Coaching the caged bird to sing

Last week I was enjoying delivering a leadership workshop with my great colleague, Andrea when I was reminded of one of the many wonderful phrases crafted by Maya Angelou. She said of herself: “I am fine as wine in the summertime.”

It’s bold, evocative, succinct and the words have music in them.

A lot of my work centres on helping my clients to find their voice as part of developing as a powerful leader. When they find something as simple and compelling as Maya’s words, I know that I have done my work well.

But if you don’t have Maya Angelou’s gifts, where and how do they find those words?

The first step is to decide: what it is that you want to offer? A client’s initial answer is often framed in terms of the competences or characteristics that they bring. It’s worthy but unexciting. And it’s not really what they offer. What matters is what it’s like to be led by them. It’s what people remember. It’s what they need to convey. In the words of Bernadette Jiwa (whose blog ‘The Story of Telling’ is one of the best marketing blogs around) – “Don’t sell the guitar. Sell the music.”

The second step is to ask: what is special about you? Marketing gurus often challenge us to find our own USP. Good in theory but difficult in practice. Why? Because few of us have something that is truly unique. If you do, go with it but if not then three truths help:

• You are interesting (especially if your audience is the right one for you) and
  
• You are unusual or extraordinary in some way and
  
• You have many facets (some of which stay mainly hidden)

And in combination, these three can make a voice that is close to unique.

The third step is to find new ways and fresh language in which to convey who you are. Language has a life-cycle and we are all tired of the familiar so we have to dig in unbroken ground. My approach is to get my client digging with freedom. Then the gems appear. And the richest ground is often:

• ·         Metaphor and simile – “what’s it like working with you when you’re at your best?”·          

•            Out of the mouths of … “what’s the most powerful feedback you’ve ever had?”
  
•            Story and anecdote – “how were you when you did truly great work?”
  

And we don’t stop until the client finds words that evoke and excite.

The fourth step is the hardest: being willing to show yourself fully, putting the words out there. That takes confidence – not so much in yourself but in the value of what you bring. It takes courage – your audience might not like what you say. And it takes compassion – loving yourself, “warts ‘n’ all”.

And when I get that tingle down my spine, and hear the energy and wonder in my client’s voice, I know they love the voice they have found. You can imagine the mischievous smile on Maya’s face as she said:

“I’m determined to go through life with passion, compassion, humour and some style.”

If this short piece speaks to you, I’d love to help you find your voice. stephen@gibsonstarr.com

A Challenging Conversation with Elvis

Thursday – delivering a workshop on managing challenging conversations with a colleague for a corporate client.

Friday evening – flying overnight with my wife to The Seychelles via Dubai for some much needed rest and rejuvenation. 

Saturday early afternoon – arrive and pick up the hire car. We are met by a helpful young man who quickly takes me through the paperwork. “Here’s my mobile number in case you meet any difficulty”, he says. “Thanks”, I reply, “and by the way, what’s your name?” “Elvis”, he tells me.

As we settle into our car, our first tropical down-pour helps us discover that the driver’s window will not close. Time for a challenging conversation with Elvis. So I go back into the terminal to find him. But Elvis has left the building.

After much fiddling and cursing, the window closes. I remember one of the options for handling challenging conversations: accommodation. So we pay Elvis that complement in his absence and drive off.

That evening, looking for somewhere for dinner. As dusk falls we discover that the headlights don’t work and there are few streetlights. Elvis doesn’t answer his mobile. Ah, but there’s a second switch and the headlights come on. Reminder to self: before instigating a challenging conversation, check your facts, forget blame and complaint and get curious.

 

Sunday – lying on a fabulous beach. Just stay in the sea while a brief shower passes. Drink from a fresh coconut. Elvis is forgiven.

Monday – an even more fabulous beach. I’m no longer thinking about challenging conversations as I watch last night’s rainwater slide off the mountains and snake across the sand as waves break on the reef that protects a perfect bay.

Then eight US Marines arrive playing drum ‘n’ bass at a volume that makes their tattoos shimmer. But I let it go, and the music switches to The Chili Peppers and then they turn it off when they go to play boisterous games in the waves. Further recall: it’s useful to know how to have challenging conversations but it’s also good to know when, and when not, to.

As we slough off the stresses of everyday life, languid conversations with my wife naturally occur. Swapping stories of recent times, enjoying the present together, exploring the future: the types of conversation that can get squeezed out by day-to-day operational imperatives both at work and at home.

Reminder to self for our return: less doing, more being. 

Or as Elvis might have put it: a little more conversation, a little less action.

Coaching with a difference

Once a month I relax completely as Sue pounds my back to draw out some of the tensions and contortions put there by tennis and life in general. As I relax, despite the pain, we talk freely about what we’re doing and what’s going on in the world. At a recent session, I commented that a lot of what I do involves helping people deal with the impact of difference. “’The impact of difference’ - that’s a powerful idea” she said. 

We all know that people are different. We don’t all think, feel or behave the same. But so much of the time, as we try to make sense of what others do, we assume that they are the same as us. So if we don’t understand their behaviour, we dismiss them as bad or mad, as malevolent or stupid.

One of the most shocking and profound things I read when I first started coaching was Myles Downey’s contention that people have a unique map of reality, they have good intentions and “are achieving their own objectives – perfectly – at all times”. In other words, in their world, what they do – no matter how bizarre it might appear to us – makes perfect sense to them. And so much of what I do, whether coaching, facilitating or speaking involves working with the implications of that for how clients might deal with the challenges they meet at work.

The top two implications are: I am not the same as them (so my job is to help them find their own way forward); and they are not the same as the others in their life (so their challenge is to understand in what ways those others are different).

In a previous post I argued that there is only one coaching question: who are you? As a coach, I explore each client’s needs, drivers, frailties, triggers, preferences and beliefs about the world in order to raise their self-awareness and discover how to work with them. As I do this, I show empathy and understanding but I must remember that I am framing a hypothesis, a best approximation, a guess borne of experience and shared humanity. 

As a facilitator working with groups on leadership skills, I combine outside-in and inside-out techniques. I help others to learn from best practice, showing them models, skills and techniques that help them raise their game. But I know that they will hit their top game when they express who they are, using the best practice that ‘fits’ them.

At the core of the leadership programmes that I deliver is the belief that to lead others you need to understand yourself and have a grasp of the ways in which others might be different. That’s why I use psychometrics like MBTI, various models of leadership style and preference, and research on drivers and needs at work. It’s all to enable leaders to manage themselves well and lead diverse others.

And within many of the most powerful models, is the belief that others’ behaviour makes sense to them. The challenge is to find that sense. So in workshops on managing conflict, we look beneath the opposing, irreconcilable positions that people take up. We look for the underlying interests and needs that those positions express. And once we understand what leads someone else to take an opposing position, the possibility of a win-win emerges.

All this is within the enclave of leadership and effectiveness at work. But it is too important to hide there. “The impact of difference” is not just a powerful idea. Understanding it is an integral part of operating in the world as it is rather than as we assume or wish it to be. Without it, collaboration and constructive disagreement are not possible. We’re condemned to blame, to stay separate and defend.

So as you instinctively come to judge others, get curious instead: who are they and what leads them to do what they do?