Episode #19: Coach
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Coach
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Welcome to Allowed. I’m your host, Caneel Joyce.
Speaker 1: (00:02)
Today, we are talking about a set of skills that can help you when you’re desperate to get something done with someone, it’s not happening. You’re noticing yourself maybe wanting to fix the problem for them. This might happen when you’re working with one of your children. It could be when you’re collaborating with you know, maybe your husband or with somebody at work. It also often happens if you’re a manager of people with people that you’re managing. So I think all of us can relate to the experience of we’re seeing somebody struggle with something or perhaps they’re kind of carelessly leaving something undone and you don’t really want to have a conversation about it. You’d rather just fix it yourself or maybe you don’t want to make them feel bad. Today I’m going to give you an alternative that is going to produce amazing results for you in your life, in all areas of your life.
Speaker 1: (00:55)
This is the skill of a coach. This is where we get to experience our full creativity and pull it forth from others. You are allowed to create base for others, take full responsibility for their results and their growth. With a simple question. You can sit back and watch the magic happen. Welcome to allowed. I’m your host. Caneel Joyce. Let’s start the show allowed. When you were born, you were whole. Perfect. Then somewhere along the way you learn that parts of you were not allowed here and you began to chip away at yourself. What are the pieces of you that you’ve put into the basement, the parts of you that we cannot see anymore or that you cannot even remember? What are the ways that you, without even knowing it, are eroding your own alive ness, your creativity and your wellbeing and how can you reclaim the wholeness that is your birthright? I’m dr Caneel Joyce and I’m here to join you in exploring these questions and many more you didn’t even know you were allowed to ask. You are allowed to grow. You’re allowed to dream. You are allowed to be exactly who you are and to become the next version of who you want to be. Start your journey of exploration with me right now on him allowed.
Speaker 2: (02:18)
You are allowed to be
Speaker 1: (02:22)
welcome to the show. This is such an exciting time to be a part of the kick ass enterprises team because we are in the enrollment period for forward fearless, which is our ongoing group coaching program where I get to meet with you live twice a month and you get to be connected to some incredible peers who are like you on a major growth journey in their life.
Speaker 2: (02:51)
If you’re going through a big change or you want to improve how you are experiencing being alive as a conscious, I really invite you to check out the details on this program. You can find a link at [inaudible] dot com which is spelled C, a N like nonsense, E. E. L. this is an online program and we have members all over the world. We have people from Canada, South Africa, Sheila, uh, Europe, and it’s a really great group and the way that everyone’s getting to know each other is really quite moving and the support that they’re receiving from each other, not just from the program. And for me, it’s exactly what I was hoping was going to happen with this programs. I’m really, really excited. The other thing I’m excited about is because this is an online program, I’m able to offer this at such an affordable rate. This is a fraction of what it costs to work with a top notch executive coach.
Speaker 2: (03:52)
It’s a fraction of my normal rates and it’s usually something that is easily justified when you’re considering that payoff of you becoming a stronger leader who’s more sure of what you want and is able to move forward fearlessly. So forward fearless has been literally designed for you. You can actually work this stuff and receive some live coaching, even one on one coaching in that group format from me. So please check it out. If you’re at all curious, do apply. This window is going to close soon and we’ve only got until the end of this month before you need to enroll. Since we are closing enrollment at the end of March, 2020 and we won’t open it again for months. So if you’re curious now why delay sign up right now@caneel.com now for small challenge this week and opportunity to receive a special gift. Just for me. Here’s the challenge. Like my Facebook page and click on through to join our allowed community Facebook group and there this week you will find a brand new post, which is a coach challenge.
Speaker 2: (05:00)
In this challenge, what I want you to do is leave a comment and here’s what it should include because this is the podcast episode about how to take on coaching skills in your comment to this challenge. I want you to tag a person in your life who you think is an awesome coach to you. This is somebody who has never swooped in to try to save you or fix you, but instead they have empowered you simply by encouraging you, drawing you back to your vision, asking questions that allow you to solve problems and grow and learn on your own. And this doesn’t have to be somebody who coaches professionally. Often there’s a person, a mentor, a family member, a parent who really sees you and empowers you. What I’ve loved is when I have an employee who does this and actually I am super fortunate that the two main members of my team, Alena and Heather, thank you guys have been really incredible coaches to me so I’m going to tag them.
