I’ve always been fascinated by who we are and why we are.
For many years I loved a personality test, a type assessment, a quiz - any way to help me find out who I was and what made me tick.
Most of them were useful in some way - helpful lenses that showed me where I fit in someone else’s framework - but even more useful has been building my own personal understanding, from the inside out.
I’ve had a lot of first sessions recently. Meeting someone for the first time, exploring working together, and asking lots of questions about what’s needed for us to get set up well.
Alongside the purpose of the coaching (the what), is the partnership and the practicalities (the how).
This is such rich territory! Each of us has our own recipe of things that help us work at our best - and we’re all different.
It’s hard to focus when we’re constantly being interrupted.
Notifications, messages, calls, meeting invitations, people popping in for a chat and not realising we’re listening to or working on something.
It’s frustrating - we never get a chance to get into what we need to or want to.
If only there was a way that we could get some quiet focus time…
Oh wait. There are lots of ways!
How do you feel about owning your “I”?
Sharing your perspective, your preferences, your priorities?
Communicating what you need in the moment - or what you’re looking for in the longer term?
Or are you hoping that your expressions, actions or work will speak for you, and the other person will figure it out for themselves?
I love a simple framework.
The best ones can help put structure around anything that feels overwhelming or scattered - a way to get everything out, group and organise what’s there, and find a way to see the wood for the trees.
They can be especially useful for the content of our heads, when it feels like we have so much we want to say, but don’t know how to say it.
One of my favourites is this one - the SCQuARE process.
Feedback is one of my favourite topics to coach around. There’s so much to unpack and explore, and a lot we can reframe in a short amount of time.
While most often we’re working through how to give and receive it, there can also be times when we want more than we’re getting - because how can we improve if we don’t know where we are?
We just need to remember to ask a useful question, so that we get some useful information in response - instead of defaulting to “Could you give me some feedback?”.
What’s your relationship with praise?
Do you delight in it, or dodge it?
Do you take it to heart, or skip right past it?
Do you rely on it, but worry that it might not last?
I have done all of these, and often still do.
So, it’s been useful to remind myself to take a closer look at it, in a productive way.
If only we’d had a conversation beforehand…
Almost 18 years ago Stu and I went on holiday to the Lake District.
It was one of our last times away before having our first child. I was 6 months pregnant.
We thought it would be lots of fun to cycle from where we were to Keswick. Not far away at all said Stu…
If you know him, you know that he is a brilliant, strong, capable cyclist who absolutely loves being on his bike. Me? Not so much.
Do you love feedback, or loathe it?
Does receiving it make you feel uncomfortably in the spotlight?
Does it feel like a judgement about you?
I’m back for the third time in Tara Mohr’s Playing Big Facilitators Training (as an alum I get to go back every year and experience it again).
It’s hands down one of the best investments I’ve ever made, and the book is one of my most valuable resources - and the one I most often send the women I work with.
I use a lot of her principles and practical tools in my life and coaching, but one of my favourites - and a gamechanger for both me and others - relates to reframing our relationship with feedback.
We’re on this section of the course right now, and listening to the call this week I was struck all over again at the effect our relationship with, and experience of, feedback can have on us.
