This month’s video is on three essential coaching books.

In the video I discuss:

• Tim Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Work
• Edgar Schein’s Helping
• Caroline Adams Miller’s Creating Your Best Life

Did you like these choices? In case you missed it check out my earlier post “7 Best Coaching Books for Managers and Leaders.“

“One word frees us of all
the weight and pain of life;
that word is love.”
Sophocles

It is Valentines Week after all, and after my short piece on Fierce Love earlier, this quote seemed to be one to share.

It makes me think…

• How do I sit with the “weight and pain of life”? How do I notice what’s there?
• How do I remember that feeling of love? How do I let it free me?
• How do I show love? So I might lift some others’ weight and pain?

Anything strike a chord here for you?

Some of us actively coach and some of us accidentally coach.

But all of us serve those who are in our lives.

Getting clear and becoming mindful about how you want to serve is a powerful foundation for success.

Fierce Love

This is what rings most true for me at the moment, a mantra of service.

Fierce reminds me not to get too comfortable in the conversation we’re having.
To push myself to be as bold, as courageous and as vulnerable as I can when I engage.

Love reminds me that I want to fully champion that person, help them on the journey to be the best version of themselves that they can, regardless of what we’re working on.

And you? How would you describe the way you want to be of service to those around you?

It’s Darwin Day today – hurrah!

When we think of how coaching cultures rise or fall within organizations and how coaching becomes part of the way we do things around here, it’s worth bearing in mind the great man’s words:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives,
nor the most intelligent that survives.
It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Is your coaching culture destined to be a Dodo?

Here’s the typical and all-too-depressing evolution of many organizations approach to bring coaching in-house.

A few people in your organization get coached and they think it’s pretty good…

And meantime, someone on the senior leadership team reads a good article about coaching…

And the employee engagement survey numbers come in and they’re not looking good…

Which eventually means someone lobs the “create a coaching culture” doozie to the head of HR…

Who’s actually pretty thrilled, because HR has long been a fan of coaching…

So this HR initiative boils down to running “coaching skills” training for managers…

Which sets to concrete those managers prejudices against coaching, but it’s clear this is divorced from the real world where people have to get things done.

Which confirms that everyone should keep on working the way they’ve always been working.

 And everything that coaching could and should contribute to the organization’s success – more focus on what matters, more striving for Great Work, more impact in the work you do, more internal capacity – goes away and dies a quiet death in a corner somewhere.

Three critical factors for coaching to work in your organization

So if the usual path is an evolutionary dead-end, let’s look to see what allow your coaching program to adapt, become resilient and flourish.

Here are three evolutionary boosts

1. Make coaching not an end but a means to an end

Coaching has to serve a business objective at the organizational level, and it has to be useful for both coach and coacheee at a personal level.

The reason I rail against the stated goal of creating a coaching culture is that it puts lots of coaching down as the measure of success.

Coaching, sure. But for the sake of what?

2. Make coaching something for normal people

I don’t know for sure – I’m a coach myself after all – but I suspect many managers look at people who’ve drunk the coaching Kool-Aid and go…

They’re slightly weird.

I don’t want to be like that.

Somehow coaching has become Coaching, a peculiar and slightly unnatural way of behaving. It’s like a fetish. Fine if it’s practiced between two consenting adults in private, but just don’t include me in it.

But Peter Block said it best: “coaching isn’t a profession but a way of being with each other”.

And all managers and leaders know far more about coaching than they’re given credit for (by themsleves and by others).

Help them see how coaching is just another managerial tool to help them have more impact in the work they do, and it becomes something they can step towards rather than back away from.

3. Make your coaching training suck less

You’ve probably experienced it yourself. You go on a coaching skills training program, and whether it was bad, good or outstanding, within two weeks you’re back to behaving in the same old way. Nothing seems to make it out of the training room and into the meeting rooms.

That’s because training is a pretty lousy way of trying to shift ingrained behaviours. Let’s face it – if you’ve behaving in a certain way (let me tell you what to do/let me solve that for you) for the last 5 – 40 years and getting rewarded for it, 6 hours in a classroom is unlikely to have much effect.

But there are ways and means of creating a program that is connected to the strategic priorities of the organization, that acknowledges the reality of most managers’ working lives, that doesn’t begin and end in a workshop, and that allows people to move from a little less advice and to a few more questions.

Find something or create something that allows managers and leaders to strengthen their coaching skills. Typical Coaching Skills for Managers training just isn’t going to hack it.

What’s worked for you?

You’ve seen places where coaching has become a key part of the way stuff is done.

What did you notice that worked? Leave a comment and share your own evolutionary insight.

Much as I love professional coaches – hey, I am one after all – my real passion is about making coaching just a regular part of the way we work.  In particular, how can you as a busy manager and leader use coaching more often to increase the focus, impact and meaning of the work you and those around you do.

Peter Block, a man I constantly hold up as a deep influence on my work, said it best:

Coaching is not a profession.
It’s a way of being with one another.

Indeed.

I’ve had the good luck of interviewing some fantastic coaching thought-leaders over the last number of years as part of the Great Work Interview series.

Here are 7 thought leaders you might be interested to hear. Listen for the useful insights and tactics they share – your coaching will be richer as a result.

