Reflective analysis of a hard conversation

Hello all,

   Since the beginning of that winter cession I am working with a group I had never worked with before in another class. I knew those people from last cession so I really thought everything would go smooth and well. During our first group meeting three weeks ago I realized that we were not efficient. Indeed, it took us five hours to do a work I could have done in two with a group I was working with during the previous session. I started to feel frustrated but we all thought it was because we just came back for our one month Christmas break so we were not very motivated. During our next meeting things got worst we were even less efficient! I realized that one group member didn’t have the same way of working than the others – she was very perfectionist, too much for me. Into my mind I started to think she was the only reason why everything was going so slow. When I saw her I wasn’t very constructive when we were speaking, I was always thinking “you’re ruining our team project” so I was cold to her.

   I decided to fix an in person meeting with her for that assignment, it was a good pretext and I feel like we really needed it in any case. First I was judging. I was just thinking “whatever you say, I will not give up, I think you’re too perfectionist and not pragmatic enough”. At the beginning I didn’t realize I was, to me I was just right. I was thinking my working method was better because I had better grades than her at the first semester. I kept saying to her “I understand your point, but…” and suddenly I realized I wasn’t understanding anything I was just saying those words (“I understand your point”) as a robot to fake I was paying attention to her. But I really wasn’t. When I realized that, I tried to take distance from myself and fully realized I was in a deep phase of judgments which was blocking all my reasoning capacities. I realized that usually I was better at stopping that vicious circle. So I started to tell myself: “stop thinking she is wrong and listen to her, don’t associate her whole personality to the fact she is more rigorous and perfectionist than you. That may be a quality, how many times professor/bosses said you were not rigorous enough and that it was a shame??”. A shift started into my mind, I really wanted to stop being stubborn and learn who she was. I wanted to see and not to download anymore. I started to notice that even if she had different working methods form the rest of the group, they may be interesting and complementary. Moreover I realized I wasn’t “loosing” opening myself, I wasn’t giving up anything. The main risk was just learning more about her and making the whole group feel better. I realized that the aim wasn’t to prove my method was better over hers but combine both of them to have better results. In a nutshell it wasn’t a fight and keep fighting could only bring a loose/loose outcome, opening myself could only bring a win/win one. The choice was easier to make now!

   After I was aware of my thoughts I really want to understand her! I was in a better mood and I wasn’t cold anymore. I’m sure she could feel it because she had fewer defensive reactions. The dialogue was more constructive and got deeper. For instance I started to share with her what I was thinking using the I-I technique: “I think that sometimes I am frustrated because we spend too much time on details, for instance on PowerPoint designs”. She answered me that she worked in a consulting agency where she learnt those details were very important and they could make the difference between a good and a very good work. She told me that was the reason why she was very picky now. Before her job in the consulting field she was less perfectionist but she worked on herself to become such a person. I realized that now, I was actually listening to her and understanding her point of view. Now It was making sense. I was starting to see her as a strength now and wanted to use her strength and build on it for the interest of the whole group.

   We have another reunion next Wednesday. I’m sure it will go better that time… 

Feedbacks - Coaching cession #2 - Ladder of inference

The past coaching cession went well. First of all we did it in person and not on Skype which, in my mind, was easier because we were not experiencing any technical problem.

We were all very attentive and listening to the coachee. In my opinion the questions that the coaches asked were meaningful. I felt we tried to ask questions which could make the coachee realize that he forgot to see the problem from a different angle. For instance, Abhinav made me think about the fact that my reaction regarding my boss wasn’t only related to anger or disappointment. Indeed, he made me realize that it could have been related to the stressful environment I was working in.

Moreover, I have the feeling that I was listening in order to understand. Indeed, I wasn’t trying to listen in order to find questions but I was interested in the stories my teammates were telling. After my coachee story (Ingrid) I had to take a few seconds in order to find relevant questions because I hadn’t done it while she was speaking. I really liked doing that and I’ll try to do it next time too.

I also liked the fact that we had to tell a personal experience and not our opinion about something. It was helpful and made us personally involved in the coaching process. Moreover, I really felt it made my peers very involved in the way they were listening to the other member. It is always harder to tell personal experiences because we have to involve our emotions, especially for conflict related situations…

Week 4 Reflective Entry from Abhinav Shrivastava:

First of all, I would like to thank my peers Grichka and Ingrid for their contribution in the coaching call.

