Week 9 - Coachee

I did both options this week - one intentionally and one by accident. First, I made an effort to sit down and have a serious conversation with the bane of my existence. This woman is a workplace bully. She is irresponsible and petty and…well, clearly I tend to pass judgment on her. Not this week though! I sat with her at lunch, which I usually don’t do, and just asked her how she’s been. She talked about the stress of applying for new jobs, about how sad she was for a student who is in crisis, about Trader Joe’s, about her romantic life, and pretty much everything. The topics ranged and at the time seemed to connect. Now, however, it seems like we covered so many random issues that it’s hard to imagine anything substantive coming out the experience.

What went through my head at the time though is the focus of the assignment. When I sat down, I told myself “She is a person too.” I often forget that she goes through her own sadness, stress, and drama just like everyone else and has a right to empathy. I also made a conscious effort to leave myself completely out of the conversation. When a question arose about the conversation, I asked it and tried to emphasize questions that allowed her to express more about what she was feeling regarding each issue.

To be honest, I think the conversation was really helpful for me in a lot of ways. I feel calmer around her now and don’t feel angry when she’s around. I can have a conversation with her as long as I remember to think of her as a person and not to focus on me. Beyond that though, like I said, nothing substantive came out of the conversation itself. She didn’t break down and admit that she’s a bully for these reasons, nor did she express why x, y, and z about working with me frustrate her. I don’t think that we broke a lot of new ground, but what we did create was trust. I feel much more comfortable talking to her now that we’ve had a calm and cordial conversation. I would bet that she feels the same way, so that’s progress!

Option two was really enjoyable also. I talked to my friend about stress that she is coping with right now. She is having IRS problems that are digging up some old, sad memories. Additionally her husband is sick. There’s a lot going on. So I went for a walk with her on Thursday and I just asked her how she’s coping. As she went through the whole long story I noticed that she wasn’t giving herself very much credit for all the hard work she has been putting in regarding all these issues. I asked her to list some of the things she’s done that she should be proud of, and it was tough for her at first. She didn’t want to take credit for anything good, so I prompted her. I said, “If I were you, I’d be really proud that I’d…” and I finished the sentence. She laughed, because it was corny, but eventually she conceded and talked about the good things she’s accomplished. Then, I asked her to think about what she could do now that she’d be proud of down the road. This allowed her to strategize a bit about her ideal resolutions to these problems and to come up with a plan.

I felt really good about walking her through this, and next week will reveal if my conversation was helpful.

Week 9 - Coach Take 2

Well, my coachee did not disappoint. He took this assignment as an opportunity to improve and work on his relationship with his fiancée. He described a conversation that was bordering on a fight as both involved parties were pretty committed to their ideas. He also admitted that he was “talking over her” and he wasn’t really letting his fiancée express her ideas because he was so sure that his ideas were right. But then, like the angel on his shoulder, Olen’s lecture popped into his head and my coachee decided to just shut up and listen to his fiancée.

He described the physical energy in the room in some detail and the physical connection – specifically he described intense and unbreakable eye contact even as she continued to talk. He said that maintaining this eye contact and really attending to what she was saying and expressing had a drastic impact on both parties. He was able to hear her better, and she was able to relax. His own calm was contagious and maybe gave her enough comfort to suspend a bit herself.

One topic my coachee touched on that I think is crucial to this course is the idea of validation. Looking at someone while they are talking and nodding as they speak validates what they are saying. Confidence is what allows you to open up and to say more and get more personal. Validation is crucial and I think it is a matter of justice to an extent. People are often told their feelings are invalid and that is a way of silencing them, so validating someone else is actually a bold political act if you ask me.

Another thing we discussed was the difference between empathy and sympathy. For my coachee, this week’s assignment was really about distinguishing between those two. He found value in his fiancée’s feelings not because of how they related to or were similar to his own. Instead he valued them as feelings that were unique to her and that she had complete ownership of. I talked about how much I hate it when a friend is letting you vent and all he can do is tell you about the time that the same thing happened to him and boy was it frustrating. If I’m sharing my feelings, let those feelings belong to me. Don’t take them over.

Finally, I asked my coachee about “planning ahead.” What about trying to think of those things that are most awkward to talk about? What are the topics that make it really difficult to be a good empathetic listener? If someone is confessing something you deem immoral? What about when a person is misquoting or misrepresenting you or someone you know? By thinking now about those challenging situations, maybe we can prepare for the future and strategize ways to cope down the line. In his situation in particular, what are the fights with his fiancée that he most fears? I think that brainstorming those topics and maybe even running through a model fight in his head will help my coachee be empathetic when the time comes.

Week 9 - Pre Coaching

My regularly scheduled coaching call had to be postponed this week due to the holiday, but I did have some thoughts I wanted to process before speaking to my coachee anyway. The big question is, “Can listening be learned?” Obviously some people are better listeners than others. Some people are better at pretending to be good listeners. Other people are rhetorically gifted or are merely open and honest individuals who have an easier time speaking candidly. Where do these abilities come from?

My thought is that for some people they are (more or less) natural. I think that I am naturally a very good listener. There are elements that can be taught though. While I was never “taught” to listen per se, I was trained as a sexual assault counselor and learned new skills and information about different kinds of listening through that.

I will be curious to see in this week’s posts if some people had a harder time with this assignment. I am assuming that it was a cake walk for my coachee because he is the epitome of empathy, but we’ll just have to wait and see…

Week 8 - Coachee Assignment Pt 2 (Attempted presensing)

I have known my best friend for over twenty years and we have been sharing an apartment for almost three. She is like a sister, and just like sisters we have our ups and downs.

She recently bought an adorable cat (Desmond) who is delightful. I, however, have not been thrilled with life in general lately, and have been using Desmond as a scapegoat for my malaise. I have been closing myself off and acting as a recluse and claiming that it was because of the smell of the cat. Realistically though, poor Des had very little to do with it.

So, this week’s coaching assignment gave me a perfect opportunity to have a difficult conversation with my roommate about our relationship and about my state of mind. To be honest, she seemed to do most of presencing (because she is a saint) but I got to at least be a part of a successful dialogue. I initiated the conversation to talk about the smell of the cat, which neither of my other roommates found problematic.

