Calcinatio: Letting Go an Illusion of Reality

In a former blog entry I introduced alchemy as a metaphor for great coaching, then summarized key alchemical processes in a recent newsletter. For the next nine blog entries I'll amplify these alchemical metaphors with client examples.

Calcinatio, purifying by fire, is the first of the alchemy procedures, subjecting the basic material to intense heat, driving away alien substances and leaving a pure, whitened ash. Psychologically, this is the burning away of the false self. The whitened ash represents release from our personality's fixated illusion of reality.

Whenever we are "consumed" by raging anger, this is the ego's habitual response to feeling threatened. In The Nine Ways of Working, Michael Goldberg uses the calcinatio metaphor with perfectionists, "fire-breathing dragons with very good manners. Their dragon fire can be a sanctifying, purifying fire--something to test your mettle and make you the best you can be--or it can be a punishing hellfire that will burn you to a crisp."

When we're angry and learn to stay with the fire, however, not reacting, not obsessing over how and who to burn to a crisp, we let the anger go to ground, finding and releasing the illusion that everyone should behave a certain way and it's our job to fix them. Here's how Jan describes changes she's experienced:

I used to have the sense "If I don't flog it and work really hard at it, it won't be enough." I became aware of a pattern where a grievance with someone in a work situation would give me an excuse to get angry.

My story was "Unless I'm right and good I cannot love or be loved," and that's not true, of course.

Since then I've learned ways to release anger so I don't devastate the countryside, no one dies, and no tragedy occurs. I've come to allow the lid to rest a little more lightly on the pot. I'm not pushing it down so hard for fear the contents will explode. I'm more in touch with my anger, aware when it comes up, and find new ways to express it, often in creative efforts.

This burning through releases creative energy, passion, and grounded idealism that can literally change the world.

(See also Solutio, Solificatio, Nigredo, Separatio, Mortificatio, Sublimatio, Coagulatio) 

Sell From Your Strengths

According to Valerie Atkin of Wells Street Consulting, selling's bad rap is reflected in such cliches as "being sold down the river" or "selling out." Actually, effective selling for coaches invites collaborating to inspire a vision, stay the course, accomplish goals, and significantly improve lives. So don't sell yourself short.

Current-day technology celebrates the subtle strength of so-called "passive" marketing—writing articles or books that attract clients, and especially in these days of Social Media Marketing ("SMM" for the initiated), having a web site and/or blog that connects us through the Internet with people we might otherwise never have reached.

You can see on my home page quick answers to these key questions in a potential client's mind: (1) "What is it?" (2) "Why do I want it?" (3) "Where do I get it?"

Most recently, following Corey Perlman's suggestions in eBoot Camp has boosted my web traffic considerably (more than a thousand hits a day). And, as Corey suggests, I use Blogger.com for my blogs. It's a free Google service—so why not let Google do my marketing for me?

Once you have your initial, clean, clear message that sets you out among coaches, think about other ways potential clients can get to know you. Browsers will go where key words draw them. I’m not suggesting you need a 500-page web site and four blogs, as I have, but several coaches have hired me, for example, after finding a poem in my Poetry & Personality pages.

Where to start? Find your personal vision, one that answers two key questions posed by Stanford's Michael Ray: "Who is my Self?" and "What is my Work?" "When we talk about 'Self,"' said Ray, "we're talking about your higher self... your highest future potential. And by asking 'What is my work?' we're asking what is the purpose of your existence or what are you meant to be?"

Trading Places

CJ Fitzsimons is a successful coach, consultant, and trainer. He wanted fine-tuning in coaching his client Hans, an Enneagram personality style Eight.

CJ: Hans was livid that his superiors had decided to send him to their Assessment Center (AC), and if he passed he would lose much of the freedom he enjoyed in his job.

I asked Hans to assign different places in the room for two roles, Hans today and Hans in his new job after the AC. I interviewed him in each for a few minutes, then asked how he felt in his new job. "Not half as bad as I expected," he replied. We agreed to a half-day session before the AC, and I scheduled to talk with Mary a couple of days beforehand.

