coaching – In Pursuit of Great Mathematics Teaching

Coaching Questions based on FISH! A Proven Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results by Stephen C Lundin, Harry Paul, and John Christensen

This is a little business parable book. (I have read several books from this genre recently and been pleasantly surprised with them after I get over the silliness or contrived nature of the story. Another one is Who Moved My Cheese? which I wrote about recently.)

I found FISH! contained useful, applicable points for leading my team. The four practices advocated in the book are: choose your attitude at work, incorporate play, make other people’s days, and be there (fully present) at work.

Thinking as a coach, the book gave me inspiration to write a list of coaching questions. (Questions marked with a *star are taken directly from the book, not written by me.)

What would you like the energy of your team to be? When you visualise this, what do you see, feel, hear, and experience?
If you were working at your best, how would your colleagues/boss know? What would they see, feel, hear, and experience? What would you like them to see, feel, hear, and experience?
What choices do you have regarding your energy/mood/attitude at work? What attitude would you like to bring to your work?
What assumptions are you making about your energy/mood/attitude at work? If you knew you could choose your own energy/mood/attitude at work, what would you choose?
*When you are doing what you are doing at work, who are you being? Are you being impatient and bored, or are you being world famous? Who do you/we want to be while you/we do our work?
How playful are you at work? How playful would you like to feel? What would be the impact of being playful at work? What opportunities are there to be playful at work?
*How could you/we have more fun and create more energy?
*How could you/we engage [our customers] in a way that will make their day? How could we make each other’s days?
How present do you feel during your work? How present would you like to feel? What would be the impact of being present at work? What opportunities are there to be present at work? With which people could you be fully present?

I have phrased these questions for a work context, but they could be used for families and relationships of all types.

Book Review: The Invitation by Tony Stoltzfus – and coaching

The Invitation, a book about Christian coaching, has made the biggest impact on me this year. I am a practicing Christian and wanted to learn about how I can use coaching with Christian coachees. Stoltzfus runs an ICF-accredited coaching school and another one of his books, Leadership Coaching, is about coaching more generally. However, The Invitation is a book specifically about a Christian model of personal change. My biggest takeaway was how to incorporate prayer into coaching.

Stoltzfus lists sixteen psychological desires: see them in the image below (image source).

When my coachee is talking about something that I suspect is related to a deep desire, I explore to find the desire that is beneath the surface, and then choose a prayer question that asks Jesus how he has already been filling that desire.

For example, I was working with a woman whose family circumstances have changed and she found herself anxious about the future. I asked some questions to explore further what she is really seeking; a sense of peace, rest, acceptance, and purpose. After further delving, she decided that acceptance was what she was most keenly desiring. I suggested we pause and she ask a question in prayer: “Jesus, what do you like about me?” I asked her to ask the question and then sit quietly for 30 to 60 seconds and see what she heard, sensed, felt, or thought.

Book Review: The Life and Work of David Grove by Carol Wilson – and coaching

I was struck by the idea of Clean Language after reading the chapter in Wilson’s book Performance Coaching. Wilson’s book, The Life and Work of David Grove expanded on that idea and also added a lot more about Emergent Knowledge and other areas. Some parts of the book were not as valuable to me as a coach. However, I found very helpful the idea to use the coachee’s words back to them so as not to pollute their thinking. This was a hard lesson for me to learn – I think that I thought I was adding “value” in some way by interpreting what the coachee said. Now I think that this just muddies the water for the coachee. So unless I ask permission to share an idea of my own, I now try to re-use the coachee’s own words rather than rephrasing them.

Another useful idea for me was to ask for metaphors to explore the topic, especially when the coaching topic is a difficult one for the coachee. Grove used these techniques to explore trauma and I have faced only a small number of coachees who wanted to talk about traumatic events. However, it has been useful to ask for metaphors in many of my coaching conversations. For example, my coachee was talking about a feeling of grounded expansiveness. I requested a visual image for this and she replied that it was like a majestic mountain. We explored this a little more and I now regularly ask her about whether certain behaviours come from or could come from the majestic mountain.

Book Review: The Inner Game of Tennis, W Timothy Gallwey – and coaching

The Inner Game of Tennis is actually written for tennis teachers and explains how to help students experience what good shots feel like so they can become better players. The ideas have a lot of crossover to coaching and impacted early coaching ideas a great deal since its publication in 1974.

Gallwey devised the idea of two selves. Self 1 is the judgmental person, evaluating progress, giving instructions, and making the player try hard. Self 2 is the person’s “doer”, where the person experiences flow, confidence, and can see the goal of a shot. This is helpful to me as a coach – if I can help the person see their goals and approach them with relaxed concentration, rather than judging their progress, they will more naturally make progress.

Coaching Questions about Change, based on Who Moved My Cheese?

I recently read the business classic, Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson. It’s a short book (fewer than one hundred pages with nice big type!) that is a parable sandwiched by discussions of a group of friends about its meaning and use. In the parable, two mice (named Sniff and Scurry) and two littlepeople (named Hem and Haw) search through a maze for cheese. In the story, cheese is a metaphor for whatever it is that they really want in life. All four characters find some lovely cheese, but after a while, the cheese disappears. The mice immediately start looking for new cheese. The littlepeople, by contrast, waste a lot of time complaining that the cheese is gone and hoping it will return.

After some time, one of the littlepeople comes to his senses and starts off to search for new cheese. As he goes, he writes on the wall the things he learns in the hopes his partner will see it.