Speaker 2: (06:04)
All right. The last part of this challenge is leave a little comment to me about one thing that stood out from this episode. Now you don’t have to remember all this stuff. It’s all there in the coach challenge. Just go to my Facebook page and then link through to the group, join us and leave your comment. Who ever is the lucky person to get drawn who’s offered a complete, you know, response. Cause I’m, I’m a stickler like that. I’m going to draw from all of those complete responses and you are going to receive a special gift to me in the mail. So we’ll, we’ll reach out to you and ask you to send us your address and I’m going to send you a little package just for me. I can’t wait to learn about the people who have had the most impact on your life and to hear what it is that you’ve taken away from this episode.
Speaker 2: (06:48)
When we share what we’ve learned, it really helps the learning sink in and it’s such a great opportunity to get to appreciate someone who’s really made a difference from you. They might not even know it. Now let’s get into today’s topic. This week we are right in the middle of our three part series on the empowerment triangle. Last week we did an episode all about the creator role and this week we’re doing the coach. Next week is going to be about the challenger role, which is one of my favorite topics. So in this series on the empowerment triangle, we are digging deep into the roles and I please encourage you to go back and listen to the episode on the creator so you can have a sense of the complete thing in the empowerment triangle. This is where we are above the line and if that phrase doesn’t mean anything to you, you can learn more about above and below the line.
Speaker 2: (07:35)
In episode six, seven and then our drama triangle triad was 1213 and 14 so we talk about this a lot. We often are focusing on the below the line piece because it’s just so normal for us to be below the line. That’s at T time where we’re in a state of threat or really feeling like we’re right. We might go into victim mode or hero mode and try to fix somebody or solve something. We might go into villain mode where we’re really blaming ourselves or others and that’s all the drama stuff, right? And humans truthfully are hard wired to be in drama. The good news is there’s this other triangle which is above the line and actually those three modes of the drama triangle flip and they turn into this beautiful triad with the creator, the coach, and the challenger, and being able to recognize these three roles in yourself and others can give you a really clear roadmap of which skills do I need to bring into play and how might I get myself unstuck.
Speaker 2: (08:36)
Like the key question here is where am I? Am I above or below the line? So let’s really dig in to what it means to be in the coaching position. And I do not mean being a professional coach, somebody that coaches for a living. I mean, you can be a coach any day of your life. This is such a mindset and skillset for you to have. It actually saves a ton of time. You have so much influence with so little effort. Truthfully, it’s really easy. Okay, so here’s the thing. When you see something going awry, how do you respond? We talked about heroing in episode 14 and as a reminder, what the hero, the below the line hero is all about, is seeking temporary relief from that problem. They like to fix and save and solve and swoop in. They also like to ignore and numb out and escape.
Speaker 2: (09:30)
Um, they apply solutions to problems while avoiding feeling their feelings. Can you think of a time when you have heroed you might hero yourself, you might hear, Oh, someone else. You might hero in a situation and that problem inevitably is not resolved at the core permanently. You’re not addressing the root cause because you’re only seeking that temporary relief from your feelings. So the challenge for us is as a coach to listen without that filter of where’s the problem? What’s the solution? It’s to not let certain attitudes or biases inhibit our ability to be present with our authentic experience. And sometimes this means being present with our experience of witnessing somebody else having their own experience. You know, I know that as a mother, one of the most challenging things for many of us is to witness the suffering of our own children. And as we know, childhood has a lot of suffering in it.
Speaker 2: (10:34)
There’s a lot of hard knocks and learning that happens. And when children are given some space to be empowered to solve problems on their own, they learn and they grow. And that sticks with them for life. When we swoop in and solve every problem for them. And you know, the extreme version of this is like the classic helicopter parent, right? When we swoop in and solve all those problems for them, they don’t learn. What they learn is I need to rely on others. And I must not be equipped because someone else’s swooping in here, so it can have both a temporary lack of learning, but also this longterm like self-understanding of I am a victim, I’m not capable. So the hero sees others as victims. The coach sees them as empowered and creative even if they are not experiencing themselves as that in that moment.
