Grist for the Mill

"I love what I'm hearing. You're giving me the opportunity to see myself in a different way. Not like two sessions ago when I had a kind of tantrum after we finished: I am not going back to Mary Bast! She reminds me of my mother!

Hmmm. Well, of course the first part was pleasing. But even more so, the second half of my client's admission pleased me. First, because she felt free to tell the truth, which was useful feedback that I'd unwittingly let out my preachy side; second, because a coaching session can be the perfect place to relive and experiment with parent-child patterns that still hold influence.

As a coach you may not get a chance to observe clients in interactions with others. You'll hear only their reports of what happened and, because none of us is entirely objective, that report will be missing some pieces. So it's vital to pay attention to how a client's patterns show up in exchanges with you.

In that former session I'd forgotten a simple guideline for making process observations: describe specific behavior. Instead, I'd offered a theoretical analysis, suggesting she loved her career because it provided variety. Yes, yes, I know: ask powerful questions, don't give advice. My style is conversational, however, so sometimes an opinion comes off as a pronouncement. And I believe it's good for clients to see how we, too, get caught up in archaic patterns, and to observe how we own and learn from them instead of being defensive.

So I was able to authentically applaud my client for sharing her reaction to my off-putting behavior, model my willingness to explore a persistent pattern of my own, and invite her to signal if she felt the same way again -- confirming our equal partnership and at the same time opening the door to some real-time information about her relationship with her mother.

Years ago, in my social psychology program at the University of Cincinnati, Len Lansky gave me the best piece of advice I ever received from a mentor: "Everything is grist for the mill."

Monkey Mind

You've heard of monkey mind. Most of you will associate the term with the agitation of thoughts when trying to meditate. Some of you may also think of your mind and body as inhabited by a particularly agitated monkey when you're feeling anxious. 

If you tell me you've NEVER felt like you "might jump out of your own skin," I'll have a hard time believing you. I can feel the core of anxiety in my belly right now, no different from every other time I've sat down to write anything, no matter how excited I am about the topic or how confident I feel that it will appeal to readers.

Of course the monkey above seems quite pensive. That's because it knows something vital about anxiety. Anxiety holds on with greater strength when you try to avoid or overcome it; anxiety lets go when you let it in. No one knows this better than Daniel Smith, author of Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety.

Typically I use book references or quotes to support a concept I'm sharing, but Smith's book is so good, this post is also a positive review. I could pick any section at random to demonstrate his wit and honesty, but here's one about his personal anxiety scale:

It runs from zero to ten, zero being catatonic and ten being the guy in Edvard Munch's The Scream, where, psychologically speaking, you're on a bridge surrounded by faceless strangers who are unable or unwilling to help you and the sky is blood-orange-red and swirling and hectic and everything is so bleak and awful that you'd rather die than spend another second where you are.

Eventually Smith discovered what I learned from R. Reid Wilson. However counter-intuitive it may seem, when you face into your anxieties, they surrender.

You and the people you coach can design experiments that speak directly to their anxieties. One of my clients, for example, loved amusement parks but avoided the scary rides, especially the roller coaster. While exploring her anxieties, she agreed that her fear of the roller coaster could symbolize all her fears, so she went to the amusement park, sat alone in the front seat of the roller coaster car, and stayed on the ride several times, until her anxiety subsided. This shifted her assumption that her fear had her.

Smith exemplified his own, similar shift, by his reaction to cutting his finger while slicing an English muffin:

The cut was severe. I could see the pink of deep tissue and beneath it the bone. A year earlier I would have had instant visions of disaster -- the night, the week and in turn an entire existence ruined by a hasty gesture. Now I just stood in the kitchen watching the blood drip into the sink, thinking, Well, that just happened. Better do something about it. And then I allowed myself a moment of quiet pride, for such matter-of-fact poise and practicality -- such reflexive poise and practicality -- signaled a momentous shift in my mental life. When they wove the stitches in, I almost smiled.

Brain Food

No doubt some of your clients have asked for help to stop unwanted habitual behavior, and then been surprised at how difficult that can be. Always looking for a powerful metaphor, I was delighted to read, in David Eagleman's Incognito, about the fanciful German expression innerer schweinehund or "inner pigdog" -- referring to the part of us that wants instant gratification no matter how firm our dedication to a long-term goal.