My goal during the conversation was to avoid Field I. I am not really a Field II kind of gal, but when I am uncomfortable I revert to politeness, which makes sense. There is comfort in rules and conventions. So when she asked what she could do to help, instead to taking it all on myself and saying she was fine, I was honest. Without getting into the details of our friendship, we agreed that neither one of us was communicating enough about what we needed at any given moment (specifically when we need quiet, focused work time, when we needed alone time, and when we were looking to chat and have fun). I admitted that instead of saying what I need, it’s easier to just make myself busy and hide. She admitted that when she is stressed about work and needs focused work time, she can be a little passive aggressive.

I did have to practice suspension a little bit in this conversation because for weeks now I have been convincing myself that health issues and the cat were the reasons I shut myself off. When she suggested otherwise, I could have easily been defensive and stuck to my guns, shifting the blame to two specific things, both of which are outside my locus of control. Instead though, I asked her to tell me what she was seeing in my behavior. What was I doing to suggest that something else might be the problem? When she shared these things, I told her that those were good examples and that she may be right. Likewise, I explained to her that her behavior comes across to me a certain way that she might not be able to see. She admitted that she was able to see her behavior coming across that way, but hearing me announce that it was affecting me made her feel badly and moved her to change her actions. We both suggest ways that we could help the other person and ways that we can proactively improve our own situations.

The readings continuously reference silence, and there were certainly some extended silences in our conversation. The longest one spanning (I would estimate) a full minute or more. To be honest, I don’t think I spent those silences well. I spent them trying to think of the next thing to say instead of meditating on those that had already been said.

At the end of the ordeal, despite the tears and the guilt over our recent lack of communication, we both felt better about where we were. I think that the act of suspending was important. It’s easy to get defensive when a person is talking about your state of mind and your happiness. Likewise, I think it’s important that both she and I avoided field I and REALLY said what we were thinking, even knowing that it may be hard for the best friend across the table to hear.

Week 8 - Coachee Assignment Pt 1 (Musings from my back porch)

So after 15 minutes on my back porch in the cold wind, I came to some conclusions about my “self.” Who am I? I am a young, thoughtful woman (who in many ways still sees herself as a girl) who aims to make people happy above all else. I see my own happiness eternally linked to the happiness I can give to others. Simultaneous though, I love and trust and know myself. I can be happy with/by myself as long as I know I am doing what is best for me. Lately, I have spent a lot of time on my own walking, reading, running, or just sitting. I spend most of this time planning things I can do that will improve my life or the lives of those around me (i.e. cool projects for my students, fundraisers for my rugby team, to-do lists for myself, etc.).

I take the role of caretaker very seriously. That is what draws me to teaching and what draws a lot of my friends to me. My empathy gives me access to the highest version of myself, but it can also be a weakness, or so I am told. I have, over time, come to accept the weakness that comes with it. I can cope with it and all it’s drawbacks as long as it grants me access to the self that I love – the self that makes others happy and loves me.

This person wishes to work for social justice, but often is caught up in the world of those around her, losing track of all the people I don’t know yet whom I may be able to help. I do see my purpose as helping others and finding pleasure and fulfillment in doing so. I face a lot of criticism about this, and I have tried to absorb it. People often tell me that my happiness cannot be dependent on how I make others feel because, to an extent, that is beyond my control, and that doing so puts undue pressure on me. If my goal in life was not something difficult and trying though, I’m not sure it would be worth doing. I acknowledge that sometimes I am a slave to it; at times I let that alter my decision making, and my failures impact my happiness. But really, why shouldn’t I be upset if I make someone unhappy? Don’t I deserve an amount of blame if my actions negatively affect someone else? I take accountability for my actions, and my sense of accountability and respect for others is what drives me, and I think it makes me a better person.

I suppose I don’t want to see anything wrong with this way of life, so I often don’t let the criticism sink in. I am aware of it, and I can repeat it back to you, but I haven’t let it let it affect my actions. It hasn’t made me stop doing what I’m doing. I suppose I just don’t see why anyone would not expend energy making others happy. I know there needs to be a balance – I can’t make someone happy at the expense of my own health or enjoyment, but if we don’t put others first, life seems all the more finite. You are one person, and if you only focus on pleasing yourself, you run out of pleasurable things. If you like chocolate and TV and books and running, you can do those things, but what happens when you’ve used them up for the day? You just do the same thing again tomorrow? Maybe the search for new things that make us happy is drive enough to get someone through life, but I think it’s more challenging and rewarding to search for what makes other people happy. If I make my mom happy, I’ve achieved something. If I make myself happy, I have just given into an impulse that I already knew about. There’s very little challenge. You try something. If you like it, you win. If you don’t, start over. It seems so small. Making other people happy is so much bigger, so infinite, and so challenging.

Obviously my reasons for helping are selfish – I like the way I feel when I’ve made someone else happy. But that doesn’t make those people any less happy, right? So don’t we all win?

Week 8 - Coach

So I started this week’s coaching session asking my coachee about his 15 minutes in nature. For him, it was a bit unnatural (ironically enough) because he is so used to spending time in nature in less contrived ways. He hikes and camps and isn’t used to being in his backyard and calling it “nature.” He found the noises and bustle of civilization a bit distracting, but he was still able to find some value in his quiet time.

Through his meditation, my coachee aimed to be open to himself and to solidify an understanding of who he is. That is, however, something that he does pretty regularly and naturally, so the tough part is and will be actualizing that vision. How can he get to be this best version of himself? One key we talked about was making sure to take time to think about this best version as often as possible. The more it is in mind, the more likely we are to act on those hopes and impulses.

The “self” that he was thinking about is a person who needs to help. Since he was a little kid, my coachee always felt a yearning to do so. He asked an interesting question though, which I thought of during my own meditation: If enough people feel that same helping impulse, there must be a reason. There must be something about helping others and making others happy that is universal and necessary. I suggested that maybe it has to do with needed to connect. We also agreed though that it is largely selfish. Helping feels good, so we like to do it. He finds, however, that as he gets older he finds it harder to make others happy. I suggested that problems are simpler and PEOPLE are simpler when they’re young, so it makes sense that it’s easy to help and sooth at that point. My coachee thought that it might have to do with standards of happiness – both his own standards and the standards of others.

