Stuck in a coaching rut? Shake it off!

Posted on March 19, 2020March 19, 2020 by Jeremy Lewis

“I‘ve got this stupid song in my head and I can’t get rid of it,” one of my kids said to me the other day.

“I’ve always got a song in my head,” I replied. And it’s true, I do. If you know me at all, you’ll know music is a very important aspect of my life.

For some reason, today’s song – or perhaps I should say ‘guilty pleasure’ – is Shake it Off by Taylor Swift. You know the one:

’Cause the players gonna play, (play, play, play play), and the haters gonna hate, (hate, hate hate, hate). I’m just gonna shake (shake, shake, shake, shake). Shake it off! Shake it off!

And it’s got me thinking about coaching.

No, really.

It’s got me thinking about coaching because at a seminar last week someone said to coach at your developmental edge, you’ve got to “shake off” your existing coaching paradigm. And that is when the song kinda lodged in my brain. Reflecting on their own self-development, they actually said something like this, “As a coach I need to develop reflexive self-awareness to go to the edge of my practice – to a place I’ve not been before, and yet intuitively I know I can. I need to shake off my own paradigm.”

Using creative devices for our own development

And so I thought about the song’s lyrics. It’s amazing how a creative device – such as a song, a picture or some sort of creative process – can shed new light on our thinking and self-reflection.

Consider this lyric from Shake it Off and think for a moment about how your coaching clients experience you as a coach:

Never miss a beat; Lightning on my feet; That’s what they don’t see.

Now consider the next stanza and think for a moment about how you experience yourself when coaching:

Dancing on my own; Make the moves up as I go; That’s what they don’t know.

That seems like flow to me, ease if you will. You are dancing in-the-moment, using your intuition to move to the beat emerging from the coaching dialogue, and your client doesn’t really know what you are doing, how much work you are doing or how much artistry is involved. Rather, they simply experience a great, helpful conversation. Going with the flow, making it up as you go along to suit the music; this is working at your edge.

The risk is that we play it safe

The risk is that we do not find this special place often enough, or even at all. Instead, from fear of being out of our depth, we reach for trusted coaching tools and techniques, or retreat into a defensive position – fight or flight, appease them, collude with them, interpret others’ behaviour from our own biases or slip into ‘rescue’ mode. This is not working at our edge. This is playing it safe.

Tips for working at your edge

Firstly, recognise this defence is a normal response to fear. Slow yourself down. Breathe. I use a mantra to centre and ground myself. Stay curious – be okay with not knowing. Notice what is happening and name it. Take responsibility for your shameful feelings of not being good enough.

You are good enough.

Shake off your coaching paradigm and try something different. You need to practice self-reflection to go to your edge. Take it to supervision – that’s the best place for developing reflexive practice. Supervision can help you build inner strength, see your blind spots and learn through shame.

Trust your intuition and know that you will be okay. Trust yourself.

Or as Ms Swift might say:

I got this music in my mind, singing it’s gonna be alright.

(scroll down)

And now you’ve got that stupid song stuck in your head, am I right?

The Beautiful Game of Coaching and how to play it

Posted on March 5, 2020March 5, 2020 by Jeremy Lewis

Commentators have referred to Football (disambiguation: Soccer) as the ‘Beautiful Game’ for generations.

Like football, I think of coaching as a beautiful game – it is free-flowing, exhilarating and emotional, the action moves forward quickly, and anyone can play it almost anywhere. Crucially, the best players are talented and work hard, and also enable those around them to play better. In coaching, this is through mentoring, co-coaching and supervision as well as providing coach training.

So, if coaching were football, what formation would you play?

4 4 2

For me, the defence – comprising a goalkeeper and four defenders – is where coaches provide safety for their client. Your defence is established during the beginnings of coaching – the contracting stage – to provide structure and psychological security throughout the match.

The midfield is where the magic happens. It is the middles of coaching – where following your intuition, paying attention and giving encouragement reside.

The two forwards, well they ‘forward the action’ in pursuit of your client’s goals.

4 1 4 1

That said, 4 4 2 is not a very well balanced formation – you can easily lose control over the game and it’s hard work as the game progresses. The trending formation in football is the 4 1 4 1, as played by my beloved Leeds United.

There are two crucial roles that set this formation apart from the traditional 4 4 2:

A Central Defensive Midfielder (CDM) drops behind the middle four and is the most important player on the field, covering two of the usual midfield roles – a defensive midfielder and the controller of the game. He needs good technical skills, the ability to pass under pressure and great self-awareness of position.

One or two all-action Central Midfielders who have significant defensive and forward roles to play – known as the ability to play ‘box-to-box’. The players become known for making late runs and hitting sweet long shots. In the 4 1 4 1, they line up across the centre of the field with two wingers, leaving one centre forward who can press the action forward or hold up play when necessary, for example when awaiting support from his colleagues in the centre after receiving a long ball.

Suggested coaching formation

In coaching (and supervision), my defence comprises everything in my contracting so that we establish the right ethical stance in the relationship – roles and responsibilities (Equality), Boundaries (time, territory and task), the expression of our feelings (Authenticity), and the safe Place where we hold our discussions. This ‘back four’ provide psychological safety for my client. The last line of defence in any coaching relationship is the must-have goalkeeper, named Confidentiality.