Sir John Whitmore is one of the fathers of the coaching profession and author of the influential Coaching for Performance.

Cinnie Noble, the leading figure in the world of Conflict Management Coaching which just happens to be the name of her new book.

Mary Beth O’Neill, author of one of the best books I know about executive coaching, Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart.

Rich Litvin, who does fantastic work about probing the secret of confidence.’

Eddie Erlandson who with his business and life partner Kate Ludeman wrote Alpha Male Syndrome, a book in coaching those “A types” (men and women) in organizations.

David Rock, who’s at the head of the pack when it comes to connecting the findings of neuroscience with the art of leadership and management and who’s book Your Brain at Work is destined to be a classic.

Dan Coyle, author of the very fine book The Talent Code that talks about what “deep practice” really means.

And if you’re interested in hearing some internal practitioners…

Sally Bonneywell, Head of Coaching for the global pharma company GSK.

Carl Oxholm, leader of the coaching initiative at the professional service firm pwc.

Listen up, pick up some tips, then go flex some coaching muscle.

“Feedback is a gift”

Man, I hate that lyin’ stinkin’ statement.

At least, I hate it when it’s offered up from the person giving it to the person receiving it.

Certainly, having another person’s perspective on what’s going on can be useful and enlightening.

But often what we’re given in feedback is a hellish cocktail of

• Data-free prejudice
• My reality is better than your reality
• This is a command but I’m calling it feedback

And for some reason we’re supposed to be grateful for this download of … stuff that in fact often tells us far more about the person giving the feedback than the person receiving it.

Feedback = pain

This isn’t a metaphor.

On a neurological level, starting a statement, “Let me give you some feedback…” actually lights up the same pain circuits as being physically hit.

And to add insult to injury, this social pain lasts far longer than physical pain. (Think of the last time you hurt yourself. You can remember the moment but you can’t really remember the actual pain. Now think of the last time you were humiliated or shamed and you can feel that shame again right now. )

But feedback IS a gift

The time it’s most useful to hold this perspective is when you’re the one giving the feedback.

Not as a moment of self-congratulization, but as an insight to who’s responsible for acting on the feedback.

Too often we think that giving feedback means we’ve conveyed a clear request for change and we expect that to happen.

But if your feedback is a gift, then the feedback is the other person’s to do with what they will. They can implement, reinterpret it, ignore it altogether.

They get to make the choice on how to use the feedback you’ve offered up.

An adult to adult conversation

The fundamental philosophy behind all of the Box of Crayons’ programs is to help people build and maintain adult to adult relationships in the organizations in which they work.

I think that means two things.

First, in the words of Peter Block, it means “giving people responsibility for their own freedom”.

Second, as a way of taking responsibility, it means asking for what you want knowing the answer may be no.

What does that mean for your feedback?

Here are the three useful tips for giving feedback that sticks.

1. Ask them how they like their feedback

Everyone wins when you know the most likely way to get your feedback heard.

2. If you offer up feedback, see if you can untangle the facts from your judgments about the facts.

You’ll be surprised just how little data there is within the huge cloud of opinion.

3. Ask them what was useful about the feedback

Everyone wins when you (and they) know just what worked (and therefore what didn’t).

4. If you want them to do something, ask them to do something

Don’t hope it’s “obvious” in the subtext of the feedback. It isn’t.

If you’d like your team or your organization to get a little better at this tricky skill, you might like to take a peak at The Last Feedback Workshop You’ll Ever Need.

Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse working in palliative care, recorded people’s regrets as they were dying and has shared the top five.

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Well. That shakes me up. How about you?

“Coaching is available to all of us
and is not a profession but a way
of being with each other.”
~ Peter Block

I’ll admit it right away. I’m a Peter Block fanboy. His books – from Flawless Consulting to The Answer to How Is Yes - are deeply influential on my work. (Community even made me cry a little. And yes, it’s a business book.)

So when Peter wrote these words as a blurb for my first book Get Unstuck & Get Going on the stuff that matters, it was a little like Mozart saying to someone, “that’s an OK piece of music.”

Very very thrilling.

And what’s so wonderful about the words above is that they speak to what I think of as the need to democratize coaching. Because I do think that coaching can feel like something of a gated community. If you’re rich enough or lucky enough, you get to be coached. If you’re touchy-feely enough or looking for the post-career career, you get to be a coach.

And the rest of us miss out.

And I say No to that. I want everyone to understand that coaching is just another word for having a type of conversation that goes a little deeper and makes a little bit more of a difference.

And it’s a conversation that anyone can participate in, both as a receiver and as a giver.

February 5th to 11th is International Coaching Week. Throughout the month I’m going to share some of the practical and sometimes counter-intuitive tools and insights we teach in our practical coaching programs, programs that are designed to serve the too-busy manager.

Do stick around for the ride….

You can listen in here http://www.blogtalkradio.com/writenow.

There are 93 things I’d like to talk to Michael about, but we narrow it down and discuss:

•  The secret to getting attention (and book sales) in our noisy, over-communicated world
• How to create a “home base” in cyberspace that you own and control
• The ingredients needed to create your distinctive voice as a writer
• Some super-practical tips for starting your own successful blog
• How to write blog posts while you sleep

Check out Michael’s blog at www.michaelhyatt.com.

Listen to my interview with Michael Hyatt