Coaching Unwrapped

David Crowe 0:08
Hi, I'm David Crowe, and I'm joined by Sarah Ives. We're experienced coaches, having worked in the field of coaching for 20 years. Our podcast is about what for us lies beneath coaching conversations. In this episode, we look at how to make changes in our lives, whether that's professional or personal. Why do we bother? Why should we bother making changes? A bit about the theory around making changes, and what change looks like in practice for our clients, and indeed, for us as coaches. Supporting people to make changes in their lives is at the core of what we do as coaches and it's something that isn't linear and straightforward, but it's complicated and messy and it takes a lot of commitment, takes a lot of courage, as we talked about in the last episode, and commitment in order to make that change. Sarah, what comes to mind when we start to think about how do we make changes? What is it, apart from David Bowie?

Sarah Ives 1:10
Yeah, if only we had the copyright now, sing along to that. I think I spend a lot of my time whether that's coaching or facilitating, talking about change, looking at what it takes to make a change and for me, part of it again, going back to that bravery, but it's also about clarity about thinking through, where am I now? Where would I like to be? The other side of the coin, for me, is change for someone who's naturally risk-averse. So change brings up the kind of ghost of changes past. So it provokes fear and slight anxiety when I'm being asked to change from something that I'm very familiar with into something that may be a little bit challenging, so energising and a little bit of fear. That's what comes up for me when we're talking about what does change look like? How about you?

David Crowe 2:08
A bit of the same I think, do we know what the change is? Do we know what it is? Because I think we are invested in keeping things the same as they are or similar to what they are. So I think it is, I guess the first question for me would be why change you know, is there a compelling need for change? And there may be, and I can think of some coaching situations where people perhaps have called out liability behaviour in that client and they've come to look at that, or perhaps a lack of confidence, or certainly one of the things that I've seen hugely in the pandemic, or post-pandemic, is this thing around career change. So there are a lot of people who are really throwing things up in the air and asking some fundamental questions about what they want to do. So what's in it? For me? I think it's a question of whether or not people really want to change and also, the sense that the change might not give the intended outcome, it might be different. I think there's a law of unintended consequences. So there is something about you putting a change in place and it may not be with everything, it may not be exactly what you think it's going to be at the end of it. So for me, there's something about like, thinking about, we have this nice idea of linear change, when it isn't really, it's why do we want to change? And do we understand that it might not turn out the way that we're hoping for?

Sarah Ives 3:50
Yeah, I think that's quite interesting and I think when you start to look around at what changes for different people, you know, you only have to go on to our favourite search engine and you will find, I think there's well over a million citations on what is change? What has changed management? How do we change things? So for me, as soon as you get that volume of view about what it is because we're not all thinking of it in the same way, I think it's helping people to drill down and know what that is for them. There's lots of theories around change. Some of it's fantastic and accessible. And I think sometimes for clients, they come in thinking, they don't even know that they want to change something. It's just a feeling of I'm a bit stuck. Yeah. And it's that stuckness I think for me, certainly in coaching that we help and managing that becoming unstuck and changing simultaneously, I think. When we talked about change, and trying to drill down again about what the presenting issue is with clients. So quite often people come into coaching or sessions that we run, and they do want to change something. But there are two core areas that people come at it from with me. One is fear. So if I don't change, I'm going to miss out or become irrelevant. So they're being driven by that fear-based, "I must change, I must act now, otherwise, I will, not cease to exist, but I know that something is coming, that's worse than where I am". Then on the flip side of that, and I have fewer clients on this side, there's the ambition to this positive energy. So there's something new and exciting out there. I want to change something because I think there's lots of possibilities and I'm not sure what it is, but I want a slice of it and that sort of tremendous energy and willingness to change. I think both of them have equal value. But quite often clients come at completely different angles from that. Sometimes people have been sent to coaching almost a bit like some sort of remedial therapy because it's perceived that they need to change in some way. So that's often the kind of fear-based side for me, as opposed to that more energetic side where people have sought out coaching as a way of helping springboard themselves towards the change. I don't know if that's your experience of client work and change?

David Crowe 6:24
Yeah, I think that's really well put actually, this idea of it being developmental, coaching, and being something that people can aspire and have ambition with. I think it's good and in a sense, that's probably in a contemporary basis, how coaching is seen much more now and it's probably a move away from more of that sense of things going wrong in the liability behaviour, or something that people are fearful of. So I think it's seen much more in those ways. When you start dealing with people, I think you're right, you do come across a degree of fear and anxiety about how to change or why bother changing and why can we not keep doing what we've done before?