In Out of the Box Coaching Field Guide I show how to move clients from either/or to both/and thinking. People with Hans' personality style have the either/or belief, "either I'm strong or I'm vulnerable." Thus Hans saw the AC as a place "where they torture people for several days by observing how they respond to stressful situations." He assumed he would be at the mercy of the assessors, a vulnerability that triggered his personality's toggle-switch thinking ("If they're not with me, they're against me").

CJ's fieldwork was to coach Hans into both/and thinking, which he did quite well yet in a different way than I might have done. I help clients identify the "X" and the "Y" that are apparently incompatible, explore the underlying objectives, then ask themselves, "How could I do both X and Y?" CJ helped Hans reframe the belief that if he was vulnerable he was out of control, but accomplished this by getting Hans to do a role switch, a technique from CJ's training in psychodrama (similar to the Gestalt empty-chair technique).

CJ: I knew Hans was concerned the assessors would "seek out weaknesses and bore into them," which offended his need for fairness. As I wrote our agenda on a flip chart, I invited him to move to my chair and to imagine himself as his AC assessor. I interviewed the "assessor" about his approach, how he'd treat Hans, what he'd look for in his assessment – keeping the questions and tone light.

Hans relaxed visibly, his body going from hunched/defensive to laid-back/open. He grinned, "It’ll be OK. He’s not out to get me. He’s only doing his job."

My conversations with CJ demonstrate the nature of collaborative mentoring, how we learn from each other. I helped him see how both/and thinking can reframe a client's underlying beliefs; he showed me the effectiveness of psychodrama with a business client.

Using Metaphors in Change Work

For as long as humans have had speech, story-tellers have been respected for how their tales and poems taught and/or entertained. Harvard Business School guru John Kotter says, "Those in leadership positions who fail to grasp or use the power of stories risk failure for their companies and for themselves."

There's a time-honored tradition in change work to use stories for healing. A healing metaphor can help clients gain the personal resources and enhanced world model they need to handle their problems. Typically, though, as in the general history of storytelling, the coach decides what story or metaphor will have the greatest effect.

I've used a more client-centered approach, for example with a coach who said she always felt "like the new kid on the block" around her colleagues. I entered her metaphor by saying, "OK, I'm here with you. You've just moved in, and you're the new kid. What's that like? What are the other kids doing? How do they treat you? What are some ways you can get them to include you?" After she answered "They want to play with some of my cool toys!" she realized she has "cool toys" in her current repertoire that helped her feel comfortable with more experienced coaches.

I saw even more possibilities for metaphor work, and attended training in Symbolic Modeling with Gina Campbell. Here, instead of the coach determining the direction, open-ended questions preserve the terminology of clients' metaphors with "clean language," questions that follow the client's lead.

The next time one of your clients offers a metaphor, experiment with being completely spontaneous, playful, nonlinear. Forget about structure, forget about tools from your experience that will "help" or "coach" the person. Simply be present, and see where your client's metaphor leads both of you.

The Donald Duck Cure

Building on Stories that Change People, the following is an example of a paradoxical intervention (encouraging clients to exaggerate a behavior).

Greg had been promoted to management as a reward for his technical know-how. Creative and bright, he was experienced at resolving problems by himself and had no models for how to encourage others. In particular, instead of coaching team members in private Greg criticized them openly in team meetings. They had recently been his peers, and found this humiliating.

When I gave Greg this feedback, he understood why they felt embarrassed, but insisted he had no control over his behavior: "It just comes over me!"

Knowing how much he loved his young daughters, I asked if the same thing happened with them. "No," he replied, "they're really fun to be around and easy to teach. I love playing with them and showing how things work." He said their happiest times were spent watching Saturday morning cartoons together.

I asked Greg to look for a cartoon that depicted aggressive behavior, "putting someone down" and we'd talk about it in our next session. I expected coyote and road-runner, but Greg described Donald Duck's nephews building a snowman at the bottom of a hill, only to have Donald zoom down on his sled and break up the snowman, laughing (quacking) and laughing (quacking). After several attempts, the nephews built a snowman around blocks of cement. This time when Donald ran into the snowman, he was flattened and stars appeared over his head (in that fun way of cartoons).

