As I was doing some research on the web today I came across a coaching website which had this unusual strapline:

“Step inside your comfort zone  -  there are no prizes for being uncomfortable”.

Hmmmm…..It’s well known in the world of personal development and coaching that if you want to grow and develop, you have to take small steps outside your comfort zone from time to time. By doing this you expand your capabilities and come to the realisation that, yes, actually, you can achieve more than you have done in the past. You need not be bound by your limiting beliefs.

In our coaching we see far greater results from those people who do stretch themselves out of their comfort zones. Coaching gives you the time and space to reflect, to learn, it increases your self-awareness, and gives you the confidence and support to take positive action that you would never have dreamed of doing before.

For a coach to claim that it’s fine to stay where you’re comfortable seems to me to be quite crazy…On the other hand, perhaps I’m just taking it all too seriously…

Last night I went to an Open University Business School South Coast Alumni Network event – a presentation by Curly Martin , one of the UK’s leading life coaches. She was energetic, passionate and persuasive about the benefits of life coaching both for the client / coachee and for those in the audience who might be considering life coaching as a profession.

Prior to the session starting I got chatting to some of the other delegates about coaching in general, about the difference between directive and non-directive practice and about coaching principles, one of which is that the client / coachee already has all the resources they need themselves. Martyn Stainer, co-incidentally a Resource Group Manager at BAE Systems and I were considering what you do as a coach when you ask your client/coachee a question and they respond with ‘I don’t know’. How do you help them without giving them an answer on a plate?

Curly neatly addressed this issue during a concise and effective demonstration of life coaching with a volunteer from the audience. One of the questions Curly asked was, ‘And what action are you going to take?’ The answer came back, ‘I’ve been thinking about it, but I don’t know.Curly wasn’t fazed by this at all, she didn’t make a suggestion or give advice. What she then asked was, ‘Well, if you did know, what would it be?’  This is a very useful little NLP question, which works by getting the client/coachee out of an I-don’t-know-the-answer rut for a few seconds, which is often long enough for a creative solution to emerge.

Other ways of tackling the I-don’t-know-the-answer response are:

1. Ask your client / coachee to think of someone they know whose skills, abilities or qualities they admire. Once they have someone in mind, ask them what this person would do in their situation.

2. Disney Creativity Strategy (Robert Dilts)
This is another NLP technique which allows the client / coachee to look at an issue from different angles. It involves anchoring four spaces on the floor, one for ‘Realist’ one for the ‘Dreamer’, one for the ‘Critic’ and a Meta position. Have your client / coachee step between the Meta position and the first three, considering their issue from that point of view. This technique enables people to identify other courses of action (as well as other potential downsides!).

3. Cartesian Logic questions -  these are particularly useful when your client / coachee is stuck for an answer or is unsure about something. They help to test the boundaries of normal thinking, and loosen up limiting beliefs. You ask:

Q What would happen if you did XYZ?
Q What would happen if you didn’t?
Q What wouldn’tt happen if you did?
Q What wouldntt happen if you didntt?

The questions allow your client / coachee to consider something from all possible angles, and might enable them to see both possibilities and limitations that they wouldn’t have otherwise.

4. Even as a non-directive coach it is OK to make a suggestion as long as you ask the client / coachee’s permission to do so first. Even better if you create an anecdote (‘I know someone in a similar position and they found XYZ helpful’), thus leaving the client / coachee free to decide whether they take it on board or not.

Finally, it really is worth persevering with your questioning in order to help the client / coachee come to their own decision about what action they’ll take, because they are far more likely to be committed to it. Having said that, if you test the level of their commitment (using a simple scale of 1-10) and they’re not on 10, remember to ask, ‘And what would it take to get you up to 10?’.

After all, people are far more likely to take action that they have thought of, and that they are fully committed to.

I had a phone call Friday morning from Bill Saravinovski, the Mayor of Rockdale, New South Wales (situated on Botany Bay, 12km from Sydney, Australia). I first came across Bill following an interview of him on the BBC website about playing Barry Manilow songs in public to deter groups of youths from congregating and potentially causing trouble in the car-parks of Brighton-Le-Sands, a suburb of Sydney.

