I Care For: People in Conflict

In celebration of International Coaching Week (February 5-11), a different guest blog post will be highlighted on the ICF blog each day this week. This is the first in this special series.

Though it is inevitable to have disagreements in both our personal and professional lives, many of us do not have the skills to effectively engage in conflicts that may emerge. What may start as a difference of opinion for instance, can escalate unnecessarily into a harsh exchange that is full of blame and hurt. Unresolved and poorly-managed disputes can also linger after they are ostensibly over. When this happens, the words and feelings expressed remain as remnants that hang on us and shroud the next dispute and the one after that and on and on.

Conflicts happen for many reasons, including the fact that we have values and needs in our lives that we feel strongly about. It may even be a perceived challenge to how we see ourselves and want to be seen by others. That is, when we become defensive, we are defending something important to us. At these times, when we are offended by something another person says or does, we often react -  in offensive ways  - and perpetuate the cycle of conflict. We lose our perspective about what is important to us and also, what may be important to the other person. Conflict takes a toll in a range of other ways too. The emotional repercussions cause stress for us and those around us and have an impact on our problem-solving skills and abilities, our creativity, decision-making and our way of interacting and being.

A typical scenario that I encounter in my coaching work recently occurred for a former colleague who is aware of my speciality – conflict management coaching. She shared her deep concerns about the conflict-saturated dynamics among members of a Board - of which she is one. The group have apparently been at an impasse regarding some major decisions over the past six months, and their individual and collective well-meaning intentions are suffering due to the in-fighting.  My colleague said that the constant internal and interpersonal disputes among the members are apparently causing some stakeholders to question the Board’s effectiveness. She added that the members have built walls around them - and we are ‘up against a wall.’ 

What does this have to do with Coaching Week? To celebrate, I have volunteered to help out the Board by using my conflict management coaching skills and also, the coach-approach to mediation that I developed. Together we have just framed the objectives. They are to help the Board members break down the walls, to better understand the dynamics that lead to their conflicts (as to proactively consider how to handle future challenges that may occur), to establish a process for making decisions in collaborative ways and to get on with the important work of fulfilling their mandate. We start at the beginning of Coaching Week - on February 6, 2012.

Cinnie Noble ACC, LL.B, LL.M (ADR),  is a lawyer-mediator and certified coach, specializing in conflict management coaching. She hosts ICF’s Conflict Management Coaching Special Interest Group and is a former Board Member of ICF-Greater Toronto Area. Cinnie is the author of “Conflict Management Caoching:The CINERGY Model” (September, 2011) http://www.tinyurl.com/conflictcoaching/ and co-author with Ed Modell and Diane Brennan, of the chapter entitled Conflict Management in the book “The Handbook of Knowledge-Based  Coaching:From Theory to Practice” (John Wiley and Sons, 2011),  by Leni Wildflower and Diane Brennan. Cinnie’s website is www.cinergycoaching.com.

Sharing the value of coaching

ICF members Terence Pritchard, ACC, and Yvette Elcock, ACC, joined ICF staff member Kristin Kelly at the HR Directors Business Summit in Birmingham, United Kingdom where the ICF sponsored a booth in the exhibit hall. This year's Summit marked the 10th anniversary of the event and it was the ICF's first appearance.

Attendees represented organizations across Europe and many were interested in learning more about how coaching could work within their businesses.

Learn more about this event at http://www.hrevent.com/.

Don't Make This Personal Branding Mistake

The below post first appeared on CBS MoneyWatch:

There are blog posts, articles, and even books dedicated to helping you create a personal brand, but personal branding expert Dan Schawbel warns against making a critical mistake that can decimate your brand overnight. I had the chance to interview Dan Schawbel about personal branding and his book, Me 2.0: 4 Steps for Richer Life. Go to Richer Life to listen to the full Dan Schawbel personal branding interview.

Robert: How specific should someone be when creating their personal brand? Let's say a few years ago my personal brand was "I'm the MySpace expert." And now all of the sudden MySpace is dead. So is there a fear with committing too much to a specific brand?

Dan: You don't want to commit to someone else's brand. By saying you're a LinkedIn Expert or a MySpace Expert, you're committing to someone else's brand, so you're placing a bet that their brand will grow and succeed and therefore your brand will grow and succeed, because there will be more of a demand for your services. But it's a fool's bet. It's not something that I would ever recommend. I've seen some people be successful doing that, but it's too risky and it's building someone else's brand and not as much building your own. So I think it's really important and it's part of the reason why I did personal branding-because it's something that was written about 10 years before social media. It was getting talked about and social networks were being created. So therefore, my belief is that it's something that will survive even if social media becomes something else later.

