Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn. I'm your host, Claire Pedrick, and today we're going to have great fun talking about the end of a coaching relationship. First of all, remember to subscribe or follow if you want to receive the podcast every week straight to your device. So welcome, Karen O'Connor and Beatrice Zornek. Before we dive into the question, tell us a little bit about you and your coaching journey. Karen, why don't you start?
OK, I came across coaching way back in 2004 when I was doing a leadership course. I was a senior leader at the BBC and they sent us to Ashridge Business School. And so there was a introduction to the coaching approach back then. But when I left the BBC and became a consultant, I started training to be a coach full time. I've been coaching now for about 10 years and I really love to see people become happier. And I tend to coach a lot of leaders.
in a variety of industries, but I also coach in the social sector. And I'm sitting here going, wanting to go, do you know so and so, but we'll keep that for later. Beatrice, tell us a bit about you. I'm originally from Romania where I studied psychology. I wanted to become a therapist, but that was a bit ambitious for a young graduate without any earnings at the time. But that led me to a lifelong passion for psychology and how we function and how we think and about...
Nearly seven years ago now, I started my coach training and I haven't looked back since. I'm a PCC coach and I work with people at key points of transition in their careers. So taking on a first leadership role, changing careers, finding more meaning and purpose in their professional lives. Brilliant. Thank you so much. So Karen, you're in our Gold Supervision Group and we had that amazing conversation about ending the coaching relationship.
And I said to you, come and talk about it on the podcast. Because everyone's going, what a great idea. So tell us a bit about your great idea about ending the relationship.
Well, it is now that I think about it quite self-evident, as you go through coaching, things that you've written a book about simplification of coaching, Claire, and this is sort of about that, that the self-knowledge of coaching is in service of moving forward to whatever we want, moving on without the coach, moving on without the coach.
And that's the bit, self-accountability, that I think is a longer process than I used to give time for because if you've learned about yourself and you figured out the things about yourself that show up at certain times with certain triggers useful stuff like skills or validation or less useful stuff like lack of confidence or limiting belief that's very individual what those triggers are what presses
my buttons isn't what presses yours and this is the stuff that helps with endings I think so I'm always thinking that ending starts at the beginning, because the more we know about ourselves, the more we can normalise, normalise and have strategies when things get in the way or show up again because they do.
And the big klaxon to me at the end of a session or a series, which didn't used to be such a big question, is when I hear the word just, just as an action point, as in I'm just going to put this time in my diary or I'm just going to climb Mount Everest, you know, because there isn't any just. It's putting all that lovely individual new knowledge about ourselves and being ready for when things that throw us off course crop up again, because they will crop up again.
And I think the end of a session is about normalizing those triggers for yourself, changing the responses, normalize the triggers, but change the responses, be ready for it. And there's some... interesting research which I'll tell you about later, which I've been talking to a professor of health in Holland and she's been looking at the same area which I think is very useful for coaches.
How interesting, because there's something isn't there, I think, where we accidentally think that the work, the work is what we do together in the sessions. But actually the work is their work and it goes way beyond the sessions and in between and as you say, beyond. I'm struck by that, what you're saying reminds me of that piece of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets where he said, make an end is to make a beginning.
We shall not cease from exploration and the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. That's what happens as they go, isn't it? Beatrice you're smiling. I feel like you're an encyclopedia of beautiful quotes. No, I just only sell you the ones I can remember. but I was, I really like what you were sharing, Karen. And I was actually something you said struck a chord. what you were saying about endings start at the beginning.
And I think you're right. It is self evident, but, it's actually something I've been reflecting on more recently. because, and I feel I'm arriving to this podcast more as a learner and as a curious. person than an expert, which feels a little bit vulnerable as a supervisor myself. So you were saying about ending starting at the beginning, and I feel that as someone who works in an open-ended way rather than in a programme, so I don't have a fixed programme, and I used to.
