think it is true. Sometimes you have to be in there, but you also have to step back.
But there's something, it's an amazing gift to be in a space with people where you feel as if you're doing very little, but the impact feels really significant. It's just glorious, isn't it? When it works. Yeah, but it's scary as well. I think it takes quite a lot of experience to be able to observe some of these things. Before I took the Henle course, before I got into coaching properly, I became a coachee. And... This lady was coaching me. She was very good. She was very calm.
And she observed. She said, do you mind if I make an observation? She said, you use a lot of couldn'ts and shouldn'ts. You know, you're very tough on yourself. And I sort of thought about that a lot. And she's absolutely right. I've been enormously self -critical all my life. And... I sat and dwelt on that for a long time and that I changed completely as a result of that thinking process that came out of that observation. That was one case where a coach's requested observation was very powerful.
And I think you had to be pretty experienced to be able to notice. I noticed that your eyes went up just then. What was going on there? You know, wow, you've got to be... on the ball to spot these things. Yeah, but also you need to know, Stephen, that 80 % of what you notice isn't very useful, but you just have to notice it anyway. And the 10 % or the 20 % is the bit where the change will happen. Because sometimes you go, I noticed you just looked away.
And they want to go, yeah, I had a speck in my eye. And is that something then about, in that role that one has in those conversations, whether they're with individuals or groups, schooling oneself to try to remain non -anxious. It's that non -anxious presence thing, isn't it? Because if you get anxious, then when you notice something and then it turns out it wasn't significant, you can think, brat, I've got that wrong.
And then you become sort of almost too tense to then properly inhabit the space. So... you sort of got to go in there knowing that you're not going to feel comfortable the whole time and you're not going to feel like a wild success. But at some point you may in that interaction be part of something shifting and that will be glorious, but it will only, as you say, be a small part of it.
And for most of it, you'll probably think, good grief, I wasn't really earning my keep there or I was just actually massively screwing it up. You know, any of the things on that spectrum really. Yeah. But we're back to ego, aren't we? Because we make it about us so quickly. Yeah. So I feel I have to make this conversation work. Yeah. And then when it's when I'm not doing enough, then I make it about me. Yeah. When I'm doing too much, I make it about me. Yeah. And it's not about me.
No. And this is the problem between mentoring and coaching, I think, Claire. And they are such radically different interventions, aren't they? Because with a mentor, I'm paying you to help me do this. And coaching is a different approach altogether. However, one thing I will say, going back to one of your earlier questions, Claire, is that I've become a better mentor having learned how to coach. I bet you have. So you can actually say, well, so... How do you overcome this type of objection?
The old one would have been, right, well, there's several ways you can do it. Tell me what you think. When was the last time you had this objection and what did you say? And then they go on and they say, yeah, thanks for that. I didn't tell you anything. Mentoring, I think, is deeply dangerous when the mentor is very wise.
And I remember that as being another very, very helpful and slightly startling thing from the transforming conversations course, when you said that in order to coach, you don't need to know the subject matter. And that's so counterintuitive, isn't it, in most of what we do. And it took me a little while to get my head around it, but it's so true, isn't it? Because...
The temptation when we do know the content is to be wedded to our understanding of it, rather than to be open to hearing what the other person is saying about it. So you can see why that is a trap. And actually, I'm very grateful you did say that, because I found myself a little bit after that line managing several people in areas of expertise that I absolutely didn't share.
And I found it less frightening because it you can have a role with somebody when you're not the expert in their field, but you can still nurture them in how they're developing in their work. So, yeah, really interesting. Fun enough, when you're doing your business school course, all these really bright people, and we had a super cohort in our group, a really lovely, well blended group. And we go through our little models. And eventually you think it seems awfully contrived.
And again, I don't wish to keep pumping up your book, Claire, but it did resonate with me. In your book, you say, look, I know that in your course, you're taught to use a model, but I actually disagree. And I think What I've taken from this is there are different circumstances where structured models are actually a barrier. And generally I've found that the more senior the person, the less structure you need to have because often a senior person finds it quite lonely.
