In this episode, we're honored to host Jonathan Passmore, a globally recognized chartered occupational psychologist, executive coach, author, and leader with over 40 years of experience across various sectors.
With a wealth of expertise gained from diverse leadership roles spanning public, private, academic, and non-profit sectors, Jonathan brings unparalleled insight to our conversation. His work has earned him multiple awards and prestigious placements on both the coaches' Global Gurus and Thinkers50 lists.
Join us as we delve into the transformative power of coaching with Jonathan. Our discussion explores unleashing individual potential, igniting self-awareness, fostering growth, and cultivating effective leadership.
Key Takeaways:
Jonathan's links:
Hi, I'm your podcast host Keita Demming: Author, Advisor, Thought Partner & Coach.
I'm an award-winning educator and coach with a PhD in Adult Education and Workplace Learning who works to transform companies into places that are idea-driven and people-centered.
At The Covenant Group, I design training programs and coach entrepreneurs and business leaders to meet their strategic goals and build their businesses.
In my book, Strategy to Action: Run Your Business Without It Running You, I introduce an effective and straightforward tool to elevate your skills as a business professional and navigate the corporate world. The book offers practical insights on transforming strategies into tangible results.
Follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and subscribe to my Newsletter.
In this episode, we're honored to host Jonathan Passmore, a globally recognized chartered occupational psychologist, executive coach, author, and leader with over 40 years of experience across various sectors.
With a wealth of expertise gained from diverse leadership roles spanning public, private, academic, and non-profit sectors, Jonathan brings unparalleled insight to our conversation. His work has earned him multiple awards and prestigious placements on both the coaches' Global Gurus and Thinkers50 lists.
Join us as we delve into the transformative power of coaching with Jonathan. Our discussion explores unleashing individual potential, igniting self-awareness, fostering growth, and cultivating effective leadership.
Key Takeaways:
Jonathan's links:
Hi, I'm your podcast host Keita Demming: Author, Advisor, Thought Partner & Coach.
I'm an award-winning educator and coach with a PhD in Adult Education and Workplace Learning who works to transform companies into places that are idea-driven and people-centered.
At The Covenant Group, I design training programs and coach entrepreneurs and business leaders to meet their strategic goals and build their businesses.
In my book, Strategy to Action: Run Your Business Without It Running You, I introduce an effective and straightforward tool to elevate your skills as a business professional and navigate the corporate world. The book offers practical insights on transforming strategies into tangible results.
Follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and subscribe to my Newsletter.
So, from my point of view, I think what needs to change is that organizations need to move away from this ad hoc use of coaching as a resource hook and set to see this as a strategic resource Clarity about where can coaching add the greatest value to us as an organization in helping us deliver our mission, achieving our strategic objectives, enabling us to meet our KPIs. And clarity about where coaching comes in sitting alongside learning, development, mentoring, appraisals and the other HR interventions that organizations are using you you, of course. So I'm Jonathan Palsmore. I am Professor of Coaching and Behavioral Change at Headley Business School, uk. I'm also the Senior Vice President at Esrath, a digital coaching platform, and over my career, I've been very active in writing, researching and thinking about coaching and about behavioral change. I've written around about 40 books written probably in the region of 250 scientific papers and book chapters, and I've spoken at conferences across the world. I've been lucky enough over the last 40 years of working having had opportunities to work in organizations such as PwC, ibm, business Consulting and in OPM and have held a number of senior executive positions To bring an unusual blend of executive leadership roles and understanding about leading these organizations, but also a deep understanding about science and technology and how we can bring those aspects together to support individual change, and deeply, through coaching.