Speaker 2: (11:21)
So temptations to hero, a bound. It is very easy to walk through life and notice a ton of opportunities for you to swoop in and help. And I know sometimes like magic when there’s a big project on my plate that I’m really wishing I could avoid doing. Sometimes a great opportunity to procrastinate comes along such as, Oh no, there’s something going wrong with my technology or I really hate the way my office is laid out and I can see my team is laughing at me right now because they see me do this sometimes or somebody will arrive at my doorstep really, really needing my help with. I remember it became so predictable in grad school, right when I was about to dig into my writing, which I really didn’t want to do because I was whatever I was below the line about it. Then magically the phone would ring and it was a friend in the middle of a breakup or somebody who needed a ride to the airport or you know, my mom who I hadn’t talked to in a couple of days and I really wanted to get into it with her and, and it was just like magic.
Speaker 2: (12:16)
I suddenly began to recognize this and realize, Oh, even though I have no idea how, why the phone is ringing. Then me deciding to focus my energy, there was me heroing myself. I got to avoid all of the anxiety and kind of performance pressure I was putting on myself. All those feelings of fear and self judgment and even a little bit of like anger and some sadness and all of the things. I got to avoid those feelings cause I got to dive into something that was much easier to address and solve and ultimately to distract myself. So look out for these temptations to hero and see if instead you can say, Hmm, step back. What’s the long term play here? Who am I seeing as a victim? And again, I might see myself as a victim, like the grad school example. I was a victim of the writing work or I might see somebody else as a victim and that would be okay.
Speaker 2: (13:12)
My friend is in the middle of a breakup and I really need to help them. They can’t help themselves on their own. And it may be true that they needed my support, but me seeing them as a victim as a different thing, I’m seeing them as not empowered and when that happens, I need to come up with a bunch of solutions for them all over the place. If I were in coaching mode, instead, I’d have a different mindset about that kind of a phone call. Let’s take the breakup for example. I’d be there to hold some space to listen. I’d be there to help draw someone to remember what is it that you most want? I’d be there to encourage them, to invite them to empower themselves, to draw their attention to what choices do you have? Are there more options out there? How can we think about this creatively?
Speaker 2: (13:56)
What resources and facilities do you have that can empower you? So even if they’re in victim mode, you hold space for them on their own. Finding their own power, and this is why coaching is kind of a longterm game in a certain way, but it’s a longterm game that’s filled with these massive breakthroughs. I know that when I’ve worked with coaches who have allowed me those three or four or 12 sessions to finally make that flip and realize, Oh, I didn’t realize that I had this completely different way available to me to address this problem, or I didn’t realize how I was holding myself back. I now see myself as empowered and creative and when they hold space for me to get there on my own, it is permanently transformative because I had to go through all of that inner work, the thought process, the feelings, questioning all the stories.
Speaker 2: (14:54)
I had to do that inner work in order to land there. So now I’ve cleared that stuff all away and it’s not going to come back at me. On the other hand, there are some who call themselves coaches, but actually what they’re doing is giving advice, which is super different. When you give advice, it’s not creating that space for them to learn on their own. So you could, maybe you could tell me the answer to a problem, but in that moment, if I’m below the line, I’m actually not available to listen. Even if I’m going to follow your instructions step-by-step, I’m going to do it the same way as I was initially. Do it again later on when this come down the road, cause I didn’t get to learn it on my own. So the coach is all about empowerment and trust. The coach trust that life is providing learning opportunities.
Speaker 2: (15:38)
It’s not throwing things in your way for no reason. Life actually creates just the challenge that we need in order to do the growing that is most wanting to happen from us. And sometimes that’s really hard, right? It doesn’t mean there’s not feelings there. That’s why one of the master skills of the coach is to feel those feelings and allow others to feel the feelings. It’s an essential part of learning. Now, these learning opportunities did not need to be controlled or resisted. And in fact, typically it’s impossible. We can only control what we control and that is ourselves and our choices. When we resist learning or we try to control the experience too much, speed it up, slow it down, move around it, then we’re not doing the learning that is available to us in that moment. And life is going to say, Oh, you didn’t learn from that.
