This article is a condensed version of Helen’s conversation with Tom in Episode 29 of our podcast. You can listen in here, or continue to read to discover Tom’s thoughts on …
Does challenge belong in the coaching room?
I think it has its place. I think it’s all about time and place. I don’t really see myself as a challenging coach, but there’s definitely challenge built into my coaching.
I’m interested in generating new thinking and for some people that is a challenge. Some people have their way of thinking about particular topics and don’t really want to change the way they think about it. So sometimes that in itself can be a challenge, but everything I do is about generating new thinking. And if we think about TOMS CODE, the model that we introduced in an earlier podcast, and we use on our Doctors’ Transformational Coaching Diploma programme, we ask people what they want to talk about and we will ask them what they want as an outcome from the conversation. So already we’re challenging them to think about things more. And then we ask them how meaningful it is to them to talk about this, why they’ve brought it, what’s the reason for bringing it to the coaching room. Now, sometimes it’s fairly obvious because it’s a really important topic. But we might ask them, what’s going to be meaningful to you, in solving this? Why is it important? What would you have if you solve this? So, there is a little bit of challenge there, but once we’ve got past that and we’re into the conversation, we’re really going to let them tell their story. I’m not at that point going to be challenging.
I take a very person centred approach to the beginning of my coaching conversations and I want to hear what they think, I want to know what’s going on for them. I will invite them to tell me their story and they might spend five minutes doing that, they might spend half an hour. But at that point, I’m not going to be challenging, I’m just going to be listening. I’m going to be taking it all in.
When do you think that challenge might come into play?
Once they’ve finished their story. I’ve heard coaches say, well, you should be interrupting them. If their story is not helpful, just stop it. Tell them it isn’t helpful at all. I’m not going to do that. I think it’s really important and really powerful to hold that space and let someone be listened to. I think it’s really affirmative. People can make a lot of sense of what’s going on for them just by talking it out and having someone really listen to them. So at that point, I’m present, I’m in the moment, I’m listening, I’m taking it all in. As I say, I’m building up a story for myself. I will be looking for inconsistencies in their story, things that perhaps don’t seem to make an awful lot of sense. Maybe they’ve got the story slightly skewed. There might be some unconscious biases coming in. There might be some assumptions that they’re making, and we might see through all of that in a way that they can’t at that time. I’m someone objective looking in and hearing the story and thinking, okay, there’s something not quite sitting right, but I’m not going to interrupt and challenge at that point.
Once they’ve told their stories, perhaps we can gently explore some of the inconsistencies or contradictions.
If there are contradictions, then I might be saying, okay, you mentioned this at the beginning, then towards the end you said this, and how do those two things fit together?
I’m not going to be saying, ‘well, that can’t possibly be true because you’ve said this and you’ve said this. That’s nonsense. You’ve just contradicted yourself.’
But I will ask them how those two fit together. And quite often people say, ‘well, they don’t, do they?’ And then they will make more sense of what’s going on for them.
If there’s any cognitive dissonance that’s going on for them, where they’ve got two competing ideas and they’re trying to work through it, then we’ll kind of challenge them around that and what they really want.
In their storytelling there will often be some assumptions built in. They might say, for example,
‘so they’re obviously thinking this about me’, but they’ve got no idea what’s going on in someone else’s head.
or
‘I can’t go down that route. That’s not an option for me,’ which could an assumption or a limiting belief.
That’s another area that we as coaches might want to challenge, and I think that’s a fair challenge to make. I think that’s really helpful to someone to actually ask them what’s going on for them, why they feel that they can’t do something. Where does that come from?
When we move on to the ‘Options’ part of TOMSCODE, or any other framework, even someone who thinks they’re not a challenging coach, has, at that point, an opportunity to be gently challenging. Someone might say they can only think of two options, and we know that there’s always more than two options in order to move away from where we are or towards where we want to be. So even the act of exploring ‘what else?’, is a challenge. It’s just a gentle challenge.
