Time to Think Foundation Course, Oxford, 12&13 November 2012

With Time to Think Specialists Linda Aspey & Ruth McCarthy

"The Thinking Environment® has a profound effect on the quality of people’s thinking; Linda Aspey and Ruth McCarthy are among the finest Thinking Environment experts in the world.”

Nancy Kline, Time to Think

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Would you like to help people to transform the quality of their thinking & discussions?

Do you, like many people, spend most of your time at work in meetings, and yet sometimes find them unproductive and uninspiring? If so imagine that you – with simple yet profoundly impactful skills and tools that built upon your existing expertise – could transform meetings so that people come away feeling energised.

And what if, through applying these skills and tools, you could also deliver more engaging, more impactful presentations, could deal productively with conflict, and could bring out the best in people’s group problem-solving and creative abilities?

This is what you will gain through the Time to Think Foundation Course, grounded in the Thinking Environment, the unique and powerful framework for generative thinking developed by Nancy Kline of Time to Think. This quietly powerful way of being is supported by a growing body of neuropsychological research* that demonstrates how and why the quality of one or more person’s attention determines the quality of another’s thinking. Attention is indeed an act of creation.


What is the Time to Think Foundation Course?
It is a two day intensive, experiential course exploring the theory and practice of the Ten Components of the Thinking Environment and its use in a variety of contexts. You will explore and use the four “Building Blocks” to generate thinking, facilitate groups, transform meetings, deliver winning presentations, and more.

During the course you will be learning from each other as well as from the two consultants. Working in pairs, small groups and the large group gives real depth and breadth to your development experience.

Who is this course for?

This is vital expertise and exceptional professional development for coaches, mentors, psychologists, therapists, managers, HR and OD professionals, facilitators, and consultants  - in fact all those who want to develop their capacity to create conditions where people’s thinking can flourish.

Course aims and objectives:

· To explore and experience the Ten Components of the Thinking Environment and its applications

· To examine and practise the ways in which communication within a variety of contexts can be transformed into clear-thinking, invigorating, positive experiences

· To enrich your interpersonal style by listening to ignite rather than listening to respond

· To begin to introduce confidently the principles of the Thinking Environment into your life and your work with clients, colleagues, stakeholders, and others.

Comments from previous participants:

“Inspiring, thought-generating and energising.”

“I found the course so empowering!”

“Among other things, this way of running a meeting seems both disciplined and democratic.”

“I feel more confident about my ability and ready to take more risks!”

And from a client who uses the Thinking Environment:

“In team meetings, I often talk too much and feel responsible for starting discussions when no one else will. Using the Thinking Environment gave me permission to keep quiet and encouraged everyone to speak, so unusually we heard from everyone and got more ideas on the table than I could have dreamt possible. We never knew we could be so creative and so open, fearless even. It also gave me the space to be more reflective and more impactful when I did speak. “

Course details
Dates	Monday 12th and Tuesday 13th November, 2012
Times	10.00am -5.30pm
Venue	Oxford Thames Four Pillars Hotel, Henley Road, Sandford on Thames, Oxford OX4 4GX www.four-pillars.co.uk
Places	A maximum of 12 participants.
Fee	£525 (+ VAT), inclusive of course manual, refreshments and buffet lunch on both days. Optional overnight accommodation is available for an additional £115 (incl. breakfast and VAT).

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About the Facilitators

Linda Aspey is a Fellow of BACP, a BACP accredited counsellor / psychotherapist, an APECS accredited executive coach, and has a Masters in Strategic HR Management. As MD of two companies - Coaching for Leaders and Aspey Associates - she has 20+ years’experience in organisation development and executive coaching. In 2009 Linda began training with Nancy Kline, qualifying as a Time to Think Coach, Facilitator and Consultant; all her work is now underpinned by the principles. She delivers Thinking Environment events across many sectors including media, travel, healthcare and charitable sectors.

Ruth McCarthy’s career began in UK book publishing and journalism. She trained in the mid 1990’s as a coach, took a Masters in Critical Thinking in 2000 then qualified as a Time to Think Coach, Facilitator and Consultant. From her coaching consultancy Think it Through, (www.thinkitthrough.co.uk) Ruth delivers in-house Thinking Environment development days and leads Thinking Environment courses in London and Dublin. For the last three years Ruth has been working intensively with Nancy Kline, absorbing the cutting-edge ‘freshest thinking’ that is the hallmark of the Thinking Environment way of working and being.

