What do people get from coaching?

I’ve asked a lot of clients that over the years. Naturally I’ll have asked them - before we start working together, what brings them to coaching. But that’s slightly different from asking what they feel they get.

So when I ask when they are getting, generally they say “a chance to talk”, “new ideas”, “support”, a “sounding board”, “honest feedback”, “a different perspective”. Some have even said they “get advice” but that’s odd because I so rarely give it!

Rarely do they say they get “Attention”.

I think that’s because the other things are easier things to say. Perhaps there’s something concrete even about the intangibles of “new ideas”. Yes I may offer these sometimes. But most of all I “Attend”. Because I believe I am meeting a hope they don’t even know they have. To think for themselves, freely and without performing in some way. I believe that they want, more than anything in the world, to connect with someone who cares deeply about what they think. Someone who isn’t judging them or what they say in any way at all. Who wants to know what they can generate in their minds, for themselves.

They also want to trust me. And they won’t be able to do that if they don’t have my full Attention because then I just might be competing with them to be a better coach than I am wanting them to be – and knowing they can be – an accomplished thinker.

Naturally I’m not going to impose my Attention on them just because I believe it’s what they want and need. I ask their permission. And they give it very, very freely once I make the offer and explain why I am offering it. That’s how I know they’ve been longing for it. And that’s where I believe I add the most value as a Coach. Because in that Attending, I will help them to create new thinking.

And I think that this isn't confined to coaching; colleagues, managers and leaders can do the same for the people they work with, and parents and parents can do it for the people they live with.

How do we normally behave when we're together?

The photo above is a lovely demonstration of people being attentive to each other and enjoying being with each other. In reality it is probably a snapshot of a longer conversation where they weren't attentive all the time. They may even have been doing what we all do sometimes without realising - interrupting, exchanging, competing, finishing each other’s sentences.

The reality is that we all get interrupted, asked a question at the wrong time, frowned at, or we notice that people are looking at their phones instead of us. Or we get little - almost hidden but not quite - signals that they think their thinking is better. That we’re boring, annoying, wrong, or mad.

When that happens to you, what happens to your thinking?

In my own experience, when I am interrupted - openly or silently - my thinking changes from where it might have gone to either maintaining or escaping from the relationship.

I might let them interrupt because I don’t want to hog the space. I might change the subject to make what I was saying more interesting, I might feel bad and pressurised to agree with them. I might move the focus onto them and ask what they think. Or I might just give up, maybe get angry, and either emotionally or physically walk away.

Whatever I do, the result is that neither of us will know what I was about to create in my mind. And if I do the same to you when you are talking and thinking with me we will never know what you were about to create.

What a missed opportunity!

So how can we do it differently?

We offer a wonderful opportunity to our colleagues when we start and stay in a state of unknowing about what they think, and of not knowing where their thinking might go if we provide the space and Attention to let it unfold afresh, bold and brilliant.

We can do this through creating a Thinking Environment® - comprised of 10 observed behaviours, including Generative Attention, that consistently help people to generate their own finest thinking. As Nancy Kline, creator of The Thinking Environment says, “thinking for yourself is still a radical act”. Yet isn’t that what leaders, parents, partners, teachers, mentors want those we work or live with and care about to do? To go to new places, to have cutting edge thinking, growing and thriving in their own ability to get their heads around something, to be creative and robust in solving them, in exploring their deepest feelings, in making wiser decisions, and more?

To do that people need our full, generative, Attention.

There is so much evidnce now that in order to think really well, we need someone to be fascinated in what we’re saying and where we might go next, to be at ease with our thinking and the unfolding of it. We need to know that we’re appreciated as a human being, and that we and our thinking really matter. To do that, we need the promise - not the luck - of Attention.

This is at the heart of the Thinking Environment - a way of being, not of doing.

Yes we can help people with questions and coaching tools but we need to be sure who those are for. Do they really need them at all or have we convinced ourselves they are useful? Sometimes when the moment is too awkward, or quiet, or when we're stuck for where to go next we look for them. Or when we think we have to have all the answers. Yet I have often found that the most useful thing I can do is not rescue me or the other person from the stuckness – they are perfectly able, in the care of a Thinking Environment, all wrapped up in my undivided, fascinated, easeful Attention, to unstick themselves. How liberating is that?

What about the Neuroscience?

I could talk now about brains, hormones and neuroscience. There is so much I could say and it's a very popular thing to talk about - and I have huge respect for those who are finding out so much about it that's useful.

But you can read all that for yourselves. Because what we’re doing in choosing to be Attentive Leaders transcends all of that. Carl Jung probably didn’t know just how right he was when he said “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed”.

What we can do in leading is to connect with another human being to help them to see their own brilliance; surely this is the essence of humanity. And to do that, we need to give our full Attention on them and their thinking, not ours.

That is the Gift.