Sarah Ives 7:13
So I'm waiting for a bit of theory to come in David because I know your deep love of relating back and I'm wondering about the one million hits on Google, where we would go first in thinking about what's out there to help us navigate change? Because I think I mean, I use a few things that I help. What about you what helps you navigate and help others through the process of change?

David Crowe 7:38
The simple one, I guess that most, well, anybody who's done any coaching training will know about is what's called the GROW Model. And even though it's poo-pooed a bit these days, I still think there's something interesting about it. So you talk through with somebody what it is they want to get, whether reality is what possible options are out there, including not doing anything? And what will they do? So it's quite simplistic. My own preferred model is, I do like the, what's called the transtheoretical model or the stages to change model, which is around... it particularly looks at behaviour change and it started in the world of addiction and that's this idea about having a kind of pre-contemplation before somebody knows they need to change, a contemplation phase, where their thinking about making a change, and action phase, typically some what's called recidivism, where they'll inevitably kind of fall back into an old pattern, before they start to take on that new pattern, and for it to grow and become part of the way that they are. There's lots of stuff out there and if I was getting really existential, I asked this question, that Carl Rogers, who's a counsellor, or was a counsellor, who did a lot of writing about this who said, the curious paradox is that when I accept myself, just as I am, then I change and this is a, I'm fascinated by this, this idea, I do believe in change as an idea. But I also think that perhaps something about us as people, that actually part of the change that we're making is to come full circle and come back to appreciating ourselves as we are. Yeah, that in itself is part of what change is and I can think of some clients that I've worked with, where I don't know fundamentally if they've changed their behaviour, but what they are is they're much more accepting and more self-compassionate about themselves.

Sarah Ives 9:41
Do you think that's a little bit around the GROW model and you sort of saying it's a bit, not out of fashion particularly, but a bit simplistic, it's a slightly derogatory term for it, but I think a lot of coaching has grown from the GROW model if you excuse the double use of the word grow. And I think that what you're saying is also that coaching has moved across slightly into looking at how we change our behaviours. So I think in its initial phase of development coaching, and I'm not talking about its birth around sporting, coaching, and where it comes from really, it was quite functional, quite transactional looking in the business world about coaching people through and having that framework and I think, I don't know what you think. But I do believe it's grown more, and not into a therapeutic side. But it does have therapeutic value hugely. It's not therapy, it's coaching. But it is therapeutic, because people get a lot out of it, and are able to move on to different things. But I also think that this concept of changing our behaviour is a key thing in coaching and that has grown for me. So initially, when people came to coaching, first off, GROW model was in there, we were looking at what, you know, what are your goals, the reality options, the wills to change, all of those things, they're quite functional and then I think you get underneath, what's stopping that? What is your reality? Is it that behaviours in others or in yourself are stopping you from moving forward? That, you know, instead of options, where are your obstacles? Are they inside? Are they outside of us? So I like the GROW model, too. But I think there is a whole iceberg underneath the surface, that big analogy there of things that are unseen, that only once you get into coaching, and you unwrap it, which the whole look at our podcast was we talked about unwrapping coaching, the bit for me is seeing that people need to unwrap a little bit in themselves in order to change. So move away from that traditional view that this is around career coaching, or you know, a specific name for the coaching. For me, it's holistic, it's getting underneath what do you need to change? Is it just your working environment? Or is it your approach? Is it your belief that something will happen for you? Is it the way you manage with other people? So I think for me, it's difficult to have one methodology. Yeah, I think the GROW method is a good place to start. But I also think that Carl Rogers, about the paradox, when you accept yourself as you are, then I change. I think that for me kind of signposts into our behaviour, just accepting who we are and how we behave, will bring about change.

David Crowe 12:51
Any others that, as we're on the theory bit, that kind of strike you as being good models or things to reflect on as coaches, you know, in terms of supporting people to make changes?

