The Mindful Coach

Seven Roles for Facilitating Leader Development

Doug Silsbee

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780470579619
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Praise for The Mindful Coach

"Success in business is predicated on eliciting the best from people. The Mindful Coach clearly articulates the essentials of how to do this. As someone who believes deeply in the potential of all people, I found Silsbee's approach both practical and profound. This is a must-read for everyone concerned with people and learning."
—ARTHUR M. BLANK, philanthropist; cofounder, The Home Depot; and owner and CEO, Atlanta Falcons

" The Mindful Coach is not just another coaching model. It is a frame of reference for anyone involved in developing people. This highly readable book should serve as a reference for anyone genuinely concerned about helping others. It has had a significant impact on the way I approach coaching and developing others."
—JAMES N. BASSETT, M.Ed., employee development, Institute of Nuclear Power Operations

" The Mindful Coach digs deeply, offering a lens and structure for understanding the intimate and necessary connection between relationships and human development. No other skill set, knowledge, or awareness is more important to educators, leaders, and managers than what is presented in this precious volume."
—ROBERT C. PIANTA, Ph.D., dean, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia

"This revised edition provides the structure for presence, through which new solutions become available. This book itself is a practice in the art of 'becoming, ' while providing a clear action framework for powerfully engaging others with their own development. Silsbee has provided a gift to leaders, teachers, and coaches!"
—CONNIE MALTBIE-SHULAS, manager, V-22 Training Systems, Boeing

"This book has broad appeal not only for coaches, but also for managers, executives, and consultants. Leaders of all kinds can benefit from Silsbee's clear and caring process for bringing out the best in people. This is a must-read book for anyone who wants to jump-start themselves and others on their journey to their potential."
—DIANA WHITNEY, Ph.D., author, The Power of Appreciative Inquiry

"This is the guide for leaders committed to helping others learn. The seven roles will help any leader facilitate more meaningful development conversations. This new edition engaged me instantly, with immediate applications in key relationships."
—DARELYN "DJ" MITSCH, MCC, president, The Pyramid Resource Group; former president, The International Coach Federation

CHAPTER 1

The Being of Coaching: Mindful Service

Service is the rent we pay to be living. It is the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time.

Marian Wright Edelman

If one is estranged from oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

SERVICE IS IMPLICIT IN OUR DEFINITION OF COACHING: whether you do it as a professional coach with an executive client, a manager with an employee, a teacher with a student, or a health care worker with a patient, coaching means placing yourself in service to another. In turn, placing oneself in service requires a broad quality called mindfulness.

This chapter begins with an exploration of service and its implications for our mindfulness. In developing the notion of mindfulness, we’ll touch on the levels of experience that are available to us in every moment, the nature of the habits that cloud our mindfulness, and approaches for cultivating mindfulness in ourselves and, by extension, in our clients. As you will see more and more in later chapters, coaching can be considered in large part as a process of cultivating greater mindfulness, and thereby resourcefulness and choice. By the end of the chapter, we will be ready to delve into the seven roles, or Voices, through which effective coaching is expressed.

Placing Oneself in Service

Leadership is often done in the name of service; an entire field of “servant leadership” has sprung up to describe and deepen this leadership ethic. Unfortunately, some of what is done is not so helpful; leadership can often be self-service or arrogance disguised as help for others. True service means discerning and providing what is needed. This requires a high level of commitment and care. Ethical service is done consciously, with self-awareness, and for the benefit of the client.

The coach represents, and stands for, the client’s highest potential. As coaches, we can sometimes see the possibilities for a client’s success more clearly than he can. It is true service to believe in someone’s potential and encourage him to realize it, to help him set goals and develop strategies for achieving them. It is also true service to help a client acknowledge his limitations, help him work to overcome them, and accept him fully even when he can’t bring himself to take the plunge into change.

To place oneself in service is noble. It does not mean being subservient or putting oneself in a “lesser than” position in relation to the other. It is, rather, a dedication—a clear commitment to attend primarily to the client’s needs for the time being.

Service is what allows coaching to happen. It is enabled by an agreement that works for both parties about the parameters of their relationship, including logistical arrangements, mutual responsibilities, fees, third-party agendas, and other concerns. Above all, the coach must be able to respect and support the outcomes that the client seeks. The partnership between coach and client must be structured as a win-win so that both parties sense that their underlying needs are being met. This frees the coach up from her own separate concerns, making it easier to truly serve.

Being of service does not mean that we avoid giving tough feedback or dance around difficult issues. As coaches, we must sometimes participate in emotionally challenging conversations or tell our clients things that are hard for them to hear. Service depends on our ability to participate honestly for the learning of the client and not for needs of our own that we ourselves may not even recognize. To serve, we first must understand what’s going on within. Only then can we speak and coach directly, clearly, and compassionately.

If we feel irritated and impatient in a coaching conversation, for instance, we need to ask ourselves what part of that impatience comes from our own agenda and what part has to do with the client. Letting these emotions go unexamined may be easier for us, but it won’t serve the client. It might be useful to the client for us to describe how his behavior affects us—for instance, to say that we notice our impatience rising and to suggest a connection between what we notice in ourselves and the client’s behavior. If we do so, however, it must be by choice and in recognition that in this particular instance, it may be helpful for the client to recognize how his behavior may affect others.

So our own impatience can express itself in several ways. We can simply let it be acted out according to our own habits and agendas, but, if we are committed to service, we must find a way to use our impatience as a starting point for providing difficult needed feedback in a compassionate way. The difference depends largely on our own degree of self-awareness, enabled by mindfulness.

Mindfulness and Self-Awareness

Placing ourselves in service is a powerful way to catalyze our own self-awareness. As soon as we place some of our needs and agendas off-limits, they’ll show up full force. If you don’t believe this, try going on a sugar-free diet for a week. Or giving up coffee. Or stopping just about anything that is habitual for you. All of a sudden, you really want that thing—whatever it is.