Speaker 1:Wow, only three. So let me Well, let me start by talking about coach education. So I think the first thing that needs to change is coach education. So what we're doing to grow coaches, give them the key skills, help them to continue to grow and develop. I think that's one thing that needs to be changing, given the nature of changes in the profession and changes in the nature of the medium that coaches are using to connect and enable their clients to deliver the behavioral changes in the organization leadership performance that clients are seeking. I think the second thing that needs to change in our industry is the understanding by organizations as to how they're using coaching and to move away from an ad hoc to a more strategic use, an ad hoc to a more strategic use. And the third thing that I think needs to change in our industry is a greater focus on evidence and science and, as you alluded to just a moment ago, we would say that, wouldn't we? I think, if we are a profession, then all of us in this profession, all of us in this industry, should really understand and be collaborating to build out the science, build out the evidence to help us understand that coaching works, where it works and how it works. And unless we do that, I think that we're doing a disservice to the individuals and the organizations who we're seeking to serve, thank you.
Speaker 1:So, for me, at the moment, there are still organizations around the world and this has been slowly changing, but the pace of change, which, in my view, is too slow. There are organizations that believe that coaching is a good idea, but they see coaching or deploying coaching more as a personal perk, restricting its use to the most senior people in the organization, allowing those senior people to use it as a personal perk, but that individual points to their own coach, they're not accountable for the coaching process, they're not linking back the activities they're doing to the wider needs of the business and they're not allowing and enabling coaching to get deeper into the organization. So, from my point of view, I think what needs to change is the organization, is that organizations need to move away from this ad hoc use of coaching as a resource hook and to see this as a strategic resource Clarity about where can coaching add the greatest value to us as an organization in helping us deliver our mission, achieving our strategic objectives, enabling us to meet our KPIs, and clarity about where coaching comes in, sitting alongside learning, development, mentoring, appraisals and the other HR interventions that organizations are using, and for me, that means building a coaching culture. It means being clear about the use of coaching at the most senior level Absolutely Great evidence that senior executives benefit from having a sounding board, a space to think through the complex and difficult issues that leaders at the very top of organizations face. It also means, though, extending coaching into the cadre of leaders and managers across an organization and probably we're talking hundreds and thousands of people in an organization who would benefit, and that can be delivered through digital platforms like Ezra, but it could be also delivered through people building an internal coaching, training internal managers with coaching skills and then deploy those, or a mix of the two, but it means that coaching becomes available every leader and manager and to clearly identify how that's going to add value to the organization. So where is coaching being deployed? Do we believe that coaching will help best in addressing diversity and inclusion agenda? Do we believe coaching will help address first-line managers or address first-time managers, or to address promotion of women in our organizations, or to help us through a technical transformation.
Speaker 1:Coaching can play a role. In all of those. There's a clarity and explicit statements about how coaching fits into the strategy, how it fits into the HR strategy and how the HR strategy is contributing towards the business strategy and how the HR strategy is contributing towards the business strategy. Then our third level I also think that coaching is a way of engaging, it's a way of being, and that leaders and managers, everybody in the organization, should adopt a coaching mindset, and a coaching mindset is one that's about encouraging everybody to learn, encouraging people to have a growth mindset things are possible, that change can happen. And believing in having those positive, future-orientated conversations that are supportive, that are challenging and encouraging people to think through creative ways to solve problems they face, to focus on the things that are in their control, to consider the things that are in their influence and to accept the things that are outside their influence and control. So clarity around responsibilities, enabling individuals to become more choiceful and more focused in the work that they are doing.
Speaker 1:So, having recognized those aspects, having thought about those three elements, the fourth element for me, as we think about that strategic approach, is coaching beyond the organizational boundary, and that means taking into stakeholders, partners and suppliers. Not every stakeholder, not every partner, not every supplier, but those who are critical for the organization's success. And we can see that the organizations that we had in the 1960s and 70s, that were highly integrated, vertically, controlling the whole supply chain, that model of business has disappeared. So now we need to recognize that success happens by effective collaborations, working closely with partners, that they understand our priorities and needs and equally, the organization understands theirs. That might be associates, it might be customers who are also creators of content, it might be traditional suppliers, and by working and extending that coaching culture out to them. In that strategic approach, coaching can make a fundamental difference to organization success and also the success of individuals within each organization, helping them in terms of their performance, but also respecting them as individuals and supporting them with their wellbeing. Thank you. So one of the things you can do and I think it's important to clarify here I'm talking about key stakeholders, because of course organizations have hundreds, thousands of stakeholders they're not advocating for customers, not a stakeholder, not suggesting that every customer needs to be part of that coaching culture.
