Your problem is you just don't flaming well listen!

I'll bet you have had that said to you.  If not, you probably don't listen!

How unfair.  How hurtful.  How I feel that on the inside and sense my anger hormones cooking up a good explosive stew.  Or maybe its true, the sports were just that much more compelling than voices off.

Of course you listen.  But to what?  And with what level of understanding?

The real problem is that so much information is present, our busy brains choose what to hear and what to ignore and most of the time this is an unconscious, and habitual process.  Without training, what is heard is pretty random stuff, ranging from noises off stage, to the inner voice arguing with what is being said, and all places in between.  Not much space is left for ascertaining meaning.  A whole profession of diplomacy has arisen to fill the gap where this might lead to war.

After non-judgement (which gets your opinions to quieten down giving you a chance to hear without interference), the next core skill of the coach is listening.  Some call it active listening.  I use intuitive listening, full attention listening, process listening, analytic listening, and, always listening with feedback.

In this post, I am going to try to get you started with listening skills.

First some headlines and then one bit of detail and some guidance....to get good at this you will really need to practice a lot.  I mean like as much as you might do with your favourite hobby or your profession!  A lot of a lot.

Here are some things from NLP texts and other sources to think about:

In the language:

Sensory frame

• Feelings - "I feel bad", can also be eating, "you want me to swallow that hook, line and sinker?" 
• Seeing - "I cannot see this working"
• Hearing - "That doesn't sound good to me"
• Think - "I can't process this right now"
• Tasting - "This leaves a bad taste in the mouth", or "Sweet!"
• Smell - "I smell a rat!"

Grammatical Distortion

• Deletion - "that really hurts me" What hurts and how it does it are deleted.
• Universals - "you will never change" An unlikely absolute!
• Nominalisation - "this relationship is not working." A relationship is a verb, not a thing, the way we are relating can be changed.
• Cause effect confusion - "When you look that way you make me mad."  Somehow pressing buttons on your insides...how exactly?
• Complex equivalence - "the way you looked when you said that tells me I just cannot trust what you say."  Maps unconnected things together - how can you tell what the look meant?
• Mind reading - "I know what you are thinking." Huh? You're reading my mind?
• Pre-supposition - "I know you won't like this."  Huh? You read my mind without me even speaking?
• Complex words - "I love you."  For me, a tidy house!  For you, candles at dinner.  Different meanings for the same word, kind of a mix of several of the above.

Conversational process

• Repetition - looping around an issue
• No pausing to check understanding
• Interruptions with "what I think"
• Dominant, submissive, indifferent
• Content transaction analysis - parent like, child like
• Logic, emotive, irrational
• Flowing or interrupted
• Ordered or jumping around
• Past, present and future orientation
• Use of method - metaphor, story
• Towards/away from orientation
• Validation - how do I know its right - inside? Others say so? Bit of both?
• Attention on self or others 
• "Modal" influence - obligations or possibilities, needs or wants?
• Big picture, details, bit of both
• Stressors - people, emotions, things, choices?
• Etc!!!

In the body

Sub-modalities

• Tone of voice
• Pitch, speed, volume
• "Colour" in the words themselves, e.g. level of descriptive or type of descriptive
• Changes in these

Physical features (more Eckman and psychology than NLP)

• Skin colour, showing emotion shift
• Eyes in particular for tells of emotion
• Eye direction (may show recall, creation, shame etc)
• Blink rate
• Breathing rate, big changes e.g. sigh, holding breath, very low breath, panting.
• Emblems (accidental emphasis, e.g. forms a fist)
• Changes in manipulators (e.g. rubbing an ear or cheek) or gesticulation
• Satir poses (blamer, placater, distractor, leveller, calculator body postures)
• Micro expressions and related non-facial physical movements (tension, relaxation)
• Crying, laughing
• Gross movement (very still, to walking around while talking)

In all of the above pick up on changes or on signs that conflict with each other.  Saying "I am very happy about this" said with a look of fear, a flash of red on the cheek or neck, and an increase in manipulators tells at least two stories at once. Both may be true but probably for different reasons.

In the atmosphere

Intuitive responses to your client, what do you sense or pick up?  In the way a yawn is contagious if you have rapport you may well sense something they are feeling:

• Fear
• Stress/tension
• Other emotions
• Rapport
• Sense of time
• Attention intensity - close up, hear the traffic outside?