So I have a comparison, and I know that when you have a fixed programme, it's much easier to have strong endings because there is a container for a set amount of time. Now, I've changed the way I work to a session by session basis, which for me feels very powerful because I feel that the person is there every time because they want to be rather than because they've paid in advance for programme.
But then the question is when there isn't a fixed ending and there isn't a clear container, how do you talk about endings and how do you end in a strong way? So this is why what you were saying about beginning with endings in mind, like thinking about endings along the way rather than just at the end. So I'd love to hear your thoughts around that. What does it mean to end strong? And also what is our responsibility as coaches as part of the ending process?
Is that already part of the contracting stage or at what point do we have that conversation about endings? Great question. me, for me, I've come to the same space as you in that I don't really believe in a structured set of coaching. I mean, if a client wants that, that's fine. And it's a useful place to start as a process. But in reality, whatever is most important at the time is most important at the time, isn't it? And as I said at the beginning, to me, And like you, I'm constantly learning.
So I'm vulnerable in this space, too. What is in service of them and in service of them at the beginning, which I often say is I don't know anything. I am here to be a partner to you. And as you know more about yourself, how will that be useful to you going forward when you don't have me as a partner? What will you be doing when I'm not sitting in front of you or What will you be thinking about? How can you really know yourself so that you can use what you've learned when the going gets tough?
mean, Claire mentioned a quote. I've got a quote from Marshall Goldsmith, who wrote The Earned Life, and he was a coach, and he wrote, piece of advice I give to all my coaching clients is I'm not sure what crisis will appear, but I'm almost positive that some crisis will appear. So plan for distractions. assume that crazy is the new normal because you'll probably be close to the reality that awaits.
So that expectation in relationship building that there isn't a nice neat package and you just write I just need to put in my diary at the end of it you know it's work on you and it's very individual. As you're talking, it makes me think about the concept of whether we accidentally... end a session expecting the coming back. rather than ending a session with a bit of not knowing that puts more responsibility onto the other person.
Because we've always done a lot of single session coaching and those people may come back, they may not, some of them come back often, as you say Beatrice, some of them don't come back often. So for me, there's something about always ending with an ending.
in not expecting that there's going to be a comeback, although there might be, you know, they might come back in a month or two months or three months or six months or a year or 15 years, but not having the coming back as an expectation, because I think we end differently. depending on how entangled we are making ourselves be in the working process. Would you give an example of how you would end the session with this mindset? Because I think you're right.
I think I do anticipate that there is some continuity to the process and that might be, well, clearly it is an assumption on my side and you've just mirrored that for me. So how do you end the session? How I don't end the session is an easier way in. So how I don't end the session is, so you're going to go off and do this and we'll talk about it next time.
And I know that's not how you end sessions, but that's one way of ending a session, is you go away and then bounce back to me and we'll pick it up. I think there's something for me about no expectation that we'll pick it up, although we might. So there's something about have you got what you need to know that you're going to commit to whatever it is you've just committed to? And where are you going to be accountable?
So for me, it's always about trying to make sure that the accountability doesn't start with me, although it might. But it's not starting with... So you go away and come back next time and tell me you've done it. Isn't the same as, so have you got what you need to go away? And where are you going to be accountable for that? And they go, where am I going to be accountable? And rarely do they say to you, to me, they almost always say that they're going to be accountable elsewhere.
That's a beautiful thing. Because that begins the next phase, doesn't it, Karen, where they're not working with me anymore, or you. a little bit more about, you know, if people don't really understand what being accountable elsewhere means, what that might mean in practice for somebody? So in practice, I probably wouldn't use the accountability word. You know, how are going to make sure you've done it? Who's going to support you? Who's going to support you? Who's going to kick you?
Who's going to remind you? Whatever works in that conversation for that kind of person to trust that they've got what they need and they've got a bit of a support system. that's going to help that to happen. Because I think there are a few things that act, and they are really accidentally, and they are always in good faith. But accidentally in coaching, we can feel that the work is all about them and us in the session.