Speaker 1:Professional bodies might be part of an ecosystem, so an accountancy professional body or others regulators, governments are part of an ecosystem, sometimes depending on the nature of the organization, but for key ones, one of the things that the organization can do is to involve those individuals, those organizations, in the development of its coaching pool. So the coaching pool reflects not only people from within the organization but from those who are in that ecosystem. So you might have, if it's a public sector body, you might have that program of strategic coaching culture led by the city government and then the city government, and then the city government says well, it's really important that we involve a local hospital in this program, it's really important that we involve the local police and the fire service in that. And there are a couple of key charities that do a lot of work with, let's say, street homelessness, or we looked after children, or with other groups. They're critical to our success as a city government. So we involve those bodies, invite them to participate in the training, invite them to participate in our coaching pool, invite and encourage them to put coaching into the competency frameworks, put coaching into the way that they're building their organization and so, if organizations are highly interdependent, extending it into the ecosystem, because actually those organizations are critical to the success of the central organization who's leading that coaching culture change. And unless we do that because some organizations might be tiny but their employee base might be 100 people, but their ecosystem with their associates, their franchises, with their partners might be thousands of people and people only look at the brand and they don't realize is this person an associate, is this person a franchise holder? Is this person employed by the organization? People don't ask that question, they just see the logo outside of the door and they assume that that representative of the organization is living out the values and the ethos of the organization. So that's why coaching culture needs to extend out beyond the traditional employee base into those critical stakeholders. You, you, you, thank you.
Speaker 1:So, like the first example you talked about, coaching styles can be used in those sales conversations. But I also recognize that in those sales conversations, in those expert knowledge conversations, a financial advisor has specific unique knowledge Knowledge conversations. A financial advisor has specific, unique knowledge. They're going to bring that in education into the conversation because their client may not be knowledgeable about the markets or how the markets are changing. So it has elements of coaching, but it's not purely coaching, because the answer doesn't exist within the individual customer.
Speaker 1:So you can ask what are your objectives? What do you want to achieve? What do you think the best way is? What are you open to in terms of risk? You also need to be saying well, here are some of the options that are available. And if you're asking me at the moment, this type of stock is really good. That type of stock I would put into high risk. What are your choices about high and low risk? What are your views about high and low risk? What are your views about long and short term? So there needs to be some input that that salesperson financial advisor gives.
Speaker 1:Let me take the second example. I can see you're itching to come back and respond to me. The second example what came to my mind is Michael West's work, and Michael West talks about whether we give people the choice about what they do or whether we need to prescribe to them through a more directive style, and that depends on the nature of the job that they're doing. So coaching fits really well when there is a lot of discretionary activity. So I might say to members of my team I want you to go out and do some research and find the evidence of the impact of coaching and write a useful guide for potential HR managers, users of coaching that will help them build a business case for their organization. I can really, in a coaching style, help someone plan that process and go and set the goal for them. So I'm the line manager. I need to be clear about what the goal is, but then I can empower them to go and set the goal for them. So I'm the line manager. I need to be clear about what the goal is, but then I can empower them to go do the work.
Speaker 1:That's slightly different than maybe from somebody who is putting together a burger and if you're in one of the fast food chains, the burger is highly descriptive. You've got your bun at the bottom, you've got your whatever it might be your mayo and you've got your burger. And then you've got your bun at the bottom. You've got your whatever it might be your mayo and you've got your burger. And then you've got your lettuce and then you've got your whatever it is your chilies on the top, and then the bun goes on the top. You don't say to them hey, you're making a big man. How do you think you're going to do that? It's a very specific process. So for highly specific processes which are very closely prescribed, because what a customer wants is they want the big man. They know what that looks like and if you're enabling someone for a coach, do it yourself, come up with your own ideas. That might be a fabulous burger, but it isn't what a customer went in to go and buy when they went to McDonald's or if they go to Burger King or Winkners. So I think that there's for the wall example. Actually you might be saying to the bricklayer he or she should go and build a wall there and it needs to be six bricks high and it needs to run for three meters.
