Confidentiality in coaching

Coaching,

Sometimes it helps me with my time to take something that I’m writing elsewhere and to post it on my blog. This posting is one I made to the Coaching At Work group on LinkedIn before Christmas and also to subscribers to the Training Journal Daily Digest and I’d love to extend the invitation to readers of my blog to join this discussion. I wrote:

Well, I’m just back from spending a week with Roger Schwarz, author of The Skilled Facilitator Approach. It was an immensely nourishing, enriching, challenging and thought-provoking experience.

Over dinner one evening, I was part of a discussion about confidentiality in coaching. A core value of Roger’s approach is transparency and we discussed the implications of transparency in coaching.

So I’d like to extend the question to you: what is the purpose of confidentiality in coaching? Yes we all understand that clients can feel safer to share themselves fully in coaching if they know their coach is committed to maintain confidentiality. But how often do we propose a contract of confidentiality whether the client asks for it or not – without discussion, even? And with what implications?

I’m guessing that most clients would love to work in a wider environment in which it’s safe to share and so I’m wondering – how does agreeing this contract of confidentiality in coaching serve this broader aspiration?

I found our discussion over dinner thought-provoking and I wonder: what thoughts do you have? And what practices?

Even as I write I’m grateful to John Fisher, one of my colleagues on the Digest for reshaping my question in a way which adds clarity and simplicity: do we use confidentiality for our benefit, the client’s or because we “just always do it”?

The Skilled Facilitator Approach on LinkedIn

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Sometimes in the world of deep learning it’s possible to feel quite lonely. For as much as some people appreciate those people who, by their learning, lead the way towards approaches that are as yet scarcely known, others can find them irksome and over analytical. On the surface it’s hard to argue with the Skilled Facilitator Approach – I doubt that many people would find much to contradict in its underlying values and ground rules. Still, this does not mean that many people put it into practice.

For this reason, when I feed back to members of the Training Journal Daily Digest, I am thrilled to hear from someone whose company has been working with Roger to increase their effectiveness using the Skilled Facilitator Approach – and I wonder who else is out there. I check on LinkedIn to see if there is a group and, finding none, decide to set one up.

This requires some thought about how to describe the group and I go to Roger’s website for inspiration. This is the description I come up with:

Are you learning to apply the Skilled Facilitator Approach in your personal and professional life? This group is a place where you can discuss this approach, seek help and share your experiences.

The Skilled Facilitator approach is an approach to effective human interaction – an approach Roger Schwarz and his colleagues have been developing since 1980 when Roger began teaching facilitation skills.

You can learn more by visiting Roger’s website at http://www.schwarzassociates.com

The Skilled Facilitator Approach – first steps to learning

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I’ve already mentioned in my postings this week that I have found Roger Schwarz’s book, The Skilled Facilitator: A Comprehensive Resource for Consultants, Facilitators, Managers, Trainers and Coaches, just a tad unwieldy. So I thought it might be worth mentioning a few alternatives – for anyone who’s interested in a starter before going on to the main course.

Of course, Roger’s website is a great place to go. The website offers the full range of information you might expect from an organisation with expertise to sell, including a free monthly newsletter.

One article is available which gives a succinct introduction to the Skilled Facilitator Approach. It’s called Ground Rules for Effective Groups and is in its third edition.

Mmm… and maybe I should take care not to put you off Roger’s book. This is also available via his website.

The Skilled Facilitator Approach – a vehicle for holding courageous conversations

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Sitting at my desk preparing to write about my week with Roger Schwarz and his colleagues in December I look down at the card we all received as part of our training. The two-sided laminated card offers a reminder of the core values which guide Roger’s approach, the ground rules and the six steps of the mutual learning cycle.

Perhaps there’s no surprise that this approach touched me deeply. At one level, with its focus on effective communication, the Skilled Facilitator Approach is a business tool, available for use by facilitators, managers, coaches, trainers… the list could go on. Somehow, we have depersonalised communication in the business world and yet it’s deeply personal – we may be part of the business machine and still we are real people, with thoughts, feelings, emotions. The Skilled Facilitator Approach invites us to engage deeply with them in service of our communication with others.

What is the appeal to me? Firstly, with so much research on what it takes to be a great leader, parent, teacher (McGregor’s X and Y theory springs to mind) it can seem strange that we live in a world in which the learnings have not been applied. It seems to me that the Skilled Facilitator Approach maps out in very practical ways what it means to embody this theory. I am particularly drawn to an approach which is grounded in a clear set of values and assumptions (and I recognise how much they reflect my own aspirations). Perhaps at root, this approach has a deep appeal to me with my preference for holding real and courageous conversations.