It is impossible to pick up on all these and the many other factors that may be present.  With a bit of practice you might notice some of them, and they will tell you a lot.

If, as a coach, you are going to pick up the information you need, it is essential to "tune in" to the session and use your whole presence to pay close attention to the client's meaning.

Remember, your client will rarely really know their own meaning.  They probably come with a series of relatively unformed thoughts and related feelings that they wish to resolve.   Often after sessions with my coach, I have also gone out without knowing how or what has changed, just feeling a lot better.  I have learned to accept this too as a good outcome.  Understanding you are too stressed doesn't make you less stressed.  Understanding can be over-rated!

The most important thing as you start is to take time, to pause and reflect back to your client what you think you have understood and check your understanding.  This allows them to elaborate, correct or confirm and you can move ahead.  When checking, check all around - is this what you think, is this what it feels like for you, is this what the past present and future consequences are?  Is this what you want to speak out loud to me?

As your skills as a listener develop, your active involvement in the process will increase and intuition (the quick feedback of learned skills when they are needed) will improve.  But being listened to alone without any intervention or guidance is also a blessing rarely bestowed and a good place to start.

I'll come back to each of these areas in a bit more detail in later posts, and also cover some of the useful assumptions that you can make, straight out of neuro-linguistic programming, that may well help you be a more effective listener.

One of my favourites is confusingly called by Bodenhamer and Hall in their "Users manual to the Brain" selective restrictional violation and refers to a habit of conferring  human intention on inanimate things.   A great example is the comment "oh, those chocolate biscuits are calling to me!" used to weird effect in a recent chocolate bar ad.

Well, there you go, I can hear the Shiraz in the kitchen telling me to get a life, and a glass, so that's all for now.  Post up your experiences of deeper meaning below the shallow surface of communication and I'll come back with more detail in the next week or so on some of these ideas.

One final comment before the glass of wine.  Do you think it is ever possible to listen and understand without changing the meaning of what has been said?  A so called "clean process"?  Read the above, abbreviated, list of half-noticed features of communication again, check how many apply to your own communication and whether you have much control over them, and then answer my question.

Am I good enough? Non-judgement and self-acceptance in Coaching

At the heart of a coaching partnership is acceptance, without judgement, of my client.  In order to hold this attitude, I must also accept myself without judgement.  This coaching note is about non-judging, and seeks to address the question "am a good enough?" with a wholehearted "yes!"

As I think about what to write about this, I quickly realise what a huge subject this is.  So for now I am going to limit myself to a few sources for the thinking and then a quick parting comment.  I believe non-judging and self-acceptance are hard to achieve and I hope the following makes sense for you.

Why is non-judgement needed in coaching?
Judging, criticism, contempt, scorn - so often are the daily meat and drink of life.  So attuned are many people to rights and wrongs of others, that they read criticism in each expression (or think they do).  And more painful and challenging than the external voices, are the internal ones; echo's of learned attitudes, past errors, failures, regrets; often disguised in the remembered tones of past authority.  Yet our voices, my voice, I, am talking to myself!

So many people come to see me damaged and dented.  They wear toughened and scratched carapaces for protection from the outside world.  And despite these protections, they can still hear the internal voice of doubt and scorn.  Self-doubt and self-scorn that undermine potential; holding back honesty, and action through fear of pain.

And what is on the inside, governs what comes out into the world.  From a critical internal world it is very hard to be non-critical of others.  From a cold and lonely internal world, it is hard to give warmth.  From an internal world that is fractured and unfamiliar, it is hard to listen with stillness and attention to the inner world of your client.   From a fractured self-confidence, it is hard to stand firm and let go of fear.

There is some good material on this in Deepak Chopra's "Seven Laws of Spiritual Success".   In the "Law of giving" he says and I paraphrase, what you pay attention to in your life will grow and flourish around you.  If you want receive money, be generous, as giving and receiving are just alternate parts of the same flow of energy and by taking part the flow increases rather than stagnating.  If you want love, be loving.  If you want happiness, bring happiness to others.   Watch out!  This is generalisation and while I have often found the comments above to be useful, I am not saying they are truths.