Speaker 1:You're being really, really specific about what they do, which is not a coaching approach. It's a direct approach and that's fine. I'm very familiar with that debate. I think for me, what's important is what does the client need to get where they need to get to? So if it's a team member, what do I need to give them? But also not just thinking about the short-term goal, my long-term goal of helping them to develop.
Speaker 1:If it's a coaching client, I might have a different approach. I'm working with a very senior leader in an organization who's on the C-suite, somebody who's a first-time manager. They may know very little about leadership and management, and I might need to say would it be helpful for you if I shared a few thoughts about what other people in similar situations have done? And they might say, no, I want to figure this out myself, brian. More likely 19 times out of 20, they say, yeah, tell me what other people have done, and so that gives you the permission to step in, to give them a little knowledge and then to ask the question. So, having heard that, what do you think about doing in your situation, in your organization? So you're moving back into the coaching mode. Give them some knowledge. Here's some other things that other people have done or found useful. How does that apply to you? Because everybody's different. Every organization is different. Thank you, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 1:So I think I start the view that people are intrinsically good, view that people are intrinsically good and our role, whether that's as leaders and managers, as coaches, as fellow citizens, is to unleash the beauty that sits inside each human being. And coaches, leaders and managers, next-door neighbors, have the potential for doing that. One way that we do that is by role modeling that ourselves. And, of course, we're all messed up, complex humans, so we're never perfect. We sometimes do stuff that we look back at the end of the day and I could have done that differently but to start our day in our heart with the intent of displaying love and kindness, whether that's to people who are on the tube or the buses which displaying love and kindness, whether that's to people who are on the tube or the buses we're traveling into work, whether that's to our colleagues, that we greet them with warmth and friendliness and inquire about their evening or their day, or their children or their brother who's ill. How are they today? That shows some sense of kindness and by developing those type of conversations, it's likely that we'll see those spread in an organization, spread across our society. So I believe it sits in each and every individual.
Speaker 1:Second thing that I think, of course, that we can do is encourage people to be more attentive, more self-aware to the impact their emotions and their feelings and their behaviors have on others. The starting point of that is being more self-aware. How am I feeling? What am I thinking? What are my values? What are my beliefs? How am I expressing those in my behaviors? As I say, those people don't start out the day, they don't wake up and go. Today I'm going to be really horrible. Everybody I meet because I hate them all. I don't believe people start that. They're not stroking a can with their little finger up and, haha, I'm gonna make the world an evil place and people are generally lovely. So how do we encourage, through the way that we interact with people and then as we're coaching them, to be more aware of when that stuff gets in their way that prevents them being the natural person they are? So self-awareness coaching is great at doing that. How are you feeling? What are the emotions? What sensations you're experiencing in your body? We can ask people about that. So, bringing that into conscious awareness and then encouraging people to put themselves in other people's shoes, to take alternative perspectives.
Speaker 1:If you were a fly on the wall watching this conversation, what would you make of it? If you reran that conversation, what would you do differently to create a different effect? What effect did you want to create? Well, I wanted to persuade the person that did this. So did you think shouting at them and making them cry achieved the outcome that you wanted? And most people would say no, sometimes it does. I'm not saying that that isn't sometimes a legitimate strategy, but most times what we want to do is display kindness. What we want to do is encourage women to support others and so being aware of ourselves, being aware of the impact that we have on others, and coaching can facilitate and create our awareness of the impact that we're having on others and make ourselves more effective. So we need to be more conscious. Help our clients to be more conscious and to be more conscious of the impact that they're having on others, and that helps us in that journey to move towards that beautiful, loving kindness that I described at the beginning.
