You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching's virtual pub where we enjoy conversations with people who engage in the world of coaching. Hello and welcome to The Coaching Inn. I'm Claire Pedrick and today I'm in conversation with Dom Jones, who is a Chaplain for the Police Force. Dom, welcome. Good morning. Thank you for having me along. It's wonderful to be here. Yeah, we've been planning it for a long time, haven't we? I think over a year, I think we've been meaning to get together. Yes, yeah.
So tell us a bit about what you do and where does coaching fit into that? So I'm lead chaplain to Hampshire Police and I run a team of 20 multi-faith chaplains across the force. So we cover the whole of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. And our predominant role is to offer a confidential listening ear to all of our officers and staff, regardless of their faith. So that means pastoral care, a listening ear. And where does coaching fit into this?
Well, coaching fits into this as it's the way that I tend to offer my pastoral care. So I was invited onto a transforming conversations course four years ago, maybe even five. It was very early on in my time as a chaplain. And it was something that one of the diocese that I work with said, I fancy going on? And I must admit, I didn't know an awful lot about it. but it looked like an interesting thing to give a go. So I came along to the course thinking, yeah, it's not going to hurt.
And after the four days, very cheesily, it transformed my conversations. It did what it said on the tin. And I've now found myself doing server training with 3D, and I'm on my route to accreditation, just building up my coaching hours. And what that looks like and what that means for me is that I guess as a Chaplain, I said we offer that confidential listening aid, but I've often felt, well, what does that mean? What do I do or don't do? And what skills do I have to enable me to listen well?
And I think coaching has given me almost a container for those conversations. and a way of it not just being a listening ear if people want more than that. Sometimes people absolutely just need to come and vent. And my job is to sit there, shut up and not say a word and give them that safe space to just offload. When things are really tough and people just want to go, bleh, then I can do that.
But actually there are times and a lot of times when people want more than that and They come thinking that there is going to be more as well. I think there's a confusion with what a chaplain does. And so being able to say, look, if you would like to have a more of a structured conversation, and I give the opportunity to explain a little bit about what a coaching conversation might look like, then we can do that.
And so there are times when I will engage in, I guess, formal for want of a better word coaching and people know that they're coming for a coaching session and we will have a proper structured coaching conversation but there are so many times when I use the coaching skills during my pastoral care conversations and I guess a lot of what I do is a mismatch between a listening ear and a coaching conversation and there may be times when
I apologize, but I don't contract as such because we haven't gone into it. We haven't gone into it, but actually the coaching skills come in and you find, gosh, there's a question there that needs to be asked to help move this person's thinking on. And I've so many of those principles of coaching I've used massively. And I think some of the key ones for me, silence is a massive one.
I've become really brave with silence and that's something that I've learned through the coaching training and sessions is to hold that silence. And whenever I've had people come and observe me, I sometimes have students come and observe me, they commented on the silence that I hold. And it's not something I was really aware of until other people started saying it. But I remember on my transforming conversations course that there was a whole demonstration of completely silent coaching.
And it might have been yourself and Perenelle, I struggling to remember, but it was, yeah, it was, I think it was completely silent or just like the odd word. And I don't do that, but actually that showed me the power of silence. And yeah, I do, I use a lot of silence in my conversations and I've, I've learned. those cues that you talk about so often. And you can see when people kind of look up and they finish their processing and they're ready for another question.
So I think silence has become incredibly powerful in what I do. And one of the things that I use a lot of or I'm very aware of is that keeping away from the wavy people. working for the police, people do have interesting stories. I'm not gonna lie. They get up to some very interesting things. They go to very interesting jobs. And I've got to not engage in that and get distracted by that. And sometimes that's really hard because I'm nosy, I'm interested.
And what they're talking about is interesting. But I've had to and I hear myself talking to myself saying, don't go there. Don't go there, you don't need to ask that question about the detail and very much keeping away from the wavy people because yeah, that's not, I don't need to know that and it's not useful for the conversation that we're having. That was a very long answer to where does coaching fit into my work?
It's a great answer, Dom, because I think There was so much richness in what you said, and I love the fact that you recognise more the quality of what you're doing when students come and watch and go, that's interesting. Probably for the benefit of our listeners, we should say what wavy people are. So wavy people is when you're talking to somebody and as as Dom said, the conversation is super interesting and you'd love to know all the juicy detail.