And I think we can always also accidentally think that we're there one and only. That really touches something for me because I realized that a very common question I ask is, so what are you going to do as a result of this conversation between now and next time we meet?
And I'm just realizing that there's an inherent assumption that they somehow depend on me or that I need to be part of the process rather than... really empowering and allowing their own autonomy to take over their process of accountability. So that's really, thank you. That's really powerful. two things in one, it? Because one of those things might be about accountability, but the other one is about a time window.
Mm. Mm-hmm. So, I encourage you not to go no no. Don't have a double no no, please. Hahaha Because actually, using the time window can be a really useful thing. Because people are much more likely to take an action when it's got a time definition around it, aren't they? When you say, in the next week, or between now and next time, that's a nice time boundary. But yeah, I think we accidentally do a lot of things. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. It was less about the timeframe, yeah, and more about me when we meet and I will be there.
think that's such a good pick up because I mean something in you has made you move into individual sessions and I think so you know that that's what I hear you saying but it's the individuality of the person in front of you that always blows me away and even just to take if you don't mind just a very small example recently from me I I know I need to do more flexibility exercise, but I also know me and I know I'm not going to do it at night. I now know that I'm just not going to do it.
And I'm not, know, if there's a yoga class at night and I'm not going to do it by myself, which was something I learned during lockdown that doing it online, I'm not going to do it. There's something about the accountability with the other people in the class. So unless it's in the morning with other people, I'm not going to do it.
And I know that about myself and so instead of beating myself up about the reasons why I'm not doing this flexibility exercise, I'm creating the conditions from my self-knowledge about how I will succeed. And that's a very individual thing. And that's what I mean about the more you know about yourself rather than using it as, you know, I'm never going to do anything because I'm hopeless, you know, you think, OK, what are the conditions I've learned about myself that I can use here?
I mean, it's a silly example, it can be quite profound if people realize that when the setback creeps up over the hill again with the best of intentions, they actually do know themselves more to be able to prepare for it. It's the expectation that it's not all going to be brilliant after a series of coaching sessions. As you're talking, you're reminding me when you said, you know, we're all different. Everybody's an individual. I remember working with somebody and they always came.
We did in-person work and they always came with a little notebook and that little notebook always reminded me of the one that my grandma used to buy in the hairdresser that had a dog on the front with a little spiral bound thing. And they would always come in the notebook. Yeah. And they'd write down two or three things that were really in insightful for them during the conversation. And I think it was probably at end of the second session.
I said, I'm just curious, what do you do with your notebooks? Because I think it was a different notebook that they came with on the second session, because they were quite niche. So you notice things like that, don't you? And they went, I have hundreds of these notebooks. So I'm going, dear. And they said, I just go back to the office. I action the three things or I put a reminder somewhere where I'm going to action them and I tear the page out.
So I'll always come to everything with an empty notebook, but there are no incompletions on my desk. I thought, my goodness, because how many people have we worked with who write something on their list and it doesn't make any difference? But getting that clarity in terms of the relationship and accountability and all those endings over time was that actually all this person needed was a couple of things in their notebook and... We knew what was going to happen next.
which takes me back to something you said in, I think it was in Simplifying Coaching, Claire, about how there is no perfect question, there is only the perfect question for the moment and for the person. And I think we can get so caught up into what are the right questions to end well or for accountability or... Well, the best questions are the ones that work for the person. And I'm really glad that Karen brought in individuality and what works best for the person in front of you.
Can I tell you about this research this professor in Holland I spoke to? Please. name's Marieke Adriaanse and I actually reached out to her when I read her research on setbacks. And she and her colleagues work in public health. So they really are about doing research that will effectively help people change behaviors and the health of people, make them feel better. she and her colleagues did a study on setbacks.