This time the theme of the coaching call was “The Ladder of Inference”. We had started the conversation with Grichka, Ingrid as the coachee and coach respectively. I was the observer for them.

Grichka explained his experience with us. It was one of the most practicable scenarios that each one had faced in our life. He shared that his conclusion was incorrect and because of that his actions got effected.

We also concluded that not only his conclusion affected his thoughts, but also the surrounding or environment where he had worked had some effect on his thoughts. Stress full atmosphere always have negative effect on one’s performance. As a result, he missed out some vital learning, which he could have learned if he was not had negative thoughts in begin of his internship.

Later, we swapped the roles –Ingrid became my coach and Grichka took the observer’s desk. I started sharing my experiences, and explained them in detail. Later, Ingrid asked some questions and felt satisfied in the end. They asked me whether I thought that I was wrong in data selection or my assumptions was wrong, then after discussion we came to the conclusion that I was wrong in building my assumption. Although there is a deep impact on the data selected for drawing the assumptions.

After that Ingrid shared her experience about the ladder of inference and told what mistake she had made. She told us because of the negative influence of the peers in the company, she had built a wrong image against her manager. But later she found that things are totally different. After discussion we all concluded that “meanings” (third stage of the ladder from the bottom are very much affected by thoughts or view of others.

After that we had concluded that this step—by-step procedures of decision making are very much helpful. We can go down the ladder to check process. But it is highly recommended that do not get into the trap of recursive loop between beliefs and data or conclusion and meaning (Name of the stages as mentioned in the case).

Over all, it was a wonderful discussion among us. It was an informative as well as knowledgeable session for each of us. I admit that – this call was much more fruitful as compared to the previous one. There is a lot of tuning and synergy among each of us.

Thanks for reading! 

Have a nice day.

Week 4 - Reflective Entry

During this coaching session, we decided to have a face to face meeting, because of the technical difficulties we experienced the last time. And personally I felt that it worked very nicely. We kept the conversation professional, and were able to use our time efficiently.

I found that as a coach this time, I wasn’t as nervous as the last time. I tried to focus on the five key processes, and felt that I managed this quite well. However, I still find the catalyzing part to be a bit of a challenge. I do feel motivated to help the development of my coachee, but I am still somewhat uncertain as of how to do this. But I asked clarifying questions, and sometimes did a brief summarizing to make sure that I had understood him correctly.

As a coachee I still found myself somewhat nervous about sharing my experience. I noticed that the others had had more relevant experience, whereas I didn’t. They have both worked in businesses relevant for our studies, while my example was from a job with no connection to my future career. But after I had shared my thoughts I relaxed more, and realized that there really wasn’t anything to be nervous about. I felt that my coach did a good job in asking me questions, and I felt that he really listened to what I had to say. He also asked me how it affected the working environment after I stopped supporting my coworkers in their talk about the manager. And to be honest I hadn’t really given it that much thought. But when he asked me I realized that the talking had in fact been reduced. It did not affect my relationship with my coworkers in any way, it just shifted the conversation from the manager and on to something else. I found this somewhat interesting to realize. Because often you might feel pressured into agreeing with someone, or into saying things you don’t really mean, and you do this in order to avoid a potential conflict. But in my case my point of view didn’t really affect our relationship. The other coworkers may not have changed their opinion about our manager, but the fact that I disagreed didn’t make them change their behavior towards me.

Being an observer I find very interesting. Because you don’t have to participate, you get to experience the coaching from a different point of view. And I find it interesting to see how the coach and the coachee interact. What I also noticed this time was that it was harder for me to move from the role of coach to the role of observer. There were times when I was about to interrupt and ask something, before realizing that I was not the coach this time. And I think the same applied for my colleagues as well. In fact, when I was done being a coach, the observer had a question of his own to the coachee. So it seems that perhaps the role of coach has taken over, we find this role intriguing and we are eager to develop our learning.