To Book a Place on the Course:

Word Document: Please go to http://tinyurl.com/c2n2nlr to download a Booking Form along with Terms and Conditions.

PDF version: http://tinyurl.com/d7nzrtp

If you have any questions please contact us at timetothink@coachingforleaders.co.uk

You can read more about the Thinking Environment here:

Developing Leaders magazine:

Time for a Rethink - New Pathways for Executive Development

Therapy Today:

The Art of Coaching - Thinking Partners

AICTP - The Association for Integrative Coach-Therapist Professionals.

I am delighted to have been invited to, and accepted, the role of Honorary President of AICTP - The newly launched Association for Integrative Coach-Therapist Professionals. AICTP has been formed to embrace the concept and practice of integrating coaching with therapy.

Debra Jinks, the founding Chair says, “AICTP aims to offer support and guidance to practitioners who combine the theory and practice of therapy and coaching. We want to offer coach-therapists a grass-roots environment where they can share ways to improve their practice, gain increased security, safety and support in the way they choose to work, and a sense of community – we already have 200 members of our Linked In group which shows even at this early stage that there is interest out there. Right now we’re not intending to be a standard-setting body – we just want to get people talking about what they’re doing and what it means for clients”.

With Keren Smedley as Deputy Chair and Jayne Hildreth as a fellow founding director, plus Gordon Jinks and Nash Popovic taking on key roles and projects, AICTP will be holding its first open forum - world café style - on October 3^rd at the University of East London (Stratford Campus) from 4-7pm, in which anyone working as a coach-therapist is welcome to participate.

As former inaugural Chair of BACP Coaching (the coaching division of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy)  it's a subject close to my heart and I'm pleased to support them in any way I can.

Integrative practice has been going on for some time in the UK and Europe (as far as we know, not in the US because of licencing laws). This is borne out by research and anecdotal evidence from coaches, counsellors and therapists alike - yet because there has been so much debate about “the differences” it’s masked the reality out there. Many just see their clients’ needs as being on a continuum, and so that’s how they work. There is much to explore around the ethics and the practice from many angles, and with integration at its core, AICTP aims to lead the way in this important arena. It's a very exciting development.

For more details about AICTP contact Debra Jinks or Keren Smedley at support@aictp.org.uk

Coach-Therapist: An emerging profession

Some of you may have heard the term Coach-Therapist and wondered what it means.

I created the term "Coach-Therapist" (and Therapist-Coach) early in 2011 when I was inaugural Chair of the Coaching Division of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy to describe a professional practitioner whose skills, experience and training spans both.  At the time I wrote:  "We are the Coach-Therapists and Therapist-Coaches who seek to integrate aspects of both disciplines into our work, carefully, ethically and effectively, for the benefit of our clients".

Since then '''Coach-Therapist''' has, I'm pleased to see, fallen into common usage amongst practitioners who combine the two disciplines. 

At the moment anyone can call themselves a Coach and anyone can call themselves a Therapist. I and several of my colleagues believe that there is a real need to develop a proper profession of Coach-Therapist, with a body of theory, defined standards of training and professional practice, an ethical code, and an evidence base to prove efficacy. This is already starting to happen, and I'm delighted by it.

So what if you are thinking of working with a Coach-Therapist for yourself?
Bearing in mind there are no defined training standards, firstly you'd be well advised to check their existing training and qualifications. If they have completed a Diploma in Counselling and have several years of counselling experience that's a very good start. They should have a strong CPD record (Continuous Professional Development) that shows a progression of knowledge. And they should have undertaken some coach-specific training over a period of time (I'd suggest at least a year as a minimum). In time we will find more training available that combines the two disciplines, but at the moment, they are relatively separate. Their experience and training should show some relevance to your context (i.e. if you want a coach to help you in your work as an executive, you may not get what you need from a life coach, and vice versa).  And they should have regular supervision to ensure that they maintain high standards of practice and client care.

What are the benefits of working with a Coach-Therapist?
Well firstly we have a solid foundation of training and usually experience in working with a range of clients with a range of needs. Secondly, we generally know how to support and help people to recover and achieve when they are faced with setbacks and challenges. We understand the whole system, and take an holistic view, whether that's of an organisation and its culture, or of the context in which someone is living and their relationships.  We understand the impact that the past can have on the future, and don't dismiss it in favour of focusing purely on the future. We've been trained to understand the importance of what's being said as well as think about what's not being said. We've usually done a good deal of personal development work on our ourselves   so we know what it's like to be a coaching or counselling client. We understand the subtleties of boundaries and how what we say and do can impact on the client and the relationship. And we can recognise and manage stress and mental health problems, knowing if, when and how to refer on - with care - to a specialist.  

