Most people have some strong opinions, but these don’t normally prevent them from having rational discourse. However, some people present to coaching with deeply closed mindsets, by virtue of, for example, extreme religious or political views, or adherence to irrational conspiracy theories. What makes them so difficult to coach is their inability to accept the (more…)
Alan Turing’s famous test for machine intelligence was whether or not a conversation with the machine was indistinguishable from that with a human. I was introduced to the reverse Turing test by Kiersten Dierhof, one of the most perceptive observers of coaching that I know. It says, basically, that if a human (coach) cannot be...
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A Doodle survey of more than 6,500 European professionals and executives in 2019 calculated the cost of unnecessary meeting globally at $591 billion. That’s almost certainly a significant underestimate. On average, the respondents calculated that they spent 13 days a year in pointless meetings. Increased working from home will almost certainly have added to the...
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Read More Triage your meetings – a pragmatic approach to wasting time at pointless meetings
Everyone has some beliefs that they hold onto, even when logic suggests that this is irrational. For the most part, these are harmless and are simply part of our identity. For example, the theories of reflexology and homeopathy have both been thoroughly debunked as nonsense. However, unless the practitioner puts the client in danger by (more…)
Read More What to do when a coaching client has strong beliefs that limit their thinking
Questions about questions If there is a question a coach can ask that qualifies as the most irritating to clients, it would surely be: “If you did have the answer, what would it be?” It’s probably ingrained, like the writing in a stick of rock, in the bones of robotic coaches. Of course, there are...
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Research that suggests this is more than a hypothetical question comes from a variety of sources. One of the most powerful is the set of studies by Kathleen Vohs, associate professor of marketing at the Carlson School of Management of the University of Minnesota. These studies show that just thinking about money causes people to...
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There comes a point at least once in a coaching conversation, where the coach feels instinctively that the issue is clear enough to pose a powerful question – one that will really make the coachee think and open up new perspectives. Many times, that is exactly what happens, but occasionally the coachee simply responds with...
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If you’d not heard of scientometrics before, you are probably in good company. I only just learned about it through a fascinating article (Samuel Arbesman, Truth Decay, New Scientist, 22 Sept 2012, p37-39) exploring how quickly “facts” in various branches of science turn out to be untrue. Many medical schools, says the author, routinely tell...
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A recurrent theme in my coaching supervision is the complexity of managing expectations and conversations with other stakeholders in the coaching relationship. The client’s line manager and HR, as well as, in some cases, important peers of the client, all have a view of what the coach should be doing – and this can create...
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One of the basic rules for growing and maintaining effective networks is to look out for interesting conversations. I was fortunate recently to encounter, on a guided walk through the mountains of Gran Canaria, the author of a fascinating study on networking within and between firms. His PhD thesis, published in 2009 explored HR practice...
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