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 this week's edition of The Coaching In. I'm Claire Pedrick and today I'm in conversation with Ruth Davie, who I met at the Malvern Festival. So a coach that I'd been for a walk with said, Ruth Davies in turn, you must go. So I did. And I learned loads about noticing. So Ruth, thank you for the learning and welcome to The Coaching In.
that's so, so lovely to be with you, Claire. And yeah, that's a funny intro. It was a bit like that at the Festival of Ideas, wasn't it? Yeah, it was a good event. It was amazing. I didn't know anything about it next year. I shall look in advance. Yeah, yeah. It was, it was a really great weekend. Yeah. So tell us a bit about you and what you do. Okay. Well, I'll try and keep it brief. My background is actually international and community development.
And I've worked in with various NGOs, and I set up a small nonprofit organization in the Gambia quite a long time ago now. And that is where I feel I did most of my learning, or a huge part of my learning, which I feel is very important to declare. And, and then, Most of the rest of my time since then, I've been working on Look Again, which is my own little company. And we basically help people to see their lives, their work, and their world around them differently.
And it came about really as a result of, well, it's a coming together of a lot of things that were important to me on a personal level, as well as professionally. and it brings together the fact that I've had my struggles with mental health, for example, and continue to do so occasionally. And it brings together my love of photography, my love of mindfulness, and my love of nature. And those three things combined actually make a perfect package to help with wellbeing, with resilience.
And I thought when it works for me, maybe it might work for other people. We could go down a complete rabbit hole here because I was also formed in a village in Africa. No way. Yeah, so I was a teacher for two and a half years in a rural secondary school and I am convinced that that's formed a huge part of who I am and how I do what I do now. But we'll have to have you back. Yeah, that would be great. And I'd love to learn more about that. Yeah, I spent a lot of time in Africa.
And I now want you to go, do you know so and so? Do you know so and so? Because there is somebody who I think you will know. But right now, let's just talk about look again and be slightly and mildly disciplined. One of the things that's interesting for me about coaching, so lots of our listeners are coaches, not all of them, but many of them are coaches, is that coaching talks endlessly about listening, but actually really amazing listening is about looking.
And I was interviewed on a podcast yesterday where somebody used the Albert Moravian research that I've always read and slightly dismissed because when it's quoted, it's often quoted oddly.
But basically, so I've gone back to the source actually this morning and actually he says that that when there are conflicts between what people hear, the words, the sound, the vocal, the tone and the visual, what people see, The visual is dominant and that's the thing that will most influence people, what they see. And when I train coaches to listen, I notice that until you start to learn to listen with your eyes, you're missing a huge amount of data.
So I'm just really curious about what you've learned about noticing and looking through your work with Look Again. And I've got your frame that you you gave us on our workshop day, Ruth, which I use to look through things. that's great. I'm so glad you do. where do I start? Really, where do I start? I mean, that's very interesting what you're saying there, because I mean, I don't know that author that you're referring to.
And I've known for a long, long time that for me, my I'm so, so, so influenced by what I see. But I've also know that I noticed so much more than what a lot of people I know notice or that a lot, you know, to me, it's second nature. And I've realized very, very recently that I'm one of those people that are often referred to as a highly sensitive person.
And, and I think that's had a massive influence, you know, and as I'm now looking back, I know that from very early days at school, you know, I was the one who drew a road, you know, in primary school at the age of, I don't know, four or five or something with the lines in the middle, you know, because I'd noticed that. And a tree with the branches, you know, the mini branches, not just two big ones. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So in a way, it's no surprise to me now that I do what I do.
But the looking, it's literally around. looking at what is in front of us. You know, it can be as boring as looking at the floor and seeing that differently and using that as a way of gaining a fresh perspective on how we're feeling in that moment. Just the act of stopping, of slowing down, stopping, focusing our attention on the here and the now by looking at, I mean, I'm doing it right now as I speak.
