For Immediate Release: Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021 Montgomery County Declares November Remembrance and Reconciliation Month
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, the Montgomery County Remembrance and Reconciliation Commission is calling for this November to be a month of Remembrance and Reconciliation in the County. Engaging in this time of reflection will help County residents grow their understanding of the full history of Montgomery County and how we can move forward from it.
The Commission was established in 2019 to help bring the County together to promote a better understanding of our history. This includes recognition of three men who were the victims of racial terror lynchings in Montgomery County in the late 1800s: Mr. John Diggs-Dorsey, Mr. Sidney Randolph, and Mr. George Peck.
Throughout the month of November, the Commission will partner with organizations, like the Montgomery County Lynching Memorial Project, to host events for the community. Scheduled events will include a public arts demonstration, a museum exhibit, a high school student essay contest, a virtual address by Congressman Jamie Raskin and documentary film screening. More information on those events is available here.
Residents are invited to participate in the events the Commission and its partners are planning for November. The Commission is also encouraging Montgomery County agencies and residents to participate in Remembrance and Reconciliation month by hosting their own events, activities, conversations, and discussions to continue to move us forward as a community. If you or your organization are interested in having the Commission display information on your free, open to the public, event, then please fill out the form here.
The Commission acknowledges the path to reconciliation is long and winding, but we are on it and must remain on it every day. That takes intention, purpose, and action. Therefore, citizens of Montgomery County are asked to pause during the month of November, as we gather as families and communities to break bread and express gratitude, to remember the past and dedicate ourselves anew to the work of justice and reconciliation through action.
National Service Heroes Win Excellence in AmeriCorps Awards for Inspiring Acts of Service During the Pandemic
Alumni and grantees from California, Massachusetts, Nevada, Tennessee, and Wisconsin were selected for providing outstanding service during the COVID-19 pandemic
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, AmeriCorps, the federal agency for volunteering and service, awarded the annual Excellence in AmeriCorps awards to five alumni, grantees, and advocates, for their outstanding service within AmeriCorps State and National programs. From California to Puerto Rico, and from COVID-19 response to mental health awareness, this year’s award recipients go above and beyond every day to make our country safer, smarter, and healthier.
Now in its seventh year, the Excellence in AmeriCorps Awards were created to recognize the outstanding and innovative AmeriCorps programs, members, and alumni tackling our nation’s most-pressing challenges. The 2021 Excellence in AmeriCorps award winners represent important examples of national service, responding to adversity with resourcefulness, creativity, and community-mindedness.
“Hailing from across the country, AmeriCorps members are strengthening their communities through their dedication and service,” said Sonali Nijhawan, AmeriCorps State and National Director. “This year’s Excellence in AmeriCorps awardees are an example of the tenacity and compassion of our country’s best. We’re proud to honor their impact and highlight their service during the pandemic.”
The 2021 Excellence in AmeriCorps award winners are listed below:
Jaret Reyes, Reinvent Schools Las Vegas AmeriCorps, Nevada – Impactful Service AwardJaret is a community navigator and provided assistance to multiple community members on a daily basis. His service helped students connect with their teachers through distance learning, families keep their homes, and parents keep food on the table for their children through the pandemic. Jaret worked directly with at-risk students, inspiring them to stay engaged with their schoolwork virtually and in-person.
Darian Boyd, Impact America, Tennessee – Influential Service AwardOver the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Darian completed three separate AmeriCorps service terms. Darian stepped up as Team Lead for the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance service and implemented new virtual and drop-off models that were utilized to prepare over 800 tax returns in the Memphis area. Darien stayed after his term concluded to see the job through and ensure that families had access to their tax refunds throughout the summer, exemplifying his unwavering commitment to service.
