And I don’t know about you but I think a blog site with comments looks a lot more friendly and lived in too. After my first five days of live blogging the place already looks a lot more complete – so thanks very much to my early callers

I’m guessing though that there are lots of people out there who’d like to chip in but aren’t used to leaving comments, may not know how to go about it or might not be sure what to say.  If that sounds like you then keep on reading to find out how to join the conversation…

Okay, I’m not a technical expert but here’s what I’ve worked out from my own experience so far…

The technical bit

Where: There’s a comment section at the end of each post.  If you’re on the home page and can see lots of posts you’ll need to click on the word “comments” at the bottom to open up that same comment section.  Once your comment is done it will appear on the right hand side under “recent comments” (don’t be scared! see below)

How: You will be asked to leave your details: your name (which then appears alongside the comment) and your e-mail (which doesn’t get published, it’s just to verify who you are).  Then there’s a space for your URL which is the address for your own website or blogsite if you have one.  (If you want to make sure you direct people to your own site check up-to-date advice from the Business Blog Angel Claire here.)  You will then be asked to type in some letters and numbers from the screen – it’s a way of checking that the comment comes from a human rather than a machine

When: I’ll be glad to hear from you anytime, even if it’s a little while since the post was first published.

Why: To join the conversation of course!  But there are lots of business as well as social benefits and if you are interested in that side of it you can find out more from Claire here

The writing bit

I’ve seen comments on other blogs from people who say things like “I’ve never had the courage to comment before” or “I’m not normally brave enough to join this conversation…”.  Even my oft-quoted blog angel Claire has admitted to some early qualms about chipping in to blog conversations:

When I first started blogging I was often moved to comment on other people’s blogs but then suddenly overcome with shyness, feeling that my opinion was in some way ‘not worthy’!

This made me realise that leaving a comment is just like any other form of writing and the same principles (and anxieties) apply.  Here are some tips that you can use to boost your confidence in writing comments:

Purpose

Spend a moment thinking about why you want to comment – is it to offer encouragement, support, an idea, to promote something you’re doing, to make a connection?  Hold on to that thought and it will help you get over your fear and mean you get less hung up on the words.  The positive intention will drive you forward.

Style

Adjust the style of the comment to the purpose.  Is it just a quick hello, a simple question, or a full-blown analysis of someone’s position?  That will affect the tone and length of the comment.  Short and sweet is fine if you’re just dropping by!

Impact

Read it back to yourself.  Does it sound like you?  Remember this is a format that’s very conversational in style.  If you have a business web presence you might also ask yourself – what will this say about me and my business?

Edit

Check it before you send it.  Most comment forms have a preview pane – it’s worth using it to check you’ve said what you meant, the way you meant to say it.  You can also go back and edit from here.

The conversation bit

One of the best things I’ve discovered is that this really does start a conversation.  In my first few weeks of commenting I’ve had welcoming comments back from blog owners, some interesting questions posed, a very friendly personalised reply to my in-box, new visitors to my site and a strong sense of an emerging network.  One of the things that feels good (to me anyway) is when you get a comment back, even a very brief acknowledgement, so I’m definitely going to try and do that here.

Phew!  Well what started off as a short quick post has turned into something of an epic…but I realised as I was writing there was more to it than meets the eye.  Even so I’m guessing there might be things that I’ve missed so…

What else would it be useful to know?

What are the things that put you off commenting?  What are the things that encourage you?

How can I make it easier for you to join the conversation?

Look forward to hearing from you!

“Find out who you are and do it on purpose”

It reflects a lot of important coaching themes – and the things that happen within coaching.  Finding out who you are.  What’s important to you.  The values that drive you forward.  The actions, the choices that reflect those values and beliefs.  That make up and tell your story.

And once you are in that powerful state of knowing who you are, what really matters to you – well then you can get on with going out there and doing it on purpose.

So who was this philosopher who summed it up so wisely?  None other than Dolly Parton, a woman who is proud to define herself, to tell her own story.  Which means she should really get the last word…

“I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes.

I know that I’m not dumb, and I also know that I’m not blonde”

She’s talking about the way we express values through the development of a personal brand:

You may not be driven by money – like me maybe it is your personal values and the creation of value in the world. The biggest reason for me to know and live by a personal brand, is that I want to ensure that I live my life to my values, I want to create my legacy as I go…so there are no regrets when I close my eyes for the final time….

