Dogged persistence – fossil hunting

Often coaching is about finding the right question to ask: the one that opens your client’s mind to some completely new insight. To do this you have to keep approaching your client’s issue from all sorts of directions. It is a little like being a fossil hunter: gently tapping away at a stone until it cracks open to reveal a perfect specimen hidden inside.

 

I had an interesting experience recently with a coachee (she happens to be an experienced executive coach) who presented me with a personal issue that had bothered her for many years. I did not feel entirely comfortable with my ability to address her concern and wondered whether it might be something that I should refer to someone with different specialist skills to my own. Nevertheless I thought it worth spending a little time exploring before jumping to any conclusions. After questioning her closely for about twenty minutes I seemed to be getting nowhere and I was feeling more and more uncomfortable with the subject matter. Pulling myself together I put all my focus into thinking laterally about my coachee’s situation and I persisted with the questioning even though some of the questions I was coming up with could have seemed rather odd.

 

Then suddenly I asked her the “right” question and her whole demeanour changed. It was like cracking open the stone and finding a fascinating fossil inside. She had discovered that a critical assumption about her concern was not what she thought it was and that gave her a whole new perspective: we had broken through a barrier in her thinking. In itself this did not “solve” anything but it did provide us with a step forward in addressing her overall issue.

 

The lesson here is that it is not always possible to crack open a stone in twenty minutes but do not give up: keep coming in from different angles and you’ll get there eventually.

 

[Thanks to Cris Janzen for planting the seed that inspired this blog entry.]

Six Executive Coaching Hats

 

“An antelope grazing in Africa hears a sound in the grass. Immediately all the neuronal clusters concerned with danger are activated so that the lion is recognized as soon as it emerges from the grass, and the antelope is able to escape. Such sensitization is a key part of how the brain works and why it is so efficient.”

 

So begins the introduction of “Six Thinking Hats” the book about strategies for improving thinking by Edward de Bono, the guru who coined the term lateral thinking. According to de Bono if we are to be good thinkers we need to be able to maximize our brain sensitivity in different directions at different times. As he says, “It is simply not possible to have that maximum sensitization in different directions all at the same time.”

 

A significant part of executive coaching is about helping people to make better decisions by encouraging them to think about issues in new ways. Edward de Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats” provides a good framework for this by giving people new perspectives on a situation so they can spot issues and opportunities which might otherwise be missed.

 

The “Thinking Hats” are described as follows:

 

White Hat

White is neutral and objective. The white hat is concerned with objective facts and figures. When wearing this thinking hat you focus on facts not opinions or feelings. You listen out for information that is not grounded in fact and you stay neutral and objective.

 

Red Hat

Red suggests anger (seeing red), rage and emotions. The red hat gives the emotional view. If you put on the red thinking hat you look at a situation using intuition, instinct or emotion. You listen to your gut but also try to think about other people’s feelings.

 

Black Hat

Black is sombre and serious. The black hat is cautious and careful. It points out the weaknesses in an idea. With this thinking hat on you try to see the negative side and why something might not work. By being pessimistic or defensive you highlight weaknesses and wearing the black hat can help you test the resilience of your theories about a situation or anticipate pitfalls and avoid failure.

 

Yellow Hat

Yellow is sunny and positive. The yellow hat is optimisitic and covers hope and positive thinking. Hope is a powerful emotion and positive thinking helps you see benefits and opportunities as well as keeping you focused through a tough period.

 

Green Hat

Green is grass, vegetation and abundant, fertile growth. The green hat indicates creativity and new ideas. Putting on the green hat helps you to think about creative solutions to a problem.

 

Blue Hat

Blue is cool, and it is also the colour of the sky, which is above everything else. The blue hat is concerned with control, the organization of the thinking process and the use of the other hats. Wearing the blue thinking hat helps you to stand back and manage the process of thinking as opposed to the content or the thoughts themselves. 

 

Executive coaches should encourage their clients to try on different hats while they are being coached. This gives the coachee a richer appreciation of their situation and provides them with more choices and better solutions.

 

And this isn’t just for coachees; when coaching their clients, executive coaches should make sure they try on all the different hats themselves too.