Neuroscientist Eagleman points to Christmas Clubs as one type of solution to the arm-wrestling between short- and long-term desires: give it over to someone else. I must admit I've tried this with my addiction to Wedderspoon's Munuka Honey and Ginger throat lozenges, asking a friend to hide them from me or I'd never have any on hand when I actually have a sore throat. This worked for a while, but finally I just quit buying them.

Eagleman retells the story of Ulysses, who knew the dangers of sailing past the island where the Sirens' music was so alluring that passersby steered to their deaths on the unforgiving rocks. Before approaching the island, he had his men lash him to the mast, fill their own ears with beeswax, and instructed them to ignore his pleas as they sailed past the Sirens, no matter what he threatened. Knowing his innerer schweinehund would opt for immediate gratification, he structured a future where he could count on satisfying his long-term goal. Thus a freely made decision that binds you to a future outcome is called a Ulysses contract.

This is why many coaches ask for commitments from clients, and talk about holding clients accountable for what they've said they were going to do. Though this makes a kind of logical sense, I don't think it's a good idea for coaches to make Ulysses contracts with clients. Yes, it's useful to know their wiring naturally creates a struggle between opposing forces, but I'd rather help people strengthen their own ability to dedicate themselves to a desired future. Because of this, I only hold clients accountable for what they DO, not what they said they'd do. We pay attention to how the inner pig dog operates so we can learn where and how to begin changing the wiring.

(Eagleman also wrote the fictional Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives.)

 

Gain from Pain

When concrete results aren't obvious while coaching someone with heightened emotions, I sometimes wonder if simply listening is enough. Focusing is one way to help clients translate their emotional pain into kinesthetic experience and imagery with the potential to heal symbolically. 

Among the many free articles at Dr. Kathy McGuire's Creative Edge Focusing web site, those on grieving have been especially useful to me when someone is experiencing strong feelings: "Your body knows how to grieve and will direct the process to a healing conclusion, if you can stop suppressing it."

In her "Five Minute Grieving" process Dr. McGuire suggests:

1. Invite the client to cry ("...let's make room for your tears...")
2. Empathize without trying to "fix" or take away the grief ("It seems bleak right now...")
3. Help the client find words or images for the tears ("It helps to get a handle on the feeling...")
4. Empathize again, often by paraphrasing the client's words ("So it's your fear you won't find a new job and that's hard...")

Continue steps (1) through (4) as long as makes sense, then orient the client, if necessary, by doing a "present time" exercise ("You're welcome to sit here for a minute... let's make sure you're back in the world..."), or you may want to establish closure ("Let's see if we can look for solutions to your situation...").

This quote from Campbell and McMahon, creators of Bio-Spiritual Focusing, beautifully conveys the focusing attitude:

Imagine you have found an abandoned infant... how you would, through your bodily attention, convey complete acceptance and love and safety... "You are totally wanted in this world and safe with me."

(Leonid Sadofiev provided the above photo through istockphotos.com)

Paths Beyond Ego

...the spiritual agenda is paramount, which is the conversion process. Whether we know it or not, we're all transforming, because we're hungry for the opposite of our vice... Helen Palmer

A key question for coaches is how to balance clients' immediate needs with our knowledge of their transformational potential. Sometimes they don't know to ask for what they really need. 

This path is not easy, often blocked by what Kierkegaard called "tranquilization by the trivial." For many years, passages from Paths Beyond Ego: The Transpersonal Vision have inspired me to engage my clients' spiritual hunger: 

"Growth involves movement into the unknown and often requires surrendering familiar ways of being. Consequently, we tend to fear growth. The tragic result... is that we actually deny and defend against our greatness and potential... What are the common characteristics of profound transpersonal experiences? The words vary but people's accounts worldwide agree that a central realization is penetrating insight into one's nature or identity... Undertaking this process is regarded by the great wisdom traditions as the highest goal and greatest good of human existence... A common characteristic of higher development is that our identity or ego changes, eventually losing the sense of solidity and separateness and becoming transpersonal" (pp. 110 - 114).