Finally, we talked about whether or not we always need to be happy. Is there value to feeling badly? I think that unhappiness is needed to connect us to each other. Maybe life stagnates if we’re always happy. If we need to help others in order to be happy, we need others to be unhappy sometimes, and they in turn need us to be unhappy sometimes too. Marc used a metaphor of a pendulum – we can swing back and forth or sit plainly in the middle. If we put too much pressure on ourselves to ALWAYS be happy, we are guaranteed to fail, and in doing so we’ll feel worse. The pendulum can’t stay at a peak. So while working to make yourself and others happy is noble and innately human, the key is reflecting on our feelings and how we make others feel instead of putting too much pressure and emphasis on happiness as a constant.

In the second part of our chat, we discussed his efforts at presensing in a meeting at work. He said that he kind of came upon presencing by accident, but it was very successful!

The issue at hand had to deal with money that was in my coachee’s name and was stolen from work. He was hoping that everyone in the department would chip in so he wouldn’t have to shoulder the burden of the entire stolen sum. What was really great about the way he talked about this is that he kept saying his “old self” would have dealt with it the wrong way – he wouldn’t have said anything and would have let himself become bitter and resentful of his co-workers who didn’t have to help pay. This week, however, the NEW self brought it up with staff members. One of them, a friend of his (Tim), was mad and had a “how dare you ask?” kind of response. My coachee’s response was that he would help if roles were reversed.

Once my coachee had time to explain himself and what he was suggesting (not demanding), people started to come around. Tim explained that he thought earlier that my coachee was going to demand money and that the theft was my coachee’s responsibility. These are just some of the reasons that money is always an awkward subject, and all the more reason that my coachee should be praised by taking on such a difficult topic for his first attempt at presencing.

What I’ve noticed over my conversations about this workplace is that they are moving in the right direction and my coachee’s strategies seem to be helping in that shift. This particular event, despite its uncomfortable nature, brought the whole group together. They all lost $200 that was supposed to go to something they all cared about, so the experience was shared. Even within that though, people had different perceptions of how coachee’s request came across, of what was expected, of what transpired, etc. So to clarify, my coachee made and effort to be open and honest and to suspend his judgements about how the situation should be handled. He admitted that if he (“old self”) didn’t ask for the money he would have been bitter about it, and he didn’t want to be in that position. In admitting this, he explained his position without saying “You should give me money because…” And the group responded to the honesty and vulnerability. At first there was silence as people thought about how this affected them and how they contributed, etc. But then, an aspiring therapist stepped up and facilitated a discussion which ended with an agreement that everyone would help pay back the program and that some new procedures would go into place to prevent the same problem from happening in the future. In that sense, the final part of the discussion was driven by the future that has yet to unfold…kind of?

I am really proud of how honest my coachee was willing to be about his own faults, his own interests, his self-perceptions, and his expectations of himself and others. As a result of all those things, the group became closer, listened to one another, and set themselves up for future success.

Week 6 - Coach

My internet has been down all week, so thank goodness it’s spring break this week.

So in my last post,I gushed about how great my coach is, but my coachee is pretty amazing too. Thanks for being so honest, open, and thoughtful. I’m really enjoying coaching and being coached.

So I started by asking about my coachee’s attempts at suspension over the course of a normal day. He made an excellent point about how difficult it is to constantly be aware, to constantly be existing both within and outside yourself. Just as the readings on meditation suggested, focus and awareness are crucial, but far from easy. So, my coachee said that when he was aware and paying attention he nailed suspension, at least the inward part. He is such a thoughtful guy that I am not at all surprised that he finds it easy to watch himself objectively from the metaphorical director’s chair. When asked why outward was so much harder, he commented honestly that you make yourself vulnerable, and that’s kind of nerve-racking. That’s not to say he didn’t make a great attempt though:

In a staff meeting with a woman who does her job very differently than her superiors might want, my coachee confronted the issue from a suspended position. He asked repeatedly for clarification and elaboration on the points this woman was making in an attempt to really understand a position that is pretty different than his own. He said that he would explain to her that he didn’t understand, but that he knew there was value in what she was saying, and he wanted to understand better. Through this shared inquiry, he did gain a better understanding of her position, and of how her personal experiences lead her to this place.

I asked if he noticed any change in her behavior after this conversation, and the results were encouraging! My coachee said that, while her behavior didn’t entirely change, and she continued to do many things in an “old school” way that is not consistent with current ABA standards, he caught her informally checking in with her. Clearly, he said, she was more aware of her own actions and how they related and differed from what was expected. In short, she was putting in effort to change for the best of the program.

ABA is a funny field to attempt suspension in because it is so firmly based in statistical data and established, consistent patterns of reinforcement. So there’s not a lot of room for interpretation. That’s why I found this woman’s case so interesting. She was caring for these children in the way she thought was best – that doesn’t make it ABA though. Could ABA specialists learn something from her? Could she learn something from them? Could a new model of behavioral adjustment come out of a meeting of these minds?

My coachee is an interesting example of this. He claims he has two sides – the nurturer/attention giver who wants to behave like this woman he mentioned above and the scientist who analyzes data and figures out the most effective methods. By suspending and listening to both of these sides, he is able to be a really well rounded teacher for his clients.

I asked him if he learned anything specific from his conversation with this woman, or if he saw his behavior or perspective change as a result. He said that now he is more aware of what she’s doing and he knows now that what she’s doing as an act of love. He also is very forgiving of her because it makes sense that she is defensive about her tactics and practice – it’s easy to become defensive when you are coming from an emotional place.

My coachee also brought up some great points about the need for participants in a dialogue to understand the stakes. When the issue is high stakes, when finding a solution is a matter of “life or death,” you almost HAVE to suspend. There’s no room for stubbornness with there are big things on the line.

Finally, we reflected on his first assignment in which he created a safe and comfortable space for his staff to discuss and bring up any complaints or concerns about their workplace. In the most recent meeting, no one brought anything up. While it makes him feel like a successful supervisor to have a meeting without complaints, it is almost hard to believe. Had all the bitterness from the previous supervisor been vented at the last meeting? Were they all done being mad? I said that I think the creation of this safe, comfortable space is probably such a huge step forward that he shouldn’t worry about their lack of complaints. As long as he consistently reinforces that the space is there for them, people will be honest and express things when they have things to express. We also talked about how sometimes people recognize that their complaints are superficial when people are actually listening. When there’s no audience, you can say anything and rationalize it. It’s like singing in the shower. YOU think you sound good, but you know that you’re tone deaf as soon as there are other people in the room.

