The Haber Process

It was before the first world war, ever since the Incas discovered that bird guano helped crops grow, the world had been clambering for guano, and supplies were running short. In the midst of this, one scientist made a breakthrough, and thanks to this, currently the world is 4 times as populated.

The Haber process, undeniably the most important reaction ever discovered. This reaction, discovered by Fritz Haber, is:

This equation represents the reaction of 3 moles of hydrogen, and 1 mole of nitrogen to form 2 moles of ammonia. The equilibrium is:?

There is a very high chance that you owe your life to the Haber process, and on average 50% of the nitrogen in your body is from the Haber process(1.3% of the atoms in your body). Ever since the process was invented, the population of the world quadrupled compared to what it could have without the Haber process.

The nitrogen triple bond is extraordinarily hard to break(945000 J/mol). But, as always, there is a solution.

Haber created special equipment for high temperature and pressure. Under a pressure of 200 times atmospheric pressure at sea level, 400 degrees centigrade and an osmium catalyst, pumping 4 liters of hydrogen and nitrogen, Haber created 1 milliliter of liquid ammonia. Even though this process is inefficient (6%), it is still a major breakthrough today.

Unfortunately, this process has a dark side, as Haber was a German, during the first world war, when Germany had run out of gunpowder, Haber opted to convert his fertilisers into explosives. As I explained, nitrogen takes an lot of energy to break apart, but the reverse is also true. Ammonium nitrate, a derivative of ammonia, is an explosive for this reason. When two diatomic nitrogens come together, they connect and a lot of energy is released (That 945000 J/mol) this energy initiates? a chain reaction that can be huge (Reference to Beirut, August 2020). The explosions of Gunpowder, Trinitrotoluene (TNT) , Nitroglycerine, C-4, Nitrocellulose, Nitroguanidine, Potassium nitrate, 1-Diazidocarbamoyl-5-azidotetrazole (Aziodoazide azide) , Sodium azide, Cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine (RDX) , Octogen (HMX) , Picric acid, Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) , Ethylene glycol dinitrate (EGDN) and Tetryl all depend on the energy released by this.

The above section is the unedited writings of my son.

Why Bother With Coaching?

I'm often challenged on the point of coaching. As coaches, we don't give advice or tell our coachees what to do. The coachees themselves have to explore their issues and come up with their own solutions. So then, what use is a coach?

What a coach does for you, to put it simply, is to hold the space, be a mirror for you, and stretch you.

Let's start with holding the space. Take another look at the title of this section. The same question can be asked two ways. One, as a rhetorical question that is essentially a provocation. Probably the way that it's most commonly asked.

But there is another way to ask this question. Out of genuine curiosity. Non-judgmental and exploratory. And this second way is precisely the way of coaching.

When teaching coaching, I tell my students that I never ask a rhetorical questions. More than once, a senior leader has said to me, "Why did I do it?" It's typically a derisive remark to themselves. And each time, I will ask them back, "Why did do it?"

I'm genuinely curious as to the motivations that drive your behaviours. Because as coaches, our fundamental belief is that all coachees (yes, including you) are capable, resourceful, and whole. Therefore, any behaviour, however irrational on the surface, must stem from a rational reason, and be trying to achieve a good outcome for you. Hence, if we can understand your reason for doing it, we can explore if there are other, more effective ways for you to reach that same outcome.

This brings me to being a mirror for you. We all do things unthinkingly out of beliefs we've picked up in our life experience. These beliefs may or may not be helping us anymore. As coaches, our job is to reflect that back to you, accurately and without judgment. The way a mirror would. Certainly, any change must start from being first aware that a change is needed. But even just the awareness would often bring change. Because you cannot "unknow" something.

For instance, one senior leader was working. with me on his unsustainable workload. He has profit and loss responsibility for a large organisation of over 8000 people, and due to circumstances beyond his control, revenue has been falling. His response was to work harder, put in even more time at work to reverse the trend. This has always worked in his 30 years' career. I asked him, "Would it work this time?" He paused. He was silent for more than 5 minutes before admitting, "No."

Now, he can no longer avoid admitting to himself that more work simply wasn't working, and because he cannot "unknow" that fact, it freed him to examine what would work in this situation. He stopped merely working more and started working effectively. It didn't turn the situation around overnight, but it halted the fall, and started reversing the earnings trend. Plus he was no longer working evenings or weekends.

That brings me to stretching you. To work even harder was this leader's default mode. Doing it requires no growth on his part. Growth in this case meant stopping unsustainable workloads, and re-examining the ways of working that he has. That required him to change his beliefs and mindsets about what works at work. It wasn't easy and it invariably creates uncertainty and anxiety.

We all have life experience. We know what worked, and what didn't work. Even a baby learns not to go near a table leg it hit its head on before. The purpose of this experience is to contribute to our future success. For millennia, this has worked well for humans.

Unfortunately, we now live in a very different world. A world that is changing far faster than it ever has in human history. Humans, indeed all life, were never meant to be dealing with this rate of change. This speed meant that much of our "life experience" may no longer apply, or even be harmful in the new circumstances we find ourselves in. We need to constantly be re-examining, and re-writing the "programming" in our brains.

The Haber Process

So what's all this got to do with the Haber Process?

Well, like the Haber Process, we all develop beliefs that are essential for our own good. The world was about to starve, and the Haber Process allowed fertilisers to be created that can feed the population of the world. Many of us owe our very lives to this process. Without it, perhaps most of the world's population would not exist.