Sarah Ives 13:08
I think, you know, there's quite a lot around, and we talked about that positive energy and making a change, a positive change people at crossroads and thinking about where they want to go next. And I think the models that come to mind for me or the theories, one is Kubler Ross' grief cycle. So I often work with clients who have not worked through the change that they've made, they've jumped into a new role. They may have had something happen in their personal lives, and they've moved on without really progressing through what's happened to them as a result of the change. And Kubler Ross wrote a very catchy, really catchy title on death and dying. She is a nurse by background, and it's in the 50s and actually, it's been hijacked a bit by I think, by change management gurus, they apply the same principles of how we deal with grief and we go through the grief cycle, they've made it sort of analogous with change, and grief is change. So as we go through the cycle, I use that quite a bit with clients to try and recognise where they are. So you might want to make a change, you might have decided what to change too, you might even be in the process of changing. But understanding what you're leaving behind and where you are, is a big part of change for me when coaching and I think some people come and they feel a bit bereft because they have made a change, or they think they've made a change, but it still doesn't feel good. They haven't quite transitioned away from the old world. So I really like that as a bit of a deep dive for people to think if you are going to make the change or you're going to make changes for other people. This is what's going to happen they're going to go through this period of denial, a bit of anger, particularly if I'm helping clients think through a change in their teams or with other people they work through. So I think having that acceptance when we change that things will happen to us. So I particularly like Kubler Ross in that kind of approach to it.

David Crowe 15:20
That makes me think about what you were saying about it taking time. Something about the William Bridges thing about the transitions model, he talks about the fertile void. And that we need to spend some time in order for a new beginning to start concentrating and thinking about an ending and knowing that ending might take some time, and a lot of people go straight into something completely new, without having had that opportunity to say goodbye and to leave the thing behind.

Sarah Ives 15:51
I love the story that a fellow colleague tells me about using Bridges analogy of endings and quite often, what happens is that we are so focused on the new beginning and where to get to the other side that we haven't finished, particularly if we're bringing a team with us that we haven't access that, and he told me a story of a friend who had two children, they had outgrown their house. And they were moving to a lovely new place where the kids both had their own big bedrooms, lots of space to run around and they got in that first night into the new house and each kid was very excited about having their own room and then when they got up in the morning, both children were in the same room and they really struggled to adjust to this new life. They'd really gone, you know, thrown themselves into this brand new house, new beginnings for us and actually, not having that ending had made the change really difficult and it took the kids several weeks before they would separate and they weren't that young, they weren't tiny children. But they said at that point, you know, I should, this person did also teach a lot of change management, "I should have realised", I said, "Well, you can't plan your house, move around William Bridges, and Kubler Ross". But maybe next time that bit about letting go is something I think that coaching really adds to helping people with change. I think people do lovely plans, they might have some of a theoretical model in place. But a lot of my time, is helping people with endings, and how they manage those. So I'm a big fan of Bridges.

David Crowe 17:35
What I brought to mind for me was that you know, if we hadn't done all the things that we did in our house for the first year of living there, we would have done them really differently if we waited a year and seen what it looked like.

Sarah Ives 17:48
Yeah, this is supposed to be a bit about us demonstrating our expertise, and most people don't take their own medicine, when it comes to this, you find yourself in the midst of a change and then think, if only I had thought about the ending before the beginning. There's a bit about practice here, thinking about role modelling, we did just touch on that there and sometimes being through the changes ourselves that were supporting clients to make and I think, you know, there's sometimes a little bit about the parallel process going on there. I don't know how that sits with you?

David Crowe 18:24
I think there is, we should be, I'm not saying by any means we have to be perfect because we're not going to get anywhere near that state of perfection. But there is something about us having the self-awareness of our own changes, to help us to understand what clients are going through and I can think of lots of changes, the one that I guess that comes to mind for me is stepping into a world of freelancing, which I've probably touched on in previous episodes, but I think that adapting to that new world, where in the first six months, a year of working freelance, I took everything that came along because I was so anxious about, you know, a mortgage and two young kids. Yeah. And my wife and I both went freelance at a similar time. So there was that be hungry, you know, go out and do stuff. And I think I still get some of that occasionally now. I've been doing it for 22-23 years. So there are days that I wake up and I think you know, I need to remind myself to be an adult because I don't feel very adult. So, you know, I think that that's probably one of the changes. I would say that has been really... because I think that is backing yourself to do something which is very new and strange and challenging. Yeah. What would you say about your own change? What comes to mind?

Sarah Ives 20:02
It's interesting that when I was thinking about this, I was thinking about clients who I'm working with and coaching them through and it just sort of opens up my own well of inadequacy at times that you think I'm coaching somebody through something and would I do that? Are these changes that I haven't made? And I think that's why all coaches need a coach. So sometimes there are changes that we are helping people with, that maybe we haven't been able to manage ourselves. I mean, my mind would be similar to yours around starting a new business, taking that risk and actually knowing now, it's always with the benefit of hindsight, isn't it? I think I would have paid more attention to those endings side of things. I think I went into new beginnings, and I still had this big pot of working in a corporate environment, hanging off the back of me. I don't think I've paid enough attention to getting rid of that, and not then recreating that in my new environment. So definitely moving into working for myself was a big, big change for me and I could think of lots of small changes that I've made along the way where I may have done things differently. But that was a major one for me and again, if I was coaching myself, again, it would be looking at what are you leaving behind, rather than don't take everything with you, Sarah. I'm an inveterate over-packer. So I took at least two suitcases away from my corporate life when I could have just taken a bit of hand baggage, and let go of some things. So I think those are lessons for me and changes around taking my own medicine, looking at what I need to leave behind before I move forward and make those changes.

