Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn. I'm your host, Claire Pedrick, and it's a pleasure to have you listening in today to a conversation with someone I've known for a while now, since the beginning of The Coaching Inn, in fact, Alice Sheldon. And before we find out a bit more about Alice, just a reminder, if you want to subscribe or follow on your podcast platform, you'll get every episode as it downloads.
And if you'd like to leave us a review on the podcast platform that you listen to, we would absolutely love that. And also just to remind you that The Coaching Inn is open all day on Friday, the 28th of March, 2025, between 8 a.m. UK and 6 p.m. UK for you to come along and have a virtual drink, cup of tea, whatever you bring, whatever it is time in your part of the world.
I'll be there for almost all the day and colleagues will be there at other bits times and we'd absolutely love to meet you in real life online, of course. So Alice, we have met in real life. For a- and what a delight it was. for a very lovely coffee in London, which is amazing for someone for me who now never leaves the Shire. Tell us about your book and what got you into this work and then I'll ask you another question because if I ask you another one now that's too many.
That is absolutely right Claire. In fact, I'm still fixated on our delightful coffee because it was such a pleasure to meet having had an online relationship for so long and in so many different sort of pieces. So that was a real pleasure. So the question was, tell us about the book and how I got to where I am. Was that it? Good, okay, thank you. So I have had a very, varied career path via Teacher and Barrister and Chief Executive of National Charity here in the UK and other things besides.
But I think I, through all of those things, there was lots about each of them that I loved, but I was really looking for the thing that would allow me to make my Alice-shaped piece of difference in the world. And that is what I found and then wrote a book about, and obviously what we connected over. Your Alice-shaped piece of difference in the world. I love that! Because we should all have a Claire-shaped piece of difference or a whoever-shaped piece of difference, shouldn't we? Well, think so.
think it's the piece about each of us really truly being special. In my family of origin, there was a quite a dangerous story that I was special. And that is a weight to carry if you know, you don't have also the narrative that so is everybody else, which I didn't have back then, and that now is extremely important to me.
So I I really treasure the journey that has brought me to a place of believing absolutely in my own specialness, but in a way that now I carry with joy because it's, you know, as you say, I'm intrigued. What is the Claire special piece and what is the, you know, and I firmly believe that we all have, we all have our unique and individual piece to contribute. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a lifetime's journey to find it, isn't it? And sometimes people find it earlier than others.
Yeah, that is right. That is right. So what do you do now, Alice? Well, so I have the delight, well, I do lots of things now. But professionally, what I do now is I go into organisations of all kinds. So anywhere where there are groups of people gathered together doing something together, whether that's government or, you know, finance or school or charity or NHL, whatever.
Wherever there are people coming together, I go in and I share a needs based and we can explore what that jargon means, but a needs-based model of relating and communicating to allow people to really thrive, I guess, in the work context that they're in and, you know, inevitably people take the skills out into their home context as well because they work everywhere. That is what I do. So yeah, so I I love it. I give keynote. did a key for the first time for ages.
I had a big audience last week and it was just a delight, actually really delightful. And then equally, I love working with, you know, smaller groups as well. And yeah, everything in between. So. So tell us about needs-based model. Okay. I'm just going to sit and grin through this podcast, Claire, because it's such a delight to be having these conversations that you and I again have had over many years and all of the synergies between us together in this context.
Anyway, when I've stopped grinning and the needs-based model. So the way that I look at this is some of your listeners will be familiar with nonviolent communication. NVC and some I'm sure won't be, I won't say more about that now but for those who do know it, my work is very much based in that.
And essentially the very core piece of what I'm about is it turns out that when we come to understand everybody's actions, whatever they're doing, mine, yours, everybody else's, if we come to look at it through a lens that says, whatever someone is doing, they are doing it as an attempt to meet shared human needs. And by human needs, I mean, obviously the survival of food, water, shelter, whatever, but also the needs that we have to thrive.
So things like purpose, things like joy, things like knowing that we're being heard, that we're being seen, knowing that we matter. There's a sheet of sort A4 words on a bit of paper which pretty much sums up what pretty much all human beings need in order to live really fulfilled lives. And when we know what those things are and start to understand the world through that lens, it gives us a whole load of tools.