I happen to have quite a nice wooden parquet type floor needs a good sand and a varnish, but you know, it will do. And it's got it's squares and it's got lines. And it's like, actually, it's a really interesting pattern, you know, and if I'm feeling stressed, just to or anxious about something just by looking in that way, it can help me to think, actually, yeah, there's something else going on here. It helps me to reframe that moment. And And so that's the kind of basic starting point.
And we can do that wherever we are, you know, whether we're on our own with other people at home, at work, in the, in the, you know, in nature, doesn't matter. But then of course it goes, you know, we're looking there at the detail, but we also then, you know, go out into the big picture and we see the big picture differently, you know, and then there's the relational, you know, we see people, we see ourselves differently, we see others differently. We see.
know, if we're in the workplace, we see our teams, our colleagues, our managers, our staff, you know, all those relationships we can start seeing differently. Yeah, I don't know where to stop with that. I could go on for ages. So it seems to me as you're talking, as though learning to see better and notice better in the here and now is part of the journey to being able to see the differently in all those other layers? Yeah, and but I well, it's a two way thing.
We can in the here and the now, I can look at the detail like, you know, like the floor, for example. But I can also look out my window. I'm looking out now onto my window. And it's the same thing. I'm just looking at a bigger picture. And I can make I can choose, you know, I can make a decision as to what feels right in this moment. What what do I feel I need right now? Do I need to focus in on something quite small?
Or actually, will it do me a better, you know, would it help me more if I think, actually, I need to see the bigger picture right now. What else is going on here? You know? so it's choosing. There's a lot of choice involved. So for example, if I wake up feeling anxious or fearful around something, whether it's you know, it can be personal work, anything. I have my favorite go to places. You know, I've got my shed in my garden, which isn't very glamorous. But it's getting there.
It until two weeks ago, it was full of cobwebs and garden like tools and things. But I actually splashed out and I've done some DIY on it and it's now looking really quite nice. Nice soft furnishings. So my refuge, my little sanctuary in my garden is suddenly feeling a lot more cozy and nourishing. My garden itself is another place I can go to. But if I feel like I need to actually leave the house, which is where I work from, and I often do, like every day I do.
So is it a wood day or is it an up on the commons day? So where I live in Stroud and Gloucestershire, there's all these lovely commons, really quite high art. with a really big view over to Wales and the Forest of Dean. And depending on how I feel, I go into the woods if I feel like I need more nourishing, and I go up onto the common if I feel like I need that bigger picture view. And then in between, there's the canal, and alongside the canal, there's the river.
So it's like, if I feel a bit stuck, I need a bit of flow, I know where to go. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of the looking, it's about, it's looking inside it as well. You know, it's looking inwards, but by looking outwards, that helps us to look inwards and vice versa. Yeah. And I noticed that the question, what do you see is a much stronger question than what do you think or what's happening? Because it enables people to access the seeing, but... As you said, you've got a seeing superpower.
I wouldn't go that far. That you've developed from an early age, but not everybody does see. But the question is, if we don't see much, how do we learn to see better? Yeah. And that, I think, well, from my experience of working with people over the last, well, a long time now, I launched Look Again in 2012, but it's in the last sort of seven years really that we've been really focusing on what we do now, that people can learn to see differently.
And one of the things that always fascinates me is when actual photographers come and do a workshop or a course or something, and they come with all their kit, you know, and I'll never forget one day, an older man came along. And he'd just spent a whole week, spent loads of money and a whole week doing a salon, normal traditional photography course. And he came and did a two hour little workshop with me up on the common. It was with the national trust.
And he said, I've learned, I've learned to see. I've learned more with you in two hours and I've learned in a whole week and it only cost me 30 quid. So, you know, that was just really, that was a big moment for me that we're going back a long time. And that's when I thought, there's something in this. You know, and it's that thing of. We, I think, I think the key is to slow down.