The idea of creating your legacy as you go along rather than waiting to the end is a very powerful one. And it’s not something that is limited to a brand. It’s the choices we make in life. The roads taken. Things we stand up for. Words spoken. Lives touched. Not just the big things but the small stuff too. An outstretched hand of friendship. Random acts of kindness.

And it is what what I mean by stories: the ones we live, the ones we tell, the ones we leave behind.

All of which reminds me of a fabulous quote by George Bernard Shaw:

“Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch that I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

The conversation is partly about what makes us scared, partly about how we feel the fear and do it anyway, partly about the buzz we get afterwards.  This is what the bridge climber Kathy Sierra said:

A short time ago I went on the Sydney Bridge Climb. At night. It was the most frightening thing I’ve ever done. But when it was over, I felt braver, stronger, and different.

And I realised that pressing the button to make this blogsite ‘live’ is scary too.  It’s not the scariest thing I’ve ever done and it’s not like jumping off the Sydney Bridge.  But there is a fear factor, an element of taking a deep breath, closing your eyes…and just jumping.

Changing the words and the language can help to unblock the problem.  I stumbled across a really simple trick over at the ‘Thinking Managers’ site.  All you do is write down the words of your problem and type them into one of the online translation services like Babelfish. Translate your problem into a different language – non European is probably best, and I’ve had some good fun with Korean – then cut and paste the new text and turn it back into English. 

By this time it’s back in your own language but no longer in your own words, and no longer in the old, fixed words of your problem.  It might have become so ridiculous it makes you laugh or at least give you the hint of a smile and – guess what – once that happens it might not even seem like a problem any more.  If you’re lucky you might even find that the germs of the solution have turned up in the translation, lurking in the problem state all the time.

I’ve had worries about money turned into not enough gold, which makes me want to start a treasure hunt.  Or “not enough time to write this” translated back to “me there is not an hour when it writes this” which makes me think, okay, it’s just sixty minutes not all of eternity, and guess what – it’s not going to write itself…

Neat, isn’t it?  Might be worth a try – and let me know if you get any really transforming translations…

So we dream up our own definitions…write fantastical job descriptions…find metaphors that add a touch of magic.  Here are some of my current favourites (I’ll explain what they mean to me later!)

• Training Jedis
• Electrical engineering
• Computing wizard
• Translating service

It would be great to hear from other coaches about definitions that work for you.  Do you have a favourite job title?  Could we construct some more fun definitions of coaching?  What are the metaphors that you
coach by?

We can see elements of coaching, the hero’s journey if you like, in many traditional tales and fairy stories.

If we think about Jack and the beanstalk for example, we might start off by saying that it was about slaying giants, finding the courage and the confidence to destroy your demons, real or imagined.  Or maybe it is about climbing a beanstalk, up to a bigger and better place, finding not only gold but the source of wealth itself:  the hen that lays the golden eggs.

But then again it’s about planting magic beans, whatever anyone else might say, and waiting to see what grows.  And seeing how the beanstalk grows up, and up, and round, and out, leading to all sorts of extraordinary places that you couldn’t have imagined when you threw down those beans.

Or maybe the story is about how people change, and grow – or remain stuck in character.  There is Jack of course: curious, confident, hungry, full of desire, at times over-reaching.    But what about the Giant, striding around his empty castle, trapped by his own wealth and power.  Or his sad lonely wife, desperate for children, longing for any sign of love.   And then there’s Jack’s mother, who does nothing but worry and moan, the voice of negativity… and yet, at the end, is the one who fetches the axe.

And when we think about it maybe the story is not just about slaying giants – because the giant only dies when Jack and his mother are able to chop down the beanstalk.  Perhaps it is about breaking the ties that bind, real or imagined…

But what does all this have to do with coaching and NLP?  Well, it is a story that begins with a problem state (no money, no prospects, no joy in life) and ends in a positive end state.  We can see that in material terms (wealth, economic freedom) but mainly in the transformations that have taken place through the course of the story (freedom from fear, courage, confidence, a sense of your own power).  There’s some magic along the way, of course, but everything flows from the resources they have already got: the milk cow (poor old Daisy), and Jack’s confidence, resilience, curiosity, believing in the impossible…   What the magic beans do is open up new possibilities and let the story unfold…

The beauty of this and other stories is that there is no one answer… but many layers of meaning that curl and twirl like leaves on a beanstalk… meanings that we make and take from our own experience and map of the world… meanings that change over time… and with each reading… and I don’t know which part of the story has the most meaning for you now…?

