Way back in 1972 in his book The Inner Game of Tennis, Tim Gallwey said he was sure adults could learn like children, with very little technical instruction.
 
In his recent lecture in the UK, he called this approach,'not trial and error, but trial and correction’. To do it successfully, he says, you have somehow to deal with the inner voice that loves telling you what to do - while judging you as you do it, usually unfavourably. When you listen to the inner voice - 'Self 1' as Tim calls it - with its predictions and instructions, it can interfere with your performance. A preferable alternative is to have a go and see what happens,
 
Gallwey proposes an equation: “Performance equals Potential minus Interference".  Thus we can aim to remove or get away from any interfering chatter in our heads, favouring quietness or calm as a route to improved performance and by releasing the powers of ‘Self 2’. 'Self 2' is that part of us that knows unconsciously what to do, and will do it well if allowed to do so.
 
When 'Self 1’ is talking unhelpfully to 'Self 2'. you can see it manifesting in over-tightening of the muscles. In sports, that typically leads to poorer timing of shots, visibly less elegance. When in doubt, in sport, socially or at work, we tend to tighten. We think the antidote is to relax, but ‘relax’ is a clumsy, blunt instruction. The older part of the brain looks after muscle coordination, and the brain doesn’t speak in English ('Relax!') to the hand. Linguistic instructions at best operate in a parallel universe to that of our chemistry and physiology. Even if we were capable of making a translation across those dimensions, that linguistic message - if it's to do any justice to the complexity of the operation - is going to struggle for accuracy and will end up being too long and too slow.
 
The brain speaks in neuro-chemicals. This is a profound insight, harnessed by Gallwey and also (amongst others), Applied Improvisers (AI), Solution-focused practitioners (SF) and exponents of the Alexander Technique (AT). 
 
Working in theatre, Improvisation guru Keith Johnstone realised that if the aim is for an actor to appear natural on the stage, then trying too hard impedes rather than helps that actor. Hence his injunction to ‘be obvious’ or ‘be average’. An Alexander Technique trainer can’t teach you explicitly all the elements of walking - there are too many to hold in our limited consciousness, and we can't describe if fully or fast enough with our limited language. But she can assist you in directing your attention to greater awareness of certain critical variables, such as the degree of freedom in your neck muscles.
 
Similarly, smart sports players and solution-focused coaches prefer to practice not-knowing until the last moment what shot to play or question to ask. By delaying such decisions by an instant, you give yourself the maximum amount of  topical information, at precisely the moment it’s most needed.
 
That’s the theory, and each of the fields I mention has its methods for turning theory to practice. My favourite contribution from Inner Game is that the best way to do this is by focusing on critical variables. Variables are elements that can change, have different values. Critical means the ones that matter in the topic under discussion. 
 
We stiffen when we perceive pressure; pressure is one of the concepts that invites Self 1 to get involved, to the detriment of our Self 2 abilities. Pressure seems real to the commentator and even to the player, even though ‘pressure’ is a constructed concept with no visible reality. If you asked a player how they would  play that shot if rallying or in a practice game, rather than in the heat of competition, they could show you - and it's better. It’s only a perception of ‘pressure’ that results in them not doing it in this match too.
 
It may be possible to fight Self 1 or ignore Self 1, and much energy goes into those efforts. Inner Game sidesteps brilliantly and says give Self 1 something useful to do, namely pay attention to relevant, useful aspects - that is, the critical variables. It’s the job of the coach sometimes to enable the performer (on the field, on the stage, in life) to bypass Self 1 and communicate with Self 2. You might, for example, ask your coachee ‘How would you like to do this task some day? OK, show me. And now choose between these different options'.
 
And if that’s all good - and I think it is - then the question for us is this: How do we go about discovering the critical variables in each of the arenas in which we wish to improve our performance?

‘Therapy is nothing but a bunch of talk’, as the founder of Solution-focused Brief Therapy Steve de Shazer once said. And it’s not too much of a stretch to consider leadership, too, as nothing but a bunch of talk.
 
Organisations spend a great deal of money to develop and train their leaders. More than £20,000 per leader per year, we've seen estimated. And beyond that, people who want to be leaders get themselves expensive educations at business schools.  
 
The idea is that this spending pays off, as these improved leaders increase profits, recruit and retain better staff, engage and motivate them more effectively and so forth.  
 
But what are they taught on their leadership courses? All sort of theories of leadership. Most of which are based on limited or dated research, with conclusions drawn from one set of circumstances as if they can be applied (scientifically) to other circumstances that different leaders will face in their digitally-reconstructed futures in radically different organisations.
 
Even leaving aside the quality of research and the rigour of the logic of the leadership arguments, attempts to apply these theories may or may not be wise. Perhaps it is simply not possible to have a true and accurate map of leadership. To say the least, the landscape of leadership is not fixed.
 
