(TIP: This is all the CC blogs, except those in the category CC-TTEF-Hand-Sort, in descending date order and paginated. This is only visible if you’re logged in.)
ZOUD – Do you care enough to enter the zone of uncomfortable debate?
October 25, 2012
Last week I had the pleasure of hosting a conference session with Olympic gold medallist rower Martin Cross. Over the Summer I had read Martin’s book ‘Olympic Obsession’ in which he talks about his long career performing at the top of his sport. As I read Martin’s book I was struck by his penchant for engaging in challenging conversations as he and his rowing colleagues pursued their courageous goals.
Read more ›Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni and FACTS Coaching.
September 6, 2012In preparation for a workshop I’m delivering I’ve been reading “The five dysfunctions of a team” by Patrick Lencioni. This book has received a lot of interest and seems to be a core text around team work. It struck me that the Zone Of Uncomfortable Debate (ZOUD), speaking your truth and the ‘A’ of FACTS, Accountability, which John and I describe in “Challenging Coaching” feature highly in this team model.
Read more ›Feedback is the breakfast of champions
June 23, 2012It has been a big week for us in terms of the ‘F’ of FACTS – feedback. On Monday, Ian had an article published in ‘People Management’ on the topic of ‘How to give challenging feedback’. On Thursday, I delivered a short session on the topic of feedback to the leadership team of a major UK company that has recently gone through a significant merger to become the market leader in its sector. The CEO had given me the brief to ‘hold up the mirror’ to the team since I have worked with the company in various guises for the past five years – coaching individuals, facilitating team workshops and contributing to leadership development programmes.
Read more ›Sir John Whitmore and the Coaching Alarm Clock
June 8, 2012I recently joined one of the pre-conference webinars for the World Business & Executive Coach Summit (www.wbecs.com) which was being led by Sir John Whitmore. Sir John kindly wrote the foreword for ‘Challenging Coaching’ and I was keen to hear his latest thoughts since he has been a valued mentor and inspiration to me in my coaching career ever since I read his classic book ‘Coaching for Performance’ back in the nineties.
Read more ›Balancing support and challenge in coaching
April 13, 2012This week it has been great to hear how others are experimenting with their own balance of support and challenge in their coaching work. After all, it is one thing to write a book but it is even better to have an interesting conversation! Judy Walker came to the NHS coaching summit where we presented the other week and wrote to say that she had been ‘a lot more challenging’ in her coaching this past week ‘with good results’ – and she hasn’t even read the book yet 🙂 I asked her what had worked for her and she spoke of a session where the client’s goal was to be more assertive and it sounded like Judy modelled this behaviour for the client by adopting a more challenging style herself and moving quickly in the first coaching session to challenge the client to generate new ways of responding and to assess the emotional impact of these different options. The client’s feedback at the end of the session was ‘It was pretty challenging but I can see it will make a real difference’. It made me wonder how many of us have got to the end of a session and asked for the client’s feedback and heard them say ‘That was way too challenging. You need to back off a bit buddy because this is just freaking me out’. If anyone has had this experience then please let us know because we never have.
Read more ›Achieving courageous goals – Walking the talk
March 23, 2012I don’t know about you but if I read a book I’d like to know that the authors have ‘walked the talk’. Chapter 6 of our book ‘Challenging Coaching’ is titled ‘Courageous goals’ – this is the ‘C’ in our FACTS model. So, as the reader, I would rightly want to challenge the authors by saying ‘Tell us about the courageous goals you have achieved in your lives – Tell us how you dreamt, how you shared and how you started down your own path. It’s all very well for you to ask us to do this but how have you walked the talk yourselves’. This is a healthy challenge.
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