photo credit: a hundred visions and revisions

I wrote yesterday about the importance of Faith right now. Today I want to turn my attention to Hope.

It is understandable in these times to look for the easy wins, the reshuffling of the proverbial ‘deck’ that will help us find a new winning hand. However, in doing so, we may be avoiding asking ourselves what ‘game” we want to actually be playing. Now is not the time for soft questions or banal answers. Now is the time to dig deep, to find that bedrock of hope that are the foundation for the work that is ours to do. Sometimes the most important step is to first one: to stand still, re-member ourselves, and pay attention. While at the check-out stand yesterday, I glanced over and saw this comment from champion surfer Kelly Slater, “Motivation is temporary. Inspiration is permanent.”

I have found across my life that an essential element in navigating difficult choices and difficult times is to to ensure that I have a strong personal foundation in terms of my mental, emotional, physical and spiritual well-being. I find in working with clients that they struggle most when they gauge their level of hope by what transpires in the external world around them. Most all of us have known despair at one time or another in our life. Hope does not dispense with despair, but rather enables us to stand in whatever is present but guided by a fundamental inspiration that is not attached to the vagaries of circumstance. Hope is about deepening our roots so we can draw the sustenance that the branches—our life—need in order to reach to the sky.

Unfortunately, some clients have become root-bound, unable to change with the times, while others are restless and unrooted, unable to ever quite fulfill their mission. As I thought about my work with them, I was reminded of an ancient African proverb that if people walk too far or too fast, their story will not catch up. Narrative coaching is about helping people ‘catch up’ with their stories so they have the foundation for the life or the organization they desire. We embody hope when we can stand in our stories, individually and collectively, and draw power from the powerful myths of the earth and tell the healing stories of the sky. Cut off for either of these, we are far less sustainable. Now is the time to rekindle our sense and sources of intrinsic hope so we can step consciously and courageously into the challenges of our time.

Where do you need to put down deeper roots? What sustenance do you need to dwell in Hope more often?

photo credit: wadem

As I travel to work my clients or research a subject for my next book, I am increasingly convinced that these three aspirations have a lot to say about what people hunger for in organizations and communities. This seems particularly true as we head deeper into a brave new economic world in which many of our assumptions and plans are being dashed. What will breakthrough from this time of breakdown? It remains to be seen how and when the proverbial phoenixes will rise from the ashes that are unfolding around us. However, the ancient practice of using stories to help people frame adversity as part of a larger Narrative are helpful here as a means to retain a sense of faith, hope, and love.

I begin here with Faith. Hope and Love will follow . . .

Faith

While known for his sage insights on marketing, Seth Godin offered this distinction in his book, Tribes: “Religion is the way things have always been done, whereas faith is the underlying commitment to ‘the big idea.’” Religion is about resurrecting the old General Motors; faith is about the commitment to rethinking transportation, communities and lifestyles. My work is about helping clients find the ‘big idea’, the core ‘story” at the heart of their work—and finding new ways to bring it to life. As institutions and certainties wobble, faith is the commitment to the big ideas that truly matter.

Faith is the balancing force to the fear that has crept into many our consciousness (and into our checkbooks) to varying degrees. Faith is not the same as blind trust; it is the return to what is essential and what needs to be done. Faith is not about a naive idealism or a narrow fundamentalism; it is an opportunity to ask the hard questions and make the hard choices in service to the ‘big ideas.’ Faith enables us to build bridges from the ‘religions’ of the old world to a new world based on a deeper understanding and courageous embodiment of our commitments to the human story.

Narrative work and coaching are powerful tools to help people and organizations to create and cross these bridges. As I recently shared with the top leaders in a large professional services firm, “there is no ‘normal’ to which to return.” They can either settle for sifting through the ashes or they can get to work on building the phoenix. My role is to coach them to fully rise to this occasion. All they need is a little faith. . .

What would you be doing if you had more faith?

photo credit: sbblackley

The title for today’s post honors the recent death of Richard Wright, founding member of the legendary rock band Pink Floyd. In my work with clients, we often focus on creating the ‘container’ in which they can feel safe enough to openly and honestly engage in the stories they’ve long told themselves. It is from this place that they can be courageous enough to explore what else is possible. It is as if they are asked to make new choices about whether they want to add the next ‘brick’ (a story about an experience) to an existing wall or to a new path (the larger narratives we tell and live).

Are you a security guard or a seeker?

One is about security and one is about seeking. While both are important at the right time in coaching and in life, the former is often informed by our fears while the latter is generally informed by our hopes. As Ira Chernus recently wrote, “Whenever people shelter behind walls for protection, they reinforce the fears that sent them behind those walls in the first place.” While the recent economic events in the U.S. have caused many people, myself included, to pay a new kind of attention to issues of real security, I can’t help but see a need to retain our commitment to seek new paths from this place we are in.