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Many coaches already do all these things to a very high standard. With a Coach-Therapist you generally get that additional reassurance of depth and breadth of training and experience, built on solid foundations.  

To find out more contact me at linda@aspey.com

The Best is Yet to Come

As I was thinking about the year end and new year, a book title came to my mind: “Your Best Year Yet”. And then I heard Michael Buble on the radio singing that classic “The Best is Yet to Come”. Inspired by both, I penned 12 questions that I thought I’d share.

If your best is yet to come what will it look like? Click here to download 12 Questions that just might inspire you too!

You might enjoy doing this exercise alone, with your partner, family, team or even your whole organisation. Or you can pass it onto your teenager, a friend or anyone who’d like to think about their purposeful direction for 2012.

Wishing you every success for 2012.
Linda

Tips for Productive Teleconferencing

Teleconferencing is rising in popularity, and no wonder. Why spend hours travelling when you can be doubly productive working from your desk whilst engaging with your colleagues or clients? However, getting teleconferencing meetings to be as productive as good face to face meetings requires a little more thought.  If you want people to do and share their finest thinking you have to create an environment where that can happen gracefully.

Here are a few things that I find helpful on phone meetings – I don’t always use all of them all the time, but when I do, they help! Some of them are from Nancy Kline's inspiring ideas around “Transforming Meetings“.  I hope you find them useful. 

• I prepare agenda items in the form of questions, because questions open up thinking (whereas lists close them down) and I ask people to read the agenda and come with a couple of thoughts to begin to answer the questions – that helps to get things flowing early – eg rather then  “Budgets”  it would say, “What do we need to consider in relation to the budget?" or similar.
  
  
• Once I know who is coming, I send round a list of “order” as if people were in a circle around a room. They then know who they are “sitting” next to.  It seems to help with flow.
  
  
• Others need to know who is on the call and who is not so as people arrive in, if I am Chair I say very clearly –“Everyone – can I just let you know that Fred Blogs has arrived" - and I say, "Welcome Fred” – I do this for each person joining for about the first 3-5 mins. In my pre-meeting email I ask that if people arrive more than 5 minutes into the meeting they stay silent and then I will introduce them at the end of the first “round”.
  
  
• As Nancy Kline would say, “people haven’t arrived till they have spoken”, and sometimes people don’t say much more than hello so they haven't really engaged. So once we feel that the meeting should start (after waiting, as above, for 3-5 minutes) I do a quick “round” with an open question like, “ Can you say your name and then tell us something that’s currently going well for you in your life or work?” or “something that’s going well on this project?” or “something that has made you smile recently?” This gets the pleasant hormones, brain waves and thoughts flowing nicely.  I ask them to go round as per the order I have sent them  (e.g. please go to the right) or go next down the list if I’ve sent a numbered list.
  
  
• Everyone is reminded to say their name before they speak.  And that if they don’t contribute to the conversation they will rob us of their gifts! I ask them to “be abundant” or "generous with their thoughts" and it often works beautifully.
  
  
• One of the hardest things is to get people to pay the same attention as they would in a face to face meeting. If it’s a new group and I think the meetings might need some good boundaries to kick us off the first time, I will ask at the start – “can we think for a minute about the things that drive us mad in other telemeetings we’ve been to? “  Typically they will say things about people not listening, multi-tasking, typing or reading emails, leaving the meeting and not coming back, interruptions, background noises, etc . I then ask – "So how can we make this meeting different?" The ideas will flow and flow. And from that we can agree some ground rules / "a contract" that will make the meeting quicker and more effective. (I personally have to turn off my computer screen otherwise I am tempted to read mails!) These "ground rules" can become the norm for subsequent meetings.
  
  
• When we come to an agenda item, we do a round and each person says something about it. If they want to miss their turn they can, so it goes to the next one but they have to say “I’ll skip for now”. If everyone has said what they want to say I will ask anyone who skipped if they’d now like to say anything. If not we move onto next agenda item.
  
  
• Interruptions are seriously avoided and we make that clear in our contract, but in exchange for not being interrupted, people are asked to be succinct. When they have finished talking on a subject they are asked to say “I’m done” so we know they have finished and someone else can speak.
  
  
• If thinking stalls completely I suggest a break of 10 minutes and ask people to come back on the EXACT agreed time (otherwise we have to start the whole thing again with latecomers!)
  