Here's how one of my clients describes her own process:

"The word transformation gives me a bit of trouble because I think of transforming from something to something, which is a one-shot deal, and that's not how I've experienced it in my life. I think of an evolution of consciousness that's endless. Transformation is a word we use in the West because we want to get someplace.  There is a grand scheme and there’s no manual. It comes a paragraph at a time. It’s what your heart is calling you to do.

"In the process of our evolution we have things that block us, that get in the way. Leonard Laskow speaks of treasured wounds. So for me the exploration is seeing how I've held things that kept me from moving forward. 

"What has changed most in me is not blaming myself as much. I went from 'It’s all my problem,' to 'It’s not at all my problem' and digging in, to becoming an observer of all that, seeing how it unfolds, not judging. I’m happier now than I’ve ever been. I’m lighter, more present. I still get caught, but I get 'uncaught' quicker."

"K" is for Krishnamurti

The devil and a friend were walking down the street, when they saw a man stoop to pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket.

The friend said to the devil, "What did that man pick up?"

"He picked up a piece of the truth," said the devil.

"That's a very bad business for you, then," said his friend.

"Not at all," the devil replied, "I'm going to help him organize it."

This was a favorite story of Jiddu Krishnamurti, fondly remembered as "K" by community members of the Krishnamurti Centre in England, where I worked as a co-op for two weeks some years ago.

K maintained that "Truth, being limitless (and) unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized, nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along a particular path."

Imagine the paradox Krishnamurti then faced: trying to teach the unteachable. He came to this pathless path years after being "discovered" in adolescence by leaders of the Theosophical Society and groomed to be the World Leader of what later became the Order of the Star.

After experiencing his own process, a state of clarity I would call presence, he realized he could only embody the teaching by not being a leader. His proclamation met with dismay within the Order, but to me is the ultimate example of "walking the talk":

"I do not know how many thousands throughout the world -- members of the Order -- have been preparing for me for eighteen years, and yet now they are not willing to listen unconditionally, wholly, to what I say... You use a typewriter to write letters, but you do not put it on an altar and worship it." (Proclaimed leader in 1912, disbanded the Order in 1929).

Krishnamurti frequently claimed that the great religious teachers had come not to found religions but to destroy them, and throughout his life he asked questions of his audience to lead them toward discovering the path within themselves. This is good advice to us as coaches: 

"In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give either the key or the door to open, except yourself."

Change or Die?

What if a well-informed, trusted authority figure said you had to make difficult and enduring changes in the way you think and act? ...Could you change when change really mattered? Alan Deutschman, Change or Die.

Deutschman's book is based on his coverage of a 2004 IBM Global Innovation Outlook conference, where thought leaders from around the world explored solutions to major social problems and estimated the odds as nine to one against change, even when remaining unchanged could be life-threatening. He outlined three major criteria that promote change:

Relate, Repeat, Reframe

People who want to make significant changes in their lives need support and emotional reinforcement, they have to repeat new learning until it becomes habit, and they must come to view the desired outcome through a different lens (joy, for example, is a more powerful motivator than fear). 

Of course we help clients reframe limiting beliefs and experiment with new behavior, checking in repeatedly to acknowledge progress or explore barriers. And I've always known change is easier and more likely to be permanent when supported by co-workers, friends, and/or family. However, I did assume the coach/client relationship provided sufficient support to sustain desired changes. 

Lately, though, I've been thinking about two clients with the same personality style who came to me for similar reasons -- both are female, both perfectionists who felt unliked at work. Both were in their early fifties when we started our coaching relationship, both extremely intelligent and with great desire to maintain their high standards in a way that inspires rather than intimidating and annoying others. I like them both very much and I think I've given my very best to each. During our coaching hours both have shown major shifts in their thinking, experimented with new behaviors that brought more positive responses from others, and felt they were making significant progress. Neither any longer shows old behavior patterns in interactions with me.

One has developed new friendships at work, become more intimate with her husband, deepened her relationships with friends, and  achieved the leadership position she aspired to. During the same period of time the other, whom I equally respect and admire, has been dismissed from several jobs. Admittedly their professional fields are entirely different; however, the second client says she can't seem to see herself when she slips into the old pattern of being harsh and judgmental.