Victoria Ramierez-Gomez, California AmeriCorps Disaster Team – Inclusive Service AwardVictoria helped plan and coordinate the production of Be Red Cross Ready training and presented Homes Made Safer education to Alma Family Services, the lead agency for a collaborative Gang Reduction Youth Development Program serving youth and families. In addition to her work on the ground, Victoria has reached out to local school districts and local organizations to provide virtual preparedness training and offer personal protective equipment. She also played a vital role in helping to rebuild a Preparedness Coalition for the city of Bell Gardens where the majority of residents are monolingual Spanish. She reached underserved and underrepresented communities far beyond Los Angeles County to build partnerships and provide housing resources for Latinos while also building a core of Spanish-speaking volunteers through volunteer recruitment and engagement.
Paloma Suarez, Social Capital, Inc., Massachusetts – Innovative Service AwardPaloma served at the South End Community Health Center, addressing food insecurity and other social determinants of health. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Paloma established partnerships with local organizations to provide over 5,000 prepared meals, 3,000 culturally sensitive frozen meals, fresh produce, and supplies to pediatric patients. Paloma also played an important role in conducting 70% of the health center’s social determinants of health screenings. Paloma was onsite every day making sure that families had what they needed and through her contributions 706 adults, 183 youth, 494 children, 125 infants, and countless others were reached.
Jenise Terell, Public Allies, Wisconsin – Lifetime of Service AwardJenise served in AmeriCorps’ Public Allies for 25 years, serving most recently as vice president of programming. During her tenure, Public Allies has grown its alumni network to more than 8,000 individuals and engages with more than 750 Allies per year, while also partnering with over 450 nonprofit and governmental organizations across 24 communities nationwide. Additionally, Jenise has played a central role in developing several groundbreaking national programs, including a collaborative, multi-city venture with the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance that will build career and education pathways for men of color. Jenise is proud to be a native Milwaukeean, a Public Allies alumna, and a working mother of two children.
AmeriCorps State and National programs are implemented in partnership with State Service Commissions across the country. More than 1.2 million AmeriCorps members across all AmeriCorps programs have served the nation, giving more than 1.6 billion hours of service and earning nearly $4 billion in education awards since 1994. Every year, thousands of AmeriCorps members prepare students for success, rebuild communities and revitalize cities, support veterans, fight the opioid epidemic, respond to disasters, preserve public lands, strengthen education, foster economic opportunity, and more.
(From 2017) Tomorrow we have our fourth Annual Storytelling Festival for the AmeriCorps programs of Maryland. Our hosts at Casa Maryland and Pablo Blank always provide a warm welcome in their amazing space.
Each year, we try different things and end with the Living Stories, the signature process developed and used by Storywise.com over the past twenty years. Every time we invite people into this practice, we are amazed how much energy is released with the simple invitation for people to tell their own story in their own voice, to respectful and appreciative audiences.
Tomorrow, we will introduce some of our latest work that we call POND, the principles of Narrative Design. Members of AmeriCorps are creating a new story, one that will lead to life long memories of how they dedicated a year of their lives to serve their community. That is a remarkable story in and of itself.
But four months in, the members will be invited to map out the journey as one that goes through the predictable Beginning Middle Ending axis of coherency, where Beginnings hold the creative space, Middles hold the Complication and Recommitment space, and Endings hold the completion space. If you want to have a great story at the end, design it from the beginning. Don’t leave it to chance. That is what POND teaches.
Tomorrow, we will push the chairs aside and open up the room so space has a voice. We will ignore the Power Point and shut off the phones, and invite the members to walk back into the story of their service, retracing WHERE it began, ( not why or when) and then walking into the space that reveals their expanding horizon of possibility. We will ask the magic question “What do you know from here that you did not know from there that will help you get to where you are headed?”
We get so tied up in the Why or the How. We forget a far more important question- Where? We start with WHERE. Even that word “question” is loaded with the same insight because it contains a “Quest,” which wikipedia calls “a long or arduous search for something.” To ask a question is to be going somewhere.