(I left out a lot of the great stuff that my coachee had to say, but I get the feeling that my blogs are too long, so I’m trying to be a little more selective.)

Week 6 - Coachee

I’ve got to say, and I’m not blowing smoke, I got SO lucky when I was assigned this coach. No only is he a professional therapist, but he is just so thoughtful and is clearly genuinely concerned with helping me improve as a person and really reflect on my experiences. So BIG thanks to my coach.

Anyway, I had grand plans to confront a difficult person and suspend both inwardly and outwardly this week. Unfortunately, as I admitted to my coach, once I was face to face with this woman all the plans went out the window. My coach reminded me that there is no time limit on this process and I can always try again another time.

When he asked me how I think the conversation would have gone, I kept repeating the phrase, “Who do you think you are?” That is what I think my attempts at suspension would have been met with. Not that I am SO young or SO inexperienced that I would deserve that kind of reprimand, but it is demonstrative of the way I am typically treated by this particular person and the rest of the group we are in together. Not only do I feel I am looked down upon in that way, but our group is also notorious for blame shifting. No one is ever accountable or takes any blame. When something goes well, they fight for the honor, and when it goes wrong, it’s always someone else. Don’t be TOO jealous of my work environment…

Then we talked about something that Olen brings up from time to time – different contexts call for different fields of dialogue. My coach explained that when he is talking to his wife, he is working in a different field than when he is talking to his brothers. Different audiences need to be read and understood. We can’t just assume that everyone is ready or fit for field III. That, I think, was my problem. I ambitiously planned to have a field III conversation with a person who is most effectively dealt with in field II. She does not take any criticism or change well and in fact lashes out when her authority is compromised.

Part of the problem that my coach mentioned was that there is no real supervisor or organizational structure to which I can report my discontents. There is no venue for an airing of grievances. In fact, there is not even any motivation for my team leader to do a good job because there is so little supervision. No one checks to see when she’s doing well and no one punishes her when she is abusing her teammates. The more I think about her, the more I believe that a dialogic leader is necessary for most productive dialogues.

Another problem that my coach drew out of me is that there is no interest within the team (or in the system) to change anything. People are so obsessed with finding the path of least resistance, the path that’s been worn down because it’s been tread on so much, that the thought of doing a better job is irrelevant. And even though I would like to see a lot of things change, my modus operandi is appeasement. I’ll do anything to make everyone happy and relaxed.

My coach asked why I think I do this, and all I can think of is that it’s what has been positively reinforced. It feels good to make others feel good, so that’s what I do. Unfortunately, on more than one occasion it has been to the detriment of my own well-being. In my team setting, it is definitely not a productive pattern. My coach encouraged me to focus on the inward part of suspension and keep asking, “Why I am appeasing everyone else right now? What am I trying to accomplish?” and to reframe those questions as a path to self improvement.

Like I said: Best coach ever. Thanks Faheem.

Week 5 - Coachee

The first thing I talked with my coach about tonight was whether or not what we did this week was really meditation. Having read about meditation and tried it a little in the past, I thought of this more as self-analysis and less as meditation. The assignments asked us to clear our minds and only focus on one thing (breathing, emotions, movement, and thoughts) which is reminiscent of meditation practices. However, I found it literally impossible to notice these things without analyzing them at the same time, which seems to defeat the purpose. To genuinely and authentically just think about what I was doing or thinking without trying to figure out why immediately was just not a possibility for me. I can’t read theory about meditation and then go out and do it without thinking back on a readings constantly and trying to apply them to the practice.

My coach seemed to have a nicer and less rigidly academic experience with the meditation assignments though. He appreciated the operational nature of the assignments. As he put it, it was nice to know that on Tuesday he was going to be aware of one thing, then on Wednesday, another, and so on. I liked this aspect of it too, and honestly enjoyed the assignments as a whole. I guess I just had a hard time stepping back and just watching myself.

One possible reason for this difficulty that we talked about at length is the fact that for the last 20 years I have either been a student or a teacher, without so much as a year off at any point. I have spent so much of my life learning to download, to repeat information that’s given to me, and to say what someone else wants to hear, that I have to some extent lost the ability to do much else within the framework of school. I expend so much effort trying to figure out what is right, than I can’t just “take it for what it is,” as my coach put it.
This class is asking us all to walk a like between downloading (the information from the books, meeting deadlines, posting according to rubrics, etc.) and “thinking outside the box”/living in the moment. The transition back and forth between those two ways of being is what I am starting to see as a struggle. I can do one or the other, but I have a hard time doing both. My coach recommended that I take some of the pressure to figure all of this stuff out off of myself, and instead find what relevance I can – be it in my community, in my family, or in other small settings. Seems like a reasonable place to start.

Week 5 - Meditation (Thoughts)

Today was an interesting day to think about my thoughts. The teaching portion of my day was relaxing and fun, so I felt free from thoughts and existed very much in the moment. The non-teaching part of the day was very stressful though. Students were in crisis and missing and getting caught making bad choices, so I had a lot of thoughts that were really negative. My frustration definitely manifested itself in the wrong places too. I snapped at kids who didn’t deserve to be snapped at and became lethargic and unproductive.

To be honest, I am somewhat ashamed of the level of negativity in my thoughts regarding some of my students today. If, as the prompt suggested, I had watched my thoughts like a movie, I would have to say I was kind of pitiful. I would not like the version of me I was watching. The inability to break from those thoughts and their pervasive nature was scary.

The lesson of today is obvious: negative thoughts about anything, if allowed to remain in your head, will poison your attempts to be productive in subsequent conversations. Maybe these moments are when I should practice meditation. If I can clear my mind entirely, it’s as if I start with a clean slate and the negative lens goes away.

Week 5 - Meditation (I am an emotional creature!)

