Business, Coaching, Development, Leadership, Strengths, Teams
When I opened The Guardian this morning, I was greeted by the headline: Jeremy Clarkson joins Guardian drive for fossil fuel divestment. Of course – it’s April 1st today! The hammed-up, amusing piece brought back to mind a conversation about humour I had a few days ago.
Earlier this week I had an impromptu coaching session with a sparky Australian whom I shall call Cath. While we were discussing relationships at work, and how these can be difficult to navigate, Cath asked me if this was something I saw more often in my coaching practice. I brought out one of my tools, Daniel Ofman’s Core Qualities Game, and her curiosity was instantly switched on.
Using the tool, Cath discovered that a core quality she possesses is enthusiasm. When this quality is pulled out of shape, for example when she is under pressure, it turns into unhelpful stubbornness, a feeling of being entrenched. When I asked her what she knows lifts her out of this and reconnects her with her enthusiasm – a positive quality – she answered
humour takes the sting out of my stubbornness, and allows me to take a perspective on the situation
She added that using humour well is a quality she really admired in others, and wishes she had more of herself.
Humour in organisations
Self-employed Cath confessed she had found it hard to be managed when she worked as part of a team. Many of the senior managers I work with as a coach report needing a wide repertoire of styles to lead people: at times being directive is counter productive and a light dusting of humour disarms tense arguments before they have properly developed. At the same time, those managers also take note of what is said and what remains unspoken, deploying humour to get the job done while they suspend judgement on what might be going on.
Conversely, staff also use humour to challenge upwards where they might find it difficult or inappropriate to do so more directly. This way, they draw attention to hierarchy in the organisation, and even momentarily bridge the distance in status between themselves and their more senior colleague to negotiate a better outcome. It might look like an expression of solidarity on the surface, humour is also deployed here to exercise power by those lower in the hierarchy.
This challenging use of humour in organisations, especially when bordering on the cynical can also be seen as a strategy for subversion. However, it is not the only explanation for the frequency of humour in organisations.
Shared language is a hotbed for humour
When working with teams, I will often use a working styles inventory or other profiling tool to help team members and their manager discover more about which approaches are effective and which are less helpful to individual team members. Very often such a session becomes cheerful in tone as people recognise behaviours and preferences in themselves and others.
The shared language that is created through team development activities such as above is essential to effective use of humour. A light-hearted reference to someone’s tendency to starting projects but abandoning them in favour of a new one when the situation demands seeing things through to the end can avert potential conflict by recognising the other’s preference, and inviting them to accept it cannot be satisfied fully this time. In this case humour is used as a solidarity device, expressing understanding for the other’s predicament of being invited to leave their comfort zone.
Humour: a 9-5 essential?
Many organisational scholars would argue humour at work is key to healthy organisations. Do you agree? How do you use humour at work? Is it a no-no for you, or the very lifeblood of what you do? Share some tales below, as I would love to hear them!
Coaching
Asking questions is an art form. As a coach it’s one you cannot afford not to master to an above average degree: a successful coaching process depends on it.
If you have ever picked up a how-to book about coaching, you will undoubtedly have been presented with at least a chapter on types of questions, questioning techniques and perhaps even lists of coaching questions to ask. With that, the question (if you pardon the pun) of what makes a good question hasn’t really been addressed.
You see, the quality and usefulness of a question depends on timing and context, the intentions of the asker and the openness of the recipient.
Good question!
Asking good questions – well-timed, appropriate, relevant, and posed in an understandable way – can really make a coach look smart. Noticing that I have just asked my client The Big One That Changes Everything is wonderful: this is what makes coaching great. It does come with a side effect that makes me uncomfortable, which is that it can change the dynamics between me and my client. Good questions can make me look smart in their eyes, and I have a problem with that.
Don’t get me wrong, of course I hope I am not stupid in the eyes of my clientèle! But as coaching is based on principles of partnership, equality between coach and client, and what we term unconditional positive regard for the client, being perceived as smart or smarter than the client themselves can create distance where there shouldn’t be any.
The purpose of coaching is not for your coach to outwit you, but to be with you as your comrade while you’re travelling somewhere new, uncovering new angles and perspectives as you go along. Although that can look very clever, the real expert in all this is you, and your coach knows this.
So next time your coach asks you a very good question and you feel admiration for their ability, remind yourself of this: asking stonkingly good questions is what we do for a living. Were you not expecting to be asked some?
Being someone’s coach is a humbling experience. As flattered as we may feel at times by our clients’ appreciation, truly smart coaches know that they know nothing at all.
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Business, Marketing
Yes indeed: companies have birthdays too! Socius Associates Ltd was incorporated exactly a year ago, which makes today’s date a little bit special.