"So, Greg," I suggested, "since you can't stop criticizing team members at meetings, just keep on doing what you're doing, but take a second as you deliver the message to imagine yourself as Donald Duck quacking to his nephews."

His problem behavior spontaneously disappeared.

Stories That Change People

Storytelling is a time-honored way to invoke change. In the introduction to David Gordon's Therapeutic Metaphors, he writes:

"... stories, anecdotes and idioms all have... the ability to convey a message or learning about a particular problem... If the conflict within the story is similar to one you as a listener happen also to be dealing with, then the story immediately becomes significant to you... a METAPHOR... a way of speaking in which one thing is expressed in terms of another (that) throws new light on the character of what is being described.

In a powerful example of storytelling, psychologist George Burns met with a mother and her six-year-old daughter, Jessica, who'd been labeled by two psychologists as "an elective mute." Jessica spoke freely and age-appropriately at home, but would not utter a sound to anyone outside her family.

While Jessica sat on the floor drawing, Dr. Burns told her mother a story from his own childhood about a boy named Billy who was teased by the other children for his silence:

"That day the door of the cupboard at the back of the classroom was ajar and a feather duster protruded through the gap. As we filed into class, Billy's eye fell on the protruding feathers and, without thinking, he exclaimed, 'Sir, there's a hen in the cupboard!' Everyone laughed, and after that Billy spoke."

At this point Jessica handed Dr. Burns a drawing of a bird and told him it was "Tweetie."

"Who's Tweetie?" he asked.

"My canary."

Both Dr. Burns and Jessica's mother were stunned. He was the first adult Jessica had ever spoken to outside her family. "The empowerment for her to change an established pattern of behavior," he concluded, "had come not just through a story, but through one told so indirectly that it was apparently being communicated to someone else."

Stories aren't just for children. A good teaching tale can reach your clients at both conscious and unconscious levels — a right-brain "zing" along with a left-brain "aha."

Beyond Active Listening

We all want to coach our clients to be present enough to see how their habitual patterns operate, to respond out of free choice instead of reacting automatically. To do this well, we don't just instruct; we model by being fully present ourselves.

This goes way beyond active listening or even empathic listening. As described in Co-Active Coaching, "You listen at 360 degrees... as though you're surrounded by a force field that contains you, the client, and a space of knowing... and see what emerges."

Similarly, Otto Scharmer (Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges) describes a deep level of listening ("Listening 4") that requires full presence, frees us from habitual thinking, and opens new possibilities.

Listening 1 (from habits): Habits of judgment that lead to reconfirming old opinions and judgments.

Listening 2 (from outside): Factual listening and noticing differences that lead to new data.

Listening 3 (from within): Empathic listening that leads to seeing through another's eyes and emotional connection.

Listening 4 (from Source): Generative listening that connects us with an emerging future and shifts our identity/self. As a coach I hold the intention to be present at the deepest level of listening and to help clients notice how Listening 1, 2, and 3 operate as they move into Listening 4.

For example, Jane is in love with Bob. Both with busy lives, they've carved out a two-hour walk together, when Bob's phone rings with a desperate call from his sister Maggie that her heat is off and she's freezing. Although Jane agrees to go to Maggie's with Bob, she also notices her Listening 1 ("There's never enough time for me!"). Instead of reacting from that level, she probes for facts (Listening 2): Bob is the older brother of several sisters who relied on him before Jane came into the picture and she and Bob have talked about how to gradually balance that with his commitment to her. He's told Jane he wants to check in quickly and then continue their walk.

Still not reacting, simply being present, while at Maggie's house Jane engages Listening 3, putting herself in Bob's and Maggie's shoes ("Look how affectionate he is with his sister. That's the same fountain of compassion I love and respect in him"). She continues to stay present, now aware at Listening 4 ("What is there to know beyond my habitual understanding?"). In this place of full presence, she sees that her initial reaction came from a fundamental patterned belief, "There will never be enough for me." She shifts to a different sense of identify — "I am not my pattern" — and its hold on her is released. She is fully present.