Speaker 1:You, of course, there are some people, some clients that we come across, people in organizations, who have a very negative worldview. Sometimes, often, that's based upon their experiences, sometimes very traumatic experiences, that those individuals have lived through in their lives, and it may not be surprising that those negative or traumatic experiences make people cautious, have made them feel negative about the potential risks of engaging in conversations. So, just like somebody who has a phobia, who has a fear, the way that you would work with that client, the way that I would work with that client, is to encourage them to test out their hypothesis. That may have happened to them. They may have had suffered abuse, they may have suffered trauma with negative relationships in one organization, but not every organization is the same. Not every job is going to lead to redundancy or unemployment or dismissal.
Speaker 1:So testing out through a hypothesis, how are other people treating me? Allow yourselves very slowly to expose yourself, step by step, and build up confidence, and to find out that the assumption that that person is making about the world is on one, that they've applied that philosophy to 100% of the people where it applies only to one Bible text. That's back to my. Most people are good people and not every organization. There are toxic organizations. There are toxic, negative managers out there who themselves have suffered trauma or carry with them negative beliefs or biases that get in the way the way that they work with people. But deep down I still believe that those individuals can, as they reflect and understand themselves better themselves also improve. But for the individual who you're describing, coaching, helping them to experiment, to trial, to expose themselves to new environments, to take a few risks and gradually on that journey, to build the confidence that overcomes the negative beliefs they have about themselves and taking risks in the world.
Speaker 1:And one example of this I was working with a client recently who had a phobia about traveling on the London Underground. They were really scared about getting onto a tube train, worried about what might happen on the tube train, not only about terrorist attacks, but also worried about would somebody steal something from them they didn't like and cost her a baby. So the way of exposing that person to build confidence to travel on a tube was we started by going to a tube station and we stood on the platform of an open-air tube station, not underground, on a day that was very quiet, at a time that was very quiet. Then we went to an open-air tube station when it was slightly busier. Then we got onto a train, traveled overground for a quiet time, and you can see how you can build that up gradually, exposing that person to a busier train and moving from underground until the person was confident themselves to travel without traveling with somebody who was supporting them in that journey.
Speaker 1:We can do the same for the sort of client that you described. You you mean as coaches or do you mean as leaders in organization? You mean as coaches or do you mean as leaders in an organization? So I would start with what's the purpose or the values, what are the beliefs that you hold? So come back to this conversation about self-awareness, knowing themselves as the start of any journey and having a clear purpose in mind. What do we believe? What are we arguing for? What are we trying to achieve in our lives? So, some clarity of purpose, and for some people that is about achieving financial wealth or independence. For other people it's making the world a better place. Having clarity about what we're seeking to do. And then the second step that I often encourage clients to do is to set goals for themselves.
Speaker 1:I'm a bit of an anorak. Don't tell listeners that's okay, this is a bit you need to edit out. So I'm a bit of an anorak. When it comes to New Year, all my friends, they're going out and partying and stuff, and for me, I sit at home and I plan my objectives for the following year. And I plan those objectives over the course of that evening and produce a pretty simple mind map One page that covers each aspect of my life Family, holidays, work-related issues, writing, book projects, research projects, book projects, research projects and do a so-called mind map for each area and set a series of objectives what I think I could realistically achieve and then I put that mind map on the inside door of my wardrobe.
Speaker 1:This is the Adirondack and the reason why I do that is that I know if I just leave it on my computer it might go days, weeks, months, maybe the end of the year. I wish I had looked at that. I think about putting it on the door. It's on the inside so I'm not seeing it and everybody in the family isn't seeing it. But every time in the morning I get up, put on a shirt or a T-shirt, I open the door and there it is. I'm asking myself what I need to do today to move closer to those objectives that I've set. And at the end of the day, when I come to put away my clothes, I'll open the wardrobe door and I can ask myself the same question what have I done today that has helped me move closer to those objectives? And that's what I need to do tomorrow to reprioritize where I'm spending my time, my meetings, my focus to move towards those objectives and that constant reminder every day 365, by the time I come back to New Year. It's never a perfect objective. I haven't ticked them all off, but I'm often 80 or 90% towards achieving those objectives.