So, what’s been happening in that first year? As anyone who has set up their own business will tell you, the first year is one of steep learning, investing and lots and lots of firsts.
Here are some of mine:
Landing the first client
I was lucky enough to land my first two clients before Socius even existed, which I took to be a good sign!
Landing the first client is a real boost to your confidence, so my advice to anyone thinking about setting up a new business is to put a lot of work in before you launch it. Tell everybody about it as soon as you can; ask their opinions; truly take on board their feedback and advice, and offer them an attractive rate in exchange for being the first to hire you.
Commissioning the Socius brand and website
The website is very important, because it is Socius’s shop window. I took my brief for the website and brand to the brilliant designer Rachid Taibi from The Upright One, who has designed beautiful websites, materials and brands for me before.
I am delighted with the result myself, but most importantly, people who know me and my business well, tell me the brand and website are a very good reflection of Socius’s method, approach and values. Getting this right was a real milestone.
Getting commissioned by my previous employer
Being asked to deliver a meaty project by my previous employer was a huge pleasure, because I’d enjoyed working with my colleagues there over time. Perhaps most importantly, it was a vote of confidence on their part, which matters greatly, considering how experienced and knowledgeable my former colleagues are themselves.
Finding my accountant
After I incorporated Socius, I received a letter from a fancy Oxford accountancy practice addressed to
Mr Flo van Thor, Esq.
CEO, Socius Associates Ltd.
Needless to say they didn’t get my business. Instead I used my professional network to find my accountant – credentials are important, but references matter even more!
What nobody tells you beforehand
Then there are those things you find out on your own, because nobody could possibly tell you about them if they tried. For me these have been:
Weekends cease to exist
This is not as awful as it sounds. You see, I really, truly love what I do any day of the week. I have preparation to do the day before sessions, so I will often be doing work on a Sunday. Conversely, if on a weekday I’m not due anywhere and things can wait, I’ll be running errands that would test my patience on a Saturday. Or get a book and enjoy the sunshine!
It’s OK not to network all the time
By the way, sometimes not networking can be very effective too. At a workshop in April I was simply in learning mode, even while I chatted about the course with my fellow delegates. Afterwards several of them asked for my card, while I’ve struck up a great collaboration with the trainer, the brilliant Shelley Rostlund from social media experts My Social Intelligence.
Inspiration hits when it does
I don’t go anywhere now without a notebook and a fully charged phone, because inspiration tends to creep up on me!
My 8-year-old nephew Jimmy Joe is slightly obsessed with the game Hay Day. So I play too, and we have in-depth conversations about pricing, managing stock levels and when to invest in a larger barn. It’s talking shop without the jargon, which makes no difference to the end result. The things a child can teach you about business without even trying!
A huge sense of fun
It’s not just the freedom everybody tells you about; it’s the sheer joy and hilarious things which will inevitably happen: slightly mad conversations at networking events; trying out a new coaching tool with a fellow coach while sampling carrot cake in Café Coco; getting invited onto Stuart Mabbutt’s Going Wild with Wildlife radio show to discuss the smell of cow pats in the morning, once we’d covered the seasonality of my coaching and mentoring business.
Share your tales
What about your first year in business, what do you remember above all about starting up and getting going? And what thing do you wish you’d known at the start of your second year? I’d be very interested… for obvious reasons!
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Coaching
As a coach I get asked all kinds of questions about what I do (not so much what I don’t do, which is in fact a really good question to ask a coach) and how I do it.
Here are some of them:
How did you become a coach?
Well, I guess you could say I grew into it. I’ve always worked in people-oriented roles – sales, business development, marketing, communication – and almost uniquely in the service industry. I specialised in change communications and learnt a lot about the psychological processes involved in individual and organisational change. I used my people skills to support people in organisations to make sense of change more and more.
Then I was lucky enough to have a coach of my own, and that was that. Next stop: Oxford Brookes University’s Business School!
So you tell people how to be better at doing things?
This is the question which I like least. No. I don’t tell people how to be better at things, that is a trainer’s job. Nor am I a consultant or a replacement for line management! When I coach I avoid giving advice, even though I will sometimes brainstorm scenarios with a client or recommend a good read.
Usually this is where I am met with confused looks. If I don’t advise people, then what is the point of what I do?
An executive coach understands the processes involved in self-development. Typically people who choose a coach have already discovered that they do not need someone who can tell them how to do things, because they already have such people around them. Instead they want to widen their perspective and way of approaching things, so they can get rid of unhelpful habits and try new things. They need their coach to point out blind spots – things they are overlooking in themselves or situations – which are limiting them. They know their coach has no interest in skating around the issue, and supports them safely and loyally to address it.
How many sessions do your clients have?
