A week away from ICA

I have been away from ICA for a week.

It is really amazing how much it seems that ICA has become a part of my life. The week I have been away  it is as if I had left some family members or some very important activity (which it is). I went to Ohio, to follow a Business Coaching course, and actually met a fellow ICA student in person, as well as an ICA trainer! So, it turns out, we are not virtual people but REAL people.

The training was intensive, but it was clear from the start that what I have learned at ICA was going to be very helpul in orienting and organizing the information we got. However, the course went from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day, and half a day on Saturday, so by the end I was completely overloaded with information… on top of the 6 hour time zone difference.

I am back home in Madrid now, restarting my ICA classes and starting to get ready for Supervised Coaching, which starts in a few days… August 4th. And I am the first one up!

More on the July break

During the July break at ICA I have been reviewing my course notes on the modules I have finished. I already did this with the Foundation and AC100 modules, and found it very enlightening: so many things go on during a class that when reviewing and writing up the notes I take while it’s happening, I see that a great part of it just seemed to have disappeared from my mind. It’s a great way to refresh the content. At the same time, I take the opportunity to do the reflection, answer the questions, etc. I then produce a Word or similar document with all of this. Actually, just going through the learn notes again really brings up a lot of “new” information.

In line with this, I started to go over the Power Tools module, and started with the first one “Commitment vs. Trying”… Well! I have been at it for a couple of days, doing the reflection, posting the questions, etc, and still NOT DONE. There is a lot of meat in this module, I see. It is actually an unabashed exposure of the UAC concept (which by the way, keeps reminding me of the “conflicting commitments” concept of Kegan/Lahey).

Listing three projects that I had committed to and actually carried out, was quite easy.  But when it came to putting down three that I had committed to but have not managed to do… now there’s a different story. Not because there aren’t any, but because it seems that it is always due to diffuse reasons, unclear motivations, not really feeling like it (the organizing of my appartment, for instance) or even, because I don’t know how to proceed (and, it seems, I am not about to get help), in the case of my issues with relationships.

So, it has been very powerful in several ways. Actually, just allowing myself to be with these questions, holding them in my mind, so to speak, seems to me to be helpful in itself. It helps to raise consciousness and awareness of how different I feel inside when I am actually working towards what I have committed to, and when I keep procrastinating, or even refusing to see it as something I can do anything about.

Let’s see if I make it to the second Power Tool!

By the way, I am still not clear either on my Coaching Model nor on my Power Tool…

During the break

These past couple of weeks ICA has been at idle speed: no courses and little action on the discussion board (although Laurene answered my question about my research paper immediately).

I have taken this opportunity to read up on a different issue: business development models that I am studying in order to develop the one, or ones that I will use with my Coaching Business. A couple of weeks ago I finished going through the E-myth for the third time (the second time in the last 4 months) taking notes and I wrote a 2 page summary of its underlying concepts. I also did a Mind Map of the path it suggests. This mind map really helps now in organizing “next steps” with the business clients that I have. The idea is to do the same thing with other books I have targeted (extract a business model of some sort, or rather a busines development model), take down the underlying ideas and do a Mind Map of the suggested structure.

The next books, as far as I can now see it are:

• Book Yourself Solid
• Growing a Business
• Beyond Booked Yourself Solid
• the structure underlying the Action Coach business dev model,
• The basice Business Plan model (is it a good Bus. Dev. model?
• PBCA

This is actually quite a bit of work, now that I think about it, but I hope it is worth it. I am currently going through BYS, and it is clearly more geared to a professional practice than to a business. I am actually working through the examples, so it’s taking me quite a bit. I want to work through the examples because: a) it gives me a better feel of the sort of anwswers that come up, and  how difficult it might be for a professional to put himself through this; and b) I am actually getting pretty good ideas. However, I think that since what is left is the spelling out of the last Marketing Strategies, I will start to go over it again if I can, this week, with a view to extract the underlying info and structure.

Next week I will be in Ohio, taking an additional business coaching course (PBCA), which is my next step in my idea of developing my business presence here in Spain.

If this seems more like an entry on my business than on my ICA journey, I guess it is

Goal Setting — success

Last month I started to work on the Design your Life program. To begin with, after going through the initial reflection on what it is that I would like to achieve, I started in the area where I think I have more possibilities of success: self-care.