When we experience something in life, whether positive or negative, we develop a belief about how to replicate or avoid it in the future. These beliefs are our way to figure out how we can succeed in our goals and avoid pain. It's a brilliant system to save ourselves trouble and build on our past successes.

Regrettably, like the Haber Process, it can also be the source of our downfall. Just like when World War I came and the Haber Process went from being a source of life-giving nutrients to a source of death-dealing weaponry, our belief system can easily go from the source of wisdom to the source of limits and misguided information.

The world changes. Our circumstances change. What worked before might not work anymore. But these beliefs are often so ingrained in us that we never stop to think about it. Just like we might never stop to think that 50% of the nitrogen (an element essential for life) comes from a chemical process some of us have never heard of.

Which is why you should bother with coaching. Coaching gives you the time and space to look at these beliefs in a supportive, non-judgmental environment. It gives you a reflection to show you all of these blindspots and limiting beliefs. So you can choose what you want to do with them. To come up with your own solutions to challenge your thinking, stretch yourself, and grow to fit the current reality of your life.

What to Do as a Leader?

It's hard to be a coach leader. It is far easier to just delegate the work, and command your people to do the task. So why do you do it? Truly being clear on your motivations for being a coach leader would help you each time you find it to be a challenge.

As a leader, you are constantly passing judgment on the work done and the people you lead. From project reviews to performance appraisals, evaluations are part of the duties of any leader. Thus, it can be difficult to create a non-judgmental space for coaching your team members.

Some things that might help:

1. Share authentically your intention to create this space, your motivations for doing it, and start a dialogue with your people on how it can best be done.
2. Set aside separate session just for coaching, or agree on a way to signal to your staff that you would like to move from being the boss to being the coach.
3. Certain topics are inherently more appropriate for coaching than others. People development, career aspirations, and personal growth are all good topics to get started with.
4. Examine your own beliefs about your staff. Do you truly believe that they are capable, resourceful, and whole? Or that they are the experts in their own lives and situations? That what they come up with would be just as good or even better than you?
5. Put your mind in a state where you are wholeheartedly curious. Set aside your other thoughts for now, and be present to the moment.

What to Do as a Coach?

When I am asked the most common question trainees ask me when learning coaching, "Is this a leading question?" I ask them back, "Do you have somewhere you're leading them to?"

Many people come into coaching to "help other people". So one of the first things I tell them is to not help their coachees. ??

Think about it, what does it mean to help? It essentially means that I am in some way superior to you and hence able to render you "help".

But that isn't coaching. Coaching is a partnership of equals. We assume coachees have all the capabilities and resources they need to achieve all of the outcomes and resolve all of the issues in their lives. Because of that, they do not need "help" from the coach.

When people say help, they often mean, "let me tell you what to do about it". Most of us have too many people in our lives telling us what they think we should do with our lives. When what we need is the time and space to think about what we would like to do. Coaching is that space. With a non-judgmental, objective good friend who will challenge your thinking but never impose his opinions on you.

Thus, before you ask your coachees a question, ask yourself, "Is there somewhere I am trying to lead them to?" Do you have a way of solving her problem that you think she should follow? Is there a rhetorical question that you want to ask her to "show" her the best way forward?

I once made a mistake when I was pregnant. I chose to go to an outdoor meeting with a client when the air pollution was over 400 PSI and sat for an hour waiting for her while she never turned up and didn't bother picking up my phone when I called her. For years, I carried the guilt of that and the possible impact of my decision on my son. Then last year, I took it into a coaching session. If you were my coach, what would you say?

Most people would advise me to let it go. Just forgive myself for my mistake. My son is 10 years old. There's nothing I can do to undo the past at this point. What would be the use of carrying it? I'm just making myself miserable for no reason. Almost all of the questions directed to me if I mention this issue end up being rhetorical questions of this ilk.

Thankfully, my coach never went that route. She gave the space to work through the issue without once making me feel like she was trying to lead me to any particular conclusion. I ended up deciding that I would carry this for the rest of my life. I never want to forget that I once chose my work over my family to the detriment of my family.

So did the coaching session work? Better than anything could have if she had tried to "help" me let it go and move on. Years of advice to let it go just taught me to stop sharing it with others. It became an unspeakable pain. But that one session made me take my own responsibility for the resolution I want. I decided what I wanted to do with it, and that is the only reason I am able to speak of it today. It really helped.

The next time you want to "help" your coach, ask yourself, how can I hold the space for her to explore herself, reflect back to her what she truly is, and make it safe for her to reach the solution to her issues that she deeply wants.

Final Product

Hold space, reflect, stretch mindset. Such simple words. Like the Haber Process, it's simple after you know it. But for years before that, many scientists strove to discover it unsuccessfully. One scientist even threw a bottle containing nitrogen and hydrogen into the ocean on a string in an attempt to get it to create ammonia under the high pressure! ??

Similarly, the process of coaching is simple but not easy. We are all brought up with education that is instruction-based, both at home and at school. It's so ingrained in us that to help we must give advice, teach the other person what to do.

To refrain and profoundly respect the other person's capacity to reach their own solutions takes a huge redefinition of what help is. To reflect back without distorting the image into what we want takes a deep humility. Still, only with these can we create a space safe enough for our coachees to take the step out to challenge themselves, discard limiting beliefs, and grow to their highest potential selves.

Happy coaching! ??

Proofread by my son, Hendrick.

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