Welcome to the choice Magazine podcast, Beyond the page. We're chuckling because I forgot to press the record button the first time. These things happen. choice, the magazine of professional coaching, is your go-to source for expert insights and in-depth features from the world of professional coaching. I'm your host Garry Schleifer, and I'm thrilled to have you join us today, truly. In each episode we, go figure, beyond the page of articles published in choice Magazine and dive deeper into some of the most recent and relevant topics impacting the world of professional coaching, exploring the content, interviewing the talented minds like Irene's behind these articles and uncovering the stories that make an impact.
Garry Schleifer:choice is more than a magazine. For over 21 years, we've built a community of like-minded people who create, use and share coaching tools, tips and techniques to add value to the business. And, of course, what do we all want to do, Irene? Make a difference with our clients' lives. Help make a difference, yes, yes. Absolutely.
Garry Schleifer:In today's episode, I'm speaking with coach Irene Nizzero, who's the author of an article in our latest issue "Neuroscience and Coaching Separating Myth from Reality." Her article is entitled “Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness - The ICF core competencies through a positive psychology and neuropsychology lens.” It's a very interesting article. A little bit about Irene. She's got an MA, she's a PCC and has been immersed in the study and teaching of psychology throughout her adult life and positive psychology for over a decade. So now you know why she wrote this article. She owns and operates Positive Advantage Coaching. She's also on faculty at Mentor Coach, LLC where she teaches mentors, supervises and assesses emerging coaches. What an honor that must be. This offers her the chance to bring together all that she believes is good in the world positive psychology, quality teaching and the chance to journey with individuals, learning how to impact lives in a meaningful way, just like choice. Irene, thank you so much for joining me today.
Irene Nizzero:It's my pleasure, Garry. Thank you for having me.
Garry Schleifer:Yes, I was rereading the article and then, when I was updating myself on your bio, like I say, it's just connecting the dots. So I feel I know why you chose to write this article, but why did you feel it was important to write this article?
Irene Nizzero:I was preparing some information for our students, in fact, on the core competencies, and came across these couple of articles that I referenced in this one that I've offered and is now being published through choice, and it just struck me as information that could really help others to understand. I also I'm a big fan of Richard Boyatzis' work.
Irene Nizzero:I saw that in the article. Yes, yes, well, I read his book as well. The one that comes to mind that really relates is Helping People Change. He and others wrote the book, to be fair, and it just felt like for me that quintessential light bulb went on and it just brought together all of the wondering and curiosity that I had. All the answers kind of fell into place as to really why the competencies are crafted the way they are and why they work because they do in my experience, and it just felt like a great curtain had lifted for me and I wanted to share that. And then, of course, Ryan and Deci's work has been familiar to me for quite some time and I just also felt like their self-determination theory might be something that other people would benefit from knowing also, as it really pertains to the core competency.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, and speaking of that, I don't want to pass over the opportunity to thank you for doing that mapping exercise, which you did so well in the article, by literally not just the core competency, but 8.1 or 8.3. It's like a legal document matching that, but for somebody like me, that mapping.
Garry Schleifer:Just I can reflect on that and go and take a look. And you gave some great exercises too on what you can do to enhance your skill with those competencies based on what you learn. So you talked about two theories, and this is called Beyond the Page. What else would you like to say about which theory?
Irene Nizzero:Well, both of them.
Irene Nizzero:I think you know we could certainly go a lot deeper.
Irene Nizzero:On the piece from Boyatzis in particular, the Intentional Change Theory that he refers to in this in the article of his that I referenced in my article, really sort of sets the stage for why we want to journey with clients as opposed to be that person who just throws the hints or the you know that thinly veiled suggestion that we're often so tempted to throw out in a coaching conversation and really let people come to their own realizations, to their own understanding, to their own greater clarity on what's important to them, why it's important to them and how to best achieve what's important to them.
Irene Nizzero:That, no matter how we slice it, that is the thing that elicits positive activation. He's got those two EEA and NEA and that it's through eliciting that reaction that people are going to be much more inclined to take action, to really be clear about what will work for them, as opposed to sort of with resignation, say okay, I guess that might be the thing to do. You just see people light up and it's because they've gotten there on their own, ultimately, through our well-worded questions, our curiosity, our holding up a mirror. All those things that we do well as coaches.
Garry Schleifer:Well, I also want to add, and as you said and titled the article is c onnecting to the essence of autonomy for the client competence and relatedness. I'm going to quote one thing that you said in there. We are wired for connectivity and relationships under the relatedness", and I couldn't help when I read that. Think about the AI, artificial intelligence, and technology issue we had where, it's like, will AI take over human coaching? And it's like, not as long as there's a need for connectivity and relationships. So here's another reminder of things you know.
Irene Nizzero:Yeah, absolutely. I mean and that's the Ryan and Deci piece, although certainly Boyatzis makes reference to all of what we do centering at the very core of it is the relationship that we hold with our clients, right, and but Ryan and Deci, of course, really make a big deal of that as well that we don't ever do anything in isolation. I mean, I've taught positive psychology for a bunch of years as well, and when I would talk about the relationship piece, I would invite people to think about any significant event in their lives and how many of them happened in complete isolation of other people.