Week 4 Coaching Assignment – Ladder of Inference

A while back I started working as a sales person in a clothing store. When I started out, I noticed that the other employees would sometimes talk behind the manager’s back, and they would complain about things they weren’t allowed to do, saying she was too strict and unreasonable. They would sometimes also include me in these conversations, and because I didn’t know the manager very well, I assumed that what they were saying was true. So instead of making up my own mind about the manager, I allowed them to make it up for me.

I noticed that I became slightly more negative to things she would say or do, or how she would say or do them. Even if it wasn’t that bad, because of what the others had said, I immediately reacted more negatively (on the inside) than I probably would have. I based my assumptions of the manager on observable “data” and experiences from the other workers there. They told me she was strict, so I believed them – I had no reason not to. So whenever our manager did something that could be perceived as unreasonable, I immediately collected this “data” as evidence of what my colleagues told me. I assumed that everything she did was because she was unreasonable, and I drew my conclusions, my opinion about her, solely on what my colleagues told me. So in the beginning I adopted their beliefs of her.

However, after a while I started to notice that my predetermined thoughts about her didn’t match her actions. My observable experience changed, and I realized she was not unreasonable, but firm in a good way. Her actions might only have been perceived as unreasonable if you didn’t understand the meaning behind them. I realized that there was a reason for here rules and ways of doing things. I got to know her better and eventually started disagreeing when the other employees would continue talk about her.

Even though what my coworkers would talk about were small things that annoyed them about our manager, it still made me see her in a more negative light than I would have, had they not talked about her. I let them decide how I should feel about our manager, and so it took me longer to realize how I felt about her, because I had to work through my prejudice. And I think this is a normal problem both in working relationships and in personal ones. Gossip, which I believe we can compare this to, can be quite hurtful. I notice that even when my friends just say something simple like “oh, he’s so annoying”, about a person I don’t know very well - even without giving a proper explanation - I will immediately view that person in the same light, and almost look for the annoying traits. So I think the power we have over others, in this sense, is quite scary. You might experience meeting someone for the first time, and realizing they’ve already made up their mind about you because of something someone else told them.

After my experience in the clothing store, I’ve become more aware of what kind of effect other people have on my beliefs, and I try harder not to let other people cloud my judgment.

Week 4 Coaching Assignment - Abhinav Shrivastava

The Ladder of Inference

At my previous work place, the client that we worked for was British Telecommunication. I was once given a challenging assignment to be delivered within a short time-frame  I was asked to form a team of four people – to perform different roles and complete the project. As we were already three, there was a requirement for just one resource.

Below is the elaboration of the scenario in terms of The Ladder of Inference.

Observable Data: As mentioned in the definition, at the bottom of the ladder is the observable data – It is everything we might capture the situation as we do through camera.

As we began the recruitment process, we received many (around 11) CVs (Curriculum Vitae) of people, having a diverse experience, different levels of competences, and people who did handle different tasks in the past. Everything was mind boggling at the start. I found it difficult to understand and figure out - whom to select, who was most appropriate and for which positions.

Select Data –It was a big piece of data to process, therefore I filtered out the not so impressive CVs based on our selection criteria. I chose the six best CVs out of 11. This selection of data is very difficult to explain, I selected based on what I observe.

Meanings – I started relating my stored thoughts, about the six best CVs that I picked up. I began to relate the situations with culture, nationality, pervious experiences, and level of competences, how long they had worked in different projects and other background related information etc.

Assumption – From there I moved to the next round which is assumption. I feel this was the trickiest stage among all other stages. I started adding meaning, thoughts and ideas about their personalities. I don’t know how much I succeeded in building my own assumption. To what extend theses “Assumptions” were valid and whether these assumptions added value to my actions and beliefs.

Conclusion – From there I moved to conclusion, a step higher in the ladder close to beliefs. I planned interviews and questioned candidates. I tried to find out the data that one would not want to say or share in the resumes. To do this, I got better insight of the personalities of the individuals. Also, my preconceived thoughts were clarified and the image about each candidate was now more transparent.

Beliefs – Now after questioning for couple of times, I decided to revisit my selected data, upon which my beliefs were formed. I clarified many thoughts about the way they handled the situations at work place and in personal life. Below are some of the question is enquired:-

·         What are their short and long term goals?

·         Questioned about skills and experience to do the job.