David Crowe 21:53
That's a great metaphor. I like that. Does it count that we now, when we get when we go overseas, which has not been that often given the pandemic, but I do just do hand luggage now. So that's a change.

Sarah Ives 22:09
You have sorted out your life luggage, that's what you've done and I'm still at the stage where, I pack one suitcase, and then I panic and throw more things in there. So I'm clearly I've done a bit more work for me to do on myself at that point. Thinking about the overall changes that we work with our clients, what are your final thoughts on that? What are your thoughts around one thing you could take away from this?

David Crowe 22:34
I've had a lot of clients. In fact, I would say there's an argument that pretty much every client that's come to me has come around confidence, or confidence has been part of they want to make a change. But it's the trust and the confidence to do that. There's a lot of people I've mentioned already today, there's a lot of people at the moment who are coming around career change. One example I have, a client came to me, this is going back quite a few years, she had gained a big promotion, as a manager of a team in an organisation that she was coming into, didn't know the context and the background of that team was appointed and found out within the first few days that there was the dreaded internal candidate who hadn't got the role and made life really difficult for her and I think there was a question for her about whether or not she stayed in that organisation and the coaching focused on managing the change and in a way, bringing the team on side. And that person has done really, really well in that organisation and stayed with it. But I think what happens with people is they get scared about that and think right, I'll go do something easier, or I'll cop out of that because I can't stay, it's too hard. Any things that you've seen in particular?

Sarah Ives 24:01
So mine is more of a, not a generic thing, but I think that quite often. The coaching session, for me, feels a bit like either a classic safe space, but a laboratory as well. So if people do want to make changes that they can bring and have that space to think about how that might look. So whilst I'm not going to bring a specific thing in terms of, you know, clients, or laundry being brought into the session for me, for me, it is around that space to experiment. It is quite safe to bring things in to talk through, to look at from a different angle, particularly when it involves yourself, your own behaviours and that bit about endings as well. I think it starts off messy. It's not always clear. But at the end of the sessions for me that people have more of an idea about what to change and what to change to and a tiny bit of how to do that as well.

David Crowe 25:01
In respect of the sense around change, and when I think when we were preparing these, we said that there was a companion piece in a way it was it sits on the mantlepiece, next to this whole thing about having courage, because you're going to make a change, whatever change you're gonna make, it's gonna require courage. What for you is the overall sense of making changes? What comes up for you?

Sarah Ives 25:26
Yeah, I suppose that signpost, people back who this might be their first episode, you need to go and listen to the courage one to take this bit. The bit for me that sits alongside, we've got lots on the mantelpiece now, is our ability to take risk alongside. So we need the courage to do it, we need to understand what the risk is, weigh that up, and then make the change. So for me, some of it is around risk and about having the comfort and the, again that experimentation. So having thought through what it is that you want to do. So instead of just having those on the mantelpiece, that you've picked them up and had a look at them, and thought about what they look like before you then decide to go for it and change something. So I'm sure you've got some final thoughts or a quote for us, David, on change.

David Crowe 26:20
It can be slow and incremental. But more often than I think the faster the world has got. It can be quicker and more chaotic. I mean, I think it can be something like moving home, starting training in a new sector or a new job, it could be a personal change in terms of separating from a marriage. I think it's about understanding, as you said, it's understanding what that change is. And that's where I think coaching is helpful, or talking to a trusted friend is another way of looking at that. It's trusting oneself and having a good support network around us to stay true to the changes that we're making. It's accepting and understanding that it won't necessarily go in the way that we'd originally planned, then the sense of nice, neat changes and project plans and what have you, it just doesn't It doesn't work that way. I'll come back to this. It's more of a Greek philosophy perspective than Carl Rogers. But this idea you know, being kind to yourself when making changes. What progress you ask, have I made? I've begun to be a friend to myself, which is a Carto I believe, and knowing that, that takes time and if we go back to what I was saying about the transtheoretical model, we're often talking months and years for people to make changes and really hold on to those.

Sarah Ives 27:43
So coaching is for life not just for Christmas!

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