Alchemy as Metaphor for Great Coaching

Alchemy may seem a bit grandiose as a metaphor for everyday coaching, but many coaches stop short of what is possible. Alchemists believe everything will become something more advanced given time. The "Great Work" is to speed up that process. Why not imagine our deepest work can parallel transmuting base elements into gold?

As coaches we have the privilege of witnessing another human being's awakening, and clients who come to us for obvious "fixes" may not yet realize how extraordinary their changes could be.

During my first few years as a coach, working with senior executives, I gave clients what they asked for. They were awarded their promotions, managed their teams better, or — in worst cases — reinstated themselves instead of being fired.

With some, however, my simply being present and mirroring encouraged much more, so I began to push all my clients to heighten their awareness, to look at the motives and drives behind their observable goals.

In Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, Marie-Louise von Franz suggests we not program our work, but rather "observe what comes up without drawing hasty speculative conclusions." When we accept what we do as "Great Work" there's also a kind of mystical union, a shared mystery, a felt experience difficult to put into words, unique to that particular relationship through which we both grow.

Some coaches I've mentored have asked "Do we have the right to encourage deeper change when clients have asked only for help with their leadership or communication skills, or similar behavioral goals?" This is a legitimate concern, because deep change work can be disorienting, discomfiting, and for some even frightening.

I believe we need to be forceful and courageous enough to challenge clients to go as far as they can go. It is, of course, their choice. But all of us thirst to find greater meaning and to realize our full potential - not just in worldly terms but congruent with our highest values. As coaches we can help our clients satisfy that thirst.

Not everyone can or wants to make the leap Great Coaching demands, but those who do find far more rewards than they anticipated when seeking only to resolve an immediate problem.

(See Calcinatio, Solutio, Solificatio, Nigredo, Separatio, Mortificatio, Sublimatio, Coagulatio)

Ten Steps to Workshop Design & Development

This strategic planning model, from educational consultant Dr. Elsa Kessler, has for many years helped me tailor training and team workshops to the needs of specific audiences.:

Define the general purpose and/or need.

Analyze participants and their needs as they perceive them, get more data if necessary (age, experience, representation, previous experience with similar workshops or responding to similar problems, personality/ learning style, expectations).

Review your resources and barriers (time constraints, logistics of the planned location, your own/others' capabilities, the minimum amount of rehearsal necessary, your level of authority to make decisions.)

Create a theme. This can then manifest in a logo, handouts, and/or brochures; but also serves as a focus of meaning and energy, in the same way a good book title captures the book's intent.

Define the general objectives and sequence, including general ideas to mix and match topics, methods, and media for interest and variety.

Develop segments. The emphasis here is on first draft -- especially if you're part of a team of designers -- because you want to sketch out enough to make sure the segments work together and support the overall theme, without wasting effort on details that may need to be changed. Necessary changes will become apparent during the dry run:

Specific objectives (for both content and process) and sequence for the segments.

First draft of detailed content, including tie-ins to other segments and to overall theme.

First draft of detailed design. (Lecture? Question and answer session? Group discussion? Fish-bowl demo? Subgroups with large group debrief? Experiential? Case Study?)  

First draft of media. (Slides? Handouts? PowerPoint? Flip chart?)

Evaluation criteria. Most people make the mistake of waiting until after this stage to develop/conduct an evaluation. If the specific objectives are clear, you can also decide at this point how you will know if you met your objectives. This becomes self-fulfilling when you build in a process by which the desired results are observable. For example, if you want participants to be able to name four key leadership qualities, you could either design an activity where they give a summary out loud or solicit their written responses; then you can reinforce or fine-tune their understanding as appropriate.

Dry Run or "walk through." This allows testing of content and process, how long the segments actually take, how the material looks/sounds to others, how well the logistics work, whether or not the objectives appear to be met. A dry run is particularly vital if a team is contributing to the design, because all participants can check out how their parts fit with the rest and adjust where necessary.

Completion of final materials and quality check.

Dress rehearsal (not always necessary, depending upon the critical nature of the event and/or the quality of the dry run).

Conduct session/evaluate/adjust for future events.