Which story are you going to reinforce?

Narrative coaches help their clients to increase their ability to notice the “brick” in their hand and be mindful and courageous about the chocies they make in the moment as to which story they are going to reinforce. This image fits well with what we know neurologically in terms of how habits are formed through the reinforcement of certain neural constellations.

There are certainly times when we all need a healthy and reassuring dose of stability and security, particularly in times of duress and change. However, there is a great need in these times of extraordinary flux to equip clients to fully step onto the pathes in front of them—even those that are not fully formed yet.

Where are you putting your “bricks” today as you think about your most significant experiences and contacts? Are you adding to the walls around yourself and/or others — or are you using them to extend the paths toward what is possible?

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

photo credit: KidMoxie

I had the pleasure of working with Shawn Callahan of Anecdote to produce an exciting new white paper, “Three Journeys—A Narrative Approach to Successful Organizational Change” that links coaching, stories, and organizational change. The approach is based on the story of Lewis & Clark who forged a trail that would lead to the formation of what we now know as the United States. I included a case study involving a large client project to illustrate the approach in action in supporting this client to build a coaching culture and internal coaching capabilities.

We also use lessons learned from expedition itself, based on Stephen Ambrose’s book Undaunted Courage, to offer important lessons for today’s change leaders. For example, while on the first of the three journeys, leaders should be aware of the fact that:

1. The story for change must be told, at least initially, in the language of those most affected by it, if leaders want their engagement in the change.
2. Preparation in complex environments requires testing assumptions and balancing the needs for adaptation and execution.
3. It is dangerous to take an old paradigm and old ways of living into a new land.

Have a look at the white paper for yourself and let me know what you think.

photo credit: richardmasoner
Albert Einstein once noted that, “problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” The same is true in working with the stories people tell us in coaching conversations. People narrate their experience based on their cognitive patterns, personal dispositions, contextual demands and the vocabulary of their social discourse. As a result, they tend to tell their stories along similar lines over time.

One of the lessons we can we take from recent research in the neurosciences is that rapport in coaching is built through the resonance between two people, a matching in which they connect using the same sides of their brain. In my work, I make the corollary point that we then foster change by connecting with the client across the channels once rapport is established, e.g. left brain modality to right brain modality. For example, I might invite a shift from their abstract description of the situation by asking them what they are experiencing in the moment.

When you feel stuck in a coaching conversation, it usually means that the client is trying to solve the “problem” at a level that is familiar to them—but is often the very construction/habit that created the issue in the first place. If this happens for you, I would suggest one of two options to help your client get unstuck: (1) rise up a level to help them get a broader perspective and see what they cannot see at their current level of narration or (2) drop down a level to help them get more of the details and enrich and embody their understanding.

Start within the frame of your clients’ stories to expand the storytelling space between you—and then invite them to move to a different level if it would free them up to gain a new perspective on themselves and/or their situation.

My wife recently returned from a fascinating workshop with Brad Keeney, psychologist and expert on traditional healing. Take a look at this clip from a Canadian documentary as it shows Brad’s work with what he calls “shaking medicine”. There seems to me to be a growing confluence of what we are learning from the neurosciences and what many have known for centuries about the true nature of healing. If this is so, what does this mean for coaching?

Are there ways in which coaching, when its based in assumptions about linearity, causality, and rationality, misses out on some of the processes by which people actually develop? In my work with people’s stories in coaching and in teaching coaching skills, I increasingly see the ways in which development is nonlinear, noncausal, and nonrational. As I have deepened my explicit and tacit knowledge of the way stories play out in coaching, I find myself being more compassionate and courageous in working with a person’s narrative material.

In doing so, I marvel at the mystery of human nature and growth based in millennia of genetic programming and embeddedness in natural systems. As a result, I wonder sometimes if those of us (at least in the West) over-emphasize the cognitive and linguistic domains in working with our clients. It is as if we carry a belief that higher order brain functions will be able to triumph over ancient patterns if only we work hard enough. While we certainly have sufficient anecdotal experience of this in our own lives, I wonder sometimes what we are missing as coaches by not working with these ancient patterns—instead of against them. Our stories are not just in our head.

It is as if coaches become split between the face we wear in the daytime to fit into an evidence-based, market-driven world and the face we wear in nighttime to engage with other worlds we believe in our heart may actually be closer to the truth of what works. As I’ve written about in recent articles, it is the path of the craftsperson, the artisan who diligently develops the science and skills of the practice while all the while dancing with his/her muse and the mysteries of the art.

