Last Friday, the team were treated to a special training from Lynne Feingold, master coach and one of the leaders of the peer to peer coaching network in the Federal Government. Lynne took the group through a series of exercises that began with centering and focusing on your breathing. It is a simple and yet fundamental skill that prepares one to be a Listener. We come to our meetings so distracted at times, that we aren’t even listening to ourselves, let alone ready to give attention to someone else.
Next Lynn demonstrated the power of the Question- how a problem or an issue has a context, or arises from a situation, and that if we are going to be helpful to one another, we need to ask the sort of open ended questions that draw out the salient details. Questions such as Why only invite interpretation, taking us into the mind of the member, rather into the situation that the member finds themselves. The goal of the first set of questions is to see what you see, hear what you see, feel what you feel. Its a basic of storytelling, to transport us there, give us your experience so we can walk around inside it and perhaps offer you a different or fresh perspective.
Stay tuned for the next excerpt about this special Project Change process.