photo credit: mufan96

It has been a number of weeks since I last posted to this site. It is time to hit the ‘play’ button again…

I have been recuperating from surgery for thyroid cancer and attending to some needs away from the worlds as they exist on my computer. While the prognosis on the health front is excellent, it was quite the experience being on the the ‘big C’ roller coaster. One lesson learned was the limits of statistics (especially compared to the power of stories). I was told there was only a 3% chance that my growth was cancerous. However, when I was informed post-surgery that I was a part of the unlucky few, I realized that the emotional gap between 0 and 3 was much larger than the numerical one would suggest.

The mountain is still just the mountain

The power in that moment was in the story I choose to construct about my outcome—even to move beyond the need to frame my experience as either lucky or unlucky. It just WAS. I was reminded of the famous parable about the beginner for whom the mountain was just a mountain (fusion), the trainee for whom the mountain was not the mountain (separation), and the master for whom the mountain was just the mountain again, albeit with a higher level of consciousness (enlightenment). I came to realize the ways in which the labels we give to our experiences do not change the essential nature of the mountain, but are designed more to comfort our individual and collective egos.

Given that they were able to save half of my thyroid and the incidence of recurrence is rare, this brush with cancer is likely not to have any implications going forward. However, the narrative suggests differently in that I have accelerated a process that was already underway to examine the trajectories for my work and my life. It has been a time of getting down to the “roots” of who I am and what I feel called to do with my one life.

Look for changes to come soon

I am back to work full-time now and committed to re-engaging with you via this blog. Look for some changes to appear in the weeks ahead to help us all deepen our abilities to coach others and bring their stories to life. The world is waiting…

David

I had the good fortune recently of speaking at the inaugural meeting for a new ICF Chapter in Hamilton, an hour’s drive south of Auckland. Present in the group photo from left to right are Jan Canton, Janet Young, yours truly, Sally Webb, and Dorothy Oliver—the team who organized the first International Coach Week celebration for the Waikato/Bay of Plenty Region. Missing from the photo is Corene Walker, Director of Events, ICFA. It was a wonderful opportunity to help them kick off their chapter with this special event for coaches, potential coaches and organizational leaders who use coaching. We spent 90 minutes talking about “What Are Your Clients Trying to Tell You? . . . And How to Listen to their Stories to Find Out!” The drive down together was filled with delightful humor, an engaging conversation about the state of coaching, and confirmation that there are indeed sheep in New Zealand!

While in the area, I got a tour of the beautiful “whop whops” (rainforest/mountain range) by Leslie Hamilton, Chair of the marvelous 2007 ICFA Conference in Melbourne. On the same trip I spent an evening speaking on the same topic for the inaugural meeting of the ICFA sub-chapter in the delightful city of Hobart, Tasmania and for Coach Week in Perth. I always enjoy introducing people to a new approach to coaching that is driven by a mindful and compassionate attention to the narrative material from clients’ stories. I finished off this part of the trip with a two-day workshop on narrative coaching with 16 people. What I love about working Down Under is the genuine openness to learning. More workshops are being scheduled as I wrote this.

Leave me a note on the blog if you’d like to talk about hosting a workshop in your area.

We are launching our new website and new workshops! I’ve had the opportunity to speak on my work to over 1,000 poeple in the last couple of years. Now it is time to finally offer my work to my fellow coaches and other professionals (Human Resources/Capital, Organizational Development, Leadership Development, etc.).

If you’d like to know more about David and his work, sign up on our website for an upcoming telecall. It will be your chance to ask questions about narrative coaching and about the workshops.

The first two are scheduled for Tuesday, April 1st at 2:00pm PDT (California) and Tuesday May 6th at 4:00om PDT.

While you are there, check out the flyer for our first workshop in Perth and more information about our new series leading to certification next year. Drop us a comment on one of our early blog posts to let me know what you think.

We are also seeking firms to work with us in hosting our workshops. Use the contact form to let us know of your interest or point us to someone who would be a good candidate. Thanks.

photo credit: Miss Claeson
Today’s story is about my mother. Some years ago she was walking in the woods with her brother and sister who had come to visit. Knowing that my mother had a knack for finding coins—and being jazzed when she did—the two of them quietly walked ahead of her and began randomly and discretely dropping coins on the trail. “I found a quarter” came the first holler. “Here’s a dime!” came the next. After a couple more times, my mother grew suspicious and her siblings could barely contain their giggles. Finally, they fessed up.

This could be a story about gullibility, but it is really about joy. They had found something that delighted my mom. They used the occasion to recount family stories about other legendary pranks and sources of delight they’d known as children. Other stories, past and present, sprang from them. What delights your clients?

Moral of the story: Don’t worry about where your clients start in narrating their experience. Follow their trail of coins to the sacred spot where you can talk about what matters to them and would bring them joy.

I began this blog to bring together two communities doing great work in the world: narrative practitioners and coaches. I am writing from Melbourne, Australia where I presented a workshop on narrative coaching at the International Coach Federation Australasia Conference. It has been an excellent event focused on how the coaching community can step up more fully to engage the extraordinary challenges and opportunities facing the world in this tumultuous time. We were provoked by many inconvenient truths and inspired by stories of leaders who are “giving it a go,” as they would say here, in terms of creating a world that works for all.

A big takeaway for me was the importance of the choices we make in each moment, the stories we create about another person or situation — and to reflect in the moment whether my choices add to a greater consciousness and contribution — and to choose accordingly. As Rollo May once said, “real human freedom is our willingness to pause between the events in our lives and the response we choose.” It is the disciplined art of not being swept up in the habitual stories we are told and tell ourselves, but developing the capacity to continually reframe and reconnect to a larger view. Individually and collectively, we become the stories we tell.

I will use this space to share my reflections and foster connections to help professionals and organizations work with their stories and their place in the larger narratives in which we live in order to grow into the changes that have already happened. Thanks, Christopher, for that last insight.

If you’d like to know more about our introductory or advanced narrative coaching workshops for 2008, sign up for our list under Narrative Workshops. You can be assured that your information will not be given out to others. You can also use the RSS button at the top right to add the feed from this blog.

Welcome.

David