Hey, this is Mark Butler and you are listening to a podcast for coaches.
Recently I've been binging a podcast called the Psychiatry
and Psychotherapy Podcast with a host whose name I believe is Dr.
David Pewter.
The episodes I've been listening to so far include interviews with some of
the creators or people who are closely tied to the creators of some of the
most famous modalities in therapy.
, Dr.
Pewter is interviewing these different practitioners who have spent decades
developing and refining their different modalities for how they support people.
It is fascinating to me.
I highly recommend, if you're a helper of any kind, you'd be well
served to listen to this podcast.
Now, here's what's interesting.
The creator of Motivational Interviewing, I believe his name was Dr.
Miller.
We'll just pretend his name was Dr.
Miller.
Dr.
Miller and Dr.
Pewter were talking about how in the early days after Dr.
Miller had created Motivational Interviewing, they started to
do trainings with therapists.
They wanted to make sure that their trainings were effective.
Dr.
Miller said, It was a huge blow to his ego because they discovered through
follow up research that their trainings basically had no positive impact on
the therapist's actual effectiveness.
This surprised and disappointed him because
he thought he and his team were doing an amazing job.
The therapists were enthusiastic about what they were learning.
And then after the training in followup interviews with the participants, the
participants would describe how much they were enjoying using , these techniques.
But Dr.
Milner's team through whatever research they were doing, discovered that
the effectiveness of the therapists had actually not increased at all.
First of all, I have enormous respect for this man that he would.
care whether his trainings were actually having an impact.
It seems obvious, but it's not something I hear about very often, where people
say, let's do this training, and then let's make sure it actually helps.
Well, what they discovered is it didn't actually help.
So they were back to the drawing board.
Dr.
Pewter asks Dr.
Miller, if your trainings weren't working, then what did you do?
Dr.
Miller says, We realized that the only way to help our therapists become
more effective was by implementing principles of deliberate practice.
Now, I was a little bit disappointed because in the episode itself, they
didn't really dig into what that deliberate practice looked like.
So it left me thinking about deliberate practice as a coach.
And as I thought about that, my mind flashed to 2004, to
2008, when I had a sales job.
And this sales job was over the phone.
So my job was to call people to engage them in conversation, to get
a sense of where their motivation was to take a certain kind of action.
And what that led to was during those, let's say three and a half years, I
would estimate that I probably did a few thousand hours, let's say 2000
on the low end, maybe 4, 000 on the high end hours of deep listening.
Remember sitting in my cubicle at this sales job, you know, had a headset
and I would put my elbows on the desk.
I would put my hands over , the ear pieces of the headset.
I would close my eyes and I would lean down into that cubicle and I would just
listen to the person who I was supposed to be persuading to take a certain action.
And I think that over the course of that two to 4, 000 hours, I
became a very different listener than I would have been otherwise.
And I think that was deliberate practice.
Now can I say that with certainty?
No, no one was measuring my effectiveness.
There's no before and after I can't give you any data, but my instinct when I was
thinking about deliberate practice and how it might apply to my coaching practice,
my mind flashed to that experience.
I believe listening is the fundamental skill of coaching, deep listening, active,
listening, listening with the ability to sustain a conversation that Helps the
person who's talking, in other words, the, the client discover something they
didn't already know without leading or manipulating them, truly staying in an
open place, listening deeply so that they find their way to discoveries.
And I thought, is this a thing that coaches do?
Is this the thing that coaches know to do?
If you invited them to do it, would they have any idea how?
And I thought, well, what's in the, what's in the current environment,
what do we see in the world?
And I think what we see in the world is because of social media, like
YouTube, like Instagram, like Tik TOK, like podcasts, like this very
thing that I'm doing right now, we're living in a time of answers more than
we're living in a time of questions.
I worry that I, and all of you as helpers think that the majority
of our job is to have answers.
Insights to be clever, to quote, get a person there, help them see, et cetera.
And although I absolutely believe that having answers and having insights is
part of a great helping relationship, call it a coaching relationship,
call it a therapy relationship.