You know, if we're, if we're rushing through life, which we all do, including myself, you know, there's, there's always, you know, we're in being sorry, we're in doing mode, aren't we so much of the time doing, doing, doing, but we're also in our heads, you know, in our head mode. But if we slow down, and this is where the mindfulness element of the mindful photography comes in, then we really, we allow ourselves the time to be. So we see by seeing we're being more in that moment.
And then we can think about how we reframe that and then we can get onto the doing. And I, you know, for me, the way that Look Again has developed, especially in the last three years. Well, actually started a bit before the pandemic, but it was, it's very much about action. It's not just about the being, it's about, okay, so we've reframed something, we're feeling different, we've experienced something differently, we've sensed it differently through all our senses, not just the looking.
And we can get a new picture in our minds as to what it is. we actually, we want to see if we're seeing if what we're seeing isn't great, you know, if you want to change the way we see that, if we actually change want to change what we do see, whether it's actually for real, or whether it's on our mind's eye, then we can I believe we can do that. But how do we do it? What actions we need to take? Yeah, well, it is, isn't it? But I'm not a coach.
I've just, I've just changed my definition of coaching in the last 30 seconds in response to what you've just said. I've always said coaching is about somebody feeling heard and getting new insights into their own stuff that will make a difference. But actually, as you're talking, I'm going coaching is about feeling seen. Do you know what Claire, what you've just said that is so, so, so important. And when I think over the last year or so I've been doing lots of inner work on myself.
And I know in my heart that what you've just said is exactly why I do what I do because of my experiences of a lot of my life when I was a lot younger of actually not feeling like I could be myself, not feeling like I could be authentic. And I wasn't being seen for who I really am. I was being seen for who people wanted me to be rather than who I actually am. And that's been a massive game changer for me.
And that's, I think, has a, that's part of, you know, when I facilitate the process that we've developed, the methodology, because we have got an evidence -based methodology that's constantly being adapted and changed because things do, don't they? They never stay the same. And that's what I'm really excited about. It's about how we can not just become more authentic human beings as individuals in this process.
and change our own personal stories, but how we can actually change the stories of groups, of communities, of teams, of the wider world, and actually do something about this crazy world that we're in. So I've got listeners in my head going. Well, I've got a couple of listeners in my head. Yes, you do need to talk to Ruth. You know who you are and you do need to talk to Ruth. But just a little note.
I'd love us to do something with you to do some CPD with you around coaching and noticing because I think that would be so exciting. Do you know the thing that really struck me on your workshop day was when you asked us all to pick up an object. So I picked up a seed pod. Yeah. It was beautiful seed pod and you invited us to look at it and do whatever and have a look and turn it round and everything. And it was a beautiful seed pod. It felt a bit of a strange texture for a seed pod.
But in my head, it was a seed pod. And then you invited us to take the frames that you gave out to all the delegates and to look through the object at different angles through the thing. And I realized I wasn't looking at a seed pod at all. It was a fish. no way. And I found myself eye to eye with this. Which one you're talking about. That's hilarious. With this fossilized fish. I'm thinking, OK, so I've been assuming all this time you were a sea pod, but now you're looking me in the eye.
And I took some really good friends of ours to the Sea Life Center in the Easter holidays. And this fish came at me and I'm going. You're the same fish. no. But the really interesting thing was that I kind of convinced myself it was a seed pod because I thought it was a seed pod. And then suddenly when you invited, you know, you gave you gave us some offers about how we might look at it in different ways. And when I took one of the offers, I'm just going, yeah, yeah. But it's not true in life.
It's so true. It's so true. Can I tell a little story? Please. So a client is coming to mind at the moment. Who was really struggling with quite a lot of pain. And another stuff was going on and she came on a four week course with us and at the end of the course it was like it all started to really come together for her in the sense of the reframing of, she brought the whole four weeks together in a reframe and she presented to us a collage of 16 photographs, like in a square.
And that square, the 16 images were actually, it's four squares of four put together. But the reason for me telling this is because in week one, there was one issue that she was particularly, concerned about. And she was she was focused so much on that, that she couldn't see the bigger picture of her life. And so in her collar, she had that first image in the bottom left hand picture of the 16 photo square, right.