When people mistake a map for the territory, and then people do not react as they are expected or supposed to, we are tempted to call them resistant (to our great idea). I’m the leader, and you should follow me this way. The theory says so. We are confronted with disappointment and even argument and rebellion.  
 
Whereas if we were less tied to theory and were instead, say, trying out something which seems to be a good idea during the course of our leading, we could be looking for signs of co-operation and progress – key elements of a solutions-focused approach.
 
Instead of giving leaders theories, let’s give them tips. Offer hints on how better to interact with people, ways to deal with changing situations, tools for collaboration. And a reminder to keep an eye out for what works.

​There they are, staring at you. Waiting for the magic. They invested time, money and trust. In you. And you have a rough idea what they might want. After all, they signed up for something with a title, a running time, a description.
 
But that was vague and written a while ago. Now they are actually here - facing you in a room or across your screen - and they look expectant. We all know it’s going to go so much better if you can find out exactly what they want. It will help you to shape the event to meet their needs, making steering adjustments that prevent collisions, detours and crashes. And it will help them to recognise that they are receiving value and making progress.
 
Let’s say you have a group of 8-20 people, who are going to meet at least a couple of times. That means you are able to dedicate a fair amount of time to finding out what they want individually and collectively. Ideally, the process will also produce some record of these desires, which can serve as a touchstone to return to for timely check-ins. How best to do so?
 
We’ll follow our well-established facilitation concept of 'Think, pair, share.’ That means everyone gets a few moments on their own first to think about the answer to the question. Then they speak in pairs or small groups to articulate and further develop that thinking. Finally, step 3 is sharing these answers with the whole group, so that we have a collective result.
 
In this group, we’ll start by asking them to spend a minute on their personal account, writing down their first thoughts to answer the question, ‘What are your best hopes from attending this event?’ If they look blank, we might add, ‘After it’s over, what will tell you that coming here has been useful for you in some way?'
 
Observe the scribbling.
 
Now they can get into 2s or 3s to interview each other with a scripted A4 sheet, to develop their answers, perhaps picking up inspiration from each other’s ideas.
 
What’s on this A4 sheet? Further variations and elaborations of those first questions.

• At the end of programme, what do you want to have accomplished?
• What will you be able to do (better) then than now?
• How will your colleagues/friends/family know that coming here has been worthwhile for you?
• What difference will these new things make to your life/work?

You can tell the participants to choose the questions that most interest or attract them. While they have this conversation, they can write their answers on post-it notes, then collect them (signed or anonymously - you don’t need to know who has said what) onto a wall or flipchart. They may wonder whether they should write their own answers or write for their partner. The latter is potentially bonding, though adds a dangerous frisson of less accuracy.
 
Which brings us to step 3. Let’s hear these hopes read aloud. And there they are, visible to all, easy to check, and ready to revisit next time they are needed

Solution-focused practitioners like to talk about ‘What works’. But who doesn’t? The phrase starts life as an ideology-free idea, equally bandied around in SF circles and elsewhere.
 
It makes a worthwhile bite in SF mostly when it’s contrasted with the leaning in a problem-saturated world towards exploring what doesn’t work. We can then make a valuable distinction about what’s likely to happen when we put our attention one way or the other.
 
Now governments and other funding bodies are increasingly interested in what works, under the auspices of ‘evidence-based’ regimes that decide what does and doesn’t get funded.  This is clearly a rather different ‘what works’, as no SF practitioner would argue that anything that happens to work is thereby SF.
 
This kind of 'what works' can perversely or ironically discriminate against SF.  For example, SF practitioners don’t start with an exploration of problems in order to produce a clinical diagnosis which you then go about curing. If the funding bodies are looking for ‘what works with schizophrenia’ for example, with no such assessments, the SF work on patients who might have attracted such a diagnosis (unhelpfully in the SF view) doesn’t even get to the starting line. 
 
And so in a world of ‘evidence-based’, SF may be fated to remain a counter-culture movement, spread by rumours of success.
 
It’s also true that we can do comparative studies, for example with patients who diagnosticians say have schizophrenia or other labels, but that’s not quite the same as working with clients who’ve yet to be weighed down with labels.
 
That then is a dilemma. To attract more attention and funding, SF needs a stronger ‘evidence base’, and must find ways to put up a good showing on playing fields that are far from level. 
 
How can we be more part of the influential conversations at the top tables? How can we increase the amount of research that goes along with our work from clinics to coaches to organisations? How can research students be tempted to use their ingenuity to measure like with like, so we can show (I expect) that SF is indeed ‘what works’?

Past:
You knew what your group wanted to work on - find out how they have been doing so far, with a quick scaling activity.
Ask everyone to scale between 10 and 1 where they are now between realisation of their hopes and their fears. You can do this on paper, or - better - walking the scale in the room, to generate more energy.
 
