From Known Thinking to New Thinking - The Conclusions

This is the fifth and final piece in the series of five articles I have been writing based on my participation in the “Unlearning to Coach Lab” - one of the?AC's Digital Learning programmes – where I’ve been sharing some of Clare Norman’s coaching insights and ideas, and my own experience and reflections on putting them into practice.?

At the heart of this programme and Clare’s upcoming book “The transformational Coach: Free Your Thinking and Break Through to Coaching Mastery” are two core concepts:

1. Informed by over 700 hours of observing and giving feedback to coaches, a stripping back of the layers of learned beliefs and habits we unconsciously bring to our work, and
2. Proposals for new and more helpful beliefs and habits.

If this is the first time you’ve landed here, the key thing to know is, helping clients think is what drives Clare’s approach to coaching which she defines as: “a joint endeavour to move beyond known thinking to discover new thinking that energises the thinker to change”.

To find out more about Clare’s upcoming book release, register your interest here: https://www.clarenormancoachingassociates.com/library/upcoming-book-release/

Webinar 9 – Synopsis

In preparation for Webinar 9 we were asked to read sections of Clare’s book and consider what we had learned from our coach training that we may need to ‘unlearn’ in order to enhance our coaching skills.?Since we often spend up to two years in coach training, it’s not surprising there was quite a lot of material here! So, I’m going to pick out just a few that resonated with me or which I found particularly insightful.

A mindset formed in the coaching classroom is: ‘Use the established formula’.?

In the early days of coaching, sticking with the model(s) that we were trained in can be helpful with providing a structure to work with and bring us a sense of comfort that we are doing things in the ‘right’ way. But, they are only a tool “within and around which to use our coaching competencies and intuition”. Developing our coaching instincts e.g., really noticing our thinkers’ behavioural cues, and our own body-based responses and offering this up as a resource on which to draw, are equally core to the practice of skilful coaching.

So, the new alternative mindset? ‘Trust your intuition’.

Other expectations that we may have developed through our training are, that in coaching ‘We sit and talk’ and that ‘Change happens after the session’.?The problem with sitting still is that it can “cause stuck-ness” and on its own, talking often isn’t enough to break the stalemate.?

Whilst in the Western world we favour logical-mathematical and verbal-linguistic intelligence, it’s important to remember that other intelligences exist and can be a very valuable source of insights for our thinkers such as:

• Visual/spatial intelligence (“picture smart”)
• Auditory intelligence (“music smart”)
• Bodily/kinaesthetic intelligence (“body smart”).[1]

Then, when we remind ourselves of Kolb’s experiential learning cycle we can quickly see that gaining insights from talking isn’t enough. Active experimentation is required, and this can happen in the coaching session as well as outside, whether that’s in the form of rehearsing a conversation they intend to have or helping them get started on a task.

As a result, two new mindsets emerge:?

“We can use all their (and our) senses to access new learning”

“We can get shift in the room by doing it now”.

On the webinar we also practised using ‘multiple intelligences’ as a way to help our thinkers when they get stuck.?We invited our practice partner to experiment with us by using one of the following thinking aids to help represent or re-lens the thinker’s question or issue and explore it from another dimension:

Intelligence accessed: Visual

• Selection of a picture card (from a pack provided by the coach)
• Drawing of a picture
• Placement of objects (e.g. plectrums or buttons) to represent thinker’s position in relation to the issue

Intelligence accessed: Auditory

• Selection of a piece of music or a poem (listened to or read together)
• Invitation to stand and move to a different place in the room
• Outdoor walking together with the thinker

Intelligence accessed: Kinaesthetic/Body

• Invite the thinker to ask their body for its wisdom e.g:

‘When you say that, where do you feel that in your body?’

‘What is your body trying to tell you?’

‘What are the tears saying?’

Personal Reflections

I really relate to the experience of working hard to learn ‘the established formula’ taught on my coach training and then having to work equally hard to hold it more flexibly and become more trusting of my instincts!?

Like all certified training programmes, the course I attended required evidence that I could use the models ‘correctly’ and from ‘A to Z’ in order to pass me out.?

Whilst that’s understandable, I also wonder whether there’s scope for certification bodies to encourage more flexible thinking in participants perhaps by helping them to identify situations in which the taught approach wouldn’t be appropriate – or is that heresy!

I also really relate to the use of supported rehearsal and visualisation in-session. It’s a technique that formed part of my cognitive behavioural coach training and one which I’ve used to good effect in the past with clients, whether by helping them anticipate and handle interview questions or prepare for an important or difficult conversation.?This chapter of Clare’s book reminded me that it’s something I could use more if people are feeling ‘stuck’.

I recognise that ‘sitting and talking’ is what comes to mind for many when we think about coaching- and it’s certainly what my coach training centred on.?But the value in broadening this out and using all our senses to access new learning – ours and our clients’ – really resonated with me.?

I already know from my own day-to-day life experience that going for a walk in the countryside feels very revitalising, and I’m a firm believer in the mind-body connection and have already started researching this area.

The ‘multiple intelligences’ exercise that Clare invited us to carry out showed me that even a small amount of movement in the confines of a coaching session can create new energy and perspective.?

The last webinar was an opportunity to reflect on our learning from the programme and consider what we want to take forward.?

Over the last ten weeks Clare has shared with us a very rich repository of ideas and approaches that I’m sure I will come back to regularly in the future.?

For now, though, my key takeaways are:

• ‘Contracting is the coaching’ and taking time to get clear on the specific question to be addressed in the session is key to making it a success for the client.
• Keeping in mind that ‘breaking the stalemate’ in a session and handing over the baton to the client to allow them to continue the good work of further thinking is often the most helpful approach rather than taking on every one of our client’s aims for the session as a ‘must do’ list of things to check off.
• There is real power in listening to recordings of our sessions as a way to recognise what we’re doing that’s working well, what might be getting in the way, and of continually refining what we do to achieve ‘marginal gains’.
• ?The value in continuing to explore the use of body intelligence and somatics in coaching to expand the resources available to me and my clients and contribute to the sustainability of their results from coaching.

[1] Words in parentheses from Thomas Armstrong Ph.D. and www.institute4learning.com .?

??https://www.institute4learning.com/resources/articles/multiple-intelligences/

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[1] Words in parentheses from Thomas Armstrong Ph.D. and www.institute4learning.com .?

??https://www.institute4learning.com/resources/articles/multiple-intelligences/