Coaching across cultures

A fascinating conversation today about coaching people from different cultures. We all had examples to share about different cultural norms - do all Italians need to talk volubly and gesticulate, do all Turks wander off in meetings, and do all Brits speak indirectly and use sarcasm to express their real feelings? Or are these just lazy stereotypes that we hide behind rather than see the individuality of the person in front of us?

Whether we know it or not, we all see the world through a particular perspective, conditioned in part by our cultural norms, and in part by our own personality types and experience. Usually that perspective is invisible to us - we inhabit our own assumptions and beliefs - and it is only when we meet a different norm that we realise how different our own world-view is. A good case for working with a coach from a different culture perhaps?

Philip Rosinski has done some interesting work on what he terms 'cultural orientations'. These are differing cultural assumptions which vary from culture to culture e.g how power is held or shared etc. If you have 5 minutes take Philip's (free) questionnaire if you want to find out more about your own cultural orientation.

Who takes the notes?

A small bug bear of mine is 'who takes the notes in coaching relationship?'  An apparently small point I'd admit, but for me says a lot about power in the relationship and who is actually holding responsibility and ownership.

During a session many line managers I meet feel compelled to take notes because they believe they can't hold all the detail or that they will miss something vital. Fair enough if this so, but please, please, tell your coachees what you are doing as a minimum and even better if you give them your notes at the end of the session. Still better is learning to without notes altogether and giving your coachees you full and undivided attention - you can always capture your thoughts after the session.

At the end of the coaching session there is also a tendency for the manager/coach to take down the action points and agreement, perhaps sending them on shortly by email. For me this sends the message that the manager/coach is in charge and therefore responsible for the actions, as opposed to the coachee. If we believe that coaching is about increasing ownership and responsibility then this send out completely the wrong message. Far better to get the coachee to capture their own learning and action points.

So.. who takes the notes in your coaching sessions

Watch out for burn-out - issues in coaching

None of us are machines - despite our increasingly 24/7 lifestyles, all of us can only manage so much. A pattern I notice in clients is an expectation that the 'should' be able to manage all the demands on them. Rather than challenge the reasonableness of such demands the tendency is to 'soldier on'.

Which brings me to the topics of burnout - work for too hard and for too long we will succumb. Not good for us as individuals, those that love us, or the organisations we work in. It's therefore essential that coaches have an understanding of the early signs when working with over stretched clients:

• Phase of big illusions - believing that we can change the world. Work becomes life.
• Phase of frustration - placing too high expectations on ourselves leads to disappointment. We start to resent sacrificing our personal life, perhaps health problems start to niggle.
• Phase of decreased vitality - we start to feel everything is a burden, we don't have time for play or personal development
• Phase of apathy - work loses its meaning

Now of course it's not just clients that can burnout....

What is your 'deference threshold'?

Ok picture the scene - you go to visit a new client/ customer or set up a meeting with a new senior manager. Instead of being your usual relaxed, poised and self-assured self you find you have regressed a couple of decades. Instead of speaking with your normal surety you find yourself babbling and tripping over your words. Nobody is more surprised than you.

This a sure sign that your 'deference threshold' has been tripped - instead of relating adult to adult you find yourself operating from a one down place in the face of this awesome (and possibly scary) human being. We all have a deference threshold - I recently asked a very experienced coach this week who triggered hers and she replied "I once had to work with an Army General ... that did it for me!" Usually the awesome being reminds us of parental or other authority figures from childhood days and has nothing to do with the reality of who they are. Sometimes we get entangled in other's power plays and it is everything to do with them.

Coaches have to learn to work with a wide range of people - including very senior people. It is therefore well worth finding out who sends you over the edge and what it is about them that triggers you. Good material for coaching supervision.

Be more like me - issues in coaching

I often have a tricky time explaining to novice coaches that advice giving, especially on a personal matter, is, by and large, a perilous activity. "But, I' ve been through something similar - surely they would benefit from my advice!" they say to me. Well yes and no.

The point is that we are not the same, and while our experiences may be similar, they are rarely directly equivalent. What works for one person in one situation may very well not be helpful for another person in another situation. Blindly copying another's actions robs us of our resourcefulness and keeps us from trusting ourselves fully.

However, my reservations about advice giving goes beyond this . So often for me the hidden message in advice is "Be like me". I heard someone tell a colleague recently to "be more confident" - unspecific advice at the best of times but also loaded with a judgement about the relative superiority of the speaker.- "Just be like me and you'll be fine" was the implied message. Surely our job as coaches is to help people be fully themselves, rather than poor copies of other people?

As Oscar Wilde so aptly put it "Be yourself, everyone else is taken !"

Gaining perspective ... And loosing it again

So like the rest of the Western world I'm back to work after the Christmas and New Year break.
What was noticeable in the first few days back was the number of coaching clients who said something along the lines of "I'm feeling much calmer.. The holiday has given me a chance to stand back and re-prioritise... Much of the stuff I was making important just wasn't!" This is a great space to work with people in as they seem to hold their habitual ways of being and behaving much more lightly and seem much more open to exploring different ways of operating.

Then came week 2. Instead of experiencing a sense of calm and well being, clients reported how distant the holiday break felt and "It' s like it never happened". The frantic rush had begun again, and I noticed how it just took that bit longer for clients to 'tune into' their coaching sessions.

So apart from holding coaching sessions first thing on a Monday morning before the weekly scramble begins, has anyone any ideas for 'bottling' that feeling of post-holiday reflectiveness?

Happy Christmas !