Listen Up, or the Difficulties of Auditory Processing
When I listen during a coaching conversation, I listen with my entire body. I listen to what is going on around us, to what is coming up in me, to what isn’t being said. I listen to the silence. I listen to everything, for everything. The most amazing questions well up inside of me when I make space for them.
Doing Versus Being, or How Do We Step Into Accountability?
At the end of the day, accountability lets you step into your own power. When you are accountable to yourself, you hold yourself to your highest standard of what is possible and of what you can create. People no longer ask about accountability because it is no longer an issue of trust.
Standing in Curiosity, or One Impossible Thing at a Time
For me, curiosity is anything but easy. I like to know the answer. I like to give answers. I like to be the smartest one in the room. I like to be right. I have to fight to get to curiosity and then fight even harder to stay in curiosity. I ask good questions, heck I even teach how to ask questions, but even I know that I’m too much head and not enough heart. Curiosity often feels insurmountable, that impossible thing for me to climb.
Mentoring Matters, or Making a Case for Hope
I realized that that I’d left something unnamed: hope. In a nutshell, mentoring is about hope. When I mentor, I have hope for those that come after me, I give hope to those following, I am building for a future that I will never see. I hope for better things. There is, I think, hope on the other side as well. The person being mentored (ideally) receives hope, too, not just knowledge and skill and experience, but in knowing that someone else believes so strongly in them that they’re willing to give the most valuable thing they have: time.
Dunbar’s Number, or the Care and Feeding of Human Connection
And this brings me back to questions. The flippant, easy answer is that questions are how we seek information, but they’re so much more than that. A good question shows that someone is paying attention, they’re thinking about you. A good question shows care, interest, our dedication to maintaining that relationship. Good questions are the care and feeding of human connection.
The Upside of Grit, or How We Care for Our Skills
And that is where grit comes in. Raise my hand, get up and do the thing that scares me. I depend on my grit to get me through, and it does. I’ll return to Texas this weekend, and one thing I’ll make certain to pack is my grit. I’d be nowhere without it. In fact, grit is the trait helps me to be a good steward for my skills.
The Right Headspace for Coaching
Coaching is for you, not to you. It’s time to let go of thinking that there is a single, perfect time to do the work because there is no such time. The right headspace for coaching is the headspace you’re in. Let’s use that as our starting point and work from there.
The Hogwarts Maneuver, or Dealing with Imposter Syndrome
“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Can’t you do anything right? What were you thinking? Why would anyone work with you when you can’t do something as simple as send an email?” And then they got even nastier. “Oh, they’re just being nice. They didn’t really mean it when they gave you that compliment about your work. They were just afraid of hurting your feelings,” said that insidious, unctuous voice in my ear. “You’re not good enough to do this work. You don’t have enough experience, you don’t read or study or know the right things. You’re just a nobody from the middle of nowhere, and you’re lucky that none has seen this yet. You may talk a good game, but people see right through you. You’re a fraud, so pack up and go back where you belong.”
Finding My Blindspots, or the Painful Truth of Admitting My Own Biases
I’m human, fallible and imperfect, and therefore I have biases. But how I handle—not carry, not hide, but handle—these biases is up to me. As I mull this over, I come back to curiosity, to good questions, to starting with heart. I handle my biases by being genuinely curious about another person, to asking great questions that allow them to open up, and double-checking that my own heart is in a good place. Amy Cuddy calls this social bravery, and says that it “something we do first so that we can respect ourselves, not so that others can respect us.” When I handle my biases, forcing myself into social bravery, that is how I come to self-respect.
Getting into Good Trouble, or the Importance of Knowing Your Own Values
The point I’m making is this: if you are clear on your values, who you are and what you stand for as a person, it is so easy to know when you need to venture into good trouble. It’s an up-or-down vote. I know what is important to me and what is not. I have a hard decision in my future, one for which I’ve already determined that I’m willing to get into good trouble. That’s okay. I’m ready. My values have helped me to set my course of action, to know what is right for me. Upholding my values is always worth good trouble to me. In closing, I am leaving you with this question: What is good trouble for you?
Three Reasons to Make Metaphors a Coaching Habit
This is all well and good, but why do I want to use metaphors when coaching, be it with organizations, teams, or individuals? Because of this: metaphor doesn’t just help us to describe, it helps us to understand.
Power Up, or Stepping Into Who You Want to Be
I loved the idea of her “power poses,” and I began doing them. The Starfish. Superman. Bodybuilder. Wonder Woman. Pride. And while I am generally considered to have little to no shame, it was a bit awkward when I got busted in the elevator or the ladies’ restroom and had to explain just what it was that I was doing. Once they heard the explanation, people got the idea and even got a laugh, but it was then that I started to wish for a way to power pose without having to explain myself. I needed a power pose for the inside.
Five Powerful Questions for Every Coaching Conversation
There is no shortcut, no formula, for good coaching conversations. Every conversation and session are unique, and as a coach, it is my job to go where the client takes me. These five questions I’ve given here are simply a starting point to help you make your own coaching conversations more impactful and less awful than my first coaching sessions.
Kindness as an Engine for Personal Growth, or Practicing What I Preach
It wasn’t until I got home that I remembered a question I’d posed to an audience last year while speaking at a conference: What if kindness was an engine for personal growth? Essentially, isn’t that what we were talking about? Weren’t we demonstrating kindness for the other person by caring so much that we would be willing to have the hard conversation, and wasn’t that demonstrated kindness fueling our own growth in return? I cannot help but think yes, to both halves of the equation.
The Radical Kindness of Good Boundaries
Boundaries are a marker, a line. On one side of the line, you feel safe, secure, but on the other side, you might feel unmoored, violated, unsafe. Boundaries exist to keep us safe, be it physically or psychologically. Brene Brown has a line that I love and repeat often: “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” When we are clear about our boundaries and our values, we feel secure. When we are unclear, it is all too easy for that line to be crossed, and we then feel ignored, unseen, of no value to others. Boundaries are a reflection of our values. When our values are threatened, who we are as a human is threatened, too.
Why Do I So Love Poppies?
Poppies are a flower of remembrance, honoring those who died in the First World War. My husband and I have been to France many times, and we’ve walked many of those battlefields. Poppies greeted those soldiers then, and they greet them still today. But poppies also have a deeper, much more personal meaning to me. They bloom from blood, from pain, and ask us to remember even as we move forward. I’ve had years that have taken everything from me, that have forced me to the lip of the abyss and made me question what I was willing to do and to withstand in order to live. Those poppies are a visible reminder that life comes back, that I came back, even from war-torn soil.
Is There Room for Me, or the Humble Approach to Good Conversation
What would it be like to take the humble approach to conversations? What would it be like to consider what another person or another group needs in order to know that they can contribute to what is being said, to know that they will be included?
Unraveling with Questions...
And that got me to thinking: are good questions a way to add space around a knot?
