When I first became a coach it was great. I really enjoyed coaching and people told me that they found me really helpful.
But I noticed that, while I was able to help people solve problems and gain “aha” moments, I seemed to be having the same conversations again and again. People seemed to be great at tackling an issue, but like a heart attack victim, they seemed to go back to their old ways after the problem was solved or the stressful situation had passed.
So I started teaching people new skills and they seemed to grasp things quickly. I tell really good stories and I can lecture people for hours on topics as obscure as the relationship between status and “perch height” on the grass in grasshopper society.
OK that is a bluff, but people seemed quick to pick up skills and then just as quick to forget them.
Perhaps, I thought, I am a great coach but people are stupid. Unfortunately (or I suppose, fortunately) I found out that this was not really a great mindset for a coach to have. There is something about being arrogant and lacking empathy that limits the effectiveness of coaching. Perhaps someone should write a book about coaching that tells people to be humble and empathetic when coaching.
Anyway, I found that people are actually good at making a change. It is sustaining change that seems really hard. People revert to old behaviours quite easily.
This is a shame because in every organisation I have worked with, we have needed to change how we operate for a while before the overall ecosystem starts to shift. Part of coaching is, I believe, sustaining the confidence to keep trying when the rest of the organisation completely fails to shift.
But then I read three books that caused me to “refactor” my thinking, one book on habits and two on coaching. I also remembered one famous comic strip that I used to have on my desk, back when I had one. I often remember that comic strip when involved in personal change.
Anyway, combining a small amount of learning from the three books, I started to experiment on seeing if I could improve my own habits a little. The approach is quite simple, but it does take some time.
The first step is curiosity
The first step is to wonder if you have any bad habits. Putting aside the notion that ignorance is bliss, you need to either seek feedback or pay attention to yourself for a little while.
Apparently helping others starts with nurturing your own growth and nurturing your own growth starts with awareness … and awareness starts with taking time out to observe yourself in action.
But don’t panic – paying attention to yourself does not require that you literally look in the mirror for hours, nor that you meditate deeply on your unique inner light and its place in an existentially hollow world. I just mean that you should replay meetings and conversations in your own head to ask yourself if there is anything you notice.
I noticed too many things:
But the trick here is to pick only one thing, which if you change it, will make life a tiny bit better, rather than trying to change the whole world at once. James Clear, in Atomic Habits, argues very persuasively that as long as you can make things even 1% better, again and again, then you will build a lot of momentum.
So I picked something that I should already be good at. Pausing before I talk.
The second step is observation
Now that I have an improvement to make I can simply change my habits and life is good. Occasionally that works, but not this time.
Instead, Silsbee recommends that you identify times when you might display a bad habit and then review whether it happened. This will help you work out if your habit is sometimes good or if you are not really nailing the right thing.
Here is, roughly, what he suggests. I did this and it was surprisingly powerful.
Describe the behaviour: I will observe my tendency to interrupt people or start talking before I have had a chance to really absorb what they said last.
Structure (when will I observe this):
My questions:
No change needed, no reporting to others and you are free to feel overpowering guilt or just giggle at how funny it is that you did this yet again. The choice is yours, but keep reflecting for 5 minutes after each “situation” that you observe. One or two a day is more than enough to find patterns and opportunities.
Next, you have to decide to change things
I noticed that I do have a tendency to interrupt, which did not surprise me too much, although I do it more than I might have realised.
However, I also noticed another tendency – I am often very “generous” with sharing my own examples of everything. So when my client says “we tried a Kanban wall with index cards,” I respond “Oh yeah – I have done index cards on a wall too – there was this one time where we must have had 15 cards …”
Hmmm … it seems that I have a lot of experience to share and a great willingness to do so. But maybe I should learn a complementary skill called shutting up. One way to do this is to use the letters in the word WAIT to remind myself to shut up (when talking – ask yourself “Why am I talking? – WAIT”).
But Stanier has a better approach. He has suggested writing down a simple reminder to catch and correct yourself.
I now use his wording and I now write it down in my journal. This probably sounds a bit lame, but I keep a todo list each day and now I have a reminder next to it that is my current “not-to-do list.”
The “not to do” list is either my habit to avoid or my watch-list to highlight what I will pay attention to.
The simple approach is to complete this “habit story” for yourself:
It is amazing how often I catch myself when I remember this. For example, my message was:
Surprisingly it is working well, even though it is a pretty simple hack.
In summary
All you need to do is:
Posted by James King
Copyright © James King
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