Our other focus will be to invite stories that go beyond excuse and blame, stories of the decisions and choices that members made to get this far and the decisions and choices that lie ahead. Too often, our lives in the telling sound like experience after experience, “this happened” and then, “this happened,” or as one writer put it, “one damned thing after another.” But this only masks the character in the story who is walking the road and deciding which path to take. Even deciding to take no path is deciding on a path. Decision comes from the same word as “incision” meaning cutting off one option to pursue another. A choice of a path is a choice about what story you will be able to tell.
We may not be the sole creators of our history as we live it, but we are the creators of our own history in how we choose to remember it. Though our lives can be assaulted by enormous challenges, we are a species that knows instinctively that how we tell the story is how we manage to name and tame our chaos, how to get beyond it and how even to transform the most painful memories into moments of discovery.
We will ask members to share in three directions:
1) Go to the place that holds the story of their decisions to serve at the beginning- the Genesis story or origins.
2) Go to the place that holds the stories of their decisions they are having to make every day to honor and deepen that commitment- the Exodus story or passage.
3) Go to the place where this decision might grow into something about the kind of life they are choosing to live, the kind of world they are choosing to create, and most of all, the kind of person they are choosing to become. That is the story of Revelation.
We joke at storywise that before 35, you can blame parents and family and circumstances all you like but there comes a time when you have to grow beyond that and stop only showing up in someone else’s story. Its time to show up in your own- the story of your fateful, faithful choices.
Surely, your choice as a member of AmeriCorps to serve, and to put your other life on hold, and to live on a barely livable allowance, all in the name of a higher good that you are bringing into the world is a story worth showing up in.
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Frederick Douglas
Getting Ready for Guest Faculty- Peer-to-Peer Group Coaching
Project Change got off to a great start, with four Friday meetings during the month of September to get everyone into the AmeriCorps groove. The highlight was our trip to Camp Letts, on a beautiful day where the team braved the dreaded zip wire in the morning and lazily canoed the river in the afternoon, and concluded with a camp fire and stories. Thanks to our guides Meredith and Richelle and a big shout out to the Supervisors and staff from our partner sites who joined us in a fun day.
October is a special month of guest trainings which begin on October 9th with Master Coach Lynne Feingold introducing the formal practice of Peer to Peer Group Coaching. The team have already started this activitity with the Bells and Whistles check-in time that starts every meeting. If a member has a challenge and they want more feedback, they request time from the group to have a conversation. During that time, the group acts as a coaching team, and asks questions to unfold the situation, then deeper questions to expose the assumptions behind the dilemma, and then to help the person come up with a positive plan of action that they are willing to hold themselves accountable for at the next meeting.
This is the special practice that grew out of last years team, and something that members enjoyed and learned to practice as a life skill that could be applied to other areas of their work.
Sometimes we get so enmeshed in our own problems, we lose sight of the wider possibilities that a discerning listener can help us tease out. The process is not meant to be about giving advice, or replace therapy. Rather the process is meant to help a person listen to more deeply to what they are intending underneath what they are saying. The one critical axiom for group coaching is, except in exceptions, never to to ask Why. Why? Because Why is a question that invites people to get more into their head, rather then laying out the situation for others to observe. Why invites interpretation when what coaching asks for is observation.
AmeriCorps Project Change inspire Peace Makers in Jerusalem
Over the weekend of March 19-21 2015, Jermarkus Booker, Caprecia Camper and Ben Eichberg traveled to Jerusalem to present a snapshot of their work as young leaders fighting the urgent issues of structural racism in American education. Invited by the New Story Leadership, an innovative narrative based conflict transformation program, the three AmeriCorps members were part of the #Encourage Conference, where alums of NSL joined other peace activists to share stories of courage that would send a message of encouragement to a world hungry for hope. Despite the last Gaza war and despite the results of the elections earlier that week, young people from Israel and Palestine and the USA and Ireland were coming together over this special weekend to encourage each other in their struggle for change, and their quest for peace.