My CDM is Attention. Being fully present, paying undivided attention and listening on a deep level are the skills needed in the central role that plays in front of the back four and allows the coach to control themselves and the game. This deep listening allows coaches to be in the right position at the right time.

The two central midfielders are Intuition and Flow (Ease), who can carry the ball from box-to-box. This provides fluidity by combining defensive duties, such as noticing when boundaries or equality are threatened, with the ability to move forward, for example to notice short and long-range opportunities to target the client’s goal. They are flanked by the wingers of Appreciation and Encouragement.

Together with Challenge as centre forward, the midfield provides up to five players in a forward position to increase my client’s awareness and forward the action.

If your coaching were a football team, what formation would you play and who are your key players?

The A to Z of OD: S is for Supervision

Posted on June 24, 2019June 24, 2019 by Jeremy Lewis

In coaching and in certain regulated professions such as clinical practice and social care, the concept of supervision is well-established. However in OD consulting, it is in its infancy.

If you are an OD practitioner employed within an organisation, maybe you have a line manager who provides this role. However, many in-house OD practitioners are lone rangers reporting to a generalist HR Director who may not have the experience or deep understanding of OD as they do themselves.

Many external OD practitioners work for larger consulting firms and may well have line managers who provide a supervisory role. As with internal OD practitioners, this may not always be the case. Perhaps you are the OD/change expert in a larger firm that has a broader offer? Who do you turn to when you need professional guidance and support?

As professional OD practitioners – internal or external – our challenges are to consult flawlessly through the five stages of the consulting cycle, respect client confidentiality and boundaries and hold an appropriate ethical attitude. Supervision is there to help us solve dilemmas, support us through emotional challenges and provide fresh perspectives so we understand ourselves and our clients better and develop into the consultants we want to be.

If you feel like a lone-agent OD practitioner, how are you getting the support you need?

There are several ways you can get the support you need. You might join an OD networking or other peer support group, seek a mentor or hire a coach, or even hire a qualified consultancy supervisor. There are a few of us* out there.

OD thought leader: Ed Schein (b. 1928)

It would be hard to overestimate Ed Schein’s contribution to the field of OD. As former professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, Schein won several awards for his work in organisational culture, individual motivation and career development and the process of consulting.

Culture

These days, it is commonly accepted that organisation’s culture is concerned with the shared meanings that members give to past and present organisational experiences. Ed Schein pioneered this thinking in the 1980s, suggesting culture is a layered model of symbolic artefacts, behavioural norms, espoused values and underlying tacit assumptions.

Motivation (‘career anchors’)

As part of his career anchors model, Schein argued there are three core factors (economic, social and self-actualising) that motivate individuals in organisations. Many OD practitioners – me included – believe organisations must make the complex assumption that motivation is a combination of economic, social and self-actualising factors. Managers’ behaviours, e.g. more participative management styles, communication, recognition/rewards and encouraging personal development, both symbolise and enact the organisational culture.

Implications for OD

OD is partly about good diagnosis of the current and desired culture and influencing the role of leaders to develop appropriate culture through symbolic means.

We can enhance organisational effectiveness whilst stimulating the self-actualising element of individual motivation by creating linkages between the organisation and the employee – a sense of belonging.

The benefit of observing organisations through their cultures is that the OD practitioner is attuned to the human side of the organisation, not just its functional subsystems. The key to successful organisation change is to view it as complementary: culture change and functional change in harmony.

Process consultation

Schein’s interpreted collaborative consulting as ‘process consultation’. For him, this is about helping others understand the importance of adherence to the social rules surrounding human relationships. His “ultimate dilemma … is how to produce change in the client system without people losing face”. Referring to Lewin’s ice cube theory of change, he sets out three elements that must be present during unfreezing, i.e. where motivation for change is created:

Disconfirmation (or lack of confirmation);
Creation of guilt or anxiety;
Provision of psychological safety.

One of the main reasons the unfreezing stage of change fails is that people resist change and hence pervert the change effort. There are many reasons people resist change: they don’t want to lose something of value; lack trust in management; hold a belief that change doesn’t make sense for the organisation; have a low tolerance for change; or exhibit passive resistance to change by complying with the change without real commitment.

OD practitioners must find ways to value resistance to change; a healthy tension during unfreezing helps to ensure the change plan is robust. This requires the OD practitioner to recognise resistance as trapped energy, and engage the resistors in dialogue – they may be sensitive to flaws in the plan, or be able to identify unintended consequences of the change. The OD practitioner must beware of low tolerance to change and not require people to change too much too quickly.

I suggest participative change through process consultation is the most appropriate approach to ensure change targets are involved in setting the change agenda. Process consultation is also the best approach to overcome passive resistance, where people are only accepting change to save face; adopting anything other than process consultation models here “increases the risk that the client will feel humiliated and will lose face”.

Resistance can also be at play in the refreezing stage. Even when an individual has refrozen new concepts, these changes may violate the expectations of ‘significant others’ such as bosses, peers and team members. Schein suggests the initial change target may need to implement a programme of change for these others with them as targets. Ultimately a strategy for change should identify likely sources of resistance and ensure methods for dealing with it are consistent with the overall strategy.

Tag Archives: supervision