Garry Schleifer:Well, and couldn't we wait to tell somebody about that event. So, even if we did it in isolation, it has so much more joy when it's shared with someone else, who can either have empathy, sympathy, gratitude, joy along with you, right.
Irene Nizzero:Absolutely, absolutely. And as coaches, I think the piece that we add that's also significant in the relatedness piece that then adds to the competency and the autonomy is to really champion our clients capabilities, causes, all of those things really help them recognize where they already are strong and capable and invite them to Ieverage that. I mean when you hear about conversations that happen with people at work, you know the direct report checking in with their manager or the manager trying to help a direct report, it's really all about the gaps so often. R yan and Deci in particular speak so much about how we can really help people just catapult things forward by saying, but this is what's going well already. How about we launch from there and take advantage of that?
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, you said it quite well and referencing the article, what else can you do to increase the client sense of autonomy but fit in any of them, relatedness, competence. How might you connect more deeply with your clients? How consistently do you celebrate your client's successes and acknowledge their unique contributions? And that's exactly it. It's like what we talked about. It's like you don't do these things in isolation with joy and reverence, I would say right.
Irene Nizzero:Absolutely, and coincidentally they come from competencies eight and four.
Garry Schleifer:Oh, thanks Irene, of course you would bring that up. I really appreciate that.
Irene Nizzero:Well, I think I should come out as a competency nerd. I think that's really what I should call myself going forward, because that's how I feel about them.
Garry Schleifer:Oh and I just feel that the competencies are, they have a spirit. They have a life. I've never found them to be just words on a piece of paper. You can play with them so much. I'm just so thankful that they were created in the first place and renewed. Gosh, that's almost five years ago now, right, yeah.
Irene Nizzero:Yeah, Well, I mean, any profession or occupation that we respect and appreciate for its contribution has a set of core competencies that guide it. It's just a natural thing to have happen. What I love about ours is that they're so practical.
Garry Schleifer:Very practical. Pragmatic and practical.
Irene Nizzero:Yes, absolutely. So, yeah I mean I come out in the article right off the hop saying I did it. I like the core competencies.
Garry Schleifer:Exactly. Well, I do too. I want to ask you, you're a coach as well. Has this altered, inspired, or changed
Irene Nizzero:I mean, aside from the obvious, you know, just follow the yellow-brick road. Follow the core competencies, you know, you'll do fine. And these two articles and theories that were housed in those articles that I referenced, have certainly helped me to understand, like I said, the magic of the core competencies when they're really taken in the spirit they were intended. So that's been a huge overarching thing. But to be more specific about it, anytime I'm tempted to say you know, I'm sitting there thinking, but if they would just you know that phrase that sits in our heads when we start forgetting why we're there. And you know, sometimes you get the client who actually says but I just want your opinion.
Irene Nizzero:You know, or I just want to know what you think I should do, and I mean it feels every day. It's not every day, but I have had a number of reasons for which I beg off and explain that really and truly you're far more the expert around this than I could possibly be, etc, etc. What happens is if I just remind myself that I'm basically taking away this person's autonomy by making a suggestion, I'm negating the confidence that they already have and have brought to this task. We just haven't found yet that thing that's really going to resonate with them. So we got to keep working on that, and that's how I tend to try and deflect it is to say "but you have the answers," and what often happens? I won't say it happens every single time, but it often happens that the client comes back around full circle to say, "h, my gosh, yeah, I just wasn't asking myself the right questions.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah.
Irene Nizzero:Because they get there and so this article really sort of supports why I need to bite my tongue and just keep on the track that I know is going to work.
Garry Schleifer:That happens to be a theme today, people biting their tongues. It came up in my supervision group this morning about biting their tongue and how much it hurts. To add to that, and we're talking about riffing and how coaching is riffing, the words that this jumping out to me from the page right now is evidence. So when I'm struck with that I tend to do, because I'm like you, it's like I can't rob them of this. This is their moment not mine, is go back and look for have you had this happen before? How did you handle it before? So I hit the reverse gear, go back and look at their lives. Theirs, not mine and then come forward again and, to your point, they usually think of something that they, to your point, they weren't asking themselves the right questions.
Irene Nizzero:And that brings us back to the relatedness part, that in isolation we can only do so much. As soon as we've got somebody bouncing back the ideas, the observations that are really relevant, because as coaches we filter through all the extra stuff and zero in on those things that seem to be most pertinent to the situation, that inevitably the client loses a bit of track of because they, to use yet another analogy, they can't see the forest for the trees. They are in the middle of it. It's not rocket science often, right. I had a conversation the other day with someone and well, I just need to know if this model is going to work, and that was like I was supposed to help them answer that question by inputting, and I kind of laughed at the idea because it was a highly specialized area. I appreciate the vote of confidence.
Irene Nizzero:Let me be very clear about this. I know nothing about this. Once we brought it back around to what do you already know? What is your gut telling you? All of those kinds of things that really boiled down the essence of the question. Another one that I that I asked was who's in your circle, that could be a resource to you around this as we were wrapping up and all of a sudden I saw the client just light up. Oh my god, I never thought about that. Yeah, this person has just walked through this very experience. Great.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, mentor.
