April 10, 2024 • 40 mins
The most frequent question Claire is asked is When are you going to talk about Time to Think at The Coaching Inn ?
So today’s guest is Anne Hathaway. Anne met Nancy Kline by coincidence in the early 1990s and has been deeply involved in Thinking Environment work since then. The actions we take are only as good as the thinking behind them. And we have an interesting exploration about respect and positive regard.
If you haven’t read Time to Think, take a look!
Contact Anne: www.annehathaway.co.uk
And if you love this episode, please share it and rate it!
Before you go - we’ll never use the podcast to directly sell you anything, but we’re always here for a chat if you are thinking about doing something with us
Keywords
coaching, thinking environment, Time to Think, deep respect, listening, journey, supervision training, reflective practice
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching'svirtual pub where we enjoy conversations
with people who engage in the world ofcoaching.
Hello and welcome to this week's editionof The Coaching In.
Today I'm in conversation with AnneHathaway and this is a much -waited -for
(00:23):
episode.
I can't tell you how many listeners havecontacted us and said, I think you should
talk to someone from Time to Think.
So Anne Hathaway, welcome.
Well, thank you.
And dear, the responsibility.
Yeah, it's only a conversation though,right?
So.
Before we talk about that, I really, we'dlove to know about you and a little bit
(00:47):
about your journey to this point.
gosh.
Well, I'll try and give you this sort oftwo minute version rather than the full
half hour number.
I thought you were going to say the fulllifetime version.
Well, yes.
So early background post a degree inmodern languages in the recruitment
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industry.
ending up as a manager of a number ofbranches.
From there went and did an MBA at INSEAD.
ended up in a senior HR role in a majorindustrial blue chip company, was made
(01:42):
redundant, well, was made redundant fromthe subsidiary of which I was the HR
director and went off to Brussels for ashort while to do...
a secondment to the European Foundationfor Management Development.
While I was there, I went skiing over anew year, fell down a mountain, broke my
(02:03):
back.
The fallout from that was I got maderedundant.
And in the course of my recovery, about ayear in, an old boss of mine from my first
post -university job,
(02:24):
called me up and said, I've just met thisamazing woman.
I've read her book and I really want totrain with her.
And...
but I need a partner to do it with, wouldyou come and do it with me?
Wow.
I had never heard of this person calledNancy Klein and I certainly hadn't read
her book, but I trusted Val.
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So I went along and that was how I metNancy.
That was extraordinarily enough back inMarch of 1993.
So this year, it's 31 years since I metNancy.
And in common with quite a lot of people,I found myself thinking.
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how much teaching resonated with me andthat actually I'd been pretty much doing
an awful lot of listening to people inthat way for a long time.
And having done the training and sort ofas I started to recover, I found myself
being called up and asked if I would do aparticular project and magically the
(03:38):
answer to the project.
usually turned out to be something to dowith introducing people to the thinking
environment.
So I found myself working with a mixedFrench and English group who were at odds
with each other and I basically just gotthem to listen and they went, hang on,
(04:01):
we're all on the same side.
And things just sort of snowballed fromthere, so I found myself being asked to
coach people and...
increasingly to work with them in athinking environment.
And fast forward a number of years to2009.
(04:24):
And Nancy asked me if I would take overfrom her the supervision and assessment of
people who wanted to qualify as Time toThink coaches and facilitators and
consultants, which I did for 11 years, andwhich was one of the
the most satisfying periods of myprofessional life.
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And led to increasingly people asking meto carry on supervising them after their
qualification, which then led to thecreation of the time to think supervision
qualification.
I think you've just answered a questionyou didn't know I was asking.
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okay right, supervision course.
Well it's a course rather than aqualification I would say.
Yeah.
And yeah so broadly speaking my workinvolves coaching individuals, supervising
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individual and groups of coaches and
and
teaching time to think courses.
And I seem to be, after a period of beingvery involved with family issues, seem to
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be sort of finding myself doing sort ofculture change work with organisations to
sort of introduce them to the thinkingenvironment.
So, sorry, that turns into a very longextra.
That sounds, that's such an interestingstory.
And I love, I love the fact that youbumped into it by accident.
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That's such a beautiful story.
So for listeners who don't know what we'retalking about.
What is the thinking environment?
So, again, I shall try to give you theshort version.
So.
(06:34):
Quite a number of years ago now, NancyKlein found herself thinking about the
question of how you create the conditionsfor people to think at their best.