When coaching about scenarios where other people are involved, our coachee is likely to have built up a defensive story where they paint themselves as maybe the hero or the victim in the story. But very rarely do people see themselves as the villain and that they’re doing anything wrong. The problem we have as coaches is we only ever hear one side of the story. We have a coachee come to us, they tell us their story, and we’re never going to get to talk to the other person to find out where the truth in the middle lies, so we have to try and make sense of what’s going on from what’s being said to us. Sometimes just playing back, holding up the mirror and helping them to gain different perspectives is a form of challenge.
Using some of the exercises, tools, and techniques in our Transformational Coaching Diploma help to raise awareness in the coachee through seeing things from different perspectives, and to see how someone else might be feeling about it. That’s a challenge,
Challenging in the coaching space doesn’t have to be in your face challenging, it doesn’t have to be confrontational challenging. It can be very gentle. And obviously we’ll do it when we have good rapport. We don’t want to break rapport, but we don’t want to collude with the coachee either.
We want something to change and hopefully the coachee wants something to change as well, otherwise they’ve got the wrong impression of coaching. The whole point is that in coming, they start to think about things differently and perhaps make some changes themselves. We want to keep the coachee in that space where they know that we’re working with them, we’re walking alongside them, but we’re not necessarily holding their hands we are offering some support and challenge.
So challenge is good but I think we have to be careful.
We don’t want to challenge too much, or too soon.
We have to just be mindful that we don’t want to send people to a defensive place, but we do want them to think. And it’s that generating new thinking that I’m really interested in.
What other areas might we challenge a coachee in?
I think if they’re not showing up for coaching when they come, I think that’s a good place to challenge. So, if they are just coming and having a chat and they’re not really bringing topics to the room that require new thinking and they’ve got some coaching booked and they haven’t really given it a lot of thought before they come. If they aren’t really trying, I think that’s a useful time to challenge and say, “well, we seem to have got to a place where the coaching’s drifting now, so how can we bring it back on track. You had some objectives at the beginning, so let’s focus on that. What do you want to get out of the rest of our time together?”
I think that can be a really interesting challenge because it’s possible that people do get comfortable with you. They just come and they have a nice chat. So, just a gentle reminder that they’ve come to coaching for a reason, next time, let’s focus on those objectives and really make some headway.
And what do you think about challenging someone around those objectives or goals that they set themselves? Is there a time for that?
I don’t really have any attachment to their goals and their objectives. They’re theirs. And sometimes they will change during the coaching, and that’s fine. But if they’ve previously been working towards the goal and that starts to drift, then it might just be a checking back in and making sure that they are still wanting to achieve that goal. And if they are, what would it be good to happen? Just keeping them on track, or readjusting as necessary.
When we were talking about positive psychology, we mentioned that if someone comes with a goal that will impact their wellbeing, about gently challenging that goal For example, if attaining that goal is going to put pressure on their work life balance or their health, it’s important that we do some ecology checking with them. “Okay, this is your goal, but how does that impact on the rest of your life?”
But I always say, I’m not their boss, so I’m not going to be challenging in that way. Instead of saying, “well, you, you said you were going to do this and you haven’t done it, what’s going on? I’m not your dad. It’s up to you. If you want to do it, do it. But, but important to check in.
So we’ve talked a lot about gentle challenging, about raising awareness, finding new perspective. What advice would you give to someone who wants to be challenging about how they should be in that space?
I think our intention in the coaching room is to generate new thinking, but it’s also to manage the relationship as well. So we don’t want to end up being directive because that’s not coaching, that’s mentoring. I think that’s quite easy, if we feel like someone isn’t showing up to be more directive about it.
- Equally, we don’t want to be adversarial. That’s not the relationship we have with our coachee.
- And we don’t want to be dismissive, particularly of a topic that someone is bringing to a coaching session. If the coachee feels it’s important to talk about it, it’s important.
- We don’t want to be aggressive or offensive.
- We don’t want to lose control as a coach.
- We still want to be having a good coaching conversation.
- And we don’t want to start working on our own personal agenda. We want to keep to the coachee’s agenda. It’s for them to decide what they want to do.
It’s almost like there’s a spectrum, and at one end of the spectrum it’s a friendly chat and then the other end is that aggressive kind of personal trainer approach. And we want to be in the middle. We want them to trust us. We want to have rapport. We want them to open up but we also don’t want to be colluding with their story
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