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November 27, 2008

The Creative Touch workshop

Last week, Louise Austin and I ran our first Creative Touch workshop for people involved in coaching, OD consulting and leadership development.

Our aim was to share our own creative methods of working with clients and give people the opportunity to experiment and play using metaphor, visual imagery and other tools such as natural objects and toy animals.

We deliberately limited the group to 12 people so that everyone would have time to work as a practitioner and experience the power of working as a client. We were also mindful that a smaller group enabled us to create the safety for people to experiment with new approaches.

For me, the day was very rich at all sorts of levels. Aside from my delight in working with Louise as co-facilitator, one of the most significant pleasures for me was the eager willingness of everyone to jump in and have a go. It is a real privilege to work with fellow professionals exploring and experimenting with ideas and interventions that strengthen our practice. I'll add some further reflections in a few days' time, but here are some comments from participants and what they took from the day:

"Working with colleagues who do similar work was great. I'll have more choice. The work we did showed me new possibilities for use in coaching and facilitation." – Nancy Pile, Consultant and Coach

"Using creativity in my coaching." – Lindsay Taylor, Coach

"Insights into the power of creativity and self awareness." – Alan Clarke, Barking and Dagenham PCT

"Boldness – do more – I know it works." – Catherine Doherty, MD, Fields of Learning

"A great day – it exceeded my expectations. I'll be more confident in using creative techniques. Looking forward to the second instalment." – Richard Youell, People and Performance Ltd

Posted by Alison at 09:05 AM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2008

Making a significant difference

Here's another question raised at the recent coaching conference, where I ran a session entitled "Making the Most of Our Supervision" (see the previous blog entry for the background to this one)...

If you were to choose one area where you've made a significant difference for a client (who you supervised) what would it be?

What a wonderful question and doubtless prompted by the Appreciative Inquiry exercise that we worked on during the conference session. The example I'd like to share is when a client of mine (whom I was offering supervision) arrived one day in a very agitated state. He was coaching several senior executives in an organisation which was implementing significant change.

He described the organisation as heartless, insensitive and ruthless. He then explained how one of his coachees had cancelled two sessions with him at very short notice and was refusing to pay any cancellation fee. Another had been apathetic about applying any changes agreed at the coaching sessions. Yet another sought advice from the coach about how to "get rid of" a member of his team whose results were dipping.

The impact of these incidents on my client was that he was beginning to doubt his own effectiveness as a coach. He was feeling anxious about going in to the organisation and was hesitant to initiate a meeting with the HR Director, his sponsor, in case they cancelled the contract.

Once he had explained this spate of incidents, and on the basis that we explore his effectiveness as one possible ingredient, I invited my client to explore the parallels between his experience, how he had described the organisation and what was actually happening to employees. By examining the similarities between these three areas, he was able to stand back from the doubt and anxiety he was experiencing and begin to appreciate that it was not he that was "at fault" but that he was being "infected" by the system in which he was working.

With this awareness, he was able to untangle himself from the psychological process he was caught up in, distance himself from it so he no longer took it all personally or blamed himself, and was then able to plan how he could use this awareness to work most productively with each of his coachees. Equally, he was able to re-ground himself to offer a balanced appraisal of the programme. This meant he could engage with the HR Director from a place of balance, rather than fear or anxiety.

Posted by Alison at 05:35 PM | Comments (0)

November 06, 2008

Doing and reflecting

At a recent coaching conference I ran a session entitled "Making the Most of our Supervision". This was an appreciative inquiry for delegates to explore what was working most effectively for them in their coaching practice.

Because of the size of the group and the time allocated for the session, we didn't have much opportunity for discussion, so I invited people to write down their questions so I could respond to common themes rather than specific issues.

I've kept the questions with me and think that it may be interesting to explore some of these over the next couple of weeks. I'd welcome any comments from those of you who are following this trail.

In your experience, what is the ideal/minimum ratio of doing to reflecting?

I'd like to start responding to this question with a brief description of my own practice. As many of you know, I work as an executive coach and a coaching supervisor. The mix of hours/clients in each domain varies from one month to the next.

So, rather than trying to find a formula, what has worked for me during the past three years is to have a two hour session with my supervisor every 4-5 weeks. In fact, because of our respective overseas commitments, we usually end up having between eight and 10 sessions over a 12 month period. I take my coaching work, I take my supervision work, I take other professional dilemmas and issues that may impact on my effectiveness, and on occasion I'll also share significant personal incidents.

This latter content is an interesting one. I don't expect us to resolve personal issues which I would take to therapy, but we've acknowledged that such events are likely to impact on me somehow and could run the risk of getting in the way of my clarity and person-centred attention when I'm with my clients. To this end, reporting on it as part of my whole system helps me to clear the way to review and reflect on my client work and professional development.

So, what about for others?

I believe that regularity and frequency are more important than an actual number of hours of reflection or supervision time. Again, let me speak from my own perspective as supervisor. I see that both of us, supervisee and supervisor, gain a huge amount through our relationship which, as it deepens, can result in huge learning and development. With too long gaps of time between sessions, for me it almost feels as though we are starting again each time.

So let's experiment. How about an hour every 4-5 weeks for a coach who is seeing for instance an average of 10 clients, and doing approximately 20+ hours of coaching.

I'd offer two caveats here. One is that if a particularly difficult issue arises that the coach has an option to have supervision on that issue between sessions. The other is that the fact that a coach may be extremely experienced isn't necessarily the determinant. Arguably, a more experienced coach may be taking on more demanding clients and would benefit from the support of sharing and exploring some of the depth or complexity that they are holding in their coaching relationships.

If readers here have different experience and views, then I'd love to hear them. And do let me know if you're happy for me to share these in subsequent postings.

Posted by Alison at 09:09 PM | Comments (0)