And this isn't about, you not having big goals like I'm going to change my diet, putting those things in place. That's taken for granted. The idea is that no matter what you do there will be setbacks and that's not an excuse but what you... it's like double planning. What do do to prepare for that happening?
It might be a small thing but the response to it, this research says, and I'll share the link with you, is very important because if you haven't prepared for it And if you think it's an internal factor, you can spiral out of control. Like if you think about I had a piece of chocolate cake, therefore I'm an emotional eater, therefore I'll never be able to do this.
Whereas if you think about external factors, an example might be the yoga one I gave you, the morning is good for me, other people are good factors that will help me succeed. Or they discovered the If you've done it before and you've got that well that you can remember to dip into, that you remembered, you can overcome these factors and setbacks and stop them spiralling.
thinking about your tactics when it's a bit like and the reason I reached out to her is because it chimed with my idea of normalising the idea that these things will show up again. And she very they very much say people have got to not have unrealistic expectations. They will show up. might. It might be a small thing, but how you react to it can spiral or it can just be knocked away and you actually build your self-efficacy is the term they use. And I thought that was fascinating for coaches.
So I wanted to have a chat with her. So I did. And and funny enough, we ended up in a place where we were talking about the fact that because she says that setbacks will happen. Some people have accused her of normalizing failure and she does the exact opposite. She wants you to prepare for it. And that got us thinking about how there's a sort of memification of failure these days. Like people misquote Beckett on Instagram, fail again, fail better. It doesn't mean failure's something to go for.
It just means actually, it'll probably show up, learn from it, you know. And I thought her work was really, really interesting. And the main takeaway is that more work needs to be done. Because the body of work that she quoted was that people used to attribute success to internal factors. I did that. And failure to external factors, that was something I got in my way. Whereas actually she found the opposite. How interesting. yeah.
I think that part also, I mean, I'm not familiar with the research and thank you so much for sharing, also really depends on the locus of control. And also I find that, especially in people with trauma, the locus of control might be switched. So they might put success on external factors and failure upon themselves. Or at least it's more likely for people who have experienced trauma to do that. again in very individualism.
And I think that's such an interesting point about preparing for setbacks. And it made me think about something you were saying earlier, Karen, about we're not showing up with an agenda and what is in service of the client. And that's a question I've been asking myself when it comes to endings.
To what extent do I just leave it in the hands of the person and to what extent do I have a responsibility to maybe educate them, maybe clients don't know how important the ending of a relationship is, or they don't know why it's important to have a contracting session or to talk about the bigger objectives. I feel like I'm finding my feet in terms of how much responsibility do I hold and how much do I need to educate. but then without becoming too rigid or too leading or directive in sessions.
And I'm really interested, and actually I love, Karen, your idea that you're almost adding something else into the work that isn't theirs, which is, and let's talk about planning for setbacks, not because you're directing the agenda, but because you're recognizing that the value of today comes from how useful it is in a month, three months a year.
So if somebody, for example, comes and one of the things they want to talk about is imposter syndrome or feeling that they don't have the right to speak in a meeting or something, know, they're feeling that everybody's, they don't have the confidence to do that. I think that I know that some people come to coaching thinking that it's the just thing. All they just have to do is this. But that's going to show up again.
because you you probably know much more about this than I do Beatrice, you know that came from somewhere, came from how we grew up or what our parents voices in our head or whoever the voices in our head happened to be, it came from somewhere it's not just going to go away because you have six sessions of coaching and that's what I mean about normalizing the triggers for changing the responses.
Yeah. So in that supervision session, I can remember you talking, Karen, about almost using a stoker's kind of framework really lightly at the end of a conversation, at the end of the relationship to really be quite robust about the future. Do you remember that conversation?
Yeah, mean it's about my allergy to the word just as well because you know quite often people throw, I've done this in coaching when being coached myself, I sort of throw the coach a bone if they're asking me what I'm going to do you know, well I'm just going to you know do this every day, well no I'm not you know and I'm pleasing the coach which happens all the time you know and so just being very attuned to that. And even if it's nothing, even if it's...
