And so the final day of Converge 2021 rolls in. A final day filled with new thoughts, tools, and knowledge to add to my coaching development.
Converge consists of several parallel presentations going on sorted in themes to address different parts of coach development. As I was waiting for the first session to start I took an overview of which themes my chosen presentations are in and noticed I obviously have a bias towards science, discovery, and practice. For those of you who, from my notes, find Converge a bit one-sided it is then good to know that this is my bias, not an actual display of the program offered. *smiling*
As the conference progressed I realized that the absolute majority of sessions where pre-recorded, giving no room for interaction, breakout rooms, or live Q&A. With interactions restricted to chat box-writing while listening to the presentation, the daily coffee-chats have been golden nuggets of real time interaction with colleagues. Today was no exception.
Coffee chat on ICF’s New core values
As the coaching world is evolving, ICF has recently done several updates on ethical guidelines, core competencies, and now on our community core values. The updated version is:
1. Professionalism
A commitment to a coaching mindset and professional quality that encompass responsibility, respect, integrity, competence and excellence.
2. Collaboration
A commitment to develop social connection and community building.
3. Humanity
A commitment to being humane, kind, compassionate, and respectful towards others.
4. Equity
A commitment to use a coaching mindset to explore and understand the needs of others so we can practice equitable processes at all times that create equality for all.
In this morning’s chat we discussed what these updated core values mean to us as coaches and how we contribute to embodying them in our community. In my group we had some really interesting exchanges of thoughts around the shift towards social impact that can be seen embedded in the updated core values. ICF is a professional body with ideas on how we want to show up in the world and what we could bring to the table.
Feedback: not something I usually do as a coach, but something clients often struggle with
As a coach I am not having the role of expert/colleague/manager or any other capacity to give feedback. But feedback from time to time shows up in conversations as something clients need to work on. The struggle can be both when on the giving and receiving end. Pete Burridge and Jen Ostricht gave a thorough walk through why feedback so often causes these struggles, founding it in design flaws as well as delivery flaws. When feedback is at it’s best, it is a lot easier to give and receive but how often does that happen?
Pete and Jen suggested a simple yet powerful way of leveraging the way we give feedback. Shift from focusing on what you want less of into a focus on desired outcome. They then beautifully demonstrated in a role play how hard that shift is to do. It is not enough to simply turn the negative to a positive phrasing. The key is to really get to the core of how that new desired behaviour actually looks like. Unless the stakeholders giving feedback do that work and are able to give constructive feedback on what success would look like, the receiver will have to guess, try out and stakeholders may not even recognize the attempt to improve.
In the cases where you as a leader really have to give important feedback it is thus well spent time to have as a topic in a coaching session to figure out what the change you want to see actually and truly is. That gives you a chance to phrase it right and be able to give examples of success and the receiver to actually understand what you are trying to say. I’ve got a brand-new tool for the next client bringing difficulties in giving feedback to a coaching session. *smiling*
Creating intentional shifts
Several of today’s sessions, for me, circled around how I as a coach can support my clients in moving their thinking forward towards their desired outcomes. Often, impacts in coaching show up as shifts in the way the client thinks/interprets/perceives the world. Today I have been listening for what I do or could do to enhance these shifts and what I should avoid doing, not to stand in the way of the client’s work.
From Janet Sernack’s presentation on creative inquiry I picked three essential skills to create intentional shifts in ourselves or others:
1. Observe
2. Retreat and reflect
3. Be agile in action
I really like the way she so elegantly clarifies it: “Be present to what is and what could be simultaneously.” This sounds easy but give it a go, I still from time to time struggle with not being caught in what is at hand and the story the client is telling. Helpful to me is the perspective of listening for what is not there, a perspective that Janet also pinpointed: Ask yourself - What am I not seeing? – What am I not feeling. Especially the not feeling I believe will be my thought partner for a while, that’s a new perspective to me.
In Clare Norman’s session on unlearning from life to be a great coach, she highlighted some of the behaviours that a good coach does different at work. For example we interrupt storytelling unless it has a use in bringing the client’s thinking forward. We don’t need to understand - the client needs to. We don’t necessarily finish what we started. If a track is wrong for the client, why pursue it? Any progress is progress, and the client knows what brings them forward. Our job is to get to new thinking.
In an extensive study at Concordia University, 45 coaches has been thoroughly studied in transcripts of 3 sessions each to find the patterns of what it is coaches actually do when they coach and what works for the clients. This research I will have to dive into more deeply but a few nuggets I picked to carry with me right away are:
12% of what coaches said during the session was content reflection, only 1,5 % was emotion related. Too bad since the same study also revealed that clients felt better about all three rated post session measures, goal, task and bond, when coaching included emotional reflection.
0,3 %, the most uncommon inquiry, was inquiring nonverbal behaviours. (I do hope that is not true for my coaching given that so many keys are in there, but I really will have to do some new recordings to listen for it)
One of the researchers in this study had no previous connection to coaching but was studying it from a social science point of view and from that non biased perspective, the advice to coaches would be:
Quality of presence is the most powerful tool
Really great coaches go deeper. They are able to hear undercurrents, emotions, values, and bring them into play in the conversation
Taking whatever time is needed to clarify the topic has a big impact on the session and the client
Masterful coaches create reflective space using process check-ins
Giving advice generally has a disruptive effect
Not that this is news to us but it was really interesting to see how an objective approach highlights the skills captured in our core competencies and yes, the mentor coach ego did get a boost when my most common feedback given correlates completely with her findings. I agree and I am glad to see that what I know out of experience hammer into the coaches I do mentor coaching with is now also scientifically encouraged.
As usual, I leave the ICF Converge conference with my head misty with new thoughts, some of them at a aha-stage, others of the kind I need to carry for a while. My notebook is filled with quotes, exercises, ideas and facts. Inspiration level up, bring on the coaching. I do miss the conversations around trends and techniques among coaches around the world, the virtual format here had not much room for that. The short chat format doesn’t really invite to thought deepening conversations. Well, there will be room for that another time, another place. I’ll have enough to ponder from the take away I do have to keep me busy for a while. And yes, the next Converge will be meeting up IRL, in Florida August 2023. See you there.