The message coming to them from guest speakers such as Ambassador Saeb Erakat and Knesset Member Hillek Barr and various members of the USA delegation to the region was- “Don’t give up now. We need you more than ever.” And the AmeriCorps members shared their own struggles with racism and shared their work of fighting discrimination that creates a yawning gap in school achievement between minority and majority students.
This is a first for Project Change and probably a first for AmeriCorps for members to be invited to share their story and their volunteer experience on an international stage.
During the latter part of the service year, we usually give the members a chance to take the lead in training and offer their team something of their own skill set and experience. One such member, Ben, decided to teach the team a session on Gratitude and how to invite people into a circle of grace.
At the time, all the members were battling with the ZOOM world for working with their students. For most of them, the level of participation for students was haphazard or low. Many students refused to show their faces. It was a regular topic about how hard it was to engage with a screen that only had a name, and nothing else. Funa took the teaching on gratitude to heart and decided to change his mind set in how he handled this frustration with his faceless students. Next time he had his ZOOM class, he greeted the blank squares on the screen with gratitude that the students had even managed that much in terms of showing up. He could not see if the student responded or not, but Funa decided that if they did not want to show their face, that was going to be OK. And even if nothing changed for the student, the experience was different for Funa.
Fast forward to the start of this school year. Funa signed on again to serve and returns to the classroom at Sligo Middle School. He is with a group of students that he has not met. One of them suddenly says, “I know you I think. Weren’t you on ZOOM last year and were the one helping everyone and welcoming us all?” Funa said he was not sure because he could not recognize any of their faces. Turns out that this student was one of the faceless participants on the ZOOM classes that Funa had welcomed. Now she had a face. Because the student recognized him, she immediately told all the other students, “Mr. Funa is here to help, so if you have any problems, go to him.”
And that is what Funa spent the rest of the class doing, receiving the students and their question on the strength of this one faceless student who appreciated the attitude of gratitude that Funa had learned to adopt, through the teaching and training of his fellow team mate. The student only had a face when she recognized Funa, not so much from the face but from the smile in his voice.
We teach the members in their interaction with students that there is a double learning loop. It is not the members’ experience of the student that matters so much as what the student experiences of the member as she or he experiences the student. The example of Funa is a perfect example of this. It’s not what impression I have of you, but what do I mirror back to you about how I encounter you in this moment. Gratitude can change everything.
The
AmeriCorps Oral History Project was developed by Paul Costello as a way to
commemorate and learn from the experiences of the 2020-2021 AmeriCorps Project
Change volunteers, particularly in regard to the changes that occurred during
the Covid-19 pandemic. Jean Freedman developed the questionnaire and
interviewed Paul Costello, 11 of the 15 volunteers, and one faculty member. The
questions focused on the volunteers’ work with AmeriCorps, how this work changed
during the course of the pandemic, the consequences and challenges of this
work, and what lessons can be learned from this experience.
Highlights
The volunteers worked primarily in
the field of education, both in schools and in community organizations. The
volunteers spoke frequently about the importance of service and the need for
fundamental societal change. The pandemic exposed structural problems such as
racism, food insecurity, and unequal access to medical care. The volunteers
used their positions as AmeriCorps workers to ameliorate the difficulties that
their clients experienced. The volunteers’ resilience and creativity in
adapting their jobs to online platforms were particularly impressive.
The volunteers’ passion for service
to others was striking. One volunteer said, “I wanted to get involved in
something bigger than me.” Another said, “I was called to service.” The
volunteers’ jobs included teaching in the classroom and in extracurricular
programs, implementing restorative justice programs, mentoring girls, and
empowering students through the arts. However, the volunteers were frequently
confronted with issues that went beyond their official tasks: students who
could not concentrate because of food insecurity or because a family member had
lost a job or become ill. Faced with these problems, the volunteers’ immediate
response was, “What can I do to help?” They organized food deliveries,
translated for students who had difficulties in English, created videos to
supplement classroom work, encouraged students to go to college even if their
parents hadn’t, and let the students know they had advocates who would fight
for them.