I believe that having answers, insights, and yeah, even advice.
It's very helpful to the client, but in proportion,
so let me talk for a minute about how I think this can go
wrong in a coaching interaction.
Number one, because I think we live in the age of answers as
opposed to the age of questions.
I think that when coaches do questions, they're susceptible to attempting
to be too quick and too clever.
They think that speed and cleverness are their main job.
Sometimes I think coaches say to themselves or to their peers, I'm trying
to figure out what question I could ask that would get us to the heart
of the matter as fast as possible.
And I push back on that completely.
I also worry that sometimes if a coach is in a hurry, because they want to get
to answers, they want to get to insights and they want to demonstrate cleverness.
That can lead to interruption of the client, assumptions about the client.
I think it can create weird power dynamics in the interaction where the
client is either overtly or covertly being told you are wrong and I am right.
You should be quiet and listen to me.
You should do what I say, which means in the worst case scenario,
if we get this two out of balance, we end up gaslighting our clients.
And I know gaslighting is a buzzword, but I wouldn't use it
here if I hadn't observed it in different coaching situations.
So even sometimes when a coach intends to serve with questions, if there's
too much impatience or if there's too strong of an agenda in that coach.
Then I think we wander over into harmful and even unethical territory.
I think also well intended coaches are often on the hunt for the
quote, unquote, perfect question.
Oh, I just want to ask that one question that unlocks the client,
but my observation is the attempt to find and use the perfect question
robs you of The opportunity to ask a bunch of imperfect questions and then
relying on your client's wisdom and insight and trusting that they will
have the discovery that they need to have as you patiently spend time with
them, asking all kinds of questions.
One of my favorite quotes is there's no silver bullet.
We're going to need lots and lots of lead bullets.
In other words, there's no perfect question.
We're going to need lots and lots of imperfect questions in a compassionate
setting where we're creating a lot of space for that person to explore
and feel safe while they're doing it.
And then they will find their way.
The other thing that I want to mention, because I am afraid that it happens, is
that I believe that sometimes coaches use questions to lead and to manipulate.
And in other words, they have a specific idea about what they want
the client to agree to, or to know.
And instead of just saying it, they try to ask questions that would lead
the client to say it themselves.
That is the definition of manipulation.
And I understand that it's often well intended, but it's
manipulative and it hurts trust.
You will feel it when you do this.
You will feel it.
You will feel the wrongness inside you and you'll say, oh, I'm attempting to
manipulate a certain response here.
If I want a client to hear me say something, I will just say it.
And it will sound like this.
Let me share an opinion with you.
Here's what I'm thinking.
You'll say to your client, here's what I'm thinking.
Let me know whether this resonates at all or to what degree it resonates.
And then be willing to have your clients say, that actually
doesn't resonate at all.
Oh, okay.
No problem.
Let's jump back into a line of questioning that will help you find resonance.
Let's talk about the type of questions and the attitude of questioning that I
think is actually amazing for our clients.
As a foundation for this, I want to acknowledge that coaches, because we
live in this age of answers and not an age of questions, because we live
in an era where we observe coaching inside certain communities, or we can
go online and watch YouTube clips of Colin shows where a person calls in and
talks to a therapist or calls in and talks to a money coach and we get this
rapid, , presumptive shorthand coaching.
Where the practitioner is doing most of the talking, the interaction may last
somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes total.
And that's, what's being modeled for us.
I don't think that's the type of questioning that really leads to
self discovery and insight for a client, but it makes great media.
And it's a signal to us that if something makes great media, it's
in service of the lower brain.
Because it's exciting, it's interesting, it's clever, and it may not be in
service of the higher brain, which is contemplative, maybe slower to
process, may have to spend time working its way to connections.
But because we as , coaches work in this world where most of the coaching we can
observe falls into that type of coaching.
We can become persuaded that cleverness and speed and answers are the product.
And I don't agree.
I think trust is the product.
I think time and space are the products.
