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.)