Robert: That little nugget right there is huge, because I think for a lot of people they do tie their personal brand with maybe another company or with a product. Let's say I've got a book coming out and I want to tie my personal brand to that book. Now, if the book doesn't do well or if I have four or five more books that I have in my head, there could be a problem if I say that's my brand and I've tied it specifically to a particular product.

Dan: Absolutely. You'll be irrelevant if that company or that social media tool does not exist anymore. You'll be completely irrelevant, and then in order to position yourself back in the marketplace and something else it'll be really tough. It'll be really tough because you've become known as the LinkedIn Specialist, but if there's no LinkedIn what are you going to be known as? And to create new brand perception is a lot of work, and it's tough, and it's going to take years, so it's definitely not something that I would recommend. I think you just have to create your own job title, be unique, and be committed to what you're going to do, because it takes a lot of work and you have to build it over time. I didn't, you know, it took me six months and then I was fortunate enough to get written about in Fast Company which expedited my success. But what if that didn't happen? Maybe it would have taken a year, two years. That's why you really have to love what you do and you have to be. When you love what you do and you really enjoy it and you gain confidence in it, you gain a positive attitude and you're committed to it. So the chances that you'll be successful (even if you aren't Donald Trump) are very high, because people are more apt to do business with people who love what they do. If you have hate what you do (as you know 80% of people or companies hate what they do), it's going to be hard for somebody to really, really want to work with you.

Robert Pagliarini

Go to Richer Life to listen to the full Dan Schawbel personal branding interview.

Robert Pagliarini is a CBS MoneyWatch columnist, bestselling author, professional life coach, and founder of Richer Life—a community for people who want to achieve more at work and in life. He has appeared as an expert on 20/20, Good Morning America, Dr. Phil, Dr. Drew's Lifechangers and many others. Sign-up for Richer Life Tips at RicherLife.com to get a daily email that provides inspiration and insight each morning.

Content free coaching

Sounds puzzling? Impossible? Not impossible but definitely a challenge!

This is one of the best ways I know for honing your coaching skills, whether you’re experienced or new to coaching.  Content free coaching:

• Improves your ability to tune in to what is going on for your coachee beneath the words they are actually saying;  to pay more attention to the ‘music’ and ‘dance’ (their tone and body language) which really indicate what they are feeling and thinking.
• Develop and practice powerful questions that don’t rely on content, such as “what’s happening now? ”, “what else ?” “and what else?” “and what else?”!!
• Remove any temptation to ‘solutionise’  - when you don’t know what their topic is you can’t possibly start thinking  about your solutions.

The quality of your attention is exquisite.  Where will your question take them?  How will it land?

I’ve used this to hone my own skills and also when training other coaches.  It was particularly striking with a group of managers whose career success so far was largely based on coming up with answers – it made an immediate step change in their ability to be curious about the coachee’s ideas rather than their own and stopped them solutionising, one of the biggest challenges for manager-coaches.

So how do you practice coaching content free?

• Find a friendly fellow coach.
• Ask them to think of a topic they want to be coached on.
• Ask them coaching questions and reflect back – after each question they should think through their answer and indicate when their thinking is finished and they are ready for the next question or observation from you.  Your next question or reflection is based on what you have detected and what your intuition suggests will help next.
• Get feedback from your coachee on what you did that helped …or didn’t.

Caroline Talbott

What are your key tips for honing your skills? Or your powerful ‘content free’ questions?   Share them with us at Facebook.com/ICFHQ.

Caroline Talbott coaches and develops leaders, especially those who have had success in a profession (eg lawyers, chartered surveyors, engineers, HR specialists) and then moved into a leadership role.  She is also a coach trainer and passionate about her own professional and personal development. Professionals in Leadership blog. Caroline Talbott - catalyst for change. Twitter: @CaroCatalyst.

Coaching’s time to shine

International Coaching Week (ICW) is the coaching profession’s time to shine. Held the first full week each February, the premise of ICW is to allow coaches everywhere the opportunity to share the value professional coaching brings.

Coaches across the globe celebrate ICW in different ways—some offer pro bono coaching, others (in conjunction with the ICF Chapter they belong to or with other local peers) provide workshops, and still others reach out to local media channels to share coaching with the public. The sky’s the limit when it comes to promoting the value coaching offers! (Use this page as a starting point.)

ICW will be here February 5-11, 2012. That leaves just about two weeks to get those final plans in place!

How are you planning to commemorate ICW? We’d love to hear about it—let us know what you are doing.

Haven’t planned anything yet? There is still time! Take a look at how others have celebrated in the past. 

Don’t have a lot of time to plan anything? Take a look at these five simple ways to get involved during ICW without a lot of effort or pre-planning.

And don’t forget: findings from the greatly anticipated ICF Global Coaching Study will be released during ICW. This is the perfect way to promote coaching at the local level. Find out more.

Learn more about International Coaching Week.