I set up a few goals: go back to swimming regularly, incorporate massages into my life, take up horseback riding again, among others. After reviewing the Goal Setting module, I just realised how much I have learned, by how I went about it.

For instance, for the swimming goal, I set up a series of small goals: find out swimming pool schedule by this date, buy a 10 visit ticket by this other date. Go swimming ONCE this week. Swim once a week by this date. Swim twice in this week, etc. And I just managed to do it. In 6 weeks, I am swimming twice a week for the last 3 weeks, and now need to look for another structure: a swimming buddy. But it worked perfectly.

I went about it in a similar fashion with horseback riding and massage: first look for a place (by a date), then call to set up an appointment (by a certain date), etc. So, by this time I have incorporated all these three (positive) habits into my daily life.

Now other less immediate things await. But equally, if not more, important. One of them is my ICA journey objective: to graduate in December 08. I need to start planning for the different milestones to take place. By now mostly coaching and preparing the R&D part: coaching model, research paper, power tool.

Another is to broach a long standing issue in personal relationships. Here the challenge is even being able to formulate a goal, and then try to turn it into a SMART goal… We will see. At any rate: challenge for this week: identify the ICA milestones and set dates. This will bring out the Design your Life document again….

 

Powerful Request or A bit Pushy?

This week, I had a very strong experience during a “trial” session with a possible peer client, I noticed that there was a sort of “knot” in which several things seemed to be stuck in a sort of chain. She could not do A, because of B; and she could not do B, because of C; and she could not do C, because of D. You know what I mean?

So, I asked a bit, and (without realising it) decided that this was something that just needed a bit of prodding. I asked the client if she was willing to commit to doing D, and she said yes. I asked “By when could you do this?”, she said “in a couple of days, but I can’t do it because of A”… Ok, at this stage, I should have noticed that the issue was really somewhere else (close to A). Instead I said “Ok, let’s forget about A for now, and concentrate on D. Can you commit to doing it this week?” “Yes, of course”.

I continued, “Ok, what about C? Do you think you can then do C?”. “Yes, I would, but I can’t because of A”… and so on. Well, we got to actually committing to doing A… At the end of the session, I had the feeling that it had been quite heavy going, but that she had managed to see that all of the issues that were keeping her stuck where things she could do in a couple of days, without much investment of time.

A couple of days later I got an email from her saying that, while she liked my style, she thought I had been very “pushy” and she did not want to be pushed or shoved into the “unknown”… So, here we have it: I feeling that we had managed to move forward, and out of the “stuckness”, and the client feeling that she had been pushed into a place she did not want to go.

What could I have done better? For one, there was obviously an issue with A, and I just skipped right over it. Didn’t see it. Too busy being a great coach! This could not really be the issue, could it? All it would take is… That is to say, I judged the situation according to my criteria, to how difficult I think it should be (or how difficult this would have been for me).

Another thing is that I wanted to change something. I wanted to create movement. I wanted to do it right! So, with all that, it is no wonder that I missed what was happening.

So, I was really NOT listening. At least, not in a non-doing, non-judgemental, non-whishing way.

Listening, the ONE thing to do in coaching. The MOST important thing in coaching. I thought Powerful Requests, were one of the strongest tools in coaching… and they are. But if I am not listening, they will be out of place.

The client is THE ONE who knows.

Peer Coaching

This week I had my last “compulsory” coaching session with a peer client.

Twelve weeks ago, when we started, I decided to take on a part of my development that had been lagging behind for ever, or almost. A part that had resisted intact many years of siege by analysis. And, although there is still a great difference in the amount of freedom and choice I have in this area, compared to other areas, everything has moved forward, thanks to my coach’s patience, sensitivity and caring. And of course, thanks to her coaching skills.

My life will be different from now on. Thank you DeeDee.

I am also thankful for the wonderful opportunity that this peer coaching system brings to us in our journey to “coachingness”. And what a journey it is.

Coaching Process

This past week I took the final class in the Coaching Process module. I had taken the three others with another trainer, but missed this one. It’s incredible what a difference the teleclass leader makes, even if they hardly “teach” in the convencional sense of the word. It’s almost as if I could take any module over and over, with different leaders, and different students. Just one module… I would eventually probably get through all of the issues, tools, models, etc. of ICA

This month is a transition month for me. I have decided to dedicate it to finish up Power Tools and AC100 modules, do the homework, post it, do the reflections, etc. I have been going a bit too fast, taking an average of 6 classes a week, but with little time to think about this in between sessions.