·         Enquiry about enthusiasm and interest in the job

·         Whether they will fit in

·         What are your strengths and weaknesses?

·         How they helped resolve or improve a difficult situation?

·         Were resilient in adverse conditions?

·         Explain any situation where they had demonstrated emotional intelligence and cool-headedness?

·         What motivates you to do a good job?

I did a recursive process of relating the observable data and beliefs. Asking more questions leads to situations, where I look for observable data to get a complete picture of the candidate. This is a reflexive loop, where belief affects what data I would select the next time. Performing these activities several times lead me to a final conclusion. I decided to recruit that person for our team.   

Action – Even if I was not satisfied with the responses from the candidate, I tried to ask more number of questions. I tried to draw as much information as I could from the candidate, then I began to look at the data which I selected at the initial stage. Since, this was the last stage to make final decision. I did the recursive loop processing for the data that was selected and the meaning and beliefs was added to it. Do not get into the recursive loop, where you act based on your assumption.

Later, we didn’t find the person suitable for our team. He also left the project in the middle that had made our project in jeopardised. I think my assumptions are not appropriate. During the re-iteration I found myself wrong many times.

So to conclude – I must move down the ladder following the simple rules of questioning my assumptions and conclusions. Also, if I wanted to inquire more, I asked myself what data I selected what was my assumption.

Thanks for reading!

Have a nice day! 

Best regards,
Abhinav Shrivastava

Coaching assignment II - The ladder of inference

Last year I was doing a six months internship for a financial institution. That internship was taking place in the dealing room of the bank, the place where all the traders, brokers and sales people are located. As you can imagine this was a very stressful environment because people have to take important monetary decisions very quickly. My function was to manage all kind of problems those stressed people could have. My boss, Georges, was a very human person in that world (which I perceive) which doesn’t take into account feelings. Of course, he had to follow the general trend and put his feeling away to be efficient and be integrated.

One day he asked me to do a work for him and I was sure I hadn’t all the information I needed to do it. I was feeling I needed more training from him. I used Field One conversation and said “I’m not sure I can do all of that task by myself, I may need your help”… 30 minutes later I said to him I needed his help for the whole task. He yelled at me saying “You should be able to do that task by now”. Then, I tried to justify myself and he answered “I will do that work, don’t do it anymore”. I stayed calm and said I just needed more information but with an angry voice he said “NO! I will do it because you said you can’t! Final word!”

At that moment the data I selected was “angry voice” “you can’t do it” “don’t do it anymore” “final word”

My interpretation of that situation was very negative. To me, if someone was yelling at me it was because that person wasn’t satisfied and didn’t like me. I thought my boss had a bad opinion of me and thought I wasn’t doing my job well. The fact he avoided the discussion was the worst, to me he didn’t even want to talk about it, I was hopeless so why loosing time trying to fix that? I came to the conclusion that he wouldn’t trust me anymore and would just give me very simple and meaningless work to do until the end of my internship.

Due to that I adopted some beliefs thinking that it is bad to say we can’t do something. I was thinking “next time I will just pretend I can do it, I will do what I can and if I have troubles something I will just be insincere and say I don’t see the problem”. I thought that in that way I wouldn’t get in trouble again not saying I had problems. Or, second option I thought I’ll just say “I can’t do it, I don’t feel comfortable with that” until the end of my internship. Of course I was angry.

I realized that after that event I wasn’t very involved in my internship anymore. Moreover it was harder to communicate with my boss, it was hard for me to go to see him and have a “friendly” conversation about everyday life.

At the end of the internship I had a meeting with Georges in order for him to asses my internship performance. I was surprised to see that he was satisfied with my internship performance. We talked again about that incident and he finally told me he reacted in that way because he was stressed and he wanted to go faster doing the work himself. At that moment his own boss was putting such pressure on him that he didn’t have time to explain me more details about the work. I finally realized how my interpretation of that situation was flawed!!!

Reflective entry I, Grichka FRACHISSE

In a general aspect the conversation went well. We all listened to each other and we really tied to understand each other point of view about coaching. We tried to focus on the five key processes we exposed during the first class. I think we all listened well to each other and tried to ask questions. The three other aspects were harder to put in practice: mirroring, catalyzing and summarizing. It is a hard exercise to listen well and, at the same time, to think about all those other aspects. I think that these abilities will be developed through experience and involvement in that exercise.