And it also gives us a real vision for how things might look differently if all of those needs were, if we were explicitly trying to take care of all of those needs. How interesting. So there's something fundamentally important about what's present for us in our life, right? Exactly right. Wow. And what difference is it making in the world? That's a very good question.
Because at the moment, you know, I look at the world, obviously, we're two weeks on from the inauguration of Trump in the States. We've got, you know, a lot of politics that we can see where there is polarization in all directions and splitting of people. And there are examples of places where this type of work can really help people to understand the other side of the story. Because what tends to happen in my experience is that we are very scared of really going to the place of the other.
If the other has an alternative or a frightening or whatever it is viewpoint, we don't want to go over there. And the reason that we don't want to is because we think we are they going to have to give something of ourselves away or start believing or doing something that isn't an integrity with who we are?
And one of the, I mean, there are so many things that this type of work brings, but one of them is the capacity to really go to someone else's island, if you like, where they live and where they have their own set of beliefs that we may fundamentally disagree with without agreeing. with it. So we can go, we can understand it, but we have also the capacity to say, I hear you, I really hear you, and I get why you would think like that, and I'm in a different place.
And I think that that piece is missing a lot in our world, really. Wow, it reminds me of a book that I'm reading at the moment called Belonging Not Othering because you're describing there aren't you connecting without othering and hearing and listening and seeing. It's a great title. I've I've not, I'm just shaking my head because I haven't come across it. But the idea of othering is very, very helpful, I think.
Yeah. So you just dripped in earlier something that you talked about needs, but you also talked about our family of origin and what we come to this place with. So how do they connect together? So this is one of my favourite topics because I really like this very simple way of framing how our family of origin, our initial experience as young children impacts our work today and our life today.
So in needs understanding, way that this is framed is to understand that each of us has somewhere between two and five-ish, what I call fingerprint needs. So these are particular needs that we have a relationship with and we come into our adult life. with a particular antenna around these needs. So for example, in my original family, I grew up in a world where I didn't experience authenticity, by which I mean that the story was that we were all happy, but my felt reality was very different.
But I couldn't challenge that. because the story was very strong. Nowadays, if I come into an environment and I have a sense of dissonance between what someone's saying and what the reality is, my whole body nervous system being reacts very strongly to that. So none of us probably enjoy it when people are not in integrity or inauthentic with us. Probably, you know, most of us don't enjoy that.
But for me, I have... a disproportionate reaction because I'm not only reacting to what's going on in the present moment with the person who I'm with, but I'm also reacting to the entire history that I carry with me in my physical being. And so what happens when our fingerprint needs get triggered, that is the time when we have disproportionate emotion. And when I say disproportionate, I don't mean there's anything wrong, of course, with that emotion.
I just mean... that it's not proportionate to the stimulus in the moment. Typically the emotions that we feel are rage, you know, when we fly off the handle and yell at our children or our partners or whatever, probably one of our fingerprint needs is at play. Or we feel really small and ashamed. You know, someone says something about our appearance or our boss says something at work or whatever it is, and we can feel very, very little. And...
In either of those cases, it is actually as though we are sort of regressing back to being small. We don't have the thought and rationality of the adult available to us. We are in our survival, fight, flight, freeze, spawn mode, and we act out. And so it's very helpful because typically when we do those things, we don't get what we want. We feel bad. We regret it later. We blame ourselves, we tell ourselves we're bad for doing that in some way.
And it's very, very helpful if we have a different, even as a starting point, before we even start to work out how to unwire those things, it's really helpful just to be able to recognize, my goodness, okay, I see what's happening here. So that's the idea with fingerprint needs, Claire. don't know how that sounds to you. I love how you described that almost there you are in this situation and everything has arrived in your body and in your mind in the room.
And it's no wonder we're overwhelmed, is it? A book I'm not going to write, happy to give the title away, is The Power of Naming. I just think it'd make a nice book title. Yeah? But what you're describing there is the power of naming. Actually, once we've named it, that's the first step towards being able to manage things in a different way. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Because it gives us that bridge.
