The structured-thinking model encourages the thinker to expose the limitations of their assumption and to see the possibilities that come from challenge.
An alternative approach is to go along with the assumption and to allow the individual to look at how the assumption plays out within a structured framework. This can be more comfortable for some coachees.
The matrix (Figure 7.2) allows for exploring the consequences and risks of taking and not taking action towards a desired outcome.
Offering the framework encourages the identification of assumptions both about the self and the wider context, which then allows for an assessment of how willing the individual is to be limited by the assumption.
C
ASES
TUDYJoe was a middle manager in a local authority who had recently been appointed to head up a team where one of the team members was underperforming. She had been in the department for over 20 years.
She had a strong personality and often intimidated younger staff. By virtue of her time in the department, she had personal relationships with Senior Managers up the line. Joe came to his coaching discussion with a desire to begin performance-managing her, but with an underlying assumption that she had too much history for him to be able to discipline her.
When he talked the issue through using the matrix given in Figure 7.2 he identified the information given in Figure 7.3.
When Joe looked at the issue in this way, he started from assumptions that encouraged him to do nothing: possible alienation from the team;
lack of capability in carrying it out; that doing nothing was better than doing something. The more he considered ‘What else?’, the closer he moved to assumptions that provided a case for addressing the issue: the possibility of recognition; his own sense of failure if he avoided action;
the signalling to others that he could deal with the difficult aspects of people management. In the discussion using the framework the word
What are the possible consequences of doing?
What are the possible consequences of not doing?
What are the possible personal risks in doing?
What are the possible personal risks in not doing?
Figure 7.2 Structured thinking matrix
‘assumption’ was never used, but the framing of the questions in the boxes encouraged Joe to explore his assumptions.
Reframing
A third position from which assumptions can be challenged is one drawn from Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP).4 Reframing is about helping an individual to see their situation differently through putting a different frame on it. The coach offers a new interpretation of the situation, not because the new interpretation is right or better than the one held by the coachee but because, in offering a new interpretation, a new set of feelings or ideas becomes available.
What the coach did at every stage of the conversation in Figure 7.4, was to listen and then offer an alternative frame of interpretation so that the speaker had two pictures to look at. By being helped to reframe she could see that what she had to offer was of value, rather than a burden that trapped her. By being able to see a mother as having a different role at different stages of a child’s life, she was able to find a way of getting her needs met.
What are the possible consequences of doing?
• I am alienated from the rest of the team who will side with her out of fear
• I am challenged by more Senior Managers to back off
• I get recognition for taking something on that others have avoided
• I get recognition for showing that I take performance management seriously
What are the possible consequences of not doing?
• None – people accept her as she is, so no one expects anything to change
• I am viewed as a poor manager and it impacts on my performance review rating
• I make things worse for the person who follows me
• I feel a failure because I have lacked the courage to act
What are the possible personal risks in doing?
I do it badly, and she appeals against me to HR I am seen as an autocratic manager
I show that I can be tough rather than the easy going guy they normally see
What are the possible personal risks in not doing?
I am seen as ineffective by my team
I waste head count and so don’t deliver on objectives
Figure 7.3 Joe’s filled-in matrix
Reframing means using the resistance rather than fighting it. It’s not the push of an opposing perspective, it is about acknowledging the coachee’s view, and then offering an alternative viewpoint.
In each reframe, the coach is modelling an alternate assumption, from which different actions flow. ‘It is not possible’ is put up against an alternative assum-ption that progress is possible when things are broken down into achievable chunks. If work is the problem, it is held up against an alternative assumption
Conversation Coach’s
reframe Staff member :
I am sick of my job. I am fed up helping other people only to see them move on and I stay behind
He/she should appraisal ratings are always good, but I don’t want to do it any more.
It is too easy for me to be dumped on
Manager Coach’s response : You get recognition for your support skills in your appraisal.
Support skills are valuable, but I can see that when it feels like being dumped on it’s hard to see any value. How could you get more recognition for them?
It would mean getting more training so I support on more challenging stuff. How do I get that when I am the departmental
‘mother’ holding it all together?
Manager Coach’s response:
You see yourself as the caring mother, and part of being a mother is about helping children to stand on their own two feet by not always doing everything You must be very good at supporting other people, even though I can see that you are tired of doing it
Figure 7.4 Reframing
that there are areas of work that are not problematic. Inability to learn is challenged by an alternative assumption that age brings the benefits of learning.
The reframe is offered as a means of opening up new thinking, never as a means of discounting their analysis.
C
ASES
TUDYCaroline was a mother of three young children who was working part time with a small PR agency. She had held a senior-level job in a much larger PR business, and the demands of her present role were well within her reach. She came to her coaching session complaining that her skills were not being fully used and resenting some of the more junior-level assignments she was being given. In particular she spoke of one on-going assignment where she felt little empathy with the client. At the same time she had decided she wanted to gain an expensive further qualification in order to expand her range of options. At the beginning of the session she saw the client organization as the enemy. If only she did not have to give time to them she could be involved in more challenging work.
Through questioning on the tangibles, the coach established that this client was her major source of revenue. Using a reframe, the coach offered
Staff member :
I never think of it that way, I only think of it in terms of me being the one that has to pick up the dirty washing
Manager Coach’s response : If you are wanting to stop picking up the washing, what can you say to your staff?
It’s time you all took on some of the things I have been doing for you, so that I can take some time out to develop my skills
Manager Coach’s response : That sounds like a mother who wants her children to grow up and give her some space, but isn’t rejecting them
‘So this client could be the means by which you could have your further training?’. Caroline accepted the reframe, and built a picture where she saw the client as an enabler rather than a disabler. With this new frame of reference she re-engaged with them, and was more highly motivated to deliver a good service. In the process she stopped seeing what was not good enough about the level of the work, and saw instead what the work could provide for her. She reframed the work rather than defining herself by it.
Reframing asks that the coachee looks at what they regard as the problem, and consider what can be gained by working with it, rather than battling against it. This seems illogical, since it is that very thing that they have brought as their issue. However, the thing that they now see as a problem often started out as being an ally to them. It is as the individual changes in their motivations that they begin to see a block where once they saw a springboard. Because solution
The assertion The assumption The push back Reframe It will never work I can’t do
that
I can’t learn It’s not an option not to learn
focused thinking never throws away previous evidence of skills and resourcefulness, the coach has a role in helping them look at what is useful in the very thing they claim to reject.
C
ASES
TUDYLawrie had worked for over a decade as a corporate lawyer and professed that he had hated it from day one. However, he earned so much money that he could not consider escaping, since every form of escape meant a loss of income. He was caught in a loop that went: ‘I hate being a lawyer but at least I am rewarded for my misery. If I did something more meaningful I would be poor, and if that other thing proved a bad move, I would be miserable and poor. Better, then, that I stay miserable and wealthy’. Reframing for him meant asking the question, ‘How could you use being a lawyer to help you make the change?’.
At first the question seemed illogical. However, since he had made the decision to be a lawyer based on some knowledge of his own abilities, it did reflect some part of him. The coach asked him to view it not as an unhealthy part of himself to be exorcized, but a partner in making changes. From this reframe he was able to identify:
g He could do a less demanding job in law, which would free up time.
g He could use that time to explore options.
g He could still have a good standard of living while he moved towards a better-fit future.
g Work did not have to be looked at in all or nothing polarities.
The solution that emerged included law as a part of his life, but a different area of law. It was used along with other interests that were important to him. From the reframe challenge, he was able to find the part of himself where law had a place, rather than seeing law as the reason for his unhappiness.