So for example, yesterday I started with a new coaching client.
And it was a weird turn of events because this is a coaching client who had signed
up for coaching and paid for coaching.
And we'd never met or had even a single conversation.
So our very first interaction ever was the client's first paid session.
Well, by the way, I'm not going to do that.
I'm just going to credit that session back onto the back of the
engagement just because I want to.
I think that's great service.
You don't have to do that.
Anyway, all I did for the 55 minutes I was with this new client was ask questions.
Tell me about this.
What about that?
What about this area of your life?
And all I did was sit and listen.
I would go a little deeper on certain areas.
I would, I would do little tests and by tests, I mean I was trying
to find the emotional edges of what the person was talking about.
And that might sound like, Oh, with that thing, what would
be the worst part of that?
Or what would be the best part of it?
Let them talk through that.
Ask questions like, what have been your highest moments?
What have been your lowest moments?
And we're just, Asking questions.
This is the part that matters at the end of the 55 minutes.
I said, okay, well, you know, we're about out of time.
Could I give you a little bit of homework before we talk again?
And the client said, Oh, wow, that really flew by.
I came to the call today, worried that I wasn't going to
have anything to talk about.
I can't believe how fast that time went by.
That's a signal to me that the person was in something close
to a flow state as we talked.
And I never gave advice.
I never taught any principles.
I never said, here's what I want you to think about.
Here's what I want you to see.
I just kept asking questions and sitting in silence while the
person considered their answers.
I believe that may not be the only product that I'm selling, but it's
part of the product that I'm selling.
And if you think about your life experience, Ask yourself, honestly,
how many people in your life are willing to spend that kind of time
with you and have the ability to do it?
Well, if you have anyone in your life, who's capable of that and
willing to do it, you are exceptional.
Almost every person in our life with whom we have a relationship
also has some sort of agenda, there's nothing malicious here.
But in our relationships with our spouses, with our children, with our
siblings, with our bosses, with our subordinates, with our friends, we
all have a different kind of skin in the game in those relationships.
So intentionally or unintentionally , the incentives that we have in those
relationships will cause us to not hold in a coaching term, hold really clean space.
And that's okay.
That's what coaches and therapists can be for.
So if you are afraid that just listening deeply and just spending time in neutral
inquiry with your clients, if you think that's not enough, let me assure you,
it's something they almost never have experienced and don't really have a place
to go if they want to experience it.
So as a result, this kind of deep listening experience for the client
becomes unique and compelling, even when there's no obvious conclusion
or result from the conversation,
because the wise coach knows that these kind of interactions where the client
is able to just listen to questions and explore their own thoughts with curiosity
and compassion and patience, the questions themselves become seeds that we as
coaches plant that always bear fruit.
Yeah, but they don't necessarily bear the fruit that they think they will, and they
don't necessarily bear that fruit in the time that we think they will or should.
In other words, if you have a deep listening interaction with a client and
you finish that interaction saying to yourself, oh, we didn't get anywhere.
We didn't come to any meaningful conclusion, do not be surprised
when you meet with the client again and they say something like.
You know, you asked me this question and it just keeps coming to my mind.
I just keep thinking about that.
And here's what I've realized, but it happened hours or days, sometimes weeks
and months after that seed was planted.
And the wise coach understands that
these questions can aspirational, but they don't have to be.
In other words, as coaches, we love to ask questions , and I, I don't do this
as much, but I know a lot of coaches do.
And I think there's power in it.
Questions like, tell me about your dream life, get in, get into lots of detail.
Where are you?
What are you doing?
What do you own?
Et cetera, et cetera.
That's fine.
I, I, it's not really my style, but it's other people's style
and I, and I see benefit there.
I would encourage you to consider that very boring questions are also
powerful questions like in the last week, what was your favorite moment
or in the last week, what was the worst moment for you?
What was the low point of the last week for you?
We can ask questions that just connect them to their recent.
Daily experience.
And we can trust that even a small connection to a small
experience can reveal something.