When I was little, my mom used to give me a hard time about being too emotional. I cried a lot, but never for attention to sympathy. I just felt things really deeply. Still do. I only began to see this as a positive thing after seeing Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues perform her poem entitled “I Am An Emotional Creature.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/i-am-an-emotional-creatur_b_468801.html). The poem is based on an interview with a teenage girl from the South who sees her emotions, her “female intuition,” as something that sets her apart and makes her better. I would guess that I myself am more emotional than most and as the poem suggests, that means I bring a different sent of decision making skills and perspectives to the table.

Lately at work, however, I have been pretty apathetic. My emotions seem to exist between the end points of frustration and slight excitement. In past years, however, I’ve had students who broke my heart and literally brought me to tears and I’ve had co-workers make me so angry I had to leave the building. The vast majority of my emotional energy though had been spent on the excitement and exhilaration of seeing my lessons work and watching my students grow. For the part two years I have loved my job. For whatever reason (I have my theories) this year is different. I feel little other than frustration during the day, and relief in the afternoon.

So today there were only a few moments that really were emotionally memorable. At lunch I had a chance to sit with a couple co-workers I really enjoy who I don’t get to see too much. I was so happy and relaxed talking to them. This year I have tended toward the quiet end of the spectrum at lunch, but today I was chipper and chatty.

I had another emotional moment during my last class of the day. We are currently reading The Diary of Anne Frank, a story which is very personally meaningful and extremely emotional. The kids in my last class clearly loved what they were reading. They were reading their parts in fun voices and laughing and asking questions. For the first time all year, this group was engaged in the curriculum instead of in one another. I had such a good time listening to them and watching them enjoy this story.

My final emotional moment just happened! My poor roommate is student teaching right now and is also a full time M.A.T. at Tufts. Obviously she is stressed. In fact, I rarely see her. She has been my best friend for over 20 years, and her friendship has sustained me through the worst. Today we had a rare opportunity to chat for just a few minutes. Even though it wasn’t a “happy” conversation, just being able to talk to someone who has been (and is so often) my rock really gave me an emotional boost.

Luckily I didn’t feel emotional distress at all today, so my reflection will have to be based on my day’s joys. I’ll focus on the excitement of seeing my students enjoying Anne Frank. In the moment, I think I was in professional-mode and didn’t really let the emotions of the moment come to the surface. I imagine in dialogue that same thing happens. We are so caught up in downloading – in conforming to a world where emotions belong in your personal life and not your professional one – that we don’t realize our emotional connection to something until it’s too late. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons silence is important. In those silences, we can allow ourselves to step out of the professional setting for a few moments and into our own thoughts, where emotions live.

Week 5 - Meditation (Body)

Focusing on my body seemed easier to me than focusing on my breathing. The first incident I noticed today was that I walked down the hall at one point having just talked to my co-worker. I found two interesting changes as I moved from the copier to my classroom at that point: 1) I was walking much more slowly than I usually do. I tend to be a fast walker, and become indignant when slow walkers are in front of me. But this time, at 7:00am, I was strolling. 2) I also had my free hand in a clenched first, which is not a common thing for me either. So the subsequent question I asked myself was how could I be relaxed enough to walk at a leisurely pace, but tense enough that my fist was like a knot of fingers? Doesn’t that seem like an odd pairing?

The second instance I noticed was that I take very small steps when I am in a classroom full of kids. I noticed it all day. When my students are there, I take this quick, tiny steps. It doesn’t make a ton of sense, and I have no idea why I do that. Maybe it’s just a space issue, and the only way to move fluidly through the obstacle course that is my classroom is to make meticulous little movements. It’s almost as if I want to appear to be eager to get over and help (hence the quick pace of the steps), but I don’t really want to deal with them (hence the width of the steps). That may just be over analysis at its finest though.

The third thing I noticed is that I close my eyes…a lot. Specifically, I always close my eyes on the phone, when I’m eating alone, and when I brush my teeth/hair. Maybe I have just found the few moments in the day when I don’t need my eyes, and I allow them to rest during those times. Like little mini-meditations, I just turn off that sense for a little while and focus on the others. I mean, it is the only sense that you can choose not to use. Your ears always here and your nose always smells, etc. Perhaps it’s a control thing for me. Who knows?

How do these realizations relate to dialogue? I honestly have no ideas or theories whatsoever. Input is MORE than welcome here…

Week 5 - Meditation (Breathing)

I accidentally did Wednesday’s assignment on Tuesday. Forgive me.

I made an effort today to pay attention to my breathing. Know what the problem is though? Once you pay attention to your breathing, you start breathing differently. It’s like saying, “Don’t think about an elephant.” I got you, didn’t I? But I tried…

In a team meeting with a parent today, I found myself getting dangerously close to dozing off. While in this state I took short, big deep breaths through my nose, followed by long, slow exhales (also through my nose). This is how I breathe whenever I’m really tired. I’ve noticed it before. I’m no physiologist so I couldn’t begin to guess why, but it is a very relaxing, soothing way to breathe for me, despite the fact that I know it’s “wrong.”

Then, I checked my breathing after a barrage of angry students came to see me having just received their progress reports. I wish I could have paid attention to my breathing while those kids were in the room yelling at me, but I was a little distracted at the time. Instead, I caught myself the second after. At this point, I was taking a lot of long, slow breaths in through my mouth that felt like the reached deep down into my lungs. Like my sleepy breaths from above, I find these soothing. Even as I relive them now I can feel them reaching deeper into my chest and really filling my lungs more than my typical breathing. There’s something about these deep mouth breathes that makes me feel healthy and alive, like I’m getting all the oxygen I need. Maybe it was a direct response to a short period of time where my breathing was impeded by stress. Maybe when the kids weren’t in the room I wasn’t breathing enough at all, and my body was reacting.

Finally, I was just doing some reading and I was trying to pay attention to my breathing at the same time. I ended up losing track of what I was reading, but doing a really nice job taking long breaths in through my nose, and out through my mouth (the way I had always been taught). Again, SO relaxing. I think that reading puts me in a relaxed, meditative state anyway, so once there it was really easy and natural to adopt “correct” breathing patterns.