But actually, the person that we're talking to The only thing that's in their gift to move them forward, which is one of the things that you said so articulately, Dawn, which is about how do you, if people want to move forward, how do you do that? Telling you the juicy details is not gonna help them move forward. It's going to mean that you know the juicy details. So I call them wavy people because they are very seductive.
And as you probably described, one of the most wavy set of wavy people, which is. when your colleagues have been on a job and probably everybody would love to know what happened, especially you as a colleague, but that's not the thing that's important in service of them feeling heard and moving forward. So that's why the people. Well, well, so interesting. And the thing, as you were talking, I was really intrigued. You know, how did they know that they want more than listening?
That's a really good question. How do they know they want more than listening? I you get that sense from them and they perhaps they've exhausted other means as well. So within the police, we're good at wellbeing, we're good at looking after people. So we have a real range of options for people to choose from if they are having stuff going on that they need to talk to somebody about.
And so often I get people come and say, I've tried this, I've tried that, I've tried the other and I thought I'd just come and speak to you and I guess for me there's being that brave and saying okay, what, and I'm mumbling now but I think there's a bit of, I said I don't always contract but I wonder actually whether there is almost that contracting part that comes in at that point and saying okay, so what is it you want to talk about and you get.
you get that sense then from what does this person need? And I think there is that there's a co-contracting together at that point of working out what this session is going to look like and making that together. There are times when people have asked to come to me for coaching. That's easy. You can launch straight in with a nice structured coaching conversation, but it's the other times. And I think, yeah, it is that.
co-contracting together of let's work this out, what do you think you need and what might I be able to offer you? And I think it is about lists. We've talked about and you've talked about in both training and podcasts almost providing people options of you might like to talk about this, you might like to talk about that and you might like to do it like this or like that.
And I think that I will say to people look, I can be your listening ear and literally just sit here and listen if that's what you need, if you need to get something off your chest or we can have a slightly more structured conversation in which you might know something different by the end. And I think it's about that co-contracting definitely. Absolutely. And I love the fact that you offer them that because I think there can be a danger in any listening service. that listening is the only thing.
as you say, for some people that is so much the right thing. And yet somebody else inside knows or maybe doesn't know, or maybe has a bit of an inkling that there's some kind of forward movement here would be useful. And I love the fact you don't use the word coaching, And you don't need to. I think I talk about coaching skills and some people might ask. Some people ask almost, they want verification of what qualifies you to be their listener.
And so then I can talk about these are some of the skills that I've got, some of the courses that I've been on. So to give them that feeling that I hopefully know what I'm doing and have done this before. And again, I've heard you talk about this in training sessions that sometimes people might need that assurance that you know what you're doing. so they feel comfortable coming to you. Yes, and what are you going to do with what they tell you?
And I'm sure in the police that that's a very well-boundaried thing I'm guessing. It is very well-boundaried. We abide by the confidentiality clause that we all abide by, that everything you tell me is confidential unless you or somebody else is at harm. I guess there's a caveat for us in the police that if you've committed a crime, I can't keep that one quiet either because I work for the police. So that's probably the only extra caveat that we might add in.
But I imagine there's a lot of people who would struggle to keep crimes confidential, depending on the level of it. So, yeah, it is well structured. There's almost a false belief that when people come to speak to me as a chaplain, it's more confidential. And I have to be very clear in explaining the confidentiality clause and what that means. But there's still this feeling that what I'm offering is more safe than some other services.
And I don't think that's to do with the fact that I don't think that is actually to do with confidentiality. think that's to do with the role of the chaplain and the safe space that we're able to give people. And I do make a real point of I don't keep notes, I don't keep case files. I don't talk back to your line manager or your tear sergeants. And there is a real safety in that as well.
And I regularly talk about that I practice the art of forgetfulness and that, what you said to me, if we meet in the street, and I won't remember. And I've found over the years, I struggle to even remember the person sometimes when I meet them out of context. And I think that's a safety for me that I've kind of learned over the years, but it absolutely assures them that it is confidential and it's not gonna go anywhere.
And that's so important in this world, the police world as it is in any, but people need to feel safe. There's a macho culture in the police that we're still trying to get over and we're always promoting you don't need to be a macho. It's okay to not be okay. It's okay to speak and we're doing really, really well on that. But it needs that extra reinforcement that what you say to me isn't going anywhere.