If you want something more scientifically validated than the philosophical Chopra, read Martin Seligman's "Authentic Happiness", for research based psychological material.  In here you will find that "judgement" is just one of a wide range of  "signature strengths".  These read a little like philosophical virtues, and in Seligman's psychological research, 25 are suggested.   Watch out again.   Good science knows its limits too.

His research attempts to show that the strategies that people adopt that make them happy are not the opposite of those who are more unhappy, they are simply different.  Key to happiness (rather like Chopra's comment), is putting time and energy into your character strengths.  Judgement is only one of these, alongside curiosity, wisdom, courage, playfulness, fairness, etc.  Criticism and judgement is overplayed!  [There is a great deal of published research on www.authentichappiness.com and a whole coaching programme around happiness available for those with greater interest, plus tests you can take yourself to find your level of optimism your signature strengths and other useful psychological profiles].

Finally I might point you to "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell, in which he shows, via experiment, that a high presence of stonewalling, criticism, contempt and scorn correlate very highly with divorce for couples and being sued for professionals.

Fundamentally I do not believe that coaching, outside of the teaching and practising new knowledge and skills, is of any great use.  However a coaching relationship is very helpful, as it provides a space for self-exploration and self-coaching.  In my experience, all of my clients have found the resources they needed to deal with their difficulties and opportunities, and our relationship has been an important creative element in this discovery.

So far as I can understand, what is going on is that, by accepting them as they are, and focussing on them and their issue, by keeping judgement out of the arena, listening and being calm, their mental state seems to change.  More confidence and calm arises, more trust to speak about the things they fear and hide from, more openness, and :  More Acceptance of Themselves As They Are.

Once this acceptance begins to arise, it becomes possible for them to begin to act in a new direction which can be more helpful.

This is a huge and complex subject and I have not done it any justice (judging).  Suspending criticism and judgement is probably not possible for most people, certainly if it is a core signature strength for you (in which case, if I am right, coaching may not be a strength).

As I have said before, the important thing is to be aware of it, to notice your judgements and criticisms of your client arise, and to be able to choose to keep silent, keep listening and to keep them at bay at least until you have more fully understood what is going on.  A good way to do this is to confirm understanding without commenting critically.  It will at least distract you from giving your opinion!

Self-awareness is the first step, and requires some self-exploration.  Awareness of others at a deeper level can then begin.

Emotional-physical states are "catching" in a group of people.  A yawn breeds a yawn, anger or contempt leads to a fight, enthusiasm brings excitement, moving leads to following.  There is plenty of verifiable research on all of this, and you may well have noticed it yourself.

If you are going to coach, make sure you can influence your own state of mind, as it will affect your client and the outcome of the session powerfully.  And the first lesson is, be happy with yourself and it will allow others to become more happy with themselves too.

Happiness breeds laughter.  Laughter breeds happiness.  Learn to smile at yourself with good humour and deep affection.  You may find that accepting smile reflecting back out as strongly as the warm sun.  ;-)

Getting change with coaching - the Change Potential

I said in an earlier post, the traditional wisdom that you cannot change other people, only yourself, is not right.  In fact all relationships influence in some way, its just that the choice of how we are influenced belongs to us.  In coaching, your client must, by choosing coaching, be choosing change, and finding it hard.

So change is inevitable, your job is to help them find the resources they need to change more positively, perhaps to challenge their goal, and also to get there more quickly.

It is crucial to the coaching process that my client achieves some desired change.  An early assessment of this is therefore really an essential component, in my mind, of accepting a coaching relationship.  There has got to be a good reason for the work.  If there isn't one it's not really good for the coach and it's a waste of time for the client.  So how to assess it?

Change is natural, change is almost the same as saying "time".  As time passes we change.  The question is are we consciously and positively influencing it in the way we want?

The coach doesn't achieve change - the client does.  The client has to do the work and it's the role of the coach to listen, facilitate, teach and guide around the issues in the way or that may help.

I look for four things to assess the potential for change:

Clear goals
Motivation to achieve them
A Plan: A to F and all the steps between
Time and space to act

Each one has to be strong for the change potential to be high.  One way to use this is simply to ask questions around each aspect. 

Clear goal questions:
What is your goal here?  What do you need?  What do you want?  How do you see yourself changing through this programme?  What do you feel is missing from your career/life etc?  On a scale of 1 to 10, how clear is your goal?