And as we stack up those revelations, we get to insight that in my opinion is
easier for the client to trust because we ask them apparently boring questions.
They inquire within themselves about those questions.
They start to see patterns, they start to see how different
experiences relate to each other.
They start to see patterns in their way of being.
And from there they draw insight and they decide whether they want
to pursue a different experience.
We can ask questions that are as mundane as Hey on Sunday nights,
how do you feel about Mondays?
And they could say, oh, I hadn't really thought about it.
You know, actually on Sunday nights, I do feel a little bit of dread.
Okay.
Say more about dread.
Well, I don't know.
I just don't really look forward to work that much.
Okay.
If I ask you to think about work, is the thing you're
dreading any of the following?
Is it a particular relationship at work?
Is it the activity that you engage in at work?
Or is it something else that I'm not even thinking of?
You know, I get along pretty well with my boss.
That relationship's fine.
The truth is, I'm just so sick of the work that I do.
It doesn't mean anything to me anymore.
Oh.
Did it used to mean something to you?
Well, yeah.
I used to love it.
I used to love the work.
Okay.
Do you have any memory of when that feeling started to shift?
Uh, three years ago, I moved into management, I used to be more of a
technician and I was thriving there.
And then I moved into management.
Okay.
Why'd you make that move?
Oh, you know, more money.
There was more money there.
There was upward mobility.
We just had a kid.
Okay.
So you see what I'm doing?
I ask a question.
They give an answer.
I ask a followup.
They give an answer.
I ask a follow up and as I do that, I am using my coaching
skills to seek the emotional edges.
Well, how did that feel?
Well, what was the best part of that?
What was the worst part of that?
What would you have done differently if you could go back?
Why do you think that would have been better than what you did?
And you just ask questions and the time does fly by.
I believe this is.
The deliberate practice of coaching, or it's one of the ways to do
deliberate practice and coaching.
And it starts with taking all of the pressure off yourself to be clever, to
be insightful, to be quick, to be deep.
And it's just being professionally curious.
What do you do for a living?
I get paid to be curious is a thing we could say as coaches.
I get paid to stay curious long after a normal person would jump
to conclusions, insert opinions and start to attempt to manipulate the
conversation in a way that serves them.
I get paid not to do that.
Fantastic career, by the way, an incredible career.
Here's what I want to suggest to you.
Would you consider a hundred hours of this kind of practice?
Um, would you consider going out into the world, going to anyone and
saying, I am practicing listening.
Would you be willing to sit and talk with me for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes,
60 minutes, whatever amount of time, all I'm going to do is ask you questions
and let you explore your own answers.
And by the way, would you mind if I recorded this?
Because in order to become better at what I do, I want to be able
to study the questions I ask.
And whether or not they are helpful,
if you will do this, you will be a very different practitioner after the
a hundred hours than you were before the a hundred hours, there's no doubt.
And as a side note, and I almost hesitate to say this, but in a recent episode,
I talked about how all we as one on one coaches need is to have a healthy list of
people who would be happy to hear from us.
You will find it impossible to do this exercise of a hundred hours of deep
listening of listening without agenda.
You will find it impossible to complete that a hundred hours without adding a
bunch of names to the list of people who would be happy to hear from you.
Why?
Because you'll be one of the very few people in that person's life who just.
Listens, and that makes you attractive and that makes it so when you reach
back out to them in the future with a newsletter, with a podcast episode,
with a hi, how are you with a video clip that you think they'd like to
watch, they will get your message and they'll be happy to receive it.
And I continue to say that is the foundation of a, an amazingly effective
marketing strategy for a one on one coach.
So, of course, I'll say it again, I'll say it a thousand times.
You do not bring a transactional attitude or mindset into these interactions.
You don't have to, if you listen like no one else will listen, you
become one of the most appealing and attractive people in that person's life.
And going forward, they will be happy to hear from you.
And as a coach that will lead to everything you ever need it to.
So deliberately practice listening.
I think you'll find it pays dividends that you can't even begin to imagine.
I'll talk to you next time.