So if you had a magic wand and could change the culture of chaplaincy or the culture of your organisation, using coaching, what do you think is the potential? I changing the culture of chaplaincy, what I want to do to chaplaincy is to give chaplains more skills, more coaching skills. And I think the potential of what we offer then is incredible.
There are a number of chaplains on my team who have counseling skills, who have coaching skills, and there are some who have really good pastoral care skills. But I think if we could... give some form of coaching skills to the majority of our chaplains. Again, we would transform our conversations because we would enable people to be more than just listened to, to move forward with their thinking. So I think it's not transforming the culture of chaplaincy, but it's giving chaplains more skills.
It's making things like coaching more accessible. I'd never even heard of coaching until I was offered to go on the Transforming Conversations course. And it took me a while for me to even understand what coaching was. And I've always struggled with how you explain it to other people, how you sell it for want of a better word, because we use the word coaching for such a lot of other stuff.
And we use it in the police to mean the... the phase when you finish police training college before you're an independent police officer, that's your coaching period and they all have coaches and it's really hard to then explain, I'm not one of those coaches, I'm not going to train you to be a police officer, I don't know anything about being a police officer and so yeah, I think coaching
is a really transformative thing and it's about being able to enable people to experience that so I would love that chaplaincy training encompasses some form of coaching training. And then in the police, we have structured coaching that you can come and access. It's mainly for promotion prospects and enabling you to move on in your career. I would like to see coaching more accessible to people and more pastoral carers using coaching because I think it does, it helps people to move on.
I've been using coaching skills quite a lot in bereavement conversations. It's something I'm very, very interested in. I'm exploring a lot more. I read the blog a couple of weeks ago when you were talking to somebody about their work with grief and bereavement. And I've arranged to have an online chat to Paranel as well about her experiences with. the coaching at the time of death.
And I'm really interested in that because I get a lot of people who come to see me because of grief and bereavement in force. And I obviously have quite a lot of time in that world. And so I'm really interested in helping people or enabling people to process grief and bereavement in a in a better way for them and whatever that looks like.
And I have noticed already in the conversations I've had just by using those coaching skills that you can enable somebody to know something different by the end of their time with you. And I want to explore that more because I'm absolutely fascinated by that. It's interesting, isn't it? Because neurodiversity, neurodistinctiveness was not something that was spoken of much in the workplace. And in the last three, four, five years, it's become much more of a language that people use.
And now suddenly, the language of bereavement and loss and grief is just beginning to surface to be more spoken of in organizations. And I know you've spoken to, you are going to speak to Liz Wybrough about that. And Liz and Peronell are going to come and do a podcast. fantastic. Yeah, I've spoken to Liz already. And yeah, very, very, very interesting.
I think, I think the why that language is more is perhaps something the pandemic taught us is that people weren't given the opportunity to grieve and to say goodbye in a way that we are used to. And I saw an awful lot of people coming to talk after the pandemic and talk about the way they couldn't say goodbye in a way that they would want to. And I guess the beauty of my role is that we can have those conversations, but then I can change hats and I can do something very practical for them.
And if people want some form of ceremony to say goodbye because they didn't feel they got that, then I can offer that. And there's been many a time that during a conversation, I've really felt that I need to change hats. I need to say to them, do you think... some form of memorial service or not a second funeral but some other goodbye saying service would be of help for you and it has been on regular regular occurrences. Yeah because we don't know what we don't know do we?
So my mum died in April 2020 and we had an online funeral all of her. and she had direct cremation and we thought it was a holding thing and then we thought it had been the funeral because it was great. And then two or three weeks ago we went to a remembrance service, the kind of one that churches often have around All Souls Day and her name was read out. And you don't know what you don't know. We didn't realise how important it had been that we heard her name read in public.
Because of course her name hadn't been spoken in public since she was alive. So I love that you're, yeah, the offering thing to people. Because I kind of wanted to go, I thought it was a bit out there to go onto Twitter and go, by the way, if this has happened, this might, you know, think about what might be a good idea if that's useful for you. Because we don't know what's useful for us, do we? Until it kind of emerges sometimes and it turns up and we think, yeah, that was what we needed.