  
• I personally don’t explicitly tell people they can use the mute button on their phone because if they do, they might then think it’s OK to multi-task because they cannot be heard typing or doing something else. If they do multi-task, the meeting will definitely take longer. And people will not feel as if they have been listened to, which is key to creating an environment where everyone contributes their finest thinking.
  

Just a few ideas, and I hope one or two might be useful for you!

Time for a Rethink - New Pathways in Executive Development

In the ongoing search for ways to help leaders and managers to initiate and manage change, some may feel that there is little that is new out there. But just once in a while, something comes along that has the potential to reshape the way we think and how we work as development professionals. 

How can executives create followership? Or be decisive when swimming in a sea of uncertainty. As development professionals we need to help them to create synchronicity in themselves and with others. The emerging science of neuroleadership offers a new and very exciting perspective ... click here to go to my article in Developing Leaders magazine, October 2011

Mental illness - why is it still a source of amusement for some?

I received an email inviting me to attend the opening of a new trendy bar/venue in town. I didn't know the organisation and they don't know me so I must have got on a list somewhere because our office is in the area. It looked pretty cool so I was initially tempted but then on reading further down the page it said that they had 3 private areas for hire - "The Doctor’s Waiting Room", "The Ward with Padded Cell" and "The Shrink’s office".

I did a double take. Padded Cell?  This is in such bad, cruel taste. "The Shrink" was not exactly funny either, but it wasn't offensive.  But millions of people have suffered with mental health problems and still do, and in times gone by those who were deemed to be mad enough to be forcibly locked up in a padded cell were often deeply anguished and massively distressed, drugged against their will, and treated like criminals.  

I'm generally not one to sound off but this really got my blood boiling. So I wrote to them declining to attend and saying why. They probably thought I should just take a chill pill, but I asked them, would you have a room themed “the leprosy clinic” or the “cancer ward” or the “torture chamber”? I've not yet heard back. 

It left me wondering - whoever thought this up?  Was this a brainstorming session by the creatives that just went a bit too far? Were they trying to be really edgy? Was it a deliberate attempt to get some publicity (no such thing as bad press - which of course in writing this I am adding to!). Whatever their reasons, I'm not sure they were really thinking.  

At least 1 in 5 people in the UK experience mental illness – some research says it's 1 in 4 - during their lives. One in 3 families is affected by it. And people with serious mental health problems are 12 times more likely to commit suicide than others, according to research published by Kings College London. 

Making mental illness a source of amusement or entertainment is not helping anyone, even if it's not intended to offend but just to be quirky. It is a massive issue affecting millions of people and it's likely to rise as times get harder. Organisations cannot be allowed to get away with and profit from cheap publicity ploys when so many others are working so hard to remove the stigma attached to mental illness. 

So if you're  reading this and thinking about what you or your organisation could do to help others out in these times of austerity and anxiety for people, have a look here and find out more about some of the great work being done in this field:

http://www.rethink.org/how_we_can_help/campaigning_for_change/stigma_and_discrimination/index.html

References:  Need to Talk Campaign
http://www.mind.org.uk/assets/0000/9311/We_Need_to_Talk_campaign_for_psychological_therapies_briefing.pdf

Kings College -  Suicide Research

http://www.iop.kcl.ac.uk/news/?id=479

Can you coach when you're not in a coaching session?

Many managers I train in coaching skills find the idea of finding someone to practise on a little daunting. Understandably it could feel a bit odd if you were talking to someone and they suddenly ask the question "Could I coach you on this?"

Firstly, I think it helps if you start with the idea that you can coach very effectively without "doing" a coaching session per se - just by having a coaching conversation you can help someone to do even better thinking, which is what coaching aims to achieve. So what's meant by a coaching conversation?

Coaching is just a conversation or a series of conversations that one has with another. It's about style and not about context or length; and coaching conversations can take place anywhere, not just in formal coaching sessions.

Let's say you meet someone at the water cooler and they tell you about a situation they’re facing, when you ask a thought-provoking question such as “What do you think the real issue is here?” or “What options do you have?” you are coaching. When you’re telling them what you think or what you’d do in their shoes, you’re not coaching.  

Alternatively, think about a time when someone asked you “How do I do this?” or “This has happened; what shall we do?”  Did you find yourself immediately giving your thoughts and ideas in order to be helpful? Or worse, did you find yourself the one left with the problem that they should have managed? Either way, you probably missed an opportunity to coach.