Who do they go to when they're running a business? say to one of their direct reports, you know, I haven't got a clue what I'm doing with this company, or to go to the private equity fund and say, I know I've been doing this job for six months, but I haven't got a clue how to get this business sold. So who do they talk to? You know, and therefore with a coach, you need to say, well, what's going on in your mind? You know, where would you, where would you see your this being in say a year's time?
That's a question, at which point, once their eyes have gone up, you just shut the hell up and let them get on with it. So I think, I think sometimes the models are very good with maybe a more junior person or someone that's struggling with the whole process to get them going. And I, yeah, I mean, I would say use them last.
So last week's podcast with Mike White, for anyone who's listened to it, was about, about tools and techniques and actually, When they work well, the initiative for them comes from the thinker anyway. So they say, have you got a way that I could, that you can help me think about this rather than it. So it's about where does it come from? And I think it's about using the tools last and not first, because otherwise we're dragging somebody through.
Julia, I'm really interested because you worked in asset -based community development, didn't you, for a while? So, When, yes, when I worked for a previous organization, it was all around asset -based community development. So I can't claim to have done an enormous amount on the ground with that. It was more at an organizational level. But that definitely has informed the rest of my working life since that job.
And so particularly now, I do some, I have some responsibility for working in areas of high on the index of multiple deprivation. And I think the fact that you go in somewhere where some people go in and think this is a group of people who are insufficiently formally educated, have too few monetary resources and all of that sort of stuff. Whereas I think if you've been soaked in that asset -based community development, it really encourages you to go in and say, what is here, not what is absent.
And that is incredibly, so I was in a church yesterday actually, which would fit that sort of model. And there was a moment when something went wrong and one of the congregation just stood up and just beautifully, you know, did the right thing at the right time, because he had such assets at his disposal and he was in a context. where he felt confident enough to use the assets he had.
Whereas if you'd put him in a different environment where there was more judgment about whether he fitted the normal model of leadership, he probably wouldn't have been able to do that. So what does it look like creating an environment where people can have confidence in their abilities and flourish rather than feeling that they are judged as inadequate or failing? I think it's amazingly transformative. Yeah. And confidence to use the assets they have. Yeah. It's such a great phrase, isn't it?
Because that's what we're doing in coaching. We want the people we're working with to have confidence in the assets they have that they're going to be able to do some good work here. Yeah. And I think, and I say this as a secondary school teacher, not somebody who's criticising from the outside. When I look back on my second, I didn't teach for a huge length of time, but...
My observation, looking back, is quite a lot of people come out of secondary school, quite a high percentage of people come out of secondary school feeling quite as if they're failures. And that doesn't help people to then flourish. And I think that there is a lot of, we operate quite a lot of systems that... to help people to understand themselves as failures rather than successes.
And that doesn't equip them as well as feeling what are my assets and what can I do rather than, my goodness, I'm not very good at maths or whatever it is, you know. And that speaks into how coaching is commissioned, doesn't it? Is coaching commissioned from a deficit? This isn't going well, so you must have a coach or from an asset. Yes. Which is there's such huge potential here. Let's find you a coach.
Yeah. And, and as you said that it, it made me think actually we're dealing with ghosts in the room. Definitely. So when somebody's been told to come and they think that it's deficit based, we're probably sitting in the room alongside their least favorite secondary school teacher. Yeah. Which is possibly their maths teacher. Yes. Yeah, no, I think that's true. Let's not do down maths teachers. No, no, no, I taught maths as among other things. No, did I? No, yes.
Yes. I just like to put that out there. That wasn't that was. Yeah. No, I think that's true. And I think those I think those ghosts are very strongly present. I think we think, you know, that we think, you know, I mean, my late 50s, we think that our schooling is a long time ago. But it happens at a very, very formative point in our life. And so those ghosts are very noisy, even if not terribly visible. Maybe that's why.
Yeah, like, yeah, but maybe that's why sometimes it's difficult to coach people. Because they see us as the teacher. Which is why I think, you know, things like Stoker's and the framework, but also the attitude you spoke earlier about, it's your tone as much as what you say. So introducing it with much more reassurance, but not patronising reassurance than you think is necessary.