Speaker 1:And those objectives can also be aspects that bring us joy and happiness, not just aspects that are work-related. So, if we think about our life in its entirety, very few people will get to the end of their life and, as they're lying on their deathbed, I wish I had written more research articles or I wish I had appeared on more podcast shows. Now, of course, those may be part of what we do in our jobs, but more likely we want to spend time with our family, with our friends, to have moments of intimacy and moments of joy, so that needs to be reflected on that plan. So when we get to the end of our life, when we look through and probably people will have maybe 20 or 30 or 50 sheets of paper of their working life they look back over those that they're having joy and happiness in equal measure to the contribution that they're doing in their jobs and in their wider responsibilities as a parent, maybe as a volunteer, or other activities they're engaged in. So not losing sight of joy and happiness, clear goals and objectives that take into our life.
Speaker 1:And the third thing that I would say that makes us better leaders and managers is listening. We're rubbish at doing that. In fact, we're so rubbish at doing that. I spend a lot of time teaching people, as a psychologist, about the importance of listening, but it's not unusual for my wife to say jonathan, you're not listening to me over dinner and I'm just waiting for my turn to talk. And I think a lot of us slip into that bad habit of waiting for our turn to talk and instead what we should be doing. And it's great that our partners remind us, like really listening to what they're saying, what they're meaning, what they're feeling. And we can do that with our partners at home. We need to do that certainly with our teenage children Gosh, I could improve in that department too. We also need to do that with our colleagues at work, because one of the messages that consistently comes through on employee surveys is my manager doesn't listen to me. So even when we think that we're listening, we're not communicating to our colleagues who report to us that we truly are listening and understanding what they're saying. So that means not just providing them with a space to talk, it means reflecting back, using reflections and summaries to show that we've heard what they've said, but we've understood the feelings that are behind the words that they've expressed. So doing more listening will make us better leaders. Setting clearer goals will also improve our performance.
Speaker 1:So I've been working for over 40 years in organizations and had a variety I think 12 leadership positions. I've had a variety, I think 12 leadership positions and there have been tough, super tough times that I've experienced. And I guess when I look back on my career I can look back to those super difficult times when you think it's just truly terrible. You really want to give up, when you think the game is over. And the lesson that I think that I draw, that I bring into my coaching conversation, is it's not over until it's over. This idea that actually, even if people have lost their job, if their relationship has fallen apart, if things are going terribly in terms of the performance one part, if things are going terribly in terms of the performance this quarter, all the organization has gone bankrupt. Well, that's tough, it's tough for customers, it's tough for their employees, it's tough for them. But tomorrow is another day and we can pick ourselves up and we can start again with a fresh business, a fresh role, fresh relationship, fresh friendships and having that positive mindset, a belief that those events, however bad they might be in the individual moment, doesn't define the individual or the rest of that week, that month, that year or that lifetime.
Speaker 1:So one metaphor that I like to particularly use in coaching conversations is the sky and the weather, and today's weather might be rainy, today's weather might be cloud-ready, but actually beneath the cloud, above the cloud, is a beautiful blue sky, and tomorrow the wind might blow the clouds away, or next week it might be sunny, or next month or next season, and so our days, our weeks, our seasons change and for people to see that big perspective. But of course those tough times are difficult. Tough times come and tough times go, and there's a lovely phrase that I also hold on to from probably the leading manifest thinker, warren Bennis, and it's reported that he said it's the storm that shapes the mountain. So when leaders look back on those tough times, it's those tough and difficult times that probably make them the great leaders that they are. So the value, even though it's hard to do in the moment, when we look back on those difficult times, we often grow more in those difficult seasons than in the sunny periods. Venice One Venice penis, one penis. I love that.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to talk about two things, because I'm cheeky and I steal two things. I think one thing is a better understanding of coaching and the science of coaching. If organizations and individuals understood how coaching could be helpful. It is a little magic bullet. It's not a solution for every problem. However, every organization should have coaching and should be making it available to all of their employees, because it can make a significant difference to well-being and performance. So I think that's better understanding about coaching and its role in organizations and in development and learning. Second thing that I would say I think the way it would make our world a better place is about bringing those aspects of kindness into each and every interaction and treating our fellow person or the boss or chief as we want to be treated, and exactly the same for our colleagues at work. And if we can start to do that, then I think we bring and create a kinder world. Wouldn't that be something that we would all like to see? Thank you.