So I asked myself what the differences might be, and I think one key is that the woman who's changed so happily has a long-term marriage and a long-term best friend. Her husband has also been coached, has been open to changes in their interaction dynamics, and helps her think through any problems she's experiencing. Also, she and her best friend talk regularly, are mutually supportive around personal or work issues either is having, and together rehearse different ways to respond. 

The other client is single and engages with her friends primarily around mutual interests rather than looking inward with the goal of mutual development. Because the old patterns don't show up with me, we aren't able to "catch" them together. So she doesn't have the day-to-day support of someone who can lovingly confront her when she slips into her old ways. We explored how she might surround herself with people who know her desire to change and can provide a mirror to her ongoing behavior, and she's decided to sign up for a week-long self-development workshop. 

No matter what, she'll live. But I'm cheering for her to live the life she wants.

In AWE of the Process

There are many "how-to" books on leadership, management, and coaching, lists of all kinds for the 10 principles of this or that. I've done the same and published a variety of steps for specific aspects of behavioral change. 

But what about the bigger picture, the nature of change itself? I've written elsewhere about first- and second-order change, how coaches who address only conscious goals and overt behavior can unwittingly reinforce the worldview a client brings to the table and subvert the intended change.

Einstein once said, "Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which the problems were created." Our task is to help clients see how their worldviews operate and how to break free of the patterns those worldviews create. The question of "how" is elemental. Asking "why" can lead down many paths and take months or years to answer, possibly never satisfactorily. Discovering with your clients how they enact their patterns will illuminate where to intervene and promote significant change.

I've provided a frame of reference for my clients with the acronym "A.W.E."

1. Awareness of their unique patterns of motivation and behavior. This can be discovered in ordinary conversation; with models such as the Enneagram, Tilt365, DISC, MBTI; or feedback from others who know or work with you.  
2. Watching how those patterns operate. Your clients learn to hold full awareness in the present, notice their flow of thoughts, and accept their experiences without judgment or attempts to control.
3. Experimenting with pattern breaking so their choices are free, energizing, and fulfilling. Even a small, symbolic change can shake up someone's worldview so much the old way of thinking no longer computes. Keep these points in mind when you co-create fieldwork to break old patterns with new responses:

• Understand the client's worldview deeply.
• Make sure there's a mutually agreed-upon definition of the desired change.
• Collaboratively design tasks that will reframe the client's view of the problem.
• Once any part of a pattern is shaken up, look for spontaneous changes from your clients.

Same Music, Different Beat

In an Erickson Foundation newsletter article, Jeff Zeig described learning to play the tin whistle (the Irish Penny Whistle) after a lifetime of not playing a musical instrument. 
 

"This practice has been highly instructive to me and has changed my teaching style. To experience the ways a simple tune can be embellished has altered the way I understand hypnosis. Music and hypnosis have structural similarities since both are based in changing people's perspectives, states, and emotions, particularly through using innuendo."

Years ago I took tennis lessons one summer, working particularly on my backhand. A few months later I played nine holes of golf with my boss at a golf retreat in Florida where we were facilitating a leadership workshop. As we approached the first tee I joked that I'd see him at the putting green, because I tended to slice the ball and I'd be off in the rough to the right. After I'd made a couple of straight drives he said, "I thought you told me you sliced the ball." I was surprised, but didn't make a connection to the tennis lessons until I played ping-pong with friends a few weeks later and realized my game there had improved, as well.

Transfer of learning is an important concept for coaches because we only have our clients' attention for a snapshot of time before they go out into the world to either keep doing what they've always done or do something different. So their generalizations to everyday life depend on the parallels we help them draw or embed in the coaching experience itself.

The parallels can be direct, as when clients agree to practice on their own something you've experimented with together and to report back how well it works in a variety of settings. A more subtle learning transfer occurs within the nature of the coaching relationship. Several of my clients, when asked to use one word to describe their vision for 2012, have come up with words like "fun," "play," "flow," and "creativity." I see this as my call to make sure our sessions are fun, playful, creative, and in the flow.

How will your coaching sessions this year help clients transfer their learnings to everyday life?