Where are you stretching yourself today in terms of how you think about and practice your craft?

photo credit: indigoprime
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I came across these words from the late Arthur C. Clarke, renowned science fiction writer, the other day and reflected on their meaning for coaching. They seemed particularly interesting given his choice to write about the future from Sri Lanka, a context where ancient battles for power are playing out in civil war. One of sources of power in using a narrative approach to coaching is that it helps individuals and groups reckon with the historical and cultural forces that shape their stories while at the same time envisioning new ones that can be told.

As I wrote about in a recent journal article, I believe a narrative approach is useful in developing ourselves as artisans who blend science and practice to meet our clients’ needs through the questions we form, the evidence we choose, and the reflexive evaluation of our performance. As more coaches develop mastery of the technologies of coaching, we may indeed move closer to the realms of magic. As I’ve also written, the language of “craftspeople” and “guilds” seems useful here. This echoes a comment from psychologist/anthropologist Brad Keeney (1990) who urged his fellow practitioners to free themselves from the tight embrace of medicalism and scientism in order to connect to the creative wellsprings of the arts.

One of the questions I will pose in moderating an upcoming panel on research at the 2008 ICF Conference is, “What can we learn at the intersection of art and science that provides better evidence to guide our practice?”

Where have you found the “magic” in working with your clients?

photo credit: Shereen M
It has been awhile since I posted. I’ve been quite engaged on two other fronts: One is an intense and wonderful coaching project in Australia.

The other arose just before I left when I followed a gut feeling (reinforced in my dreams) that something was not quite right in my body. I discovered through an ultrasound that I have a large nodule on my thyroid. The biopsies were inconclusive and so I will have surgery sooner rather than later to take part of it out – and find out for sure.

They say the chance it is cancerous is about 5%. However, I soon discovered that while the statistical difference between the 0% chance I had before and the 5% I have now is not all that significant, the emotional difference was huge. I’ve since moved to a better space where I’ve come to appreciate this wake-up call.

I found that in this time of waiting—and the not knowing that comes with it—it was hard to know what story tell about my situation. I was not well but I was not sick. In some people I evoked a story of great concern while others resorted to hurried optimism. I came to realize in some important new ways both the power of the choices we make about how we narrate our lived experience and the power of the stories that are told about us.

I am choosing to be grateful for what IS — an opportunity to recalibrate some elements in my life. Oddly, this re-balancing process mirrors a dilemma that surfaced in my Hogan assessment where I scored very high on ambition and fairly low on power. No wonder my thyroid is out of balance!

The fact that the problem is there has important symbolic, energetic and practical implications in terms of how I express myself and live my life. What a gift! Regardless of the biopsy outcome, I am using this time to be more courageous and clear about the story I tell through my life and work.

What story is your body telling you? What story are you telling through your body?

photo credit: JasonRogers
It is the call the parent of a teenager dreads. The policeman phoned at 2:30 in the morning to tell a single mother that her daughter was at the police station. She had been picked up in the wake of a wild party. Relieved that her daughter was not hurt, the mother’s attention quickly turned to her disappointment and anger. The two of them had been fighting for weeks and now the daughter had broken both the agreement with her mom and the curfew of the town.

The mother hurriedly gathered her things, stormed out of the house, cursing her daughter for the embarrassment this would cause the family when the news appeared in their small-town paper the next day. As she drove to the station, silently praying that none of her neighbors would see her, she vented loudly about what she planned to tell her daughter for “screwing up yet again.”

And then . . . she remembered a phrase from a coaching workshop series she was attending as a leader at work: Breakdowns can lead to breakthroughs… She stopped ranting long enough to pause. And hear herself talk . . . and wonder what had gone wrong. And pull over to the side of the road for a minute to settle her breathing. And shed tears as she recognized in that moment the pain she felt in her sense of separation from her daughter. And vow to herself to find a path to a breakthrough starting that night.

And so . . . after she signed the papers at the police station, she began the “long” drive home — with her daughter sitting sullenly in the back seat refusing to engage. In the awkward silence that ensued, the mother finally opened her mouth to speak. The daughter instantly geared up to protest, anticipating yet another big fight, but was stunned to hear her mother say, “It must be hard to be 16 these days. I would like to hear what it is like for you when you’re ready.” And from that pause, the deep listening began . . .

The mother went on to be one of the best coaches in our program for her federal agency, sparked in large part by her own experience that night. She learned that listening is not half of a transaction but rather the whole of an incubation. Rather than perpetuating the same old story with her daughter, she paused long enough to create the space for a different story to become possible. Somewhere within any breakdown are the seeds of a breakthrough waiting to be born. Is that not what coaching is all about?