Irene Nizzero:Exactly, exactly, but again, just you know the two minds working together in partnership. That's the key point of this. Relatedness.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, wow, I mean, thank you Yeah. Wow, Irene thank you so much. Like just taking a theory, which could be dry and boring, and bringing it to life, like the core competencies are, has really given me a new lens to be thinking about when I'm robbing my clients of their autonomy. When I'm negating their competence and the power of Relatedness, our relationship. Don't get me wrong, I never take it for granted, however, sometimes I think they don't appreciate it as much as we do as trained coaches because we're trained in knowing what our place and level and that sort of stuff.
Irene Nizzero:Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely, and I just think both pieces here really speak to just being that ally that we are. You know, just walking alongside is already huge and really helps to solidify that sense of capability, the competence that the person has, and all of the positive emotions that go with it. I just basically reference positive, psychic in passing, but in truth I think the whole article speaks to how that bond makes a difference in such important ways, just flooding that person's brain with those chemicals that make them feel like, yeah, I do have this, I can do this.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, we can, they can, and obviously we can repeat ourselves over and over again, but it's in reflection when they say it to us and we mirror it back or speak it back directly the same way, and they go "I said that, or or oh, I'm hearing something different when you say back what I just said." It is such an amazing profession. It really is. I never, ever, ever want to. Well, I'm joking. Lately People are asking me so, you know, because I'm of a certain age, I know you're still way younger. So, oh, you got plenty of years, honey. And they're saying, when are you gonna retire from your from your job? And I'm like, what job? I'm not working, I'm making a difference in the world. You know, like in your article, the brain has the hearts. This is a heart profession, not a nine- to- five profession, right?
Irene Nizzero:Oh, absolutely, ababsolutely is just enjoying people's discovery of themselves and their own capabilities. Isn't that amazing? It is. Yeah, I don't tell anybody this, but I kind of feel like I should pay people to do this for a living, and the things we get from our clients that we have to put aside for a while while we're talking.
Garry Schleifer:I know, and it's like, in your head, oh, I just had that same experience. Okay, shut up, now it's not your turn. Exactly, exactly, relatedness, you know, and yes, the things we learn, just amazing. It's called Beyond the Page. Anything else that you were would have wanted to put on the page that you didn't last chance.
Irene Nizzero:Yeah, no, I mean, I think dig into these theories more, if people are interested because they're is so much more to them than I was able to include. I really just give them the surface and you know, I think the other thing that does come up is that they both have to happen in the spirit of mindfulness, not just for us and being truly present in the coaching experience, but when clients want to take this forward. How do I really live into now this great conversation we had and the findings that came of it? In particular, Ryan and Deci in their piece refer to how important mindfulness really is as that starting point for everything, for us to be truly present and to really help clients flourish in the span of our work with them, but also for them going forward.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, yeah, big piece and going forward without us. I always hate when I am coaching relationships, there is always LinkedIn. Yeah, thank you so much, Irene. What anything else you think our audience should do as a result of this? You already said dig deeper as a result of this article in this conversation. Dig deeper into the theories. You've put in some suggestions of what to watch for and what to do. Anything else come to mind?
Irene Nizzero:No, I think, you know. I think that people are the types who are self-determinants and will undoubtedly figure out for themselves what else they might want to explore or do differently to incorporate either these theories or both of them and just really notice the difference that it makes. If in fact, there's a change to be made in one's coaching practice to allow people really more of that self discovery, how much more successful it is for the client and there's such a feeling of gratification when you see the person make those strides, you know.
Garry Schleifer:No kidding. I'm going to leave you with a thought from one of my clients and it was like, and I never saw this coming. W e were coaching, coaching, coaching and all of a sudden the client says, "you know, I've had such an increase in confidence since I started working with you. Wasn't even on the table as part of the conversation and they just brought up out of the blue and I'm like, oh okay, great, but again, that's them recognizing their autonomy, their competency, using Relatedness. A lot of the times about people getting related to other people, networking inside their organization or whatever is they're working on.
Irene Nizzero:I think, just to really put a fine point on it, it almost never goes that way. If we've somehow sort of slid into that, well there is this thing you could do. Or I have this thought that I wanted to share with you. You know that sort of thing that it just if they come to the realization, to the awareness, to the answers, on their own it's always more powerful than if we try to suggest. Exactly, exactly.
Garry Schleifer:Thank you so much, Irene.
Irene Nizzero:My pleasure, my pleasure. Thank you again for having me.
Garry Schleifer:Thank you so much for joining us for this, beyond the page episode. I mean, what's the best way to reach you?
Irene Nizzero:Very simply, my first name dot last name all lowercase, Irene. nizzero@ gmail. com.
Garry Schleifer:Awesome, super easy. That's it for this episode of Beyond the Page. For more episodes, subscribe, like you did to this one from your favorite podcast app, Spotify, Apple, all those great places. I'm Garry Schleifer. Enjoy the journey of mastery. Thanks again, Irene.