It gives us that, well, it gives us so many bridges, but the first bridge is then removing the sort of self-talk we give to ourselves. So not only are we, you know, suffering from this reaction, but we're also then telling ourselves we shouldn't be and, you know, we can physically even start to just take the first bit of a breath, even if we can't manage a whole breath. You know, you're right. It's, that naming is powerful. I'll buy the book, by the way, Claire, when you haven't written it.
Maybe one of our listeners will write it. Alice and I would both like a copy as it comes out, please. Thank you. There's a one of the quotes in Simplifying Coaching is from a writer called Maurice Mitelink, who said, it's far more important that our lives be perceived than that they be transformed. For once they've been perceived, they will transform themselves of their own accord. So you're talking there, aren't you, about perception? So I guess my question to you Alice is then what?
Once you know that you've got an authenticity thing going on, do you mean? Then what? and once you know the army that's arriving in your head and in the background. yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, this is not meant to be a cop out, but it is the case that for every individual, there's a different way. There isn't a one route at this point. You know, there pretty much is a one route in terms of, I don't mean there's a one route.
is a, know, most people can recognize and with some help and coaching, find their fingerprint needs. that what you then do with them is a lot about who the particular individual is. So for me personally, I have found the ideas taken from the sort psychotherapeutic world to be incredibly helpful. So I'm a very visual person. When I'm throwing my toys out the pram with my teenager, it's actually very easy for me to visualize six-year-old Alice.
having a difficult, I can see her in my head and I can literally just, you know, sort of swivel my attention away from my actual daughter, who's probably quite relieved I'm swiveling my attention away and look at little Alice and I can have a kind of, you know, moment with her of just letting her know that there's nothing wrong, that I'm there and also that it's not helpful for her to kind of rule the roost, if you know what I mean. She needs to be contained and held. lovingly but also firmly.
So for me, that's something that I do. have, as another example, I have a proactive thing that I do. If I'm going into teach a large group, then often I can still get triggered if someone, if I get the feeling that I am being called wrong in some way.
So it happened, I mean ages ago when someone, I can't ever remember it otherwise happening, someone questioned my qualifications in a... workshop that I was teaching and I could feel myself, you know, I kind of feel myself go, you know, and sometimes holding large groups, other stuff comes up. Anyway, when I'm going into a large group, what I now do is I co-opt my army of supporters. So right behind me, I have my best friend who's just going to laugh basically if something goes wrong.
And so that, you know, I've got her laughter and humor and sort of utter support behind me. I'll take a flanker on either side. So those are things I declare, but that will not appeal to some of your listeners who will have very different, know, very different approaches. And some of those are, you know, in the book, some of them will be in the wider world.
But what you're saying is, what the fingerprint needs are and then having some strategies that you can draw on can make a really significant difference. Nice. Yeah, absolutely.
And I mean, in concrete terms, in concrete terms, if you had told me, you know, 10 years ago that I would be confidently talking to audiences of, you know, 200, 300 people, if you told me that I would be holding groups of 80 people and doing workshops with them, even though sometimes, you know, I can still get thrown off course, I'm absolutely far from a done deal. But that's one of the issues with our fingerprint needs is, you know, in a sense, it's quite obvious when we are acting them out.
What's less obvious is how much we avoid situations where they might get triggered and therefore how much they limit us. So knowing what they are, again, allows us to more consciously choose what we do and taking care of them means that we have the option of doing stuff that might before have been unthinkable for us.
I'll just say one more thing Claire, I mean it's obvious I'm sure but the thing about fingerprint needs, one of the things that makes them difficult is that there was a recent incident where I was playing bridge with my dear friend and the bridge teacher was a bit shouty. I dissolved into a fingerprint needs state which looked like me sort of going and rabidly apologising to this man. before I caught myself and was like, sorry, just ignore that.
But my best friend, she's laughing because for her, it's such a silly thing. So that's another thing that can happen to us and make us feel like our fingerprint needs aren't important, that actually, of course, people around us who see us go into these reactions are thinking, you know, that's...
