Ignite the Third Factor. Peter Jensen

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      Because I have been a coach in many phases of my life—in sport and even more so as a leader and as a parent of four now-adult children—I tend to think in terms of how people learn and how they will use what is offered. The preceding chapters introduce new possibilities and some exciting concepts. Now we’ll talk of communication skills, because this is the foundation for all that follows. There is really only one way to ply your trade as a coach and engage the Third Factor in those you are developing: through your ability to communicate.

      All good leaders, teachers or parents would agree that the three skills outlined in this chapter are essential and very, very easy to understand. You no doubt will also grasp the considerable importance of acquiring these skills if you are going to be an effective “Igniter.” Grasping is the easy part. I teach these skills numerous times every year and still fail to access them to any meaningful degree in some of my own challenging situations—especially in dealing with difficult people! I am so much better than I used to be, but I still have a way to go. It’s important here not to equate “simple to grasp” with “easy to do.” The good news is that there are only a few key skills to be learned, and I know you can do it. I am getting much better and so will you, but to be successful you must make learning and practicing them a priority.

      What I’m referring to in this chapter are the fundamentals of communication. These are the workhorses of communication skills. The very best coaches communicate effectively because they have mastered the fundamentals. You can too.

      Here is more good news: These communication skills apply in all situations. If you develop them, you can do anything.

      It is my not-so-humble belief that much of the coaching/management literature unnecessarily complicates the whole area of communication. It makes much of the styles of communication—mentoring, teaching, confronting and consulting—but much more important than those labels are the skills underlying each of the styles. If you learn to ask good questions, be an effective listener, give really good feedback and know how to confront your performers when things are not going well, you can do most anything. In this chapter we focus on the first three skills and leave confronting to Appendix B: When All Else Fails.

       Core Skills in Coaching

      There are two core skills in the consulting style of coaching: asking effective questions and listening actively. I will speak mainly about generating self-awareness and self-responsibility—the “to dos” of the Third Factor. These dynamics lead to engaging the other person and motivating them to evolve to a higher level. It’s obvious how these skills connect to igniting the Third Factor.

       Ask Effective Questions

      A question is much more developmental than a command because it leads to reflection and awareness and eventually to self-responsibility and commitment. This is not new. Plato and Socrates taught extensively using questions, as do all the Zen masters. Self-realization is developmental, and to discover is superior to being told, because it engages the Third Factor. Self-realization generates in the person the desire to get better and to take personal responsibility for moving to the next level.

      The information in this section is freely drawn from the exceptional work of Sir John Whitmore, a colleague of mine, and David Hemery, an Olympic gold medalist. John Whitmore’s excellent book Coaching for Performance, written some 15 years ago, covers in much more detail some of what I summarize here. David Hemery has recently put together an extremely useful book entitled How to Help Children Find the Champion Within Themselves. It is written for parents, teachers and coaches who want to learn how to ask better questions and grow and develop the children under their care. Another excellent book is Susan Scott’s Fierce Conversations.

      Consulting is a style of communicating that did not come easily to me. Trained as a schoolteacher, I had learned how to do a lot of lecturing and telling, and only listened when it was absolutely necessary or when the other person insisted. It’s really amazing that I have been as well received as a coach as I have, given this gaping hole in my communication skills. It says something about learning environments that many organizations still welcome someone, usually a so-called expert, who comes in and “tells.” John Whitmore was the first to awaken me to the incredible potential for developing others through consulting, that I, with my dominant-speaker style, had missed.

      The idea outlined in Coaching for Performance—that you could trigger self-awareness and self-responsibility in the other person simply by asking effective questions and listening actively—was merely intriguing at first. But it moved quite quickly out of the intellectual realm and into the practical one when I was suddenly and unexpectedly called on to participate at the World Synchronized Swimming Championship in Zurich, Switzerland, as a performance coach in sport psychology with the Canadian team. I was at home packing my bags in preparation for the trip when the phone rang. Sheilagh Croxon, former Olympic coach, informed me that neither assistant coach would be on the flight that day due to medical issues, and that I was to tell the head coach, Biz Price, when I got to the airport. When I gave Biz the news, she said to me, “I guess you’re it!” Was my skinny, six-foot-three, 160-pound frame, which had little synchronized swimming experience (as a swimmer, at least), ready for this?

      Fortunately for me, synchronized swimmers spend a fair amount of time underwater, and while they were down there, Biz would turn to me and say things like “Jessica is on her nose.” I took that to mean she wasn’t straight up and down in her spiral, but to be on the safe side I simply said to Jessica, “You’re on your nose,” and when she agreed, “Yes, I felt that,” I would ask a question like “What normally causes you to be on your nose?” And after the explanation, I would ask, “What sorts of things might you do to correct that?” Jessica would self-correct, Biz would glance over and comment that it was much better, and when Jessica came up for air I would tell her, “That’s a lot better!”

      This went on for a few practices until reinforcement assistant coaches arrived. I might add that for the first few practices the swimmers were amazed at how much I knew about synchronized swimming! My cover was blown СКАЧАТЬ