Dr. Lisette Nieves' One Best Question

[podcast] https://s3.amazonaws.com/tch-podcast/2018/nieves_lisette/LisetteNieves_1BQ.mp3

Looking for a new way to help your team members have breakthrough moments and rethink how they approach finding a solution? In this podcast, Dr. Lisette Nieves shares her one best question. It's a powerful, provocative catalyst for people to access their creativity.

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Resources

Companies and people mentioned in the podcast:

• Lingo Ventures
• Ernest Oriente

Full Transcript

Michael: I'm Michael Bungay Stanier. This is The Coaching Habit Podcast, where I get to talk to thinkers, leaders, writers, coaches to figure out the best strategies for leading yourself and others. And my guest today, Lisette Nieves. I pronounced that wrong the first time. How do I say your surname again, Lisette?

Lisette Nieves: It's Nieves.

Michael: Nieves. I can only blame my Australian background for not quite having the Latina accents in the right place. Lisette is a long-time friend of mine. I met her 25 years ago when we were students at Oxford together. We were both Rhodes Scholars there. She was cool then and she's cooler now. She's an experienced social entrepreneur, public sector leader. She's a professor at NYU leading the championing around education leadership and policy. She's a partner at Lingo Ventures where she works and coaches and support entrepreneurs particularly those in the education space. So, Lisette, thank you for being on this little podcast.

Lisette Nieves: Great. Thank you for inviting me.

Michael: This is one of the little spin-off interviews that we do and it focuses on your favorite question. Because you know we stand for coaching and if there's one thing that coaching is it's can you stay curious a little bit longer? Can you rush to action and advice giving a little bit more slowly? And of course questions are the magic to staying curious. So, Lisette, for you, do you have a favorite coaching question, one that you go to?

Lisette Nieves: I do. I have a few and I'm actually going to think of a different one that I love to ask people which is, when was the last time you felt you were being creative? I like asking that question.

Michael: Brilliant. And what's its power do you think?

Lisette Nieves: I think when someone comes to a coach or has reached out to me, they are obsessed and justifiably so with what they believe is a problem, a wall or something that's in front of them. And so, I think that asking them when they're creative it literally... I love doing it in person. They become lighter, literally. And I think it also allows them to get into the space where I might have to think very differently around a solution.

Michael: Right.

Lisette Nieves: Right? Because that's a challenge sometime, right? You want to aid discovery as a coach, right? You want to do that. But you also want to shake up what I call very strict degrees of freedom for how we problem solve.

Michael: Right.

Lisette Nieves: Right? You want to expand those degrees of freedom. And for some it means saying how can I think more creatively about this in a way that they hadn't thought before?

Michael: I love that. Probably what I love about the power of this is it can be a bit of a shock to the system when you say to somebody, "All right, it's time to be creative." It kind of freaks people out a little bet. They're like, "I'm not really that creative and you're going to make me ... I'm going to come up with bad ideas or no ideas." And there's something about this question as an intermediary step to kind of prime people to access their creativity. I've always thought your body leads your brain. How you are physically influences how you think and how you show up. And in some ways what that question is an invitation to kind of reconnect physically about what it felt like what it meant to be creative. And then from that new state, that new mindset you then have access to the opportunity to be more creative.

Lisette Nieves: Oh, absolutely. I think... and you are definitely the expert on this on inspiring that with folks. I think it is. It's a full complete immersion in a way, right?

Michael: Yeah.

Lisette Nieves: That for folks who may come to us for coaching are only in their head space, right?

Michael: Right. Yeah.

Lisette Nieves: Not in their body space for some of them. Not even in their soul space, right?

Michael: Right. Yeah.

Lisette Nieves: And so that helps, yeah.

Michael: I love that. Because I'm a guy who's in my head space. I'm a cerebral guy. I can't remember who said this but somebody said something like, "I see my body purely as a vehicle for carrying my head around," and I'm like oh man on the one hand that is actually me. On the other hand I truly see the power of body-centered wisdom. Soul-centered wisdom. And I think the power of that question helps people tap into some of that.

Lisette Nieves: Yeah, the beauty of coaching as you know, is you learn as much being a coach, right?

Michael: Yeah, for sure.

Lisette Nieves: And coaches need coaches, right? So I love going to people that are going to remind me to shake it up a little bit. That I'm just, I'm not seeing the whole picture. I'm only seeing a little piece of it and this is the time to be creative around that. And so I know I need that too because it's so-

Michael: That's so interesting.

Lisette Nieves: Do you feel that way too?

Michael: Yeah, I do. I've had a ... I went through a lot of coaches early on who didn't quite fit for me and then I've had the same coach now for probably eight or nine years. Ernest Oriente, who's a lovely man, and partly I ... he has stuck with me because he is very good at not falling for any of the tricks that I try and put out into the world.

Lisette Nieves: Yes.

Michael: On one hand I'm a champion for coaching and being coached. On the other hand when I'm being coached, I'm pretty slippery and I'm like I kind of want to be coached. I kind of want to avoid the hard question. And I can fool some people some of the time. So far I have yet to fool Ernest any of the time. So I love how he holds my feet to the flame and kind of gets to the heart of what's really going on.

Lisette Nieves: Yeah and I think the other thing that makes that interesting when I think with my coach too and some of my coaching experiences regarding that question is another exciting...I make which is more than the question is that acknowledging the emotion that is being expended on dealing with the problem, right?

Michael: Yes.

Lisette Nieves: Which it sounds therapeutic and I don't mean it therapeutic but you know what, it is emotional.

Michael: Right.

Lisette Nieves: It is emotional and so I love it when I'm in my head space when I have a coach that says, "Okay, enough of that. Let's get to what's really at it right now," right?

Michael: Right.

Lisette Nieves: What triggered that, right?

Michael: Yeah.

Lisette Nieves: So that was helpful.

Michael: That's so good. Lisette, this is a great question to share. Really useful for people to add to their tool of questions, their quiver of questions. For people who want to find out more about you in the work they do, where can they find you on the web?

Lisette Nieves: They can find me on the New York University website in the Department of ALT, Administration, Leadership, and Technology. Just look up faculty profiles or at lingoventures.us which is my private business.

Michael: Perfect. Lisette, a pleasure. Thank you.

Lisette Nieves: Pleasure. Thank you so much.

_______________________________________________________________________________________Michael Bungay Stanier

Michael is the Senior Partner at Box of Crayons, a company that teaches 10-minute coaching so that busy managers can build stronger teams and get better results. His most recent book, The Coaching Habit, has sold a quarter of a million copies. Along with David Creelman and Anna Tavis, Michael recently conducted and released a new piece of research, The Truth & Lies of Performance Management. Michael is a Rhodes Scholar and was recently recognized as the #3 Global Guru in coaching. Visit BoxofCrayons.com and https://boxofcrayons.com/pmresearch/ for more information.