Then Covid-19 hit. Teachers,
students, and volunteers were suddenly thrust into unfamiliar territory.
Programs that had thrived in-person suddenly had to become online. The
volunteers immediately rose to the challenge. One volunteer discovered a talent
for making videos, which she was able to utilize in a school district on the
other side of the country, something that would have been impossible without
virtual learning. When faced with the challenges of online learning, one
volunteer remarked, “The students are amazing. They mentored each other,
without us telling them to do that. If a student couldn’t log on, they just
stepped in and said, ‘This is what you do.’” Many found that this concern for
one another was mirrored in society at large; as one volunteer put it, “I’m
grateful for the fact that we’re looking out for each other a little bit more
than I think we were.”
Yet the Covid-19 pandemic also
highlighted structural inequalities, such as racism, poverty, and domestic
violence. The clients frequently came from vulnerable populations, who bore the
brunt of society’s ills. Some students had parents who developed Covid because
they worked in essential industries, such as food service and janitorial work.
Some parents lost their jobs because of the pandemic and were unable to
sufficiently provide for their families. Some students did not have computers
sufficient for online learning. As one volunteer put it, “This position has
opened my eyes to all of the programmatic obstacles and institutional
limitations; this is much bigger than Covid.” While all suffered from the
worldwide pandemic, not all suffered equally. The volunteers’ clients
frequently did not have the resources needed for essentials such as food and
medicine. The volunteers rose to the challenge magnificently – organizing food
deliveries, creating innovative educational programs, finding scholarship money
for college, translating government forms, and so forth. Yet they recognized
that their efforts were not enough.
Catastrophes always allow for the
possibility of structural change. Some were optimistic that the pandemic’s
highlighting of social problems could lead to their solutions. One volunteer
said, “I think most of us have changed for the better.” Another found that the
pandemic allowed her to develop talents she might otherwise have overlooked:
“I’ve had the opportunity to innovate through problems and challenges.” The
volunteers recognized that the status quo was not serving their clients
sufficiently, and that change was both possible and necessary. As one volunteer
put it, “We need to make a change right now.”
Conclusions
National service programs such as AmeriCorps benefit both the volunteers and the clients. While the benefits to the clients are obvious, the benefits to the volunteers should not be overlooked. National service programs provide the volunteers with educational and work opportunities, put them in contact with people they might otherwise not have met, and allow them to participate in important work, something that extends beyond themselves. While AmeriCorps has provided magnificent results, the needs currently outstrip the resources. If more Americans were involved in programs such as AmeriCorps, we could go a long way toward eliminating evils such as hunger, racism, and poverty. AmeriCorps provides its volunteers and its clients with the tools and the will to make the world a better place. As one volunteer put it, “Now I think anything can be possible.”
Jean Freedman is part of the Project CHANGE faculty. She holds a BA in Dramatic Art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MA and Ph.D. in folklore from Indiana University. Her first book, Whistling in the Dark: Memory and Culture in Wartime London, is a study of the interplay between culture and political ideology in London during World War II. Her biography of American folksinger Peggy Seeger, entitled Peggy Seeger: A Life of Music, Love, and Politics, was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2017. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Journal of American Folklore, and other publications.
As a leader, one of your most important roles is to coach your people to do their best. By doing this, you’ll help them make better decisions, solve problems that are holding them back, learn new skills, and otherwise progress their careers.
Some people are fortunate enough to get formal training in coaching. However, many people have to develop this important skill themselves. This may sound daunting but, if you arm yourself with some proven techniques, practice, and trust your instincts, you can become a great coach.
The GROW Model is a simple yet powerful framework for structuring your coaching or mentoring sessions. We’ll look at how to apply it in this article, video and infographic, below.
Click here to see our animated video on the GROW Model
About the Model
GROW stands for:
Goal.