“Stories can conquer fear, you know.  They can make the heart bigger.” – Ben Okri

How do stories and coaching go together? 

Stories and metaphors are how we make sense of the stuff that happens to us. Traditionally, stories have been used by humans to pass on wisdom, experience, ideas and beliefs from one generation to the next.  Some stories are very powerful, that is: they have the power to move us, to shift our perspective, to tap into our own power source, to give us courage, to wake us up.  To make the heart bigger.

We use stories to frame our experience.  And like other frames, some can be more valuable or constructive than others.  Through the coaching process you get the chance to:

• look at your own story from a different perspective
• try on different frames for size
• become aware of the metaphors that help shape your life
• identify the resources that you have and will need to move on in your story
• open up new possibilities for what happens next

It is an opportunity that you might rarely get to:

• become really familiar with your own story
• find the elements that have the real meaning – for you
• shape how you want the story to be in the future

And you might find stories and metaphors playing a part in the coaching sessions… you might find some on these pages… and you might start to listen to the stories that other people tell… and that you are telling… and you might find that you are starting to tell a different story… but that is something only you can tell…

“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.” – Anais Nin

It might be because you are facing a major transition: the need or desire to change your job, children leaving home, the end of a relationship, moving into a post-working world.

Or perhaps it will be because you are starting to notice a feeling… or a whisper… or a knocking at the door… or the sudden onset of tears… or the knowledge without knowing what that knowledge means or where it will take you… that something needs to change.

And if that feeling, that silent whisper, that knowledge goes on for too long you might start to say to yourself, to hear in yourself, to feel in your self, deep inside, that you are lost, that you have lost your way.  Or that you have lost your purpose.  Can’t work out where to go next.  Lost sight of what it all means.  Or just plain lost the plot.

Or maybe you know that things need to be different but you can’t see the way ahead.  There’s just a brick wall. A dead end.  And so you stay.  Stuck.

Or for some people it’s what happens when you get tired, really tired, and the thought of changing makes you feel: overwhelmed.  And you don’t want to move forward because the world has got so grey, so dull, so drab, so lacking in colour that you can’t really see the point.  And yet, inside, you know that this isn’t how things were meant to be.  Not how you were meant to be.  And that this isn’t how the story is going to end.

But that it is, in fact, just about to begin.

Two men were working together on a building site.  When lunchtime came, they sat down at the side of the road, and opened their respective lunchboxes.  The first man, on looking into the box, rubbed his hands together gleefully and said ‘Great!  I’m starved.  Chicken, cheese and tuna sandwiches, a nice piece of fruit….’

The second man looked at the contents of his box and sighed heavily.  ‘Oh no, not ham again!  I can’t believe it.  That’s the third time this week I’ve had ham sandwiches.  I’m getting sick and tired of seeing ham.’

‘Come on, cheer up,’ soothed his mate.  ‘Look, if you’re so sick of ham sandwiches why don’t you just ask your wife to use something else?’

His mate looked puzzled.  ‘What are you talking about?’ he said.  ‘I don’t have a wife; I make my own sandwiches’.

I hope you like this story.  It makes me smile every time I read it, remembering just how many ham sandwiches we all have in our lives… me included!

But what has coaching got to do with the story of the ham sandwich?

Coaching is often associated with goal setting and then taking action to achieve those goals.  But the essence of coaching is working together to reframe a situation, changing perspective so that the client starts to look at things in a different light, from a fresh angle…  This is all with a view to opening up new possibilities and choices.  That might include continuing to eat ham sandwiches…  But the client would be aware that they were making that choice – and that awareness in itself would be enough to change the lunchtime experience…

Of course the change in perspective might well lead to the client deciding to change their sandwich filling… or maybe to make their own soup… or go for a picnic in the park…and that is where the coaching around goals kicks in, as the coach and client work together to make those aims specific, to start to bring them to life, to identify the actions, however small, that the client can take to make them happen… always and all ways building on the resources that the client already has.  Taking this sandwich example to further extremes… that might include all the ingredients in the man’s fridge, the money he has to buy new fillings, people he knows that are ace sandwich makers, friends who would be willing to give him recipe ideas, places he knows where he can buy great sandwiches…  And then there are the most important resources of all: his inner resources… confidence, motivation, a sense of possibility, the desire for change, creativity, a re-awakened appetite… And those resources are the ones that are for life!

With thanks to Margaret Parkin’s ‘Tales for Coaching’ for the ham sandwich story