Speaker 2: (16:28)
Okay, guess what? Here’s a bigger opportunity for you. And the challenges will grow and grow and grow until we have no choice but to move through it and do the learning we need to do. So a coach understands this and that’s why they’re at ease. Giving that space to another person with the coach does as they’re listening to someone or just being with them is they’re guiding and facilitating and encouraging them, but they leave the power like the decision making. Um, a lot of the creative work they leave the actual doing, they leave that to the person whose job it is to do the creating. So they’re not trying to control. They’re really allowing the other person to do it on their own and work through it. I remember watching my son the first time he ate a solid food that wasn’t like mashed up, you know, avocado, it wasn’t baby food.
Speaker 2: (17:19)
It was a real solid food. A finger food. That’s a big deal as a parent when they finally get to finger foods, he was sitting at a high chair and there was a big, you know, tray that it has like a lip on it so that it can hold everything that’s on the tray. And I gave him a little teeny cup that had some dry Cheerios in it. And for some reason Cheerios are a magical food. They’re like the perfect finger food cause they are, they’ve got friction and enough grip that you can really pick them up and it’s perfect. So anyway, he, he’s got this bowl, he’s excited, he sees them, he kind of tries to get his hand in there and of course immediately all of the Cheerios spill and they go all over the tray. And then I remember him just like trying to figure out like how to use his hand to pick it up and he would try to pick up one Cheerio and then it would fall.
Speaker 2: (18:08)
But he’d still, he wouldn’t realize it had fell and he would move his fingers into his mouth and they’re empty and he’d be like, wait, what happened? Where’s the food? You’d try it again, try it again and look. And it was, you could tell it was the hardest thing, but he was so in the flow he wanted, what was it the end of figuring it out so much it was that vision, right? He had the vision for what it was going to be like that he never, he never went into victimhood about it. He never freaked out. He was just intently focused and being so creative, trying to figure out different approaches until he finally got that first Cheerio into his mouth. I have a video of this. If I can dig it up, I will post it because it’s a great example of what it’s like to give space.
Speaker 2: (18:46)
It took him about 10 15 minutes to get the first Cheerio into his mouth. It was amazing, and I was also noticing in myself just feeling all of the feelings about I could easily help him. Right now, I kind of want to help him. It’s almost like a knee jerk reaction of like, I want to help. I want to help, but I was very conscious of this is his journey, not mine, and the reason we’re doing this is so that he can learn to eat on his own. So it’s an example, but this happens in life all of the time, so that that’s what it means to leave the power with the person who’s doing the creating and the learning. All right. Another thing that a coach does is they focus on letting people own their own outcomes. That means that person’s responsible. The one who has the control is the one who’s responsible and they’re responsible for 100% of what they can control.
Speaker 2: (19:36)
What does it mean to let them own their own outcomes? Well, it means you’re not going to accept the responsibility for their actions and choices, but you are going to accept your part of any situation. You know, let’s, let’s just be really clear. The parts that you could control, you’re going to, you’re going to own and accept those. And, and, and we do it without judgment. That’s the big thing. So sometimes, uh, when we slip into hero, it’s because we’re worried that a person is going to judge themselves or feel insecure or feel embarrassed. And all of that may be true because when we’re learning, sometimes we do, we like often we do, we slip into victim and we or we supposed to villain and we start blaming ourselves. So the coach needs to really just hold space and allow them to own those outcomes and not try to change their mind about things.
Speaker 2: (20:24)
But if you can just sit there really believing that this person is creative, resourceful and whole, then you can allow them to go through their own process as they take responsibility. One of the kind of master skills of a coach that’s a more advanced skill is actually to have a way to ask questions that allows a person to understand where they did have some control, something that they can take responsibility for so that they can discover it on their own. It doesn’t feel great and it’s really not super helpful when someone else is pointing out to you. All the little things that you could have done differently that you should be responsible for. You hear the should that’s villain and that you, we feel that and that doesn’t feel great, but sometimes as a coach we recognize that the focus of of a person has been kind of tunneled and they may have a blind spot.