So - some clues as to whether a conversation is a coaching conversation are:

• Is the focus of the conversation mostly and intentionally on one individual or team?
• Is the intention of the coach genuinely positive towards the other person or people?
• Are they being encouraged and enabled to think for themselves?
• Are the skills of listening, questioning, and reflection being used?
• Is their awareness and sense of responsibility being raised?
• Does the individual think about the conversation afterwards and benefit from that reflection?
• Is there a commitment from the person to doing something more effectively or behaving in a beneficial way after the conversation?

When these are happening, it’s likely that coaching is happening. So if you hold these in mind and use the ideas when you're out and about having conversations, you'll be getting lots of practice in using coaching skills.

Secondly. you need to look for opportunities to coach - it benefits people and it benefits you.  And you might be surprised at how willing people are to "be coached".  Of course it could be a bit impertinent to think you can coach just any old person without asking their permission - in fact it could be quite intrusive unless it's been agreed or is a normal part of the culture. But in most cases, where someone asks you for your opinion or where you manage them directly, it would be perfectly OK to pose a coaching question instead of giving them the answer.  

So - imagine you're having a 1:1 weekly catch up with one of your team. They tell you about a project they're working on and how it's going - OK but there are a few delays and problems. If you were to say "Sounds like on the whole it's going well and you've made great progress; what do you think is really holding things up now?" Or "What else might you be able to do to get it moving again?" You'd be coaching them. They've already started to benefit from the conversation because they are thinking and generating ideas. Then when they tell you a bit more about it, you might find an opportunity to say, "You've talked about how challenging some of the stakeholders are to manage.  If you'd like to generate some new ideas and strategies for yourself, I'd be happy to get together for half an hour or so next week to do a bit of coaching on it". 

The more you get used to asking the more comfortable you and they will feel. And before long, you'll find people come to ask you if they could have some coaching. And then in time it won't feel as if you are coaching, it will just be a part of your style.

Your role as a manager is to help people think well for themselves.  So I'd ask you - what could you do differently tomorrow to help people you manage to do their own, clearest and most inspired thinking? 

Building Trust - focus on relationships not on sales

In the May edition of The Art of Coaching  in Therapy Today I share my thoughts about the importance of building trust in developing work with clients, focusing on relationships rather than "selling".   http://www.therapytoday.net/article/show/1893/

Learning from Coach Assessment Centres

My April Coaching Column in Therapy Today looks at new forms of Coach Assessment Centres - http://www.therapytoday.net/article/show/1867/

Therapy and Coaching - what's the difference?

I m writing this on my blog as there have been so many debates on this subject in the coaching and therapy worlds I wanted to take it a bit wider and see what HR and OD folk think too.

The text below is more or less what I have said on a recent posting to a coaching forum on yahoo groups.



I have have long held the view that coaching and therapy are on a continuum of supportive interventions at different points in people's lives. It's often the context and intention (of both the client and the practitioner) that differentiates them rather than the practise.

Equally, I see "therapy" as being on a continuum from simple supportive listening to complex intensive therapy. If we pathologize the term "therapy" it doesn't help. It's in mainstream use for both counselling and psychotherapy (as far as I am aware, there is still no compelling evidence to prove that counselling and psychotherapy are different activities and have different outcomes) and it can mean different things to people, from "talking about the issue" through to "seeing a shrink"!

So I do have some concern about the idea that some seem to have that therapy is for dysfunctional people. Many people find it invaluable during crises that we might all reasonably expect in or around own our lives and communities at some point: bereavement, divorce, infertility, being bullied, serious illness, disability, relationship problems etc. When people seek support to help them to understand, respond, manage or recover from these challenges, many are actually functioning pretty well. EAPs / workplace counselling services see people like this every day; clients have their session and go straight back to work.

Naturally there are individuals who have greater challenges in coping with distressing past and present life events, in achieving good emotional and mental health and who experience repeated or protracted difficulties, and thus who may need more in-depth work. Yet many of these clients at the right point can benefit from a coaching approach too.

I don't think it's useful either to assume that all therapy focuses on the past or that it's all going to be negative and painful, or that the therapist is expert and the client is not. There are many brief, future oriented and client empowering forms of therapy (for example Solution Focused Therapy and CBT) which have been embraced by the coaching world, and many highly generative ideas in coaching that have been embraced in client oriented therapy (for example, Clean Language and The Thinking Environment).