It's probably, you sort of have to prove that you believe you've got an asset in front of you before you can even do the work, I suspect. And actually, I remember we lived for a while in an area that, again, had very low levels of formal education and very low levels of sort of financial resilience. And I remember it was a while before people could believe we were there because we wanted to be rather than because somebody had told us we needed to be. So, and that's a similar thing, I think.
It's just, no, no, we're here. We're here because we want to be with you because you are a person of value, not because we're some amazingly saintly person who's going to rescue you, which is never gonna, it's not a good feel, is it, if you're the recipient of being rescued? I love this idea of ghosting. I was a naughty boy in my youth and I passed my 11 plus, but my parents were told, I don't know why we should bother sending him to the grammar school, which has limited spaces.
We'd rather send someone that was going to make better use of it. So we're going to send him off to a school that typically turned out plumbers, electricians, and woodworkers. Not there's anything wrong with that, it's just that... I'm manifestly incapable of doing any of those things.
Fortunately, there was a group of academic boys that went through and I ended up going to university and doing research and whatever, but I was graded as in those days as being in the math screen stream or the English stream. And you were, and neither of the two should mix. And so I just grew up thinking I was useless at numbers until I joined the Mars group. where you needed to be enormously numerate. And suddenly I found I'm actually good with numbers.
And how much time and waste has gone into that process of being, assuming I was no good at something when actually I was more than capable. It's a very interesting point. So there's something about believing that the person who we're with has got the capacity to do some good thinking.
And there's also something about what do we need to do and how do we need to be so that they also believe that and we're not accidentally disempowering them by accidentally doing or being or sounding like somebody or something where they feel that they have to give away their power and we have to do the work.
And that's why I need the techniques that one learns through things like transforming conversations and other frameworks, because at my most powerful, I am the most disempowering and I need a good framework to step into that space. I don't think it comes naturally to me. I need that framework and so I really, really value it because I know that without it I could be an absolute steamroller. Yeah. So a bit of de -powering of yourself. Yeah. Yeah. You have to give it away, don't you?
And that's what the framework helps you do. Yeah. But you have to believe it's worth giving it away because otherwise, you know, you won't do it authentically. Wow, well, we're coming to the end of our time. What an interesting conversation, Stephen and Julia. If there was one thing that you would say you were taking away from this conversation, what is it? see Julia processing, so I'm going to let her do it.
No, actually, what I was processing was I've done so much thinking, I can't extract anything from it. Certainly nothing that will make me sound intelligent. Yeah, I yeah. I think it's just reinforced for me in all that I've heard how much that business of laying your ego to one side. You know, Stephen, you know, had the courage to name the ego. It's laying your ego to one side and not seeking to prove yourself. And actually what you said, Claire, about not seeking to get over the line first.
So at that moment when you're tempted to step over the line first, that's probably the moment where you did the most important moment for pulling back and creating the space. So yeah, that's very, very useful. I think for me, the concept of ghosting I'm going to take away and have a real good think about it because... I've definitely been.
exposed to it and lived with it for many years and I'll be very mindful of it in my future coaching interactions to make sure that I'm aware of any ghosting and not pandering to it or reinforcing it. And it's been interesting that our two backgrounds are so different. That's why I invited you both. Yeah. Method of madness. Absolutely.
I think what's interesting about what you're saying there, Stephen, is that actually the simplest way to deal with ghosts is often to say to somebody, have we got some ghosts in here? Yeah. And just name it. I've got so much to think about. I really respect you, Stephen, for naming the ego, because I think... I think we rarely do and it just opened up a whole new part of the conversation. So thank you for that. And then I've now invented a new word called depowering.
What do we need to do to depower? It's an interesting question. So Julia Hill, Stephen Jenkins, thank you so much for coming. I'll pop your contact details in the show notes so that people can contact you if they so wish. And I'm Claire Pedrick and you've been at The Coaching In. Thank you everybody. Bye bye. And we've enjoyed it. Thank you. Thank you. 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.
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