Speaker 2: (21:16)
They’re only looking at certain areas where they have responsibility. They could really be, there’s a broader array of of what they have responsibility for, which is great news because everything that we have responsibility for is everything we can control and often we forget how much power we have to control. A lot of things make sense? All right, so I’m hoping that all of this is helping you think of examples of times when either you’ve swooped in and heroed and were unable in that moment to give somebody space or maybe someone has done that to you and if you’re lucky, maybe you also have an example of a person who has given you that space to learn who has given you the ability to without judgment, without them judging you or you judging yourself to just recognize, Oh yeah, I’m the one who put myself here.
Speaker 2: (22:03)
The reason that I’m late on this assignment is I made some choices about that and I wanted to make those choices and sometimes the person can realize, you know what, actually I’m okay with this performance not being great. I was doing what was a priority for me. I needed to get some sleep. I wanted to be with my children. I was focusing on strategic issues and that’s why I wasn’t here doing, doing a bunch of coding. I was dealing with a management issue. I was, I was coaching someone else. We have our own priorities, but sometimes we forget that. So the coach allows the person to really realize what’s important to you. And sometimes we do that in retrospect. We only can realize it as we traced back through, how did I get here? How did I create this situation now? Now how does this relate to the empowerment triangle?
Speaker 2: (22:47)
So the cool thing about the empowerment triangle is that all three roles, the creator, the coach, and the challenger, they’re all connected in a specific way. So the central role is the creator role. And last week’s episode, dive deep into what it means to be a creator. What are the essential skills, mindsets and behaviors? The coach sees others as creators and they draw their attention to their creative skills, abilities, resources. They draw their attention to all of that to help them remember that they are a creator and to draw forth more powerful creation from them. So they draw it out of them like you are a creator. Even if you don’t see yourself as one, I see you as one and I am here to hold space for you to, you know, flounder around until you find that. And none of that is wrong. Like they, you really can feel that from a great coach.
Speaker 2: (23:43)
Okay. Then the other role, the challenger, the challenger is the one who says, I see more that you could be doing and I’m going to apply pressure by drawing your attention to some of the, the results that you’re not wanting or you’re claiming you’re not wanting, that you’re helping to create. So it’s a, they create discomfort and they really amp that up in order to work the change formula. All right? So they draw forth from that person who seen themselves as a victim. Like, Hey, you can do better. You can do more. Here’s what I see in you. Here’s the results you’re creating. And, and that can really wake someone up and it can be really uncomfortable. We’re going to talk more about that in next week’s episode. I just referenced the change formula. There’s another episode on that. I think it actually might be episode one or two.
Speaker 2: (24:27)
We’ll link to that in the show notes. Change formula just in brief. So it basically says we only become willing to really change when we have either enough discomfort or enough vision or really like when we have both and if we add some support we then, then we can change, but sometimes we have to get really, really uncomfortable in order to change. That’s the challenges role, how the creator works. The change formula is they spark curiosity in that person who’s feeling like a victim, they draw their attention to what could that vision be like and they really help that person figure out like what would that be in a very vivid concrete sense, like using all of the senses. What would it be like if you could get what you really want? Sometimes when we’re in victim mode, we don’t even know what we want.
Speaker 2: (25:18)
So one of the most powerful questions a coach can ask is, what do you want? And when they say, I don’t know what I want, you’re like, well what’s a different way that it could be? Or what might somebody else want in your shoes? Or if it could be just 10% better, what would that look like? Or if you could wave a magic wand and have it be any way you want it to be, even if it’s impossible, what would that be? If I could drop down like exactly the dream solution in your head, what would that be? And then ask them to make it bigger. Like what if it was 50% bigger than that? 50% better. So it’s really like getting them getting their a heat up about, Oh my gosh, I want that so much. You’re really like stoking their desire and that ignites their creativity.
Speaker 2: (26:05)
So when we have enough vision and enough just comfort and really those two things are multiplied and then we have support maybe from you as a coach, then we can suddenly like finally begin that hard work of transforming, of changing. In a way that is sustainable, permanent, lasting, a coach cares about longterm growth. They are interested in creating satisfying and sustainable results. Results that are going to keep you going. And so they’re more interested in longterm fixes than temporary ones. That’s why as coaches, we don’t give advice. We may offer our own experience on something and sometimes that can kind of verge on advice. But we are really careful about doing that because we very much want that person to step into creating somewhat from a blank slate and and looking for what would the real longterm growth look like here. And sometimes that is extremely small steps right now, extremely incremental effect.