Many skilful and experienced coaches from non therapeutic backgrounds now do life enhancing and healing work with clients suffering from distressing symptoms such as severe anxiety, panic attacks and phobias, situations which would once have been the sole domain of therapists and hypnotherapists. Professional supervision is much better established as a supportive reflective learning place for coaches as well as therapists, and more coach training and CPD is available to support in addressing the needs of more complex clients; these have both helped to widen out the type of work that coaches do. Whether coach or therapist, their skills and experience will be on a continuum too, so ensuring that the needs of the client and the situation are matched with the skill and experience of the practitioner is key to professional and safe practise.

Our challenge is perhaps how to help clients to decide what they need and how practitioners, whether coach or therapist, we can explain how they work so  that clients can make informed choices.

Solution Focused Management

We’ve all said it – “If only people came to me with solutions not problems!” Yet when something goes wrong, sometimes it’s just human nature to focus on the negative.

So how can you do better thinking about problems, and encourage others to do the same? The Solution Focused Approach may be just the answer you need.

Think for a moment about when you last had a really tricky problem that just wouldn’t go away. What did you do? Did you talk it over with someone, or do a list of it pros and cons about it, or mull it over alone, or something else? Did you get anywhere? If you did, I’m guessing that you adopted a particular mindset - either deliberately or unconsciously – and you thought ahead to your goal or desired outcome. And if you didn’t get anywhere, I’m guessing that you just thought about the problem, over and over. And maybe came back to square one again.

Phlosophers and psychologists have long said that when we look at only the problem, we see only the problem. It sounds obvious, yet a shift in thinking is often all it takes to see something other than the problem.

This is how the Solution Focused approach (SF) came about. Originally pioneered in the 80s by family therapists Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg, they found that helping clients to shift from thinking about the problem to what the client’s life could be like without it, clients made better progress. They didn’t need to go into the problem in detail, they just helped clients to focus on what the “preferred outcome” looked like. They didn’t ignore problems entirely or rush to solutions, but with skilful questioning, they avoided getting bogged down in the negative.

In short, SF brings attention to:

• the positive rather than the negative
• the present and future rather than the past
• the solution rather than the problem.

SF has since been adapted for use across many fields of industry and education. It can be used in executive and team coaching, group facilitation, organisation development, stakeholder management, change management, project management .. the list is endless. 

Whether you want to make conversations with a usually negative person more productive, re-energise your team meetings, generate better appraisal discussions, or conduct great negotiations, you’ll find it useful. It’s fundamentally a questioning and conversational tool although you may find it equally helpful in your private thinking time. SF is built on a series of core principles: 

• Be respectfully curious – ask meaningful questions but don’t interrogate
• Look to the “preferred” future not the past
• Look for resources rather than deficits – what are the person’s (or organisation's) strengths?
• Build on successes – once you know what works, do more of it 
• Stop doing something if it’s not working. Do something different instead!
• There will nearly always be times when the problem is not happening – what’s different then?
• Find out what is already contributing to the preferred future that can be built upon
• Accept that people are the experts in all aspects of their own lives
• Believe that small steps can genuinely make a big difference
• Have genuine expectations of good outcomes

Like most coaching models, SF has numerous “tools” you can use; their effectiveness depends on the timing, tone and context, and all can be mastered with practise. Here are some of the most effective ones:

Best Hopes / Outcome

This establishes a goal, ensures that people set their own agenda, and generates a sense of optimism.

“What are your best hopes for our meeting today?”

The Preferred Future

Where people can envision a future that’s real for them, they are much more likely to take action, and the more detailed the picture, the more powerful it is. A series of questions can be used to help (as long as each answer is fully listened to before the next one is asked!)

“We’re agreed that going forward we’d all like this team to be working more effectively. “How would we know that was happening?” “What would we be seeing and doing?” “Who else would notice?” “What would they see?” “What else?”

Scaling

One of the most powerful tools in SF, scaling enables the person to articulate how close they are to the preferred future as well as stating the size of the problem as they see it. Often it’s easier to give a number than put our feelings into words. A low number e.g. 4 offers the opportunity to explore what’s happening that’s making it a 4 and not zero, and a high number offers the opportunity to spotlight strengths and resources being utilised.

“So if 10 represents us hitting budget and 0 the opposite, where would you score us currently?”

Resources

Everyone has resources – they just might not know it. It’s a powerful way of acknowledging that people are not helpless and that they are coping. Resources might be skills, past experience, people, or tools – anything that aids.

"You’ve said in the past that you find talking to Simon the CEO a bit daunting. Yet how did you manage to have that tough conversation with him yesterday?”