Current Reality.
Options (or Obstacles).
Will (or Way Forward).
The model was originally developed in the 1980s by business coaches Graham Alexander, Alan Fine, and Sir John Whitmore.
A good way of thinking about the GROW Model is to think about how you’d plan a journey. First, you decide where you are going (the goal), and establish where you currently are (your current reality). You then explore various routes (the options) to your destination. In the final step, establishing the will, you ensure that you’re committed to making the journey, and are prepared for the obstacles that you could meet on the way.
Tip:
In its traditional application, the GROW Model assumes that the coach is not an expert in the client’s situation. This means that the coach must act as a facilitator, helping the client select the best options, and not offering advice or direction.
When leaders coach their team members, or act as mentors to them, this may or may not apply. On one hand, it’s more powerful for people to draw conclusions for themselves, rather than having these conclusions thrust upon them. On the other hand, as a team leader, you’ll often have expert knowledge to offer. Also, it’s your job to guide team members to make decisions that are best for your organization.
How to Use the Tool
To structure a coaching or mentoring session using the GROW Model, take the following steps:
1. Establish the Goal
First, you and your team member need to look at the behavior that you want to change, and then structure this change as a goal that they want to achieve.
Make sure that this is a SMART goal: one that is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound.
When doing this, it’s useful to ask questions like:
How will you know that your team member has achieved this goal? How will you know that the problem or issue is solved?
Does this goal fit with their overall career objectives? And does it fit with the team’s objectives?
2. Examine the Current Reality
Next, ask your team member to describe their current reality.
This is an important step. Too often, people try to solve a problem or reach a goal without fully considering their starting point, and often they’re missing some information that they need in order to reach their goal effectively.
As your team member tells you about their current reality, the solution may start to emerge.
Useful coaching questions in this step include the following:
What is happening now (what, who, when, and how often)? What is the effect or result of this?
Have you already taken any steps toward your goal?
Does this goal conflict with any other goals or objectives?
3. Explore the Options
Once you and your team member have explored the current reality, it’s time to determine what is possible – meaning all of the possible options for reaching their objective.
Help your team member brainstorm as many good options as possible. Then, discuss these and help them decide on the best ones.
By all means, offer your own suggestions in this step. But let your team member offer suggestions first, and let them do most of the talking. It’s important to guide them in the right direction, without actually making decisions for them.
Typical questions that you can use to explore options are as follows:
What else could you do?
What if this or that constraint were removed? Would that change things?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each option?
What factors or considerations will you use to weigh the options?
What do you need to stop doing in order to achieve this goal?
What obstacles stand in your way?
4. Establish the Will
By examining the current reality and exploring the options, your team member will now have a good idea of how they can achieve their goal.
That’s great – but in itself, this may not be enough. The final step is to get your team member to commit to specific actions in order to move forward toward their goal. In doing this, you will help them establish their will and boost their motivation.
Useful questions to ask here include:
So, what will you do now, and when? What else will you do?
What could stop you moving forward? How will you overcome this?
How can you keep yourself motivated?
When do you need to review progress? Daily, weekly, monthly?
Finally, decide on a date when you’ll both review their progress. This will provide some accountability, and allow them to change their approach if the original plan isn’t working.
Tip 1:
A great way to practice using the model is to address your own challenges and issues. By practicing on your own and getting yourself “unstuck,” you’ll learn how to ask the most helpful questions. Then, write down some stock questions as prompts for future coaching sessions.
Tip 2:
The two most important skills for a coach are the ability to ask good questions and the ability to listen effectively.
Don’t ask closed questions that call for a yes or no answer (such as “Did that cause a problem?”). Instead, ask open ones, like “What effect did that have?” Be prepared with a list of questions for each stage of the GROW process.
Use active listening skills and let your “client” do most of the talking. Remember that silence provides valuable thinking time: you don’t always have to fill silence with the next question.