If the answer is less than an 8, you need to do more work on goals first.

Motivation:
At the root, either desire or fear are the core motivators.  Some clients want to get out of a situation that makes them uncomfortable or stressed.  With these it is a good idea to help them find a new goal to move towards, to help the intention become more positive.  Others simply want something new; they have a goal in mind.  If the goal is clear or the current situation is very unpleasant, motivation should be high.   On a scale of 1 to 10, how strong is your motivation for the goal.

If you have a score less than 8, your client's goal or fear are not really that compelling, and change is unlikely.

Planning questions:
Do you know how to do this?  What are the little steps you need to take?  What resources do you need?  How do you need other people to change or help to make this possible?  Can you see/sense how you will do this?
Score the planning on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is brilliant planning and 1 is no plan at all.

Time and space to act:
In my experience, the first three items are not enough to get clear action.  What is also needed is time and space for action towards the new goal.   Sometimes this means that other things must be finished off before the process of building towards the new goal can start.  With clients, issues in the way of starting, but nothing to do with the new goal, have been all over the place, from major private life distractions (affairs, illness, children, financial problems, other changes in relations lives, general busy-ness), to work needs (their diary is full of other junk and the first issue is to deal with priorities and change roles).

Get a score on this one too.

The next step is a bit analytical, but kind of works.  Multiply the scores and express the result and divide by 1000, express this as a percentage.  Have a go.  Anything less than 60% is too low for quick change.  The beauty of the division of issues is it shows you, as coach, where to help the client focus.

I don't think any client has ever come in and told me what their real issues or goals are at the first meeting.   Finding these only comes after the relationship has built, rapport is good and trust has developed.  And after I have asked quite a lot of questions.

Life is messy, and simple analysis will only take you so far as a coach.

More on goals next time around, in the meantime I hope you enjoyed this and try out the scoring on yourself.  Pick a meaningful issue or you will get a meaningless answer!  Do you even tell yourself the real issues?  I dare you to.

Best wishes

Rapport - How to Create It

Rapport is an essential element for a good coaching session.

At the heart of the issue is the ability of the coach to gain rapport.  Once established it can be used help the client change, to lead a change of energy, for example either to reduce stress or to raise enthusiasm.  It can be used by an adept coach to gain emotional engagement with an important issue for the client.

How do you create it?

I have never been convinced by the idea of deliberate physical matching.  The idea is that people in rapport are in sync, and body language, tonality, expression, volume, energy all start to match.  While the observation of this clearly true, I have always found attempts to match me rather obvious and they tend to put me on alert for manipulation rather than make me feel at ease. 

It does work if you want to break rapport; it is pretty easy to get out of an unwanted conversation by using opposite/disengaging body language.

I have found two principles from my own experience which I have found very useful however:

• Within the confidentiality of a client coaching session, accept your client as they are without judgement.
• Learn to focus your attention on the whole presentation you are receiving, including noticing how it is delivered.

The first bullet does not mean that legal obligations etc can be ignored, and professional ethics are an essential part of the coach's profile.  However within your ethical boundaries, witholding judgement and giving absolute acceptance of the client is a very powerful way to be influential, and to create rapport.

It is probably the hardest thing to do, in reality, as the urge to judge, to disagree, or to listen to and add your own opinion, is strong in many people.  The approach of acceptance counselling it is called "unconditional positive regard" and comes from a useful assumption that your client, regardless of how well things are going, is always doing their best. 

Acceptance of the person as they are has to be really meant, it is not something easily feigned, so it needs to be geniune.  This does not mean you will not have some tough truths to discuss.  However you have to earn the right to be heard and the starting point for this is to listen enough such that you understand as fully as possible, before working.

You may need to think about whether you can unconditionally accept yourself without judgement , before you will be able to be like this really well with clients.

The second bullet requires a quiet mind and a broader focus.  Attention should be to body language, facial expression, tone of voice, colour, volume, pace of speaking, and hand movements as well as their words.  A strategy I use is to broaden my focus to take in the whole person, and a good way to do this is to notice their breathing rate and see if you can match it.  Doing this can take you deeply into rapport very quickly and it is a lightly meditative technique that quiets the mind naturally and tends to allow the awareness to expand.  Try to notice and use the same language:  seeing, feeling, hearing language signals can easily be picked up and emulated.