The conclusion I’ve come to is that attending to breathing is relaxing in and of itself. Much like waves crashing in and out or white noise on the TV, it’s a smooth, uninterrupted pattern that seems to sooth. How could this apply to dialogue? Well, if the sound of even breathing can relax me, I assume it would do the same for others. Leaving breaks when speaking can give people time to breathe and to hear your breath. This chapter talked a lot about the importance to taking time to let ideas float out there and the importance of silence in a dialogue, and maybe modeling good breathing habits, or even taking breaks mid-thought to breathe more deeply, could allow some of those spaces to grow and be filled with something comforting, thus improving the lines of communication.

Week 4- Coachee (sorry this is so long!)

In this week’s session with my coach, we focused on my tendencies within the Four Player Model. My coach asked what roles I’m most comfortable with. At the time, according to my notes, I said follower and opposer, but I should have said was follower and bystander and sometimes mover. I’ve been caught up with the word “comfortable.” In general at my core I am mostly a bystander. I like to observer and describe and relate. It’s a tricky question because it’s so contextual – with some people I am an bystander, with some people I’m a mover, etc.

In my work, where I had my first conversation of the week, however, I am mostly the follower and the opposer – a odd combination. The funny thing is that I am extremely non-confrontational in my daily life - so much so that I am often told it is a fault - but at work or in academic settings I have the confidence to speak my mind, be oppositional, and confront issues head on. The problem is that I have a very hard time suspending and detaching myself from my ideas when I’m at work. Teaching is an emotionally intense job. You become attached to your students and are emotional invested their success. Furthermore, I have deep political/ideological convictions about schools, so as I said, it is hard for me to detach from my ideas. Thus, when I am the opposer at work, it is not always productive. Instead I get offended easily and perhaps take things too personally.

Interestingly, in my personal life I am all things except an opposer. I never say no and I don’t like to criticize. I have always had much more confidence in myself as a student and as a teacher than I do in my personal life. In my personal life though, I also am a bit of a “control freak.” I always insist on driving. I like to walk in the front of the group. I feel most safe and secure when I am in charge.

I find myself very uncomfortable in situations when there is more than one mover, especially if I am one of them. I’m sure this all comes back to the fear of conflict that I mentioned earlier. Multiple movers means multiple ideas about how to do the same thing and that can yield conflict and debate.

Anyway, my first conversation of this week’s coaching assignment was a team meeting at school. I work on a team of six teachers, one of whom is our “team leader,” but I use the term loosely. There is no direct supervision over the team, so no one checks in to make sure we’re doing OK. In my opinion, we are not doing OK. The team seems to be dominated by people who advocate and only two of us inquire. One other woman and I are the followers/bystanders in the group. That leaves four movers/opposers. What I’ve begun doing out of frustration though is playing devil’s advocate all the time. It’s not fair to call what I’m doing opposing because it is completely unproductive. My frustrations with what I see as maltreatment and a lack of respect from my team has driven me to be defiant and even petulant at times, which is completely against my nature.

So the goal that I established with my coach is that I want to be a more constructive opposer. I think it is important that someone play the opposer in a productive way, and I have no reason to believe that the four opposers on the team will oppose productively. As my coach wisely reminded me though, I can’t control them; I can only control myself. So if I cannot make them constructive opposers, I will take that job.

We also talked about some ways that I can behave differently in my team meetings so that others may act differently in response. Since I believe that I am being treated unfairly and being treated essentially as a doormat, I need to advocate for myself gently and calmly. In doing so, I will force someone else to experiment with being a follower since I will not always be the team’s loyal foot soldier any longer.

One strategy that my coach suggested was “rearticulating” or “reframing” my problem (i.e. “opposing for opposition’s sake” is not getting me anywhere. In what ways might I become constructive in expressing my views to the team?) I can also reframe by looking at one issue at a time. Instead of getting caught up in a big idea like “team dynamics” or “failing students,” I can look at individuals problems and recognize what my position is on each issue and how I can constructively express that position to the team.

I think my favorite suggestion that I got from my coach about this problem was that I should ask questions which are more oriented toward problem finding. I don’t always need to be playing devil’s advocate to be an opposer. I good opposer helps the rest of the group see the problems that they are facing as a group, and I can do that by asking questions. Before my next team meeting, I am determined to formulate a list of such questions that I can use to probe the inner opposer in each of my teammates.

Because this post is already too long, I’m only going to talk briefly about conversations #2 and #3. In conversation #2, I told a group of my friends about the Four Player-Model. Despite my attempts to go into great detail about the inter-relationship of each role and a vivid description (including examples) of each, the group unanimously agreed that the theory was overly simplified. Additionally, I think without reading deeply into the objectives of genuine dialogue, there are semantic roadblocks. If you use the term opposer (which I naively did), people will automatically have negative associations. The same goes for “follower.” The issue with “follower” is much deeper though. As Faheem posted about last week, Americans are obsessed with leadership. American schools (especially colleges) brag about producing leaders. Today’s high school graduating class is filled with the “leaders of tomorrow. We see Americans either as leaders or the people who work for the leaders. Therefore, anyone who wasn’t well read in this topic would probably create a mental hierarchy as my friends did. The mover is the highest, follower in the lowest, and the other two are in the middle.

My third conversation was with a girlfriend who was having trouble with a boy. I had the goal of being a good bystander and just telling her exactly what I saw in our conversation. I think that went exceptionally well and she ended up formulating a strategy for dealing with her boy problem based on the observations I was relaying to her. My coach talked about how reflecting a conversation back to a person is a counseling strategy, and in a lot of ways the bystander is the counselor and reporter of any group I suppose.

Week 4 - Coach

My coachee was really eager to talk about his experiments with the four-player model:

He has recently been promoted to a supervisor role in his program. There is abundant tension and bitterness – an “us vs. them” mentality among the staff– because the management style doesn’t allow people to voice frustration. Instead, feelings and thoughts get pushed aside because negativity and frustration might be bad for the kids.

At his most recent meeting, my coachee decided to take the “questions and concerns” section at the end of the agenda very seriously. He opened the floor for venting (as long as it was gear toward progress instead of mere complaining) and really invited people to share and to use their feelings to help the program move forward.

During all this, my coachee planned to be the bystander while he is usually the mover or the opposer. He knew he had to let go of ego and suspend his certainties. As he said it, he had to “shut up and listen.” Each time a person expressed a concern or a frustration, he asked how he could help. So without meaning to, he also took on attributes of the follower, looking for guidance that he could turn into action. He also talked about the urge to become an opposer during these conversations though. He wanted to stand up for himself and to justify things that were making his co-workers unhappy. Instead though, he forced himself to be polite and to be a bystander.