Example
You’re helping a team member, Julie, achieve her goals using the GROW Model.
Julie says that she would like a promotion to team leader within the next two years. This is a SMART goal – it’s specific, measurable, attainable (as she already has one year of experience, and there are several team leader positions in her department), relevant (both to Julie’s overall career aspirations and the team’s mission), and time-bound.
You and Julie now look at her current reality. She’s in an entry-level position, but she already has some of the skills needed to be team leader. You brainstorm the additional skills that she’ll need in order to be successful in a team leader role: She needs more experience of managing other people, and experience dealing with overseas customers. She also needs to continue performing well in her role, so that she’ll be considered for a promotion when one is available.
You then both review her options. To get the experience she needs, she could lead a small team on a small project. She could also spend time in the overseas team.
Finally, you establish the will. As her manager, you offer to let her lead a small team on a minor project. If she performs well, she can take on additional projects with more responsibility in the future. Julie must also approach the overseas team to arrange to spend time in that department, and continue performing well in her current role. You agree to review her progress in three months’ time.
You can see our infographic on the GROW Model here:
Key Points
The GROW Model is a simple four-step process that helps you structure coaching and mentoring sessions with team members.
GROW is an acronym that stands for:
Goal.
Current Reality.
Options (or Obstacles).
Will (or Way Forward).
You can use the model to help team members improve performance, and to help them plan for and reach their longer-term career objectives.
Today Project Change has the pleasure of a Master Coach, Lynn Feingold, who is taking the team through the process of Peer to Peer Group Coaching, the practice the team know as Bells and Whistles at each training meeting.
It begins with knowing how to truly listen, to be able to actively feed back to the speaker that you have heard them, what they say, how they feel, and how they understand themselves.
What the listener gives back is not what they heard so much as what the speaker heard himself or herself say. We presume that we speak and know what we mean and how we feel, until someone mirrors back to us how we come across, and that perhaps our words were stronger than we intended, or that there is a feeling underneath the words that others are much more aware of than we are.
A powerful listener does not hear us so much as allow us to hear ourselves at a deeper level. That means however that we remain focused on the person speaking to us and not allowing distractions or the impulse to give advice or move the focus to ourselves.Along with Active Listening, the team are learning:
the power of the question We hear our colleague describe a problem but we usually have no sense of the situation, the duration, the story of the situation that is behind the problem. Hence, the first round of questions needs to flesh out the reality as it could be observed by someone else. Narrative Scholars sometimes call this mapping the Landscape of Action. Next, once we get a sense of a shared understanding of what is going on, we shift to map the landscape of Consciousness, as to meaning, and how important is this to you, and what are the assumptions or needs or desires behind the problem that make it a problem or a challenge?
the power of the pause Conversation is noise unless we allow ourselves and our partners the space to embody the words, to allow the words to become flesh. Lynn does the “How are you?” exercise, where on the fly, you ask it and get the on the fly response, “Fine.” Then, she does it with the asker taking a breath before asking, and the respondent taking a breath before answering, and suddenly, we have created a different conversation. A Coach holds the space for a conversation to expand and go deep. The body is always in the act. So, deep listening is spatial as well as emotional and mental. The coach has to learn the space that silence creates and pausing respects, to catch echoes and resonances that are too easily missed.
the power of a plan. The coaching session is part of an ongoing story of making a difference. Hence, the words need at some point to enter the world and instigate action. At the end of each session, the person with the challenge makes themselves accountable to DO something, or perhaps NOT do something, as a strategy for change that at the next session, they can report on.The power of peer to peer coaching as a narrative tool means we are sharing our stories in real time, when we don’t know how they are going to end, and at the same time, sharing our commitment to being agents of change, and not victims of circumstances. We are recruiting an audience that is championing our leadership and on side with our intentions to do the best we can and be the best we can. We can’t do that alone, and Peer to Peer coaching is a powerful means by which we can express that.
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