Key to successful coaching - managing your own prejudices
27 Oct 2016
Self management
Look at the photo: what do you know about this picture?
Make a note.
This is an exercise we use in our coach training workshops when we come to explain the concept of self management, which is a key part of successful coaching and which many new coaches struggle with. They struggle because they’re still seeing the world through their ‘eyes’, their prism. They invariably look at the picture and immediately interpret it using all their personal experiences, assumptions, expectations, prejudices and cultural references that have shaped how they see the world. They filter the picture through their own personal lens. When you looked at the picture, what did you see? People who’ve attended our workshops have seen the following:
- ‘A man at a funeral’
- ‘A man receiving a call from the police telling him of a fatality’
- ‘A man in graveyard on stormy cold winter day’
Yet what we can say we truly know about this picture is very little. We know that from the body shape it is almost certainly a man, and from the outline of the gravestones, he is standing in a graveyard so next to a church but apart from that, we know very little. And unless you are a meteorologist, we couldn’t tell what the weather is like or the time of day.
This misinterpretation, this filtering, goes on all the time during every TV programme we watch, ever advertisement we see, every message we hear and see, even smell. It is especially true for interactions with other people and with the conversations we have. Often we hear what we feel is said – we hear our own interpretations. We project onto others what we know from experience or hearsay to be our truth and it is the reason stereotypes develop. But to really listen to someone else and develop our skills so we’re at Level 5, external listening, we need to become aware of our own filtering system, learn to listen to it and control it. This means we need to understand our own filters, our own assumptions, and learn to control them so we don’t become hijacked even if we get emotionally overwhelmed. It’s no use listening to your best friend when they’re telling you about horrid their boss is, only for you in turn to become overwhelmed with anger as you remember a time when a previous boss you had was a complete brute as this will only direct attention back to yourself. Keeping your emotions in check so the other person has the space to release their emotions is what’s important. In effect, we’re acting as their coach: we’re not judging, or offering our opinions, or trying to win them over to our way of seeing and thinking, rather we’re listening to understand where they are, and by asking the right questions where they want to be. Indeed, the ability to keep our own experiences, prejudices and beliefs from leading a conversation astray towards your way of thinking and past experiences requires impeccable self-management, which is a highly disciplined skill. As part of Lequin's online training course, How to Deal with Difficult People and Manage Conflict, we look at unconscious biases and discuss how these lead us to seeing others as difficult and how it can lead to conflict.
Key to self management is ensuring you’re not attached to an outcome. When many people first start coaching they want their clients to reach their goals, and to see noticeable change in their client’s behaviour. So they become attached to a client’s goal and in doing so often fail to hear that the client’s original goal has evolved or that there’s a good reason – a secondary gain – for the client to avoiding tackling the goal and consequently, the coaching is less effective. For many people when dealing with relationships they can’t help but feel attached to a certain outcome since through the success of a certain outcome they’re reinforcing a part of their own self-identity. But by understanding that other people evolve and detaching yourself from any outcome you ensure good self management and excellent listening. That’s not to say you shouldn’t care or get upset when someone is unkind, nor should you fail to evaluate relationships against your deeply held personal values or certain needs, but defining a relationship against a set outcome can only create a rigid, black-and-white way of dealing with others.
Lequin Executive Coaching is part of Lequin Leadership Development. We coach and train in Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Birmingham, Slough, Swindon, Reading, London, Paris, Brussels, Asia, the US,
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