It does take practice.  You can try it on the train, quietly and without intrusion, observing your fellow travellers and trying to get a sense of their breathing.  I also look for mixed messages when doing this - things that contradict can be good clues to hidden information.  The expression "I am very confident about this" supported by a very defensive bit of body language, is interesting.

A genuine and non-judgemental interest, coupled with quiet and broad attention to your client will tell you a lot and very quickly get you into their energy zone.  You will be surprised how quickly genuine rapport builds.

If you pick this information up well, and use it in your coaching, the listening and understanding of your client will go up and up and up.  Milton Erikson, the famous medical hypnotist and psychiatrist, suggested using 100% of the information one is given, and considering 100% of the problem.  It is a very useful suggestion.

When you have it, by, in neuro-linguistic programming terms, pacing the client's state, you can then gently lead the energy during your session, to your client's advantage.

Try it and let me know what you notice.

Rapport: How to establish it and what it can help you achieve

A high level of rapport between coach and client is essential for an affective coaching partnership.  Without it little can be achieved.   There is nothing particularly magical or special about gaining rapport - no mystery here - it is the most natural thing in the world and most people are in high rapport with friends, family and colleagues at least some if not most of each day.

You know when you have it.  It's great, time passes quickly, there is a buzz in your relationship, it feels smooth.   You also know that it can go surprisingly quickly and jagged frozen ice can return to a conversation due to a misunderstood word or even a look in the eye.  These comments are ridiculous generalisations, rapport comes in all shapes and sizes.  They are a common characterisation though, and helpful to ensure most readers quickly get what this is about.

I was once lucky enough to hear Dan Goleman, author of "Emotional Intelligence" and "Social Intelligence" speak about his work.  At the end of the talk I asked him what he thought the key to EI was, and he answered "self-awareness", without hesitation.   I have found that this is the key also to doing more with rapport.

A high degree of self-awareness is almost the antithesis of normal rapport, which is something that happens unconsciously most of the time.  However, if you allow rapport to arise with intention, you can also notice how it is working, and then practice finding the edges of it through your questions.  If you can explore a tough issue, while keeping rapport high, you can help your client deal with some significant learnings in that state.  To do this well, it is absolutely imperative that your self-awareness and and ability to manage your own state of mind is very high.

You can also use the memory of things achieved while in rapport to influence your client's behaviour in between coaching sessions.

If your role as a coach is to stretch, challenge, and help someone to grow in their own life, and the outcome for them is useful in business and relationships, understanding and using rapport will help you a lot.

Don't be fooled into thinking that this aspect of coaching is easy, or to be dismissed.  A coaching partnership is a dynamic relationship and there is intention, there is a learning goal.  A good coach will need to practice self-awareness and know how to make best use of their own mental and physical resources in order to be really affective.  Self-preparation before a session (for me) is not about what we are going to cover; it is about relaxing, becoming open and quiet, so that there is space for my attention to be fully placed on both myself and the client in the meeting.

It can be useful to have a theory about what the issues might be, but this can also lead you astray, so if you use pre-judgement, hold your judgements very lightly and open-mindedly.  It is for the client to say what is right and wrong, and pre-judging is often a mugs game!  Let it be a starting point only if you need one.

The structure of a coaching session could be described in a number of different ways.  From the point of view of state of mind and relationship, I use this:

Self preparation
Greeting and allowing rapport to build
Wait for the client to open
Deepen the rapport to work
Noticing the client's state, change my own to end working (they will follow suit, normally, especially if they agree that we are done)
Hold rapport until parting.
Self preparation, to gain distance
Write notes, break attention.

The rapport continues, in a number of different states of mind, throughout the session.  I have "lost it" by pushing too hard, giving my own opinions too early or too harshly, not having it in the first place.  All could be classified as not listening to the client well enough and not having the self-awareness to spot the bear pit coming up on the path!

What is rapport?

The word "Rapport" is a noun.  That means we think of it as a "thing" - something you have or don't have, something that can be created.  

Reflecting for a moment, you may realise you can also see rapport as a verb, something that you do rather than a noun, an object.  Rapport describes the process that happens, normally unconsciously, between two beings (it can be with your dog or cat!) as they come into synchronised states.

