Robyn McMaster at Brain Based Biz is one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking bloggers out there (her blog is full of the most amazing material on the workings of the brain) so I was surprised and honoured to find that she had named me for the Thinking Blogger Awards. 

I’m one of five that she’s listed – the others are Word Sell, Branding and Marketing, Own Your Brand and Design Your Writing Life. I’m familiar with Word Sell (a great read) but not the others – so more to add to my list of reading material (= brain food).

The challenge is then to come up with your own list of five nominations: the blogs that really make you think.  It’s hard, because each one gives you something (else why would you read it?).  But there are some that really do give my brain a good workout – and here they are:

1. Roger von Oech at Creative Think, whose questions, prompts and challenges get you thinking creatively

2. Anna Farmery at The Engaging Brand, who gets you thinking about leadership – of teams but also of yourself – in a very natural way, using stories and anecdotes from everyday life

3. Hilda Carroll at Living Out Loud, who gets us thinking about our ability to be happy right now.

4. Liz Strauss at Successful Blog who gets me thinking about how to use great questions to stimulate conversation, and to help us to get to know who we are

5. Rosa Say at Managing with Aloha, who has started me thinking about the values of aloha and how to apply them in my life.  The start of an amazing journey of discovery.

Robyn’s blog, I hasten to add, would be on the list had she not already been tagged…

If you don’t already know these blogs why not dip into them and give them try.  I guarantee you’ll get some interesting and unusual food for thought.

Here are the participation rules for the Thinking Blogger Award:

    1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
    2. Link back to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
    3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ (I know you’ll want to!)

There’s an art to doing this of course – you need to have good rapport with your client first, to listen closely to what they say, to use clean language that uses their words and phrases rather than your own, and to trust yourself to find the right question or questions that will provide the key that opens the door…

This approach is based on the presupposition that clients already have the resources and answers inside of them.  Your job as coach is to help them tap into those resources – be it knowledge, skills, ideas, confidence, passion, dreams – and then watch the new avenues and opportunities open up before them.

I found a great example of powerful questions at Liz Strauss’ Successful Blog.  It’s simple but totally to the point:

"What do you do well that other people come to you for help with?"

Her question has generated some really thoughtful reflections and comments – you might enjoy checking them out.  If you do delve into the comments I wonder if  you’ll be as impressed as I was with the way Liz coaches the people who are taking part in the conversation: providing positive feedback, picking out the key words in what they’ve said, offering encouragement and further ideas and questions to chew on.  For me this is a great example of powerful, supportive coaching in action.

Do you have a favourite coaching question that helps you unlock the door?  Either to your own treasure chests of resources or – for you coaches out there – those of your clients?

Coaching myself is probably the hardest part of the job but again it is questions that help to clear away the clutter and get to the point of what you need to do.  One of the things I’m enjoying about reading other blogs is stumbling across great questions and challenges that slow you down and really get you thinking.  (I don’t know about you but I can often feel them rumbling away in the back of my mind, waiting to turn into something to write something to do).

One of my most recent – and valuable – finds has been the treasure chest of material at Managing with Aloha and Talking Story with Say Leadership Coaching, two blogs written by Rosa Say around her work to bring Hawaiian values to the world of business.  There’s a coaching theme for each month, built around a particular value.  The theme for June is K?lia i ka nu‘u, translated by Rosa as "strive to reach the summit" – to be the best that you can be, to push ahead and reach the highest point.  Her challenge to us is not to take a break in June – but instead to go for the break through.

The article really got me thinking – about things we strive for, about the amazing things that people can and do achieve, but also about times we stop perhaps, before we have reached the summit.  And formulated a question that keeps on running through my head.  A question for you – and one that I need to answer for myself too.

Is June the month to make the break through?