“What did we do to win this client in the first place, and how might our learning from that contribute in getting this new piece of work?”

The Miracle Question

This helps the person to articulate the preferred future – i.e. what life will be like when the problem has gone.

“Imagine for a moment that the problem disappeared overnight – what would you see / feel / how would you know / that would tell you the problem had gone? “

Exceptions

SF believes that there will always be exceptions when a problem is not occurring, but people often fail to notice because they’re looking for the problem. Once identified, exceptions can be used to do more of whatever it is that makes the difference.

"You said that Jake and Karen always argue when you put them to work together. Can you recall a time when they didn’t argue? ….. What was different?"

Small Steps
If goals are set too high or action plans too big, they have the potential to cause the human brain to go into fight or flight mode. If the brain chooses fight, that might be a temporary state, and the initial enthusiasm and motivation for the task can fade. If the brain chooses flight then the idea of a large goal can seem terrifying. By breaking down goals and improvements into small steps, they seem more attainable, and thus are more likely to be followed through.

"If 10 represents your goal of being on time all the time, and you've already got it from a 3 to a 5, what would be the first small steps you might take towards a 6?"

Asking “What else? “

The richer the detail, the more powerful the picture and the more resourceful the person will feel.

“You've said that if you were better prepared, you’d be feeling a lot more confident about giving the presentation. What else would you be noticing?”

Compliments

Compliments are a key part of SF. Validating what the person is already doing well and acknowledging their efforts encourages them to continue.

“You’ve clearly made considerable efforts to improve the relationship with this demanding customer, yet they’re still complaining. I think that’s required a lot of resilience from you; it can’t have been easy”.

Conclusion

Once people articulate things in positive future focused language, they start to make improvements almost immediately. Whilst learning from mistakes is useful, often knowing what to do next is more helpful than knowing what you did wrong before.

Like athletes visualising themselves first at the finishing post, taking a Solution Focused approach energises, motivates and makes the vision seem attainable. And as Henry Ford is credited with saying, “If you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re probably right!”.

If this approach is new to you and you decide to try it out, I would love to get your feedback. For further reading, visit http://www.sfwork.com/jsp/index.jsp?mnk=800 where you'll find an extensive book list.

Linda Aspey, March 2010.

http://www.aspey.com/
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Insights on Personal, Professional and Organisational Development

The start of a new decade offers a great opportunity to reflect on the last and build for the future. I’ve worked in the field of personal, professional and organisational development for many years, and this new era feels like a timely one for me to start blogging.

Over the coming months I’ll be sharing my experiences and insights from a range of companies I work with to help you to apply really powerful tools and techniques to your main HR, OD or internal communications priorities, from taking organisations through change through to building a new corporate culture.

This month I’ve shone the spotlight on coaching. When people talk of coaching, they often think of it primarily as a one to one intervention; and yet it's wider than that. Coaching concepts are extremely versatile, offering new ways to look at established practises, helping us to generate fresh ideas and make enhancements to the way we do things right across the organisation.

One example is in induction, that critical event that begins the integration of new employees into the organisation.  Here I outline my thoughts on how coaching can help to ensure that you, your organisation and your newcomers get the very best from the induction. I'd welcome your comments and feedback.


Inspirational Induction - Using Coaching Principles to Engage People and Generate Learning Right at the Start

Do you remember your own induction, what you learned and what impressions you gained of the people and the organisation? Did you come away excited and engaged, or drained and overwhelmed?

As a coach I often work with new managers during their transition into a new organisation. When I ask about their induction, interestingly, for many it's a blur. Few can recall much of it at all, apart from a sense that there was a lot to take in, little time to think, and that the quality of the presentations varied widely.

This is a pity, because often a great deal of effort goes into running induction and it plays a key role in giving someone the best possible start. It’s an excellent opportunity for both the newcomer and the employer to create a positive impression and build the foundations of a good psychological contract. Importantly, it’s often the first formal learning event that new recruits attend. And yet in my experience, induction programmes are rarely reflective of how other learning and development activities are delivered in the organisation.

This is possibly because in induction the primary focus is on giving information rather than generating learning - and the “doing” and “reflecting“ parts of the normal learning cycle get bypassed.