Speaker 2: (27:10)
And then we find our big boom, okay, now I get it, we’re off to the races, everything is like amazingly better. So isn’t this sound great? So how, how can you master being a coach in your life? Let’s, let’s take an example. So right now I want you to think of an example in your own life. Where’s a situation or a person who really could use some coaching from you? And this might be somebody that you see is struggling in some way. They may feel alone. They may not be creating the results that they want or that you want. And they might be seeing themselves as a victim. Perhaps you’re seeing them as a victim, you’re seeing them as well. They’re incapable of change. Now, can you for just a moment, flip that view and do this on your own. So you’re, you yourself are going to step into seeing them as a creator.
Speaker 2: (28:00)
Can I really get with this person is capable of change. They are capable of solving this problem on their own. And if not this problem, they’re capable of leaving this problem and finding the path that they’re meant to be on and that they’re going to be fine longterm, they’re going to be fine. So can you really like see that and own that? Can you see them as resourceful, that they’re able to access, um, their inner resources or their skills, their talents, their energy, their abilities, and they’re also able to access their outer resources. So there, there are places they can go. There are people they can turn to their tools, they could use their books, they could read. So meditate on all of that. Can you see this person is creative, resourceful, whole, but there’s nothing wrong with them. There’s nothing broken. There’s nothing that needs to be fixed and that they’re capable of change.
Speaker 2: (28:53)
Can you just believe that for a moment they’re capable, that they are capable of change? They are. We all are. Humans are remarkably capable of change. We just don’t want to. So how can you help them want to? One thing you can do without even talking to that person is you can fully engage in your own life as a creator yourself. You can’t pull it forth in others. If you can’t be it yourself. This is being the change. So can you take full responsibility for your life? And if you want more on being a creator or figuring out which creator personas you like to play, please go back to the creator episode. Can you see this person as a creator in their own life? Can you drop the story that they need to be fixed or that you need to be fixed and then can you empower them to create their own change by helping them to identify what they want, what the end result would look like.
Speaker 2: (29:45)
This is their vision. And also what are some baby steps to get there. So creators get into action. We talked about this last week, they get into action, they act in the world right now and sometimes action actually looks like stopping doing something. It looks like creating space and stillness. Sometimes action looks really big. Like I’m going to quit my job and I’m going to get a new one. Sometimes action looks really, really small. I’m going to make my bed every morning actually is a pretty revolutionary and life changing habit to take on. And sometimes that little change and the book atomic habits is great and how it talks about this, that little change can unlock a lot more resourcefulness within us. A lot more discipline, a lot more focus and clarity. So as a coach, we’re able to help that person find like what are some baby steps you can take to create change right now.
Speaker 2: (30:37)
And as a coach we can appreciate the value of that person’s pain and suffering as they go through the discomfort of beginning to take action and change. And we, the reason it’s okay for us to do that and to accept their pain and suffering is because we know that they will learn no matter what they will learn. We can’t mess it up, they can’t mess it up. The good news is we will all learn in this process. So I hope that this has been a really helpful overview of some of the skills, mindsets and worldviews really have a coach of the coach that’s up there above the line in the empowerment triangle. And when you feel yourself slipping into hero or you notice your heroing, you can begin to use these steps to see if you can shift into operating in a different way. Just get really present.
Speaker 2: (31:29)
Can I see them right now as creative, resourceful, and whole? Great. I also want to offer you one last tool and there’s going to be a link to this in the show notes which is asking open, honest questions and open honest question is simply a question where it’s open ended so it’s not just a yes or no or an either or. It’s an open ended question. The second element is it’s honest, so an honest question is a question I actually have. It’s just something I’m actually curious about. It’s not a question where I’m trying to guide the person toward a specific answer or where I think I know what the answer is already either from them or the one I think is right. I truly have no preference about what the answer is. That means I’m actually curious. It’s an open, honest question and I only ask it once.