So that's another way that it's helpful because if we are aware that other people might be having a reaction, not just to what we're saying to them, but to a whole load of other stuff, it makes it easier for us to hold that and not to start apologizing for what we've said or trying to work out why, you know, all of that. It kind of cuts through all of that. So yeah, it's helpful, I think.
noticing that we're not the only people in the world and that somebody else may also have the right to be activated. No, exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's a lot about noticing in what you're saying, noticing in myself, noticing in others, noticing what's going on around me. So. We're two thirds of the way through this conversation. We haven't talked about your book.
Ha your book why didn't they why weren't we taught this in school do you know i said that the other day i was talking to colleagues on friday about touch typing and i went it's just everybody needs to be able to do it why won't we talk this in school And that's, I'm guessing what you think about this needs stuff. Yeah, I mean, the book, Claire, as you know, from our journey together, I am definitely not somebody who set out to write a book. And when I did, it did not go well.
But what actually prompted me to start writing it was the number of people who were saying, this isn't written down anywhere. and will you write it down and why weren't we taught this at school? know, that's the sort of, it's the common thing that comes out of a workshop. If you're running workshops around this stuff, it's like, this is so simple and it's powerful. Why, you know, why don't we know this stuff? So yeah, that was what provoked the book.
can't let you run over that little comment that you made there, it didn't go terribly well. Well, I love this story. So basically I start, so I write the first chapter of this book and Alison Jones, so of course, you know, also, had already, we'd met and she really wanted to publish this book. All good. So I wrote the first chapter and I give it to her writing coach. The writing coach takes one look at it and goes, unreadable.
I mean, it came back with more red ink than anything I've ever written in my entire, I'm a straight A student. was like, what is this? is just, you anyway, so I still phoned Alison in tears. And I was like, this is disaster. And she said, just send it to me, Alice, let me have a look at it. So I send it, there's this ominous three day silence.
And then she comes back and she's like, dear Alice, know, your teaching is wonderful, your facilitation is, and I'm thinking this is not going to end well, this email. She's like, this is unreasonable. I'm like, okay. So we then spent six months. Alison is convinced that she was convinced that I could learn to write. I think she's convinced that everyone in the world can learn to write because she's so good at bringing about help and, you know, support for people.
Anyway, after six months she gave up and so I then had, by then I had a team of kind of 100 or 150 individuals behind me and I shout out to Ginny Carter who who ghost wrote the book for me, which was a revelation, because I'd write my unreadable chapter, send it to Ginny. She'd then interview me, which was, course, my happy space. And then she'd go and write a chapter that actually people wanted to read. It was just lovely. that was really, you know, that was good.
And I'm really proud of what we've produced together, but I really want it to be seen as a team effort. Nice. So listeners you may well have listened to the Ginny Carter episode which came out on the 25th of December 2024 at the end of season four where she was talking about how she does this and now here we have a real life example. I love that though that maybe maybe not everyone can write. No, and they're exactly that thing of just like going, you know what?
I had another revelation during the book writing phase, which was I can't read either. So I went to Oxford, that is an academic university. I went to an academic school. I actually can't derive meaning from the written word. I can derive it from the spoken word, but books and papers are really hard for me. And being able to go, Thank goodness for that.
you know, aged sort of 40, whatever it was, I don't need to pretend anymore that I'm just going to own the fact that I've really found reading quite challenging. And that's fine, actually. It's not my, that is not very much in the out of shape piece of things. And that's okay. that's, it's been quite lovely to be able to go, no, don't really do that. And yeah, feel like I imagine you might say something similar, when you were referring to that sort of long journey.
For me, it is a long journey, but the journey of reclaiming more and more honestly who I am and being unashamed of who I am and trying to take care when how I am might negatively impact other people and looking at whether... there's anything I want to change, that's all, you know, all, but being able to recognise that, yeah, I need to be fully me in order to try to do my piece in the world, I think. And I would hope that, yeah, others would be on that journey too.
And that you have got something to say to the world, but you didn't have to be the one who wrote it on paper. Yeah. And Ginny, I mean, that was a delight because of course many people employ her and perhaps don't want it to be known for whatever reason that it's so, so for, you know, that was a very sweet connection as well to be able to say, you know, Ginny did this. And, and, and actually, yeah, I really love that. Yeah, amazing.