Speaker 1:So I think one of the things that needs to change is a recognition that coaching has changed over the last five years. So here we are in 2023, and in 2023, coaching since COVID has moved online Back in 2018, 50-50 balance between face-to-face and online work. If we look at coaching across the world Now, it's almost exclusively online. There are some people who are still meeting face-to-face, but when we're training coaches, we're not training them digitally. We're not training them to how to use digital platforms or to use digital tools. Instead, coaches are still used to writing on flipboards and meeting face-to-face on their coach training programs. So that's the first thing how coaches can better use technology to enable the behavioral change that the clients are seeking. Second change is the coaching market has changed itself. So we've gone from a cottage industry to a large-scale industry where we have heads from coach up, better up or providing coaching to tens of thousands of clients. In these environments they're employing thousands of coaches to deliver these coaching conversations and at the moment those organizations are really keen to attract talent, but no one's providing the coach training that takes account of those new roles that are emerging in these digital organizations and exactly the same on the client side, within organization. What training and development is available for coach program managers? How they manage the information and the data, how they think about the science and evidence of building the business case? And I think coach education needs to take those roles into account alongside the development of coaches. And that sits next to the digital piece. And the final piece is about ongoing learning and development.
Speaker 1:We have focused too long on competencies, acquiring the skills for those individual competencies. And the reality is, most of those competencies are rooted in a conversation that happened in a coffee shop or a bar 20 years ago. 25 coaches who set up the professional bodies sat around and said well, what do you do? Oh, yeah, I do that as well. And then someone wrote them down. No science, no evidence, no research. And then they said are these the competencies that these new coaches, this group of people, are using? Okay, so it's a good starting point. And so they train people. And then, when we come to review the competencies, we interview the coaches who have been trained what do you do? Oh, you're doing that. Okay, we'll write those things down. So it becomes a self-fulfilling set of competencies.
Speaker 1:Now we need to recognize that competencies are useful, but they're not the only set of skills, not the only way to research and understand how behavioural change happens. There needs to be a wider look in the behavioural change literature. There needs to be more use of science applied to coach training so coaches understand not only the behaviours that they're deploying and the coach mindset, but they need to understand the science of what they're doing, its limitations and its potential. And that means a review of coach education from professional bodies and also in universities and coach training schools. So we train people across the new industry, the submerged, we train them in digital and we train them beyond competencies. You, okay? So you're really going to get into the controversial space, don't you? You're going to see your numbers plummet as a result of this, okay. Okay, you can advertise this as the most controversial, okay.
Speaker 1:So let's start gently and then we'll ramp up to offending the majority of people. Let's start with the 5% first of all, that I'll offend, or I offend, the 95%. So there are a range of people out there who are using approaches that they describe as their coaching approach as being with crystals. I have not seen any scientific evidence that suggests working with crystals leads to improved anything. People might like to do it for themselves Lovely, but when you're then selling this as a health or well-being intervention, I would question the science around that. It's a fake claim. People who are listening, if you want to send me a randomized, controlled trial showing evidence of crystals versus non-crystals, I will change what I'm saying, but until then, I haven't seen that paper, I haven't seen that research, so I'm highly skeptical about that next area.
Speaker 1:Just as a second example. So it's more than this. And there's adx science. We all know they're quite good fun, but you might be an aquarius and I'm from aquarius. Are we going to have the same day? No, it's nonsense. Um, no science to support that. And zodiac coaches and I've seen people badging themselves as this. It's total nonsense. Shouldn't. Shouldn't be undertaken by individuals. We should be some. If you want to do that for yourself, it is fun. Of course we like a little bit of entertainment in our day. Might be nice to read it in the newspaper. We shouldn't be selling this to clients and pretending that this is science or evidence-based.