What I noticed is when the coachee was speaking, usually the coach wasn’t saying anything (I wasn’t talking either when I was a coach) but little “ok” sometimes. When the coachee was over with his presentation, then the coach was asking questions. So, to me, during the coachee presentation it was hard to see the difference between the coach and the observer. I would like to have pieces of advice about what to say when one is in the coach role who is listening to his coachee.

Later on I would love exercises with more spontaneity. Indeed, we all had prepared our “speech” about coaching days before the Skype interview, so to me it was more like a presentation and not a real exchange between a coachee who is spontaneous and a listening coach.

Overall I’m very satisfied with the exercise which I find very interesting and different from other classes. I’m very satisfied with my team members too, we all considered the exercise as something serious and we all tried to be constructive and really get into it.

One more thing, we faced technical problems with Skype so we had to restart the call at least 4 times and we didn’t have any video working. Personally I really missed the visual contact.

Reflective Entry from Abhinav Shrivastava:

To begin with, I am thankful to my peers Ingrid Elizabeth and Grichka Frachisse for being a part of this conference and making it so informative. Here is a reflective summary from me.

We planned on having a Skype call on Friday evening at 4:00P.M with our team.

We started the conference with Grichka and Ingrid playing the role of a coach and coachee respectively. I was in the observer’s position for their conversation. It was a very knowledgeable talk between the two. 

Ingrid raised some excellent points about coaching. She quoted that “A Coachee must have trust on his coach.” Also she explained the whole idea of coaching in detail, and then Grichka ended the first round of the session by asking few questions. Later, I being the observer concluded the discussion for them.

Amid of the discussion, we faced some connectivity issue with the internet. However, we were soon able to resume with the call & continue with our conversation. This time Grichka was on the coachee’s seat and I played his coach. He started assertively explaining his ideas about coaching. It took him some time to explain each point in depth. Once he was done, I was ready to question and clarify my doubts. I asked the questions as mentioned below:-

•       As mentioned by you in the blog, the study of coaching is like psychology & psychotherapy. Please justify?
•          Is coaching applicable to all levels of the organisation? What do you think?
•          As you said Coaching results are measurable. Did you mean quantitative values?
•          What does the toolbox actually mean?

Next, Ingrid played the role of a coach, and Grichka took the charge of the observer. I started explaining my thoughts about coaching. I tried to put forth all my ideas and explained the all the concepts including the 5 stages of the coaching process i.e. Listening -> Mirroring -> Summarizing -> Questioning -> Catalyzing. I mentioned explicitly about the calculation of risk in advance and the feedback process once the coaching was done. Later, Grichka summed up the dialogue between Ingrid and me. He also appreciated Ingrid for raising smart questions that had occurred to him too.

We all are satisfied with the online session and also with the way we all worked in the team.

Thanks a lot to my team members for making the conversation beneficial.

Have a nice week-end! Stay connected J

Week 2: Reflective entry by Ingrid Sorensen

I think the coaching session worked out fine. I felt everyone was focused and listened to what the other persons had to say. We had some technical problems with Skype, which caused us to have the conversation without any video. So in a way it was a bit challenging, because we couldn’t see who we were talking to. But at the same time I think it made us focus more on our words, and made us more aware of how we verbally interacted. For example, we couldn’t show that we agreed with what was being said (for example by nodding), so I felt it important to announce that I agreed with certain points. But even though this was an interesting experience in itself, I still feel that human interaction, being able to see the person you’re talking to, is very important. Especially if you want to have an open and honest conversation, and develop a good relationship.

Because this is all very new to us, at least to me, there might be some insecurity as to how we are supposed to conduct ourselves, and how to react to what the other person says. But I feel like we managed to complete the assignment in a satisfying way. Also, I noticed that after a while everything went smoother. I think people became more relaxed, and realized that it wasn’t that scary after all.

I realized that when I’m doing my role as a coach, I may not ask “questions that matter”. I ask questions to clarify certain points of view, but perhaps I need to focus more on making him think differently and see things in a new way, instead of focusing on what he already knows and has opinions about. Hopefully this is something I will be able to do in the near future.