Now, I set out to write about the training itself and I recognise that I have not done this. Still, I want to express my gratitude to Roger Schwarz, to Matt Beane and to Annie Bentz for embodying this approach in their training with us. For this is a rare sight – the espoused theory in practice. And I know it is borne of an ongoing commitment which few people demonstrate in their lives to put into practice a set of values, rules and behaviours. Roger, Matt and Annie, I thank you all.

Roger Schwarz and the Skilled Facilitator Approach

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Over the years, I’ve found that my learning needs have been met as much by synchronicity as by diligent research. My introduction to Roger Schwarz and the Skilled Facilitator Approach has been no exception.

As it happens, the friend who introduced me to the Skilled Facilitator Approach is also the friend who introduced me to Marshall Rosenberg’s work in the field of Nonviolent Communication – Aled Davies, Director of Resolve (GB). I remember how, in 2003, Aled thrust Marshall’s book into my hands and said “you must read this!” More recently, Aled has told me about his interest in the work of Roger Schwarz, author of The Skilled Facilitator Approach. I took Aled’s choice, in 2008, to fly to the US to train with Roger as a measure of the value he placed on Roger’s work. In the months running up to Christmas Aled has been planning a programme in London – Roger’s first public programme in Europe.

Now, let’s be clear. Roger’s book is rather fat and unwieldy. I’ve been reading it – slowly. At the same time, I was keen to support Aled in publicising Roger’s visit. So I asked Aled if he would run an evening workshop to which I could invite members of my network. I was thrilled when Aled said yes. I didn’t anticipate that I would come away from the workshop and sign up for Roger’s programme in December. And I didn’t anticipate just how deeply Roger’s work – and presence – and that of his colleagues would touch me.

Perhaps that’s for another posting. For now, it’s enough to say that this is how I spent the week beginning 7th December 2009. And this was, for sure, a week to remember.

Continuing the big freeze

About Dorothy

The big freeze continues. In SE13 our snow fall has been modest compared to many parts of the country, perhaps three or four inches. In Haslemere, my friend Jenny tells me they have had a foot of snow and have been unable to use their car. This week my appointments have been postponed, one by one, as my snow-bound colleagues and clients let me know they can’t get into London.

My road is close to Lewisham’s centre and used by many people who park their cars to go shopping. The pavements, ungritted, quickly turned from untrodden snow to thick ice. On Thursday, I decided to clear the ice on the pavement in front of my house. This was not an entirely straightforward decision. On the one hand, I felt sure the pavement would be safer without the ice and on the other hand I heard rumours that the liability would suddenly be mine if I cleared the ice and someone fell. Who wants to be sued?

On Thursday, I cleared a small path in the midst of the ice. On Friday I cleared a little bit more. Today I decided to go the whole hog, clearing the full width of the pavement of ice before going upstairs and admiring my tidy patch from above.

I sit down with a cup of tea (the pink, herbal variety rather than the strong stuff – rasberry and echinacea of I remember rightly) and finish my book. And then, looking up, I watch the snow begin to fall.

Hey, ho!

LinkedIn and the power of intention

Coaching

The new year has started – may it be a good one for you!

This week I have been catching up with all sorts of Christmas messages in amongst my client and other commitments. Amongst them I enjoy an invitation from Sara Milne Rowe to “Link In”. Sara and I met via our professional coach training and we both had the great pleasure before Christmas of joining Roger Schwarz and his colleagues for a week-long training in the Skilled Facilitator Approach. No doubt I’ll be writing more about this programme in the days and weeks ahead.

After accepting Sara’s invitation I check my progress in Linking In. When I set my intention last year to start connecting with people via LinkedIn I was already connected with 49 people. Today the number stands at precisely 100. I haven’t set out to send out invitations “en masse”. Rather, I have gone for the slow drip, drip of checking: “are we connected?” Over time, the numbers are building.

Of course, the question remains, why connect? This is also a question I am enjoying exploring. For the time being, I am appreciating the opportunity to read people’s updates – what are people up to? And of course, it’s also fascinating to discover what a small world we live in as I discover who else knows the people with whom I am connected.