The next day, he reports people were smiling. The energy from the meeting, which was potent at the time, carried over to the next day. People appreciated that he had been a bystander and that he had listened. There is a level of discomfort about his role as supervisor because he was one of their peers a couple months ago and now he’s in charge, so the erosion of that power hierarchy may have also restored some normalcy or comfort to people who are not yet used to viewing him as a supervisor.

I asked if the other three players were represented at the meeting. There was mover – an ABA specialist who is training to be a psychologist facilitated a lot of the meeting. That same man also was an aggressive opposer at times as well. He has a lot of frustration (was recently demoted by choice) and got a little defensive and sarcastic at one point. Two other women were very quiet – maybe more like bystanders. They largely listened, but would express their ideas through the mover mentioned above. He would check in with them, ask what they thought, and then reiterate their ideas. There was no mention of a follower though, and the reason for this seems obvious: there was nothing to be done, at least not immediately. The purpose of the meeting was not to plan an event or create an IEP. The meeting was just meant to initiate a conversation. Followers will emerge in the upcoming meetings when the staff’s concerns are turned into effective plans and actions that will improve the organization.

While there was no ultimate action plan, the meeting was far from pointless. The goal of the meeting was to make people who feel disenfranchised feel heard for a change. With each concern that was brought forth, my coachee asked his co-workers for specific examples and all these examples were recorded. Then he asked group members what could have been done differently in those scenarios. What could management have done better? The conversation is what will yield results. My coachee mentioned that before he was a supervisor, sometimes all he wanted was to hear his supervisor say, “I was wrong, you were right.” While in the grand scheme of things a fixation on right and wrong will not be productive, I can see why he wanted to give that to his co-workers. As long as they feel like they can never be right and that their superiors always thinks he is right, the co-workers will see no point in dialogue. In this case, it seems like admitting that there is a right and wrong is a nice way to strike out against the hierarchies that are in place and are counterproductive. He also talked about how hard it was to let his co-workers say he was wrong, because he had not fully suspended and did still feel strongly about his ideas, but he did a good job staying in the bystander role despite instincts that push him toward opposer.

When I asked my coachee what role he felt most comfortable in, he said he is a mover and opposer. The more we talked about it though, the clearer it became that this is not always true. In different contexts, we have different strengths and weakness. In his career, my coachee’s strengths are as mover and opposer (hence his need to practice as a bystander). In his personal life though, he sees himself more as a bystander and follower, avoiding conflict at all costs. When asked why he thought there was a difference between his personal and professional life, he made an astute point: the only type of professional leadership most of us are exposed to is that of the mover. Most bosses tell you what to do and tell you when you’re wrong. So, since he is new the role of supervisor, it makes sense that he would follow those models. That is how we are taught to lead and that’s how we feel we should act when we are in positions of “power.” Additionally, some people, my coachee and me included, find a certain level of comfort in control. Being in control means there are no questions and fewer variables.

Week 3 - Coach

I talked to my coachee today about his experiences in education. He said he was an A/B kind of student who got by primarily by memorizing and cramming. Because of that, he didn’t retain much of what he learned in his early education. He came to realize, however, that he is a pretty analytical thinker, and that his problem had been that he wasn’t studying the right stuff – the stuff that interested him or appealed to his academic strengths. Now, with a great sense of self-awareness, he is trying to be better about studying the right stuff and doing it the right way. I love that his education may not have taught my coachee much about biology or history, but it taught him a lesson about himself and his styles that will legitimately benefit him in so many of his endeavors.

We also talked about my coachee’s choice to take time off from school. He realized at some point that he thrives outside the classroom and wanted to explore the informal learning that takes place in the real world. As he put it, the educational system is not geared toward self-learning, and that is what he wanted. Through his year off, a year without many responsibilities, he was able to build confidence, and most importantly, open-mindedness, both of which are major attributes needed in his field of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA).

I was curious about a possible personal connection that my coachee might have to the kids in his program – he said he did not thrive in the classroom, which is also true of these students. So we began talking about the ways he incorporates his informal education, what he learned about himself in his year off, and what he’s gained from his friendships and relationships, into his teaching. Two main ideas emerged: patience and open-mindedness.

My coachee always thought of himself as a patient individual, especially in comparison to some of the other people in his life who were models of impatience. What he found, however, is that he was more subject to the learned behaviors inherited from these models than he previously thought. His students force him to his limits, and his frustration can get the better of him. He described this experience as “humbling.” The mere fact that he is not at patient as he thought can be a positive thing though. Having admitted that he needs to be more patient, he and I discussed the importance of making a conscious effort outside of work to analyze his limits and his frustrations. In doing so, he hopes to become a more patient teacher, husband, son, and friend.

Additionally, my coachee talked about the open-mindedness he gained from his year off from school. The people he met in that year proved the importance to suspending assumptions. This applied importantly to his work in ABA. It is easy to assume that kids in ABA don’t have much to say. Instead, he makes an effort to ask them questions and to engage in conversation, which is not always common in ABA settings. As he put it, there is more than meets the eye when it comes to these kids. There is also more to ABA than meets the eye. He talked about the perceptions of the field as being cold, generic, and at times robotic. People judge ABA programs based on what they have heard without being open minded to the techniques and unique strategies that may be different from program to program.

I also asked about what drew/draws my coachee to ABA. He talked about his initial distaste for lead teaching (which incidentally is what I do). Now, he said, he is less resistant to lead teaching. I asked him if something in his life had changed that made lead teaching more appealing and he talked about comfort levels. Now that he has watched classes and has analyzed class dynamics, it all just makes a little more sense and is a little more comfortable for him.

In talking about what he has learned from his work/teaching experience, he brought up an interesting and important point about conceptions of intelligence. He said that working in this program has helped him accept his own intelligence, enjoy others’ intelligence, see everyone as bringing something to the table.