Speaker 2: (32:16)
I find that genuine burning curiosity, that creative feeling of desire I want to know, I want to learn and I have no idea what it’s going to look like on the other side. Asking open, honest questions is one of the most game changing skills a manager or a leader can learn. I was recently doing a training with about 40 managers at a big tech company, and this is a team. It’s an amazing team. They’re distributed all over the world, but they come together once a quarter and they know each other pretty well from those gatherings where they, they meet in one location for a few days so they know each other well. They work together for years, most of them. However, they weren’t practicing open on this questions. There was a little bit of like the culture of nice, a little safe, a lot of hero behavior.
Speaker 2: (33:02)
I’m going to save you, I’m going to help you feel comfortable and because I see you as a victim, I’m kind of gonna try and push you into like a solution without really being direct about it. I think we’ve all been on the receiving end of that one. So when when they were doing coaching questions for each other, which is something they really, they really cared about and were really dedicated to doing, sometimes the question would actually be a solution suggestion with a question Mark at the end. So they learned this skill of open on this questions and then I had them break out into like two or three people each and just for five minutes, go back and forth asking open, honest questions of each other. Once that genuine curiosity was there, after five minutes I heard one person say to the whole group, I’ve been working with this guy for six years and I know him better after this five minutes.
Speaker 2: (33:49)
Then I knew him after this whole six years people were saying, I never realized how much I was heroing until I felt what it felt like to actually ask a question where I really didn’t know what the answer was and I didn’t care what the answer was where I was asked something I actually wanted to know and I was curious about. People also showed what it was like on the receiving end of this. It’s like I felt so listened to and heard and cared about when this person asked me an open, honest question. This is a game changing skill. It’s, it’s actually quite easy, but as a reminder, and I want you can, something you can just download and pin it to your desk is a cheat sheet for you on how to ask open, honest questions and there’s some more stuff in there to take a further detail on that.
Speaker 2: (34:27)
So go to [inaudible] dot com slash podcast to find that download. All right. As we often do, I’m going to wrap up this episode, uh, with a couple of things. So I’ve, I’ve got an announcement for you. I’ve got an offer and I am going to answer a question from one of you listeners. This was sent to me a while ago after we began talking about what are the alternatives to being in the drama triangle. And this question is great. I can learn how to be a coach. But the problem is that my boss is not one and he’s hearing me constantly and it’s really, really uncomfortable. He keeps trying to solve my problems for me. He’s being really controlling and what can I do because he keeps heroing me in and I really wish he would coach me. Dude, this is the most awesome question because as a manager, it’s so rare to have an employee actually notice your management style enough to know that they want something different and to be able to kind of coach up and give them some feedback. So here’s a couple suggestions for you. One is a, you can be a creator, right? You can step onto that drama triangle and how can you create a coaching setup with your boss? Might
Speaker 1: (35:37)
you email him for example, and ask him to do it differently? Might you say, I would love you to ask me some questions about this, or I need help figuring out what I want. So think about like where do you, where do you want him to draw the creator in you? Another thing you might do is live in the moment when they happen to say, I have an idea. What would it look like for you to ask me some questions about this? I want to see if I can really solve this problem on my own. These are two ideas. I’m sure our listeners have more. If you do, please share them in the podcast. Facebook group, that would be awesome. It’s again linked to it in the show notes, [inaudible] dot com slash podcast where you can also find the freebie from this episode on asking open, honest questions.
Speaker 1: (36:17)
If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to this podcast, leave a review and rate us. That makes a huge difference in other people. Being able to find this and follow us on social, any of those channels is a great place to send me your questions and I can answer them on the show and we’ll see you next week. Thank you for being here, making time and space for yourself to grow into the creative, magnificent, spacious, and powerful leader that you were always meant to be. I’ll see you next week.
allowed. For more information, check out my website, caneel.com/podcast C a N E E L caneel.com/podcast where you can find tons of resources, new episodes, show notes, transcripts, videos, all that good stuff to deepen your learning experience. Also, follow me on social. Send me your feedback there. Ask me your questions. I’m Caneel dot I S on Instagram and at Caneel on Twitter allowed you are allowed to be whole.