In most meetings there is a certain quick and shallow rapport; at its deepest level humans have been shown to experience high internal mental and physical congruence - our brain waves are shown to synchronise to each other and even our biochemical systems.  

So what we are using the word rapport to describe is the process by which human beings invisibly lock into deep interpersonal relationships.  It is pretty magic.

No doubt you have heard the fireside wisdom that you cannot change another, only change yourself.  Well I would amend the comment slightly to say you cannot help but influence others, its just that how they are influenced is normally their choice not yours.

I have most poignantly noticed this effect through bereavement.  If you have lost, through death or the ending of a major relationship, someone loved, then you may also have experienced the sudden loss of their synchronisation with you, their presence both physical and in your thoughts.  In these circumstances the loss of rapport is experienced as a physical and emotional shock, and boy do you change quickly.  Well, I did.

Reflect on what this might mean for a coaching partnership, and how the process of growth works in a relationship like this.

As I move through this blog series on coaching I hope you will come to appreciate the power of choice, and key role coaching can play in helping clients become aware of alternate choices, sometimes better choices, better strategies for profit, better strategies for people, better choices in relationships and so on.

It is all about becoming aware of choices.  For the coach, becoming aware of the process of rapport, and understanding more about how it works, how they influence and change the state of rapport for working, is a crucial foundation stone for a successful practice.

The theory, however, is all very well.  Go and practice!

That is it for rapport for now.  There is more to say in the next blog on building and using rapport.

What is Coaching?

Well, who knows?  It's hard to tie it down, right?

From my experience the work is so varied that to try and define it can become so general as to be useless.  Somedays it's just about being there listening and some I have to work very hard to help my client get an outcome.  Depending on the issue, you can be coach, teacher, motivator, counsellor: all of the above.

To break it down I just want to start simply with the relationship itself.

I am normally chosen as a coach by someone who has a motivation for growth or change.  I also choose my clients.  This mutual choice is crucial to a successful coaching partnership, and is one of the reasons I approach corporate coaching programmes with extra care, as the choices of both parties are open to question - and therefore so is the success of the programme.

How am I chosen?

Well, I do promote the service!  Don't get me wrong.  I am not saying you cannot sell in this field.  It seems to me unethical not to sell if you find people who might need your help.  A good doctor has to ask a lot of interesting questions to work out how best to orientate his work, and good questions help the patient express their problem and also can focus their understanding on its seriousness and impact.

So, having promoted I wait to be asked, and spend an hour with a potential client, or more...sometimes a day, with no charge, just working out if we can enter a coaching partnership.

There are a few key things that get established in that time:

Rapport - builds naturally during a conversation, and when it starts to build you know.
Trust - this follows naturally from a deepening of rapport.
Change potential - it is vital to me to assess the client's potential for change as I am not going to be around to shoot for the goals, they have to do that themselves.

My next posts here will dwell on each of these elements in more depth, I will also comment on how to create them.  For now, if you are following, have a think about your own coaching experiences and see what additional elements come to mind.  Share your thoughts if you wish.

Once these are established I will look to help and establish a programme.  Once these things are established, it does not matter what I do to prepare for coaching session, as my client's quietly and often unconsciously prepare as they anticipate, and journey to see me.  They enter the coaching session with their issues already bubbling up to be shared.  

All I have to do is be open to what they are saying, and know how to follow their whole meaning.

Coming next - Rapport, how to establish it and what it can help you achieve.

Nick Mayhew - Coach

Great Coaching for Business

After years of successfully coaching business leaders, I feel ready to share some of the techniques and ideas I have learned through the school of hard knocks, from great teachers, and from my clients.

Please feel free to ask questions, share your thoughts with me, or to improve and criticise the ideas that follow.

People have so much potential, and yet realise so little of what they have.  It is a great privilege to be a coach.  To be invited to share someone's challenges, deep fears, and hopes has always been fulfilling for me.  To join them in the coaching partnership and help them move forwards in life, has always been a real thrill.

I publish this to share what I have learned and with the intention it might be read and found useful by budding and experienced coaches, clients and anyone who wishes to improve the choices in their life.

May it be so.

Nick Mayhew - Coach