But the point is, and when that comes up again, that's a question I frequently ask, and it might be leading, but this normalisation of, yeah, and so when you encounter that another time, you know, what are you going to draw on in yourself? I we talk about, we talk about in the Stoker's thing, we talk about... endings with what external or internal resources you're to use. not in that language but then you know what have you learned about yourself that could help next time this shows up?
I had this visualization of an alarm, a smoke alarm going off, which is how often does a smoke alarm go off in a house and everybody's standing in the street in their pajamas barefoot. That's not what happens actually when there's an alarm. You do investigation, you poke it with a broom or you check the batteries or you see if your teenage daughter has yet again burnt some toast and the idea that these things are alarms in us and they will go off.
So let's investigate what's actually happening here and decide what the appropriate action Yeah. As you're talking, I keep thinking about preparing for the Camino and all the prep that I did and all the training that I did and my feet were in tip top condition and I got the right socks and all of that stuff. But then the most important thing to do was then to go, so what am I going to do when I go blister?
And that's such, that's another great example, isn't it, of knowing we're going to fall over. what do we do, what do we prepare for now knowing that there's going to be a falling over? Yeah, so I'm quite an expert in coping strategies, in foot, in foot post disaster coping strategies. But that's what we do the work for, isn't it? Because actually we're doing the work for the rest of the person's life, not for the six sessions or the three sessions or the year or whatever it is we're doing.
for the one session. Yeah, yeah. So what are we noticing coming out of this conversation? I'd like to hear a little bit more, Beatrice, about why you decided to just go for session by session. What was the instinct in you that made you think that was a better service of your thinkers? good question. That was a few years ago now.
think it's... I think coaches work better in different ways and I probably had the fortunate opportunity to have... I think I had maybe one or two clients in a row who were signed up for a specific time and I remember feeling a few times with both of them, just feeling this person doesn't really want to be here. and I felt that we weren't doing our best work.
And perhaps back then, I also, I mean, I did bring these things up, but perhaps I didn't have as many tools or wisdom to really challenge that and explore that a bit more, especially when sometimes clients are afraid to say, well, actually, I don't really want to be here, but I've paid for it. I'm going to show up anyway. And then I realized I want to work with people because they want to be there.
And I recognized the difference between people who were there because they signed up for programme versus people who were there because they actually wanted to. And I thought I, you know, I thought I want to do good work because people want to be there basically. Yeah, but there is probably more I could still do.
And this conversation has really made me, you know, left me with some things to more things to think about how we still create a container for the duration of the process, but also how we end. each conversation without an expectation that there will be a next time or when the next time might be. So thank you for that. And also what you were saying, Karen, about preparing for setbacks, that's really powerful. And I feel that's another piece of sort of education that people don't think about.
But we as coaches, we know that these things are bound to happen. So then we can... support our clients to be aware and be prepared for things that will come up along the way. What are your insights, Karen? Everyone's different. was struck by what Beatrice has said about control being different when there's been a trauma.
The researchers think about that as well, different individuals sort of self blame very much more quickly if something else has happened versus, but that self efficacy, the argument goes. can be really greatly improved if you remember when you overcame a setback in the past. And that's the research outcome to that, you know, reminding yourself that you've done this before, like you on the Camino, Claire.
I know I've had a blister and fallen down, so I know this isn't going to mean I have to give up, you know. So all conversations are useful because as I started off by saying, I don't know anything, you know, don't know anything about you, you know everything about you. Ha So you're going to share that research so we can put it in the show notes. Yes, I told her I was going to do that, so I'll do that. Thank Thank you.
Well, what an absolute delight to talk to you, Karen O'Connor and you Beatrice Zornek today. Thank you for everything you brought and thank you everyone for listening. We'll be back next week. Bye bye.