Speaker 1:Next thing in the process is neurolinguistic programming. So this is about 40% of people people are listening about. Sorry about this. And so NLP was developed with an anti-science basis. So we believe that by just going to talk to people about what they did, we can pull together a range of different things, like a magpie stealing things from different areas. Some of that content is really super because it's based on psychological research. Some of it is completely fake and has no scientific evidence. So on my website, drawfromastamorecom, myself and Tatiana Rosin wrote a paper reviewing the whole literature of NLP, its application in coaching. So what's the fake science bits? I'll just give one example of those Fast phobia fix. So fast phobia fix is a way of addressing very quickly or overcoming a phobia. We talked about that earlier. That can happen within the space of a few minutes.
Speaker 1:What the research evidence tells us about this particular intervention that is put forward by NLP is there's no scientific evidence to support it. So there have been a number of randomized controlled trials, a number of studies of this. There is zero evidence that makes any difference. So once again, nlp as an entirety is probably wrong for people to put this forward as saying this is an evidence base. The eye movement is another example, but there's very little evidence to support that and there are quite a few other examples. This is where people are supposedly. If you're talking to someone and they look up to the right or down to the left, this indicates that this is a particular style of thought that they're having. Of course, we know that there is no evidence to support that either.
Speaker 1:There are some things in NLP that has been drawn from Gestalt and from other approaches I might say magpie stolen that are really useful. But for me in NLP it's about recognizing the original source rather than saying NLP in its entirety is an effective, evidence-based approach. It's not. It's false and we should instead be much more selective about what people are drawing out and be clear about the evidence that supports that. And the final group that I'm going to offend is all the people who are in the ICF and in the EMCC and in the other professional coaching players that if that group of individuals thinks and many of them may not, but if those individuals thinks that only focusing on competencies is their way to become the best coach possible, I think it's also important it comes back to your question that we as coaches are able to explain why we're doing what we're doing. Why are we doing this? What's the evidence that underpins this? Is coaching effective? What's the evidence to support that claim?
Speaker 1:Coaches should be reading widely in the literature just like any other professional. Your colleague, who's a financial advisor, understands the markets. We as coaches, we're involved in behavior, in psychology, people's minds and what they do, their behavior. We need to understand the science of that, be able to say the reason why I'm doing X, role and Y, but I'm working with you is because this research paper, this science, how does coaching work? Coaches should be able to say well, there's this randomized control trial, there's this meta-analysis study, there's this paper that shows that it reduces stress, there's this paper that shows that it reduces absenteeism. We should be professionals that understand the research as much as we understand the behaviors that we're acting out. We shouldn't just be following a script. We should deeply be able to critically appraise the play, not just read out the lines.
Speaker 1:Sorry, you have no listeners. I apologize to everybody that I've just upset on the call. Please send me a word of milk on LinkedIn. I'm sure some of you will do so, but I'm encouraging you to think critically about what we do in the coaching. This is an April news, so it's always a pleasure, of course, to connect people on LinkedIn. Please reach out to me on LinkedIn and connect, and of course, I'm really happy to listen to you. I've said something where you've got evidence to say Jonathan, your role in this is lovely. I'm always willing, with an open mind, to read that and to learn and change. But equally, people just want to connect.
Speaker 1:I often publish my research for free on LinkedIn so people can access that, and I also have a website, journalforpossiblecom. People are looking to connect with me. I'm really happy to hear from them on that website or for them to read any of the articles that I publish. They often appear. The historic articles appear on that website and appear. The historic articles appear on that website. There's around about 100, 150 papers people can go and read and download if people would like to follow up any of the science.
Speaker 1:You, oh, I can't, so that's a tricky, tricky question. So I'm of a certain generation and when you get older, then the thing that you really need to focus on is your health and well-being. And it is very, very easy to sit there on the sofa of an evening and not go for a run, not even go for a walk at lunchtime, where you think I should just do another five emails or respond to somebody on LinkedIn who sent me a re-message about NLP Thank you very much for writing to me and I should get off that chair and go for a walk and have an evening, go for a run. So the comfort is sitting in the chair, doing the email, watching the news, whereas the discomfort is getting out, doing more physical activity to keep my body going for another 25 or 35 years. You, you, you, you.