And then she and then she and then all the squares came out from that all the other photographs came out from that. And then she realized that actually, that one issue that she was being totally consumed by. at the time, had now become what it actually is in reality, which was just one small part of her life and that everything else was so, her life was so much bigger than that with all these different areas of her life.
And I often remember that, you know, for me, that was such a beautiful moment and such a great offering of inspiration, not just to me personally, but to the other people in the course, you know, when she shared that. She felt seen. Yeah. And she got new insights. She got loads of insights. I mean, she offered us so many. And you know, this is the thing, isn't it? It's a two way thing. That's coaching, Ruth. Yeah. Maybe I should qualify as a coach with you guys. Well, it sounds like you have.
Well, maybe I just jump. Yeah, I can jump through a few hoops and I get a qualification. You know what? I would I would love it. I really would. But seriously. Yeah. What you're bringing is something quite unique. And one of the things that I love about being a bit provocative in the coaching space is the idea of looking at some of the things that make for great coaches through a slightly different lens.
So we don't teach coaching presence, which is a fundamental thing, coaching mindset and coaching presence. You can learn about them from books, but you know, it doesn't actually teach you anything. We put people in a room with an improv teacher and we do it. And then you learn more about presence and coaching mindset from that than you ever could from this person said this and this person said that. So I'm just really excited about your notes.
So am I. I mean, this is so exciting for me, Claire, because look again, is it a bit of a crossroads? Until now, we've focused so much of our work on working in the nonprofit community kind of sector. Partly because that's my background and that's what I'm comfortable with. That's what I know. But since lockdown and having been forced to go online and then people from around the world started finding our courses.
And before I knew it, we had... about 60 to 70 % of people coming on off on our online four week courses that were open to the public were practitioners from around the world. You know, some are coaches, some are therapists, some are, you know, teachers or other kind of people practitioners, you know. And when I realized that I thought, well, gosh, there's something more to this than I know. And, and they were asking us for more. So I thought, gosh.
I better write all this down then and make it into something. So it became a training program. And to cut a long story short, we've now trained 74 people in 22 countries around the world. Amazing. Yeah. So it's exciting. It's also quite exhausting and I have to watch myself. Practice my what I preach. Can I share a bit of learning? Please do. I learned this as a student. on a training with somebody else where I did their level one, level two and practitioner training.
And actually it was the same, but it wasn't the same because each time you came back for the next layer, you, you, you, the delegates, we arrived at a different place and therefore the training was different. So if you, so if you want to do more, yeah, I think you, I think, one possibility of doing more is do exactly the same thing again and let people arrive at a different level. That's really interesting. Yeah, that's really interesting. Thank you for that. That takes the pressure off.
Yeah, it does, doesn't it? And of course, things evolve anyway, don't they? I mean, what, you know, we're now focusing more on going into the workplace and looking at the potential for... training people within workplaces or within institutions that they can then build capacity within organizations that then makes it more, well not just builds capacity, but makes it more sustainable in the longer term for organizations.
But I'm really, really excited with, for the next step into how we can use our mind's eye, our vision, and mindful photography, as well as nature connection. Let's not forget wonderful mother earth, you know, and everything that we, you know, have the connection with, you know, with nature. And I truly believe that so much. And the more I spend time in nature, the more I feel like I'm part of nature, you know, I am nature.
But how, you know, when I think of the future, and images come to mind of the future, I can very easily get really quite fearful about what's coming our way, you know, not just for our generation, but for our children, etc. And what is already there for so many other parts of the world, and it's only going to get worse.
And I started thinking about this way before lockdown actually, and then the pandemic happened and I focus on the mental health side of things more because that was what was needed. Whereas now I'm thinking, how can we use all these tools to actually not just reframe the now, but revision the future and actually create that new story that we want to see, you know, rather than accept that story that's coming our way.
