I visit an elderly lady in my neighbourhood occasionally to have come clothes mended. On my way there I pass a lemon tree, which bears a surprising amount of fruit - however, the fruit have never turned from green to yellow in the 2 or 3 years I have passed.

 

It reminded me that we experience growth during our entire lives, literally from the moment when we are conceived.

 Our lives, bring about “fruit”, in one way or the other - we have a choice how "mature" they are.

   

Many of the conditions and “ingredients” of a healthy tree are not visible when you look at a lemon tree from the outside.

Many of the “ingredients”, the areas of our personality are also invisible to the outside.

 

We tend to forget that there is an invisible part of our being as well. 

We would be wise to grow those invisible areas of our lives to achieve healthy fruit. I have identified 3 useful areas for growth:

 

  • Growing healthy relationships.

For most of what we do in our lives we rely on other people, we work in a team; we are placed in family; and these areas of our lives work more effectively the more we invest in good relationships.

 

  • Nurturing self-awareness –

This is key. The more we are in tune with who we are, the better we grow fruit. It is about how we impact others, knowing our strengths and our boundaries and limitations are and how we can overcome or manage them.

 

  • Emotional intelligence

To grow we need to be tune in with the quality of our thoughts, and emotions. Did you know that feelings originate with thoughts, not the other way around? Our thoughts tend to wander off to the negative first. Learning how to manage one’s thoughts so that they go to the positive and produce positive feelings is key to developing healthy fruit.

 

 

Warm regards

Silke

 

I did a talk on how I reached consensus for a decision in my church project team recently and I thought to share some of my insights with you.
 
Here a quick overview of the scenario: A Foundation which takes in unwanted or neglected babies until they can be adopted and which we have been supporting for some time was experiencing an unusual increase in babies being dropped off for care. They were in dire need to increase their living space and to improve the adoption process of the babies.
 
My first learning point was that I identified 3 different stakeholder groups:
  • my project team
  • our church leadership
  • the beneficiary of the decision, the baby haven.
  
Secondly, I was surprised that consensus building turned out to be a journey not just a process. The process is pretty straight forward:
  • Discuss the options
  • Identify the concerns
  • Ensure participation
  • Reach consensus
 
The options were:
to get a much bigger place so that the number of babies and caregivers could be cared for.
A concern was the cost - the baby haven depends entirely on donations.
 
The 2nd option was for the Foundation:
  • to employ their own social worker which would speed up the adoption process, also with the concern of cost but on a much smaller scale.
During several weeks I kept interacting with all three stakeholder groups, making sure everyone was on board and on the same page.
 
I am happy to report that the final outcome was the commitment for my church's financial support towards the employment of a social worker at the Foundation
The journey was well worth travelling!

I prepared a talk on mentoring at my  Toastmaster's club just recently and was looking for techniques to improve my mentoring relationships. I found some really cool questioning techniques in Marilee Adams' book "Change your questions, change your life". If you are mentoring or coaching staff members you might find some of these techniques useful.

 I love the first one because it made me realise that we always have a choice: Marilee Adams explains that when things happen to us, we automatically ask ourselves questions, which lead us either down a "Judger Lane" or a "Learner Lane." When discussing possible difficult situations during mentoring dialogues likely questions your mentee might struggle with could be:

 "Why am I failing?" or

  • "What is wrong with me? or, in relation to others
  • "Who’s blame?" or
  • "Why are the others so frustrating?

 

The Judger Lane is characterised by automatic reactions, it is blame focused and often has a negative impact on relationships. It can be rather paralysing.

 What is more helpful is encourage your mentee to ask questions such as,

  • “What are the facts?"
  • "What is the big picture?"
  • "What can I learn?"
  • "What am I responsible for, what not?"
  • "What does the other person need, want, feel?”

 As Learners we can make more thoughtful choices, find more creative solutions and we are more likely to work towards win-win relationships.

The way to switch from the negative 'Judger lane' to a more effective 'Learner lane' is by asking "Switching questions":

"Are you in Judger?"

"What assumptions are you making?"

"How else can you think about this?"

 Let me know if these might add value to your mentoring or coaching dialogues.

 And on a different note - here is a picture where I hand over a copy of my book to the librarian of UNAM, Irmela Phohl.

 

I did a talk on communication styles for coaching just the other day. Whilst you might not coach clients as your job, you may still mentor, teach or train someone in your team and find some of the principles I found useful. I found them in Marybeth O'Connor's book on Executive Coaching. 

 Principles for coaching:

 I love the first one since it is the foundation of all effective interactions. O'Connor calls it coaching with backbone and heart. Communicating with backbone means to state your position whether it is popular or not. Communicating with heart means to stay committed and engaged in the relationship even amidst misunderstandings or disagreements. 

 The second one is that, as a coach, I need to bring my "signature presence" into the coaching relationship. One the one hand, I follow a clear coaching methodology, but on the other, I partner with my client to address his/her challenges and allow my unique personality to colour the relationship. 

 Third, and a fascinating aspect about coaching, is that I need to recognise that my client has most of the resources to address his/ her challenges. I guide my client, - mostly through probing questions -  to mine the resources he/she has. It is not a monologue but a highly interactive process. It also means not giving advice (tempting as that may be) but to challenge the client to see his/her obstacles from a different point of view and empower him/her to find creative, effective solutions. 

 

And on a different note - here is a picture where I hand over a copy of my book to the librarian of NETS, Lorna Neumann.