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.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
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…
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…
Saturday, February 20, 2010
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)