So Ginny's done a whole podcast episode on how to write a self-help book. So do have a listen to that if writing a book is in your... ether... listeners. What's your biggest hope now for the thing that is Alice-shaped that is emerging? That is a very good question. I think... My biggest hope is that I can get out of my own way enough to be able to influence power.
So the people that I want to talk to are, I mean, I want to talk to everybody because I love people, but the people that I actually want to take this, the message around this to are people in power. And that's what I would love, know, in five years time, I'd like to be sitting here thinking about, thinking about shifts that I can see, you know, at a bigger scale because of that, I guess. so that the difference that is made in the world is. that's.
that we move away from a right-wrong paradigm into a needs-based, understanding paradigm, and we take action as a society that explicitly holds all needs with care. We might not be able to meet all needs all of the time, in fact, we certainly won't, but that we explicitly look at What are the needs on the table and how can we act to meet them? So something about more acknowledgement.
And it feels as you're talking Alice, that there's something about enabling people to be themselves more, even if they can't get everything they need. Yes. Yes, that's right. It's interesting. I haven't really thought of those two things together. But you're right. I was thinking about that. We were talking about that, weren't we, just before you asked that question. And so I'm curious how those two kind of come together.
I'm thinking about the work that we're doing around neurodiversity and masking, because you're very much talking in the same space, I think, aren't you? a little bit more clay. I'm just thinking about how neurodivergent people have to mask. And actually not all neurodivergent people know they're neurodivergent, in which case they're really masking a lot.
And part of that is either not knowing what our needs are or not being able to articulate necessarily what that is in service of being able to operate in a bigger space. And I think that comes with all kinds of people in all kinds of different... areas doesn't it? Yes. Yes. Yeah, so lots to learn. So lots to learn, yeah, absolutely. And it is a never-ending journey, I think, but one that so many more people are interested in in all walks of life, and that gives me some level of hope.
So if you could challenge our listeners to do one thing today, what would it be?
Hmm. Well, I would go right back to where I started, think, which is understanding the world through the lens of needs, because although there are many, many tools, I mean, you know, that's, that's, obviously, that's kind of what my book is about, that all of the tools that flow from understanding the world through the lens of needs, but what I would What I would really love people to do is to print out a needs list.
You can get hold of one on my website and stick it on a fridge, on the back of a door, wherever, you know, in your desk drawer, just to have it so that when there's some behavior going on, whether it's your own or someone else's, to just pause, take the list and just go, okay, what needs do I guess this person might be trying to meet?
Because I think that fundamental shift... might be, I could imagine, hope that might be something that's playful but that also can be quite insightful in terms of unwalking ways of being. standing in someone else's shoes. Yeah, yeah, all standing in our own in a different way. noticing that we have got shoes and what shoes they are. Yeah. So the book, remind us the name of the book. I have it beside me. The book is called Why Weren't We Talked This At School?
by Alice Sheldon and how do people find your website Alice? So my website is, hopefully we can put it in the show thing. It's needs-understanding.com. So that will be in the show notes people. And I'd love to hear from people. It's always a delight. I also use LinkedIn a lot. let's also try and put my handle or whatever you did. I used the right one. But it's always a pleasure to hear from people. So please, please don't hesitate to be in touch.
Fabulous. So thank you, Alice, for coming to the coaching in today. Thank you Claire for making me so very welcome and feel so easy. It is a delight to talk to you always. I'm going to get you back to London again before long. Yeah, because we met because I just put a thing on LinkedIn, didn't I? And I said, I've got two hours near Baker Street if anyone's got time to meet for a coffee. And you went, yes, me. Yeah, I do that sometimes if I'm gonna, if I am traveling and got space.
No, it's yours. Dear Alice, I am coming to London. Exactly, you have first dibs. No, I wouldn't want to deprive anyone else Claire, but our friendship will be ended should you choose a different route, not that I wish to, you know. No, lovely. Sheldon, thank you so much for coming into the coaching in and everyone thank you for listening. We'll be back next week with another episode. So have a good week. Bye bye. Bye bye.