And that... I think that really is more of a coaching, you know, related process. But, you know, let's do it in a way that involves creativity, that involves going into nature or being with nature, that involves a simple, it's actually very simple, you know, and it's, it's accessible. And we've got this thing in our pockets that we carry around with us, you know, the phone, which can be It can be such a distraction.
It can be such, well, it can really contribute towards anxiety and competition and not feeling good enough and all of that stuff. So let's put it to good use. Let's reframe that and do something good with that. And I've got loads of ideas, Claire, around how that can happen. I'd love to talk to you more about it. think we should take this conversation offline in a minute. Yeah, a few weeks ago, we had I did a podcast with Charlie Cox and Sarah Flynn about their new book climate change coaching.
And Charlie's story started in I don't know if it was Gambia or Ghana, but she worked for a long time in West Africa. And that's impacted how she does what she does now. Yeah, yeah, the things that come together are interesting, aren't they? It is. Yeah, it really is.
I think, I mean, something that I'd maybe like to offer here is that in terms of the noticing and the seeing, you know, it's not... it's not about just seeing with the eyes, you know, it's about all the head, you know, like being being it comes back to this thing of what is knowledge, you know, and we and we, I mean, I for one, who struggled on and off with feeling like, I'm not clever enough, I'm not intellectual or academic enough, you know,
and it's because my knowledge doesn't come from reading those books or from writing my knowledge comes from seeing and feeling, you know, I feel really deeply. which can be great. It can also be not so great, depends on where you want to go with it.
But it's, it's, you know, so when we're doing this, and the way that we facilitate is around really encouraging people to see not just with their heads, but with their heart, and with their hands, and also with, you know, their higher selves, whatever that means to people, you know, it can mean lots of different things. And it means that, and also how we can We're not just individual human beings. You know, we don't just see as individual human beings.
We see as part of the collective of being part of humanity. You know, you can see a bit of an H thing going on here. I'm really into H's. I've got loads of C's and loads of R's and loads of I's. And it's kind of how I see things. It's part of the process, but it really helps as a person. And also to ask, you know, our last H is help. You know, it's about, you know, we need, we need each other. We can't do this work on our own. We need to ask for help, but we also can offer help.
You know, so again, it's that two way thing and a massive part of the action side of what we're, you know, what we try and, or what we offer is, is that two way thing. You know, it's how can I care for myself as well as how can I use what I've learned, what I've felt, what I've seen. care for others in the wider world. It's a two -way thing. And the jargon for that is systemic, isn't it? Yes, it is. Yes, jargon. I'm not very good with jargon, but yes, it is. It's good for selling those. I know.
If I had that all over my website, I'd probably get loads more business with mine. Yeah. The word regenerative comes to mind, however. That's another bit of jargon at the moment, isn't it? But there is, you know, I mean, you know, I'm not joking when I say this.
I really believe that we do need to to reconsider everything from a systemic perspective and you know, the whole whole idea of not just surviving, but thriving and flourishing and being regenerative again, you know, within ourselves as well as outwardly. through our work and through our relation, I think is absolutely key for the future.
Yeah. So Ruth, if people want to talk to you about your mindful photography stuff, give us a few weeks, guys, because we might have a different conversation as well. But how do they get in touch with you, Ruth? The website is look -again .org. So that's look -again .org. dot org. Yeah. People can email me at Ruth at look hyphen again dot org. Perfect. I guess I can give you some handles and you know, social media stuff and some other things, the notes or whatever. Yeah, perfect.
If you do that, that'd be fantastic. We've got some workshops coming some freebie workshops, little tasters coming up as well, which I can let you know about. Okay, so if you let me have those, I'll put them in the show notes. Great. Lovely. Thank you Ruth for coming to the Coaching Inn. What a pleasure it's been. Thank you so much for having me. It's been really good fun. And yeah, it was really good fun actually.
Thank you so much Claire and I look forward to getting to know you better over time hopefully. And thank you everyone for listening. Bye bye. Bye everyone. 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.
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