I think it can be different. Just think for a moment what your organisation's induction could be like if:

• it helped people to not just hear about but to absorb the organisation’s strategy
• newcomers shared responsibility for their own learning and were enabled to be resourceful, to think for themselves and make their own discoveries
• people were stretched and supported, and their learning styles valued
• it clearly demonstrated the organisation’s values and culture
• all the presenters were positive role models
• building relationships was seen as being as important as learning about processes
• people came away from the session with commitment to an action plan ....

would it be different from what happens now in your induction programme? If so, might newcomers truly engage on the day and recall the event? And might all those involved in delivering and managing the event feel more than a sense of dread or duty that they had to do their bit on the induction?

Whether you work within the HR arena, are a manager recruiting and inducting your own team, or a senior manager and contributor to induction events, I believe that even with limited time available, if you apply some coaching principles you can transform induction into a positive experience that generates energy and inspires people right at the start.

Principle 1: Establish the purpose and the contract. Being clear about what everyone wants to get out of the induction will help to establish mutual expectations. Discuss your goals and get them to discuss theirs with a partner at the start of the day. This helps to engender a shared sense of ownership for their learning, and reduces the tendency for people to sit around passively waiting for information. Revisit their goals during the day to keep the focus on outcomes.

Induction events often cater for a wide variety of levels, experiences and skills and breaking down barriers is key to people contributing, so get them talking with each other in as many ways as possible.

Principle 2: Make it strategically relevant. Like coaching, induction must be clearly linked to the strategy on several levels.

Firstly if retaining new people is important to your strategy (it's unlikely not to be if you've just spent time and money in recruiting them) senior people will be more likely to support induction than if they think it's just about learning how to fill in holiday forms. So this needs to be communicated to get their buy in.

Secondly, the newcomers need to see, early on, the role they have to play in the organisation's strategy, and whilst many induction programmes do this well, sometimes it's hard for new people to make a personal link. Set them a task to discuss aspects of the strategy in small groups to stretch and encourage them to make sense of it for themselves.

Thirdly, ensure that each induction presenter tells them why their department, function, product or service is directly or indirectly important to the organisation’s strategy and the goals, reinforcing the links in people's minds.

Principle 3: Choose the right people to faciliate the learning. A session that is presented badly by an unprepared, untrained, boring or nervous manager or employee can impact on the credibility of the whole event, and can send out signals that you don't really develop people. If you make your induction events inspiring good people will be more likely to want to get involved.

Principle 4: Model the culture you have or want them to create. Much as a good coach needs to model desired behaviours, the whole induction event needs to model the culture as much as possible. So if your organisation is an exciting place to work, the day and the exercises need to be exciting. Recently recruited employees, buddies and mentors from the business all have a role to play in inducting others and sharing their learning about the culture, so consider drawing upon them during the day.

Principle 5: Challenge people to think and learn for themselves. As most adults learn best by doing, inspirational induction means providing fewer presentations and offering more opportunities for interactivity, in and around the business wherever possible. Researching a key customer; interviewing a manager about their budgeting process; tracking the sales or service cycle; translating frequently used company acronyms - the possibilities are endless. Get people into pairs or small teams, give them some guidelines and be on hand for support where needed. And don’t assume that people lower down the ladder can’t do some of the more challenging tasks – on one induction event the new 18 year old receptionist volunteered to interview the CEO when no-one else would!

If you want to offer time for reflection on their learning or achievement of tasks, consider splitting the induction into shorter sessions spaced over several days.

Principle 6: Encourage them to build relationships. You’ll be doing this throughout the induction by encouraging plenty of shared discussions and exercises. Exercises get them talking, generating energy and networking. The networking theme should be strong throughout the induction and you can encourage them to meet up with each other in one month to reflect on their learning. However, we all know that like meeting people on holiday that you promise to stay in touch with, you never do. So include this in the action planning session at the end. It's also worth considering a short induction refresher for the group a few months down the line, as people tend to get sucked into the sub culture of their department.

Principle 7: Agree an Action Plan. Like a good coaching session, the discoveries made in induction need to be translated into results. However all too often induction days end without a commitment to action, so build in an action planning session where they can set some SMART future learning goals that lead on from today to take back for discussion with their manager.

Conclusion
If you treat the induction like any other developmental and coaching event you’ll be demonstrating and modelling the culture and not just giving hard facts and data. When you engage a range of senses you cater for all learning styles, personality preferences and levels of experience, and inspire people to engage right at the start. And by changing the focus from information-giving to information-seeking, you’ll be setting a really positive tone for the future.

And then hopefully when you ask new recruits a year down the line if they remember their induction, they’ll give you a different answer than the one you might get now.


Linda@aspey.com

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