Absolutely, and there is something about the saying of our loved ones names in public that is important and churches do it on a regular basis. Only the Sunday just gone, I held a road death memorial service where a member of all those killed on our roads and we read out the names, all of those, and that's the most powerful part of the service when people hear their loved ones names read out. And so, yeah, for me being able to offer something like that.
alongside a conversation is an incredible ability and gift I can able to offer. Yeah, yeah, some kind of ritual sacramental processing thing. And actually that's, know, in coaching, that's something that we can integrate as well. And, you know, as a a chaplain and a priest, you have a very unique way of doing that. And then there are coaches who use constellations, which I think is also sacramental, which is an outward visible sign of an inward shift where people can do stuff.
you what a gift these conversations can be to the people that we talk to. Absolutely. I think you don't know what you don't know and you start what you think is a conversation and you finish with offering or having some form of service or Thanksgiving or memorial for someone and I think it's the beauty of coaching, the beauty of conversation and the beauty of relationship as well as coming together with somebody and holding that safe space together.
So there's something deeply transformative for you in your role about having integrated this additional way of engaging with people isn't there? Absolutely. it's, I'd say it's not just hopefully transformative for the people who come, but it's also for me. And it gives me a sense of having some more skills to help the people that I'm with. And it gives me a more of a structure and a format to conversations. that helps me.
I think the type of personality that I am, I I like to be a doer and I think I'm at risk of trying to rescue people on the triangle. I think I can be at risk of trying to rescue people, but having had some training and allowing myself to have a format to my conversations and a bit of structure gives me It gives me a way of helping people without stepping in and rescuing, which isn't what people need.
So it's given me that structure and enables my conversations to have greater value and greater depth. it hopefully helps people who come to see me and helps me as well and gives me that knowledge that I've had some skills and some training in my conversations as well. there is a next level than simply listening if that's what people need. Yeah, that's amazing.
it really, it's a gift, isn't it, to enable people to keep their personal power while we're having a conversation with them, because then it grows. Absolutely. And I am regularly visualizing that ball that we talk about and moving it, making sure who's got the power and Yeah, making sure that they they have got that power during that conversation. And that's a really powerful thing to be able to do as well. And a beautiful thing to be able to see.
Yeah, because I think sometimes that little tiny nugget of personal power is often with some people, it's the only thing that right now they've got. And our job is to fan it into flames. And when we rescue, it minimizes it, I think. And particularly We've been just talking about grief and bereavement, particularly in those times when maybe it feels like your whole world has collapsed around you. But if you can keep hold of the power, then that's a beautiful thing. Definitely. Definitely.
So if you could give one nugget of wisdom to our listeners as we finished on, what would it be? One nugget. Other than do some coaching training, which hopefully most of the listeners have done, One nugget is really hard. think it's gotta be, going back to what I've already said, is staying away from the wavy people. Stuff is so interesting. We're nosy by our very natures, and I am, and I work in a really interesting world, but stay away from the wavy people.
This isn't the time to get the gossip and to get the... to get all the fine details and enable those that are speaking to you to not have to go into the details. And I love that phrase that I've heard so often when people say to me, does that make sense? And of course, at that point, I don't say yes or no, I say if it makes sense to you. then they carry on with their ramblings, I haven't. really got a clue what's going on here, but I don't need to.
And that's been really powerful is that I don't have to understand the details of this conversation to have this conversation. So yeah, I think that nugget is stay away from the raving people. It comes back to, I think one of the first things I said at the beginning and it is really helpful for them and for me.
And I think in the world, I work in, I don't need to know those details sometimes from my own wellbeing because if they've been to a particularly nasty job, I don't need to know all those details. I don't need to know the amount of body parts and things like that, for my own wellbeing as well. So there's a definite, perhaps not seen help for me, which maybe isn't, we don't always talk about.
When we talk about stay away from the raving people, it's perhaps for the person that is having the conversation, it's for their good, but actually there's something for my good as well. Yes, absolutely. That's such a great insight. Well, thank you, Dom. So I'm Claire Pedrick and I've been speaking to Dom Jones. So if people want to talk to you more about chaplaincy and coaching, how do they get in contact with you, Dom?
So they can get in contact either via Twitter, I'm Hans, as in Hampshire, H-A-N-T-S, HansPleaceChap on Twitter, or simply an email to chaplin at hampshire.police.uk and I always say to our student officers whenever I'm telling them my email address don't forget that Chaplin has an A in it otherwise I'll become Charlie Chaplin and he won't reach me. Thank you very much Tom and thank you everyone for listening bye bye. Bye bye.
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