This is a piece of string question. It really depends on the individual, the questions they are bringing, how the relationship develops, time scales, whether the coaching is part of a development programme and the number of sessions is predetermined, and of course budget.
The minimum seems to be four sessions, more than 10 is less common. Clients also return for a top-up or new series of sessions.
How long are sessions, and how frequent?
This too depends on the individual’s needs and on the reason for coming to coaching. Most of my coaching clients have a session per month, sometimes more frequently if there are pressing matters to discuss or an important event is approaching. Sessions typically last between 60 and 90 minutes.
Do you have a model or approach?
Sadly, I do not often hear this question, and it’s a hugely important one to ask before choosing a coach.
I do not apply a specific model to my coaching, such as the famous GROW model, or base my work on a particular approach like Co-Active Coaching or NLP. Although these and other models and approaches can be excellent, I find it limiting to rely on a single one of them.
One reason is that a coaching intervention (a complete series of sessions) will have distinct phases, each of which needs coach and client to draw on different resources. I prefer to have more than one option available in the different phases.
A second reason is that each client has a unique set of qualities and characteristics, and brings their equally unique set of questions to coaching. To use the same approach with every client would be taking the ‘one size fits all’ view on coaching.
A third reason is that unlike many coaches, I find the idea of a model limiting in itself, and do not believe that having a snazzy acronym is necessary to have a solid, safe and professional methodology underpinning my practice. I’ll explain more about mine in a future post.
What is the question you want to ask about coaching?
Let me know in the box below…
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Development, Emotions, Marketing, Strengths
Happiness, it seems, has become synonymous with success. It won’t do to feel meh or mild unhappiness about something: we aspire to having constant positive emotional responses that boost our mental resources and motivation.
Positive psychologists, Todd Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Diener penned a new book titled The Upside of Your Dark Side in which they argue the case for what they term ‘mild unhappiness’, a term perhaps best explained as dependent on context.
They explain that there are tasks which really benefit from a certain level of fed up-ness to get them done. Familiar and routine tasks which no longer excite us but require our full attention to be done well are such an example. Also tasks which ask us to engage on a level of detail we do not normally favour or things we have been putting off because they take us out of our comfort zone in some other way.
One can be too happy
Feeling (too) happy too often, Kashdan and Biswas-Diener argue, can get in the way of getting things done, because:
- we get used to being comfortable, and start taking things for granted
- we are less likely to attend to detail and think more in broad terms
- we tend to minimise negatives to maintain our happy outlook
- we become desensitised to feeling happy, and so start seeking out events that trump the last one that made us feel happy
- we can also become far more sensitive to negative emotions to the point where they become overwhelming – amplification
- our happiness can impair our own and others’ performance
Of course the authors acknowledge there is a great deal of evidence of the benefits of happiness brings. Being happy is linked to benefits such as higher incomes, better immune systems, kindness and wearing seatbelts. They caution against the unrealistic pursuit of happiness, and argue the case for a better balance.
Mild unhappiness is also clearly distinct from serious, debilitating unhappiness which leads to social isolation or mental and emotional disorders. Mild unhappiness is more about being on the fed up side of indifference.
The business case for mild unhappiness
Emotions which we habitually label as negative can in fact be very helpful in business situations. Here are some examples.
Angry people are less gullible
Being aware of anger rising is informative to you. Because anger is disagreeable in itself, we tend to check whether it is justified to feel angry, and pay closer attention to what is happening. We read the situation in more detail than we would if we were happier about it; in other words, we are less easily influenced by someone’s arguments if we angry.
Anyone who works in customer services knows how hard it is to convince an angry customer who is scrutinising a product or service they are unhappy with!
Anxiety is a safeguard
Anxiety deservedly gets a bad press, because we know high levels of anxiety are bad for our health. At the same time anxiety serves its purpose: it is a very clear indicator something isn’t right.
Short bursts or low levels of anxiety shake us out of complacency and trigger processes that sharpen our senses and heighten our perception and awareness. Anxiety also boosts our problem solving capability, and helps us see creative answers to problems where in a less heightened mental state we would have made no such links.
Approaching deadlines are a prime example of anxiety triggers. In my practice as a marketer I hurtled from one to the next, and realised that I seemed to meet certain deadlines much more creatively (a very important ingredient of marketing) when I was experiencing the right amount of anxiety.
The high of mild unhappiness
The productive use of happiness and mild unhappiness dependent on context is what the authors refer to as ‘wholeness’.
Something the book doesn’t mention, but which I experience often myself, is the feeling of achievement that follows the productive use of mild unhappiness. It is not only that the task ended up being done after getting angry about it and taking a few risks which feels great. The memory of how it got done is so vivid that it serves as a useful reminder of where the line is between mild and full-blown unhappiness.