I’m not a great fan of Barry Manilow myself, so I can understand the attraction of this particular creative solution – I certainly would run a mile to avoid hearing a single rendition of the ‘Copacobana’ , let alone Manilow being blasted out at high volume non-stop for several hours.

When I came across a similar idea (using a high pitched whistle called a Mosquito, which only young people can hear) I tracked down Bill’s email address using the Rockdale City Council website and sent him the details.

Late last year I came across another idea, this time using pink lighting as a deterrent, so I sent that information to Bill too. Well, I thought, the young people who were gathering in the car parks of Brighton-Le-Sands might have been secret Manilow fans; playing his songs hour after hour might actually have made the night-time meetings even more popular than before… Bill replied that he’d put the idea of pink lighting to his colleagues at the council, and if they got approval, they’d try it out.

He rang me early Friday, saying that they were piloting the idea in Brighton-le-Sands – not only that, but he’d been inundated with media requests for interviews (see ‘Sydney creates a pink light district’,  ‘Pink light to beat crime‘ in the NSW Daily Telegraph) because of it…I was delighted he called and I’m delighted that the internet and email have allowed us to make this connection, and that in some small way I have been able to make a difference to someone on the other side of the world.

So if the spotlight wasn’t on Rockdale (or more specifically the car-parks of Brighton-le-Sands) before, it will be now. I can’t comment on the efficacy of Barry Manilow, Mosquito sonic devices or pink lighting over and above what I’ve read in the press, but I hope Bill solves the problem. I think it’s great that he’s prepared to be creative and try something on the off-chance it might work.

And the moral of the story is? When you’re looking for solutions, you might have to try a few things out before you find something that really works. Do a bit of research of course, assess the risks and prepare yourself for the flak you might get from other people (after all, you can never please all the people all the time). Whatever you do, don’t let this stand in your way. Persevere. And be bold!

Bet you thought Jenny and I were so busy elsewhere that we’d forget to come back to you on the subject of Achieving Your Goals – no chance! after a few minor diversions including Jenny getting her cat seen to and me organising Hugo’s 5th birthday party, (not to mention the proper work in between of course) – we’re back on track.

In today’s posting I’m going to share with you an interesting tool, devised by Dr Martin Seligman, called the January Retrospective. This is a bit like Out with the Old, In with the New which Jenny described in her posting on 1st January, only in more depth.

Here’s how it works.

At the end of January set aside 20-40 minutes of quiet time to reflect on the previous year. Think about how your life has gone over the past 12 months. What has happened, what goals did you set yourself (if any) last year, and which ones have you achieved? If you missed some, what stopped you? What successes did you have, how did they come about? What good things happened that you’d forgotten about? Reflecting on those positive things, identify what difference they have made to you, and how do you feel differently now that they have happened. Consider what you know now that you didn’t know then. Consider also the negative things which happened and rather than dwell on them, think about what you have learnt from them, and how you have changed for the better because of them.

Once you have spent about 20 minutes on this (or more if you want), you need to organise your thoughts on one page that you can keep and refer back to. For ease, Selgiman keeps his record on his PC.

On a scale of 1-10 rate your satisfaction with your life in each of the categories which are of great value to you, and jot down a few sentences to sum up. Seligman uses the following categories:

Love
Profession
Finance
Play
Friends
Health
Generativity (leaving a meaningful legacy for the future)
Overall

Other categories could be:
Faith / spirituality
Learning / personal development
Relationships:  intimate / family / friends/ community / business
Work / career
Health & Wellbeing
Fun / Hobbies/ Recreation
Self Esteem
Achievements
Contentment

Choose whichever categories are most meaningful to you. Because Seligman has been doing this exercise for the last decade, he also uses a category called ‘Trajectory’ in which he scrutinises the year-on-year changes and their course across the decade.

The idea is that you keep this summary of 2006 in a safe place until next January, when you go through the same process, reflecting on how 2007 was for you personally.

Over time, you will build up a fairly detailed appraisal of how you, and your life, is progressing, which is important for balanced decision making. And you will have reminded yourself of the positives, and reinforced the learnings too.

From ‘Authentic Happiness’, Martin Seligman (2003)