Mindfulness is the inner state in which we can observe ourselves in action. It enables the self-awareness, for example, that in this moment, I am irritated, or happy, or craving that cup of coffee, or I am just about to say something to my client that might be better not said. Awareness, in turn, allows us to consciously choose whether to say, or withhold, that thought.

The importance of mindfulness in serving cannot be overstated. The mindful coach knows, from her awareness of her own feelings and thoughts, when she is serving the client and when not. She knows if her personal agendas and judgments are in the way, and what to do with them if they are. She is able to be mindfully present with the client and to listen and respond clearly, with acceptance, and without judgment.

Committing to service requires the corollary commitment to a self-development curriculum in mindfulness. Self-awareness—noticing and suspending one’s own habits and agendas—is a primary requirement for being an effective coach. But ultimately the coach himself benefits too. The client benefits from being served well, and the coach benefits from learning to be of service, from learning the discipline of true mindfulness.

A commitment to cultivating mindfulness will provide you with a lifetime of learning opportunities. It will also greatly deepen your experience of coaching and your ability to be present and effective as a coach.

As a concept, mindfulness is central in a mushrooming volume of professional and business literature.1 The term comes from Western translations of the formulations of Buddhist teachers. Some of the other terms I will use (attachments and aversions) come from the same tradition. I have chosen to organize this book around these particular terms and distinctions in part because they are informed by my own personal work and lineage of teachers, and in part because they, more than any other language I’ve run across, point directly to the granular nature of experience that seems to be central in being mindful and aware. This language is pragmatic, relevant, contemporary, and consistent with current scientific understanding. We can use it to understand more precisely what goes on inside us. Still, I acknowledge that other vocabularies and conceptual frameworks could also serve as platforms from which to develop the ideas presented here. For example, Daniel Goleman’s domains of emotional intelligence (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management) come to mind.2

The cultivation of mindfulness is a lifelong process. As you read this book, give yourself lots of permission to be a beginner and to experiment. Because you are probably a well-educated, successful, intelligent, quick learner, you may expect that you will be “good at” mindfulness. Watch out! This internal standard will spectacularly interfere with your learning in this particular realm because the very orientation toward achievement and performance makes it particularly challenging to simply look squarely at what is and accept it fully.

I invite you to engage this material not as a reader seeking to efficiently assimilate a new body of knowledge into the way you do your work. Rather, approach it with genuine curiosity, seeking what you might discover about yourself and how the experiences contained within this book might challenge what you think you know. Instead of fitting this material into the existing frameworks of your understanding, be open to how it might expand those frameworks and enable entirely new ways of experiencing yourself and engaging in relationships.

Exercise 1.1 provides a beginning experience of mindfulness.

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EXERCISE 1.1.

Mindful Eating

This exercise is a variation on a traditional eating meditation.3 It’s an excellent experiment for directing your attention and noticing your own habits of mind at play. (It’s hard to read the directions and perform the experiment at the same time. You could read the whole thing through and then turn your attention to the exercise, make a recording to listen to, or ask a friend to read it out loud as you do the exercise.)

Begin by selecting something that you enjoy eating, and procure three small bites. Fresh raspberries, small pieces of dark chocolate, or pieces of dried fruit work well. (You could, of course, later extend this practice to an entire meal.) I’ll describe the practice with berries.

Cup your three berries in one hand. Settle yourself in a chair. Be comfortable. Let go of other activities and distractions, and let your body relax.

Now, take one berry and look at it as if you’d never seen a berry before. You could imagine that you just arrived here from Mars, and someone handed you this berry, and you are exquisitely curious about what it is. Sense its color, texture, patterns. Smell it. Bring it to your lips, but without touching them. Experience it fully, using all your senses, being exquisitely curious.

Notice any response in your body. What happens in your mouth in anticipation? Are you salivating? Is there any sense of craving in your chest? Any emotions? Memories of other times eating berries? Notice everything that arises in you in relation to this little berry.

Now, slowly place the berry in your mouth—not chewing, but letting the flavor slowly emerge. Sense the flavor spreading in your mouth and how the flavor is subtly different in different parts of your mouth and tongue. Sense every nuance of flavor and texture. Feel the place where your teeth and your tongue meet the skin of the berry.

Very slowly and mindfully, chew the berry. If you notice your thoughts wandering or your attention elsewhere than on the experience of eating, bring it back to the sensation of the berry in your mouth. This is a practice in one-pointed attention, an opportunity to “mono-task” all too rare in our busy modern lives. Make the most of it.

Notice the urge to swallow, and sense the urge itself. Let the berry linger; chew slowly and bring your attention back to the berry over and over until there is nothing left in your mouth but berry juice. Then swallow, and sense the berry juice flowing down your throat. Let yourself experience the absence of berry in your mouth. What is it like to have the berry gone?

Now take the second berry, and bring the same fresh curiosity to this berry. You’ve never actually looked at this berry before! How is it similar to the first? How is it different? Look. Feel. Touch. Smell. Sense not just the berry, but every sensation in your body at the same time. Place the berry in your mouth, and notice your mouth’s response to it.

Consider momentarily that millions of years of evolution went into the perfection of this berry. A farmer grew this berry; someone picked and packed it; a truck transported it; someone placed it on the shelf in the store for you to buy—a miraculous chain of events, each of which was required to give you this precise experience. Notice the feeling of gratitude in you. Be present with the unique experience of eating this berry. It’s the only opportunity you’ll ever have for this particular experience, this particular moment.

Again, let the berry linger, become juice, and be swallowed, becoming part of you. Take your time. Enjoy. Be...