Finally, we closed by talking about transformative learning experiences. I was fascinated by his response. The transformative learning did not take place in a classroom or in a work place. It was when he was sitting around with his friends talking about whatever was on their minds. There were only three or four people present, but as he put it, “thoughts were everywhere.” The conversation seemed limitless and opened the eye of everyone involved to new ideas and concepts that did not exist at the beginning of the conversation. There was no end result, no goal or purpose; it was just a conversation that grew and grew and built and built. Academic or business setting and their time constraints and pressure may limit dialogue, and this experience is proof. Maybe too much focus on an end result can prevent dialogue from going where it naturally would. An example from the education world that we talked about had to do with individual education plans (IEP). If you HAVE to get an IEP done, you are almost scared to let everyone get into a dialogue. This creates frustration because we have to answer to people who set limits on us even though they are not part of the conversation. The goal – to get the child on his/her IEP, is exactly what prevents us from doing what’s best for the kid. Maybe if a group of invested parties sat down and just started talking about the child, we would be more likely to achieve a productive dialogue.

Week 3 - Coachee

I began my conversation with my coach this week by talking about my transformative learning experiences. What a GREAT topic of conversation. He’s lucky that I didn’t ramble on about it longer, because I could easily talk about this for hours on end. In summary though, I took a course my sophomore year of college called “Introduction to Literary Theory.” It sounds thrilling, I know…

The course was taught by a young guy with a nose ring from New Zealand (look up the work of Professor Simon Hay if you are interested in having your mind blown). Professor Hay is a gifted thinker who seems to have read every single piece of critical theory that has ever been written. He was presented with a group of about twelve kids who had read none of it. It was a struggle for everyone involved, but there was a shared drive to figure this stuff out – to unpack Fanon and Derrida and Foucault – and apply those thinkers to film. I think the fact that we watched movies brought the group together even more. While talking about a book can be a shared experience, the actual reading rarely is. But when you watch a movie, you are all there at the same moment, seeing the same thing but experiencing something unique.

Between the drive to understand what was being presented, the use of the film, and the absolute joy of listening to Professor Hay speak, we achieved an intense sense of shared purpose. We wanted to understand the readings, but we also wanted to find similar meaning in our world. I remember, he would often say, “…and that’s what’s so [messed] up,” as a constant reminder that our world was not a perfect place, and that we needed to be critical of it. Eventually, most of the students in that class would go on to take all of Professor Hay’s classes together. We struggled together for six semesters over the challenging material and the sometimes difficult idea that our world is a messed up place.

I don’t do Professor Hay even a fraction of the justice he deserves, but my point remains the same: I have never felt more accountable to and more dependent on my classmates as I did in his courses. I have also never seen my world, read a book, or watched a movie the same way since meeting him.

My coach also got me thinking about the idea of internal dialogue, and asked me questions about why I think I haven’t embraced this idea yet. My answers disappointed me a bit. In part, I have just been lazy. Changing the way you do things is hard and it takes energy. Second of all, I think that I have put so much mental effort into trying to figure out the group dynamics being described in the readings, many of which I cannot relate to. In a way, I guess I’ve seen only the forest and forgotten about the trees. A personal goal of mine, after speaking with my coach, is to be more mindful of the sections in the readings about internal dialogue and focus more of my energy on trying to use those techniques and strategies.

My fixation on the group element of the class sparked a conversation with my coach about my own sense of skepticism about “Come Together” in particular. Since age five, there have been a total of two years that I was not a student, and in those years I was a teacher. School is all I know, and in school students are told all the time to be skeptical – that it’s the only way to progress and to find truth. So in that way this course has been a difficult change. It’s not that we shouldn’t be skeptical at all, but sometimes I feel as if I am being told I’m TOO skeptical. The book and readings talk about the importance of being open minded and suspending, but I guess I get nervous about open-mindedness and skepticism being mutually exclusive. I have managed to be both my entire life. How come all of a sudden I am not being open-minded enough about the material? Why am I all of a sudden skeptical to the point that I am unproductive? These questions make me feel almost a bit defiant, and seem to fuel my skepticism to the point of cynicism a lot of the time, and while I know it’s not productive, and it will not help me understand the concepts put in front of me, it’s a defensive reaction that I am seeing in myself.

My coach talked about the importance of purpose, and how maybe if I felt more of a sense of purpose regarding this material, I would be more open to it. I think he has a great point. When Olen asked me why I signed up for the course and what I hoped to get out of it, I said it was a required course. I need to release that sense of obligation and resentment that comes with it, and just be open to the idea that this could be useful material for me. I could in fact become a better person and communicator if I only try to be open-minded.

Finally, we talked about goals. My coach talked about a group he had been a part of that was successful and transformative for him. He said one of the keys was that they all wanted the same thing out of the group. I wonder what would happen if we, as an entire class, had a shared set of goals. Maybe if we were working towards something specific that we all wanted, that would shape the effort and attitude of us all. I think it would be an interesting experiment…

Initial Reflections on Coaching

Having just listened to Thomas Leonard's lecture on coaching, I find myself asking How is this different than counseling? The "15 proficiencies" and all his other checklists sound a lot like the training I received before beginning my counseling job. Granted, "counseling" is a very broad umbrella with all kinds of styles and philosophies underneath it, so maybe coaching technically is a type of counseling. I'm just not 100% sure what purpose "coaching" serves? And I don't mean that question to be cynical or skeptical. I honestly don't see what this is for if not simply another name for counseling. Who are the "clients" that Leonard refers to? Who needs a coach? He talks quite a bit about who doesn’t need a coach (clients struggling with weight issues seemed to be a hot button issue).

I see the value of coaching in this class though - we are all new to this field and are struggling to wrap our heads around it. Most of all, I think having a coach will be a helpful way to hold me accountable. At the risk of speaking TOO candidly, I'll admit that I probably wouldn't overtly include my new knowledge of dialogue in my daily life if not for the coaching corner. So in the end, I know this is a good thing for me.

One challenge that I imagine coming out of coaching is striking a balance between "commiserating," which Leonard notes as his favorite proficiency and "[revealing] the [coachee] to [himself]." I am imagining, based on the postings so far, that there will be moments when my coachee and I are both skeptical about what we're reading/learning. It becomes my responsibility to be open-minded and suspend my skepticism for the sake of enhancing the dialogue and digging deeper. That's been a huge challenge so far in this course, and it will only get more difficult when I have the responsibility of coaching another person.