When I revisit a module to re-read my course notes and move them to Word, at times the subject seems very remote. Other times, I get moved again by recollections of what the class was like. And of course, one of the most powerful tools is actually doing the reflections and posting them, mostly for what it has of walking the talk, of living and embodying what you believe in.

Acknowledgement

This week I took a second time the second class on Acknowledgement, and today, since a client cancelled her session at the last minute I just went over the notes I took.

There was an interesting way to bring up somebody’s values, by asking them to think of a person they admire, and to name the three values of that person that they most admired. At the end, the teleclass leader said that those were the values that the admirer has, and is striving to increase or live out.

Another way to use values in our coaching, is to keep in mind the values we find out (by questioning? and acknowledge the client whenever they show up in the sessions.

It is also worth remembering that we only hear from others when there is something negative to say. So, just saying something positive to someone, or rather noticing something positive and mentioning it, will make a difference.

And something very close to coaching: Just listening can be a very powerful form of acknowledgement.

An objective: live a week of acknowledgement. Tell people that I appreciate what they do. Will I remember?

 

Resistencia

¿Cómo aprender a escuchar ese ligero cambio en el color de nuestro horizonte interior que indica que se está produciendo una resistencia?

Un tono distinto, una sensación, más tensa, una tendencia a racionalizar nuestros actos.

¿Porqué es importante esto? Cuando hay resistencia no estamos actuando en nuestro mejor interés, ni con todas nuestras armas, sino que reaccionamos. Y lo peor es que reaccionamos ante estímulos inconscientes u ocultos a nuestra conciencia.

Por este motivo podemos estar tomando decisiones empresariales o laborales que no concuerdan con los objetivos que mantenemos. O quizá pospongamos acciones que sí deberíamos tomar: nos vemos diciendo que queremos algo, pero no nos ponemos a ello… resistencia…

¿Te suena?

Semana Santa de reflexión

Cuanto más avanzo, más me doy cuenta de que el Coaching es, casi exclusivamente, escuchar. Escuchar y preguntar. Sólo con eso creo que se pueden hacer avances extraordinarios.

 ¿Cuál fue la última vez que te has sentido escuchado, realmente escuchado? La sensación de que alguien está ahí, a tu total disposición, escuchando con atención.

 La escucha total y activa permite que el otro vaya abriéndose y encontrando en su interior cosas que desconocía. La escucha activa e interesada permite ver patrones de pensamiento que el que habla no percibe, por estar tan inmerso en ello que forma parte de su misma persona, de su manera de ver el mundo.

 Y para que no parezca que me refiero a cosas evanescentes y ambiguas, hace poco tuve una conversación sobre la dificultad que un cliente (empresario) está teniendo en que una empleada cumpla sus objetivos. Cuando le pregunté sobre por qué la mantenía en la empresa si no cumplía sus objetivos, me contó su opinión sobre la persona, su potencial, pero sobre todo que no quería llevar su negocio exclusivamente con criterios “duros” y “empresariales”, que la vida era algo más que sólo dinero y que no quería que el dinero o los criterios empresariales fuesen los que dictasen estas decisiones.

Conforme hablaba me iba llegando una idea de las premisas subyacentes en las que mi cliente creía y que condicionaban sus decisiones empresariales, sin ser él consciente de la fuerza que tenían sobre él. Premisas no cuestionadas ni decididas de manera consciente. Estaba reaccionando a una “idea”, un prototipo de “empresario” manipulador, centrado exclusivamente en los beneficios, que no dudaría en vender a su madre…

Tras charlar un rato para aclarar el concepto, como acción entre sesiones acordamos lo siguiente: haría un alegato de las ventajas que tiene llevar una empresa exclusivamente con criterios empresariales, por qué es lo mejor para él, para su familia, para sus clientes, para la industria y para la empleada. Es decir, defender la postura opuesta a la que él estaba defendiendo sin saberlo (Extreme Perspective).

Su comentario tras hacerlo: No sé si darte las gracias o acordarme de tu familia, hay cosas que a veces es mejor ni plantearlas. En fín, era necesario y he de confesar que estoy realmente sorprendido con los resultados.”

Como en el caso de mi cliente, a veces nos oímos, pero no escuchamos lo que decimos.