When the snow falls

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Tuesday: The news bulletins start to focus on the weather, reporting heavy snow in Scotland and the north and predicting equally heavy snow in the south as part of England’s coldest winter in 30 years.
Wednesday: The news focuses on a rather luke-warm attempt to “settle the leadership question” in the Labour Party (unseat Gordon Brown?) and continues to focus on the weather. In Lewisham, where I live, the snow falls throughout the afternoon – a rare and beautiful sight. One by one, my business apointments for the remainder of this week are cancelled or converted to telephone calls. I attempt to travel to my choir rehearsal in the evening, only to be told that there will be no trains for the return journey. I go back home.
Thursday: I could spend the time I unexpectedly have at my desk – I have plenty to do. Still, it seems a shame to miss out on the snow and I venture out, walking up to Blackheath, across the Heath and down to Greenwich. There are already many footprints in the snow and – no surprises here – people of all ages are out with their sledges. As I walk one of my coaching clients phones: can I fit in a session this week? We arrange to speak this afternoon. Returning to my desk in the afternoon I am delighted to find an e-mail from a client in Dubai, letting me know he has given my name to one of his friends in Kuwait. His friend has already dropped me a line to ask for information about my work in the field of leadership development.
As I walk, I ponder the way the newscasters have been talking of the “worst winter in thirty years”. It is as if there is no judgment or conclusion involved and nothing to be explained. “Worst” is somehow commuted to the status of a fact. Without doubt, there are inconveniences and downsides to the weather. And still, these unexpected times seem to me to offer something valuable – the opportunities that need only to be seen in order to be seized. These are some of my favourite opportunities at this time:
  • The opportunity to remind ourselves that we live within nature’s laws and to consider what we can control and what we can’t;
  • The opportunity to start the day with a blank page and to ask, “what is important to me today?”
  • The opportunity to let go of doing and focus on being; “who or how do I want to be today?”
  • The opportunity to step back and reflect; especially to ask myself, how many of the activities that normally keep me busy serve my vision for the world and my own part in making that vision a reality?
  • The opportunity unexpectedly to play;
  • The opportunity to enjoy nature’s beauty.

I wonder, what are you making of this unexpected time?

Ordinary Men

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“Most of the other comrades drank so much
solely because of the many shootings of the Jews,
for such a life was quite intolerable sober”.

Following my visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau I look for a book (in Massolit Books and Cafe) that might begin to answer some of the questions we ask ourselves about the Holocaust. I come away with Christopher R. Browning’s book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.

Returning home following our visit, I make this my next read and find it to be a thoughtful and thought-provoking study of the experiences of 500 members of Reserve Police Battalion 101, based on their testimony in 1962 to 1972 as part of the investigation and legal prosecution of the Battalion by the Office of the State Prosecutor (Staatsanwaltschaft) in Hamburg.

Browning avoids sweeping generalisations to explore the multiple responses of the Battalion’s members over time, from their first and unexpected order to shoot 1,500 Jews in the Polish village of Jozefow in 1942 to the Erntefest (“Harvest Festival”) massacre towards the end of the war. Over time the Battalion’s members diverge into three groups, ranging from those who consistently took action to avoid the task they were allocated to those who learned to enjoy it.

The Battalion is of particular interest both because of the extensive and relatively open and honest testimony of its members and because it comprises the men of the title – ordinary men. These are not men who joined the Battalion fueled with the kind of race hatred that the naive witness might expect. The unfolding account offers a conclusion which, in turn, challenges any view of these men as fundamentally evil or in some way different from the reader. These were our fellow human beings.

In his Afterword, published six year’s after the book’s initial publication, Browning responds to scrutiny and criticism by his fellow author Daniel J. Goldhagen. His response is enough for me to decide not to seek out Goldhagen’s alternative account of Reserve Police Battalion 101.

The Massolit Bookshop and Cafe

About Dorothy

When the Nesbit family arranges “secret Santa” for our Christmas trip to Krakow it is easy to predict that Santa might brings at least a book or two by way of presents. So there’s no surprise, when I text my brother and sister-in-law to let them know of delays to our journey, that they reply from a bookshop.

The bookshop they describe when we arrive sounds like a veritable tardis. Stepping into a confined area it seems at first sight that this English language bookshop has very few books. Until, that is, it becomes apparent that beyond the initial entrance there’s another part of the bookshop – through some doors, across a corridor and through another set of doors. In addition, the books shop offers coffee and American cakes to eat in the cafe area or amongst the books.

I go to the bookshop, the Massolit Books and Cafe, with my brother and my nephew the day before we leave. Following our visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau we are interested to read and learn more – an interest twinged with the pain and sadness that comes with knowing about the Holocaust. We all come away with books.

And since my mother and I have an afternoon flight the next day we make the bookshop our final stop before leaving, for a browse, a drink and cake.