Present:
Something comes up in the moment, but you (and probably most of the group) don’t want to devote much time to it for now. Write it on a ‘car park’ chart, visible to all, expressly there to list topics that we can’t or won’t deal with further in this session, but which will be allocated a time and a process for later.
 
Future:
Invite participants each to write a letter to themselves. Then post them out a couple of weeks or a month later as a great reminder of the learning, visions or actions from your session.
 

At last! it’s what they call your ‘HBR Moment’. That’s when your big idea gets recognised in an article in the Harvard Business Review. In this case it’s the cover story.

The big idea is that Performance Review Conversations need reforming, because for the most part they are counter-productive and based on faulty, traditional thinking. 

Co-author is Marcus Buckingham, who we exchanged ideas with a few years ago at a conference in Florida. Since then, we’ve always included him in our presentations, with his ‘Strengths' work as a significant feature in our landscape of positive change. It’s less likely he’s been mentioning us, but you never know. We chatted to Martin Seligman, too, and maintain friendly relations with Positive Psychology.

Meanwhile, we’ve been quietly developing and implementing better performance review processes with clients from care homes to dock facilities managers. As the HBR article says, it’s a hot topic, which we’re currently discussing with a leading heritage organisation and a charity for the homeless.

You can, as Bruce Springsteen noted, 'spend your life waiting for a moment that just don’t come'. Well let’s not waste any more time on performance reviews that confuse or demotivate. Give us a call to seize this HBR Moment and transform your organisation’s most important conversations!

Read the article here

Professional coaches spend weeks and even years attending training courses, honing their skills and pursuing recognised accreditation. All of which can be useful and perhaps essential to be a proficient, credible and skilful coach.
 
But what about professional trainers, who deliver content? They don’t want a career as a coach, but know that coaching techniques will enhance the impact of their interventions. 

Global mobility specialists BGRS have a pool of highly-skilled intercultural trainers. They provide training on cultural norms and practices for managers relocating to a new country. Whilst trainees are strangers to their new cultures, they also bring with them a wealth of know-how that could be put to work. 
BGRS wanted their intercultural trainers to develop coaching skills, so as to harness trainees’ know-how.

The Challenge:
How to help these skilled trainers to be confident and effective at incorporating coaching into training interventions without having to attend lengthy training programmes themselves.  
 
The Answer:
Solutions Focused Micro-Coaching Tools (MCT’s) - a set of sequenced solutions-focused coaching questions related to a specific topic. BGRS trainers use these question sets to guide trainees to make significant progress faster.
​
Our colleague Regina Reinhardt, herself an experienced solutions focused practitioner and intercultural coach, identified the topics that relocating managers most frequently raised in training sessions which lent themselves to coaching.

One of the most popular is ​'Switching between Direct and Non-Direct Communication Styles'. ​

Here's the MCT - the questions which the trainer asks those managers:

1. ​What are you aiming to achieve through your communications?
2. Which style is most appropriate here (direct/non-direct)?
3. How do you know?
4. What would be the benefits to you of adapting your style?
5. On a scale of 1-10 where 10 is expert and 1 is you know nothing, how skilled are you already communicating in a non-direct/direct way?
6. What’s got you that high? Please share examples...
7. What else do you know about this communication style?
8. What would be the first signs to your colleagues/boss/others that you were communicating more in a non-direct/direct way?
9. Where else in your work and/or life would it be useful for you to adapt your communication style?
10. What’s the first thing you can do to take this forward?

 
We compiled a short MCT handbook to help trainers be aware of the tools and to know when and how to use them. We've introduced them with 1 hour large-scale interactive webinars and smaller practice groups, and voila - BGRS now have a bunch of trainers who have started their coaching journey. All equipped with the confidence and tools to switch between training and coaching modes.

​Please feel free to test this coaching conversation structure, and let us know how you get on. Share with us how you encourage trainers to take a more coach-like approach.

Nice to see the number one story in the Observer this week was ‘Viruses save a man from antibiotic-resistant bacteria’, in which a 69-year-od American is brought out of a coma and has his life saved by an injected cocktail of bacteriophages.

The story appears just 16 years after we wrote about phages in the first edition of The Solutions Focus, as an illustration of the SF principle, ‘Every case is different.’  

Each phage will attack only one virus, so you have to find the right one to be effective. The trouble with the broad brush approach of antibiotics is that certain viruses become immune to their effects. 

That’s rather like different approaches to organisational problems.  Broad-spectrum approaches can be applied, often with good effect - but not always.  We recommend taking care to find the solution that works uniquely for you.

Read more in The Solutions Focus, Making Coaching and Change SIMPLE, by Paul Z Jackson and Mark McKergow.

And you can find the Guardian article here.