Starting from the premise that the actionthat we take is only as good as the
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thinking that's gone behind it.
So if that's the case, then how do youmake the thinking the best it can possibly
be?
And essentially by a process ofobservation, which is ongoing and
continues to this day, she observed thatit seemed to be all about the way that
(07:18):
people were treated while they werethinking.
That fundamentally, our behaviour and ourattitude towards another person will have
a significant impact.
impact on the quality of their thinking.
And this got distilled down into what wecall the 10 components of the thinking
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environment, which you could summariseessentially as treating people with the
deepest possible respect.
There's no sort of hierarchy of those 10components.
They mostly are ways of being or behaving.
(08:02):
But if there's one that's possibly moreimportant than any others and that the
others all feed into, it's the quality ofour listening.
And we refer to this as listening toignite.
Yes.
So most of the time when people arelistening to us, they are listening in
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order to reply.
Absolutely.
So she replied.
Well, see, one of the problems with beinga thinking environment practitioner is
you'll find yourself in any conversationthinking, is it OK for me to say
something?
Is it OK for me to interrupt?
So I think there has to be an agreementthat either we're in a thinking session,
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in which case it is not OK to interrupt,or we're in a conversation.
So we're in a conversation.
It's fine.
Thank you, Anne.
I'm really interested in what you saidabout the highest possible respect.
(09:12):
Because it feels really different fromthat phrase, unconditional positive
regard.
I'm just wondering what that's about forme.
And I wonder what you think.
Well, I'd love to know what more you thinkabout that.
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listeners gonna laugh in the way that wehave this dialogue.
So.
I've just written a book called The HumanBehind the Coach and one of the things
that we talk about in there isunconditional positive regard, which feels
really out there.
(09:56):
If I'm really direct, if feels a bitarrogant, I can have unconditional
positive regard for you.
I can't.
I can have the most unconditional, mostpositive regard I can possibly have.
But that's not the same as unconditionalpositive regard.
And when you, what was your line again?
The highest?
(10:17):
The deepest possible respect, I think Isaid.
And for me, I think as you said that, Ijust breathed a huge sigh of relief
because that was the deepest possiblerespect, which is I'm going to do my very
best here and it's not going to beabsolutely perfect.
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Whereas unconditional positive regard justfeels as though it's an aspirational
thing.
That when we start actually honestlythinking that's what we're doing, I have a
little bit of a concern about that becausenobody's perfect.
And what a marvelous thing that is.
(11:00):
Yes, so I'll now have to go and write in.
in my second, in my pen, in my, my copy ofthe book, your, your, your description,
because that's a beautiful way to describethat, I think.
Thank you.
(11:21):
I mean, it's, I think you're right aboutthat.
That the idea of unconditional positiveregard is, is an aspiration.
I also think that...
The problem with races like that that weas coaches have lived with typically for
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some time is that.
At some level they start to lose meaning.
Yes, and or we start to believe them.
Yes, and the belief that we're there.
Yeah.
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Whereas, I mean, one of the things aboutwhen we teach the thinking environment,
one of the things we talk about is thethree streams of attention.
And it's so the idea is actually you'vealways when you're listening to somebody,
you've always got your attention, 100 % ofyour attention in three different places,
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which of course is mathematicallyimpossible.
But, you know, the idea is that you'resort of trying to focus in three different
places.
And so one of them is the creation of thethinking environment.
And now I'm going to have a sudden panicand think, God, I can't remember the three
streams of attention.
(12:52):
That's OK.
But one of them is absolutely our reactionto what we're hearing.
Yeah.
And I think.
And we can't get away from that, you know,but the point is not to allow it to
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overtake.
Absolutely.
so the other one is this, is you'relistening to the content of what you're
hearing, but the other piece is absolutelyabout your reaction to it.
And you can't stop happening, thathappening, you know, it's...
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I remember people typically, particularlywhen they were sort of doing their coach
practicum.
And so they would come back to me for asupervision session and sort of reporting
on the pro bono sessions that they've beendoing.
And I remember people sort of asking,saying, on one particular occasion that
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somebody had been sort of terribly upsetby what...
what she'd been hearing from her coacheeand really wanted to cry and was really
sort of, you know, struggling with thatbecause, you know, I shouldn't be
responding like that as a coach.
And I reminded her that one of the thingsthat, that, Nancy said to me back in the
(14:23):
day was that, it was absolutely okay tocry in a coaching session if you were
moved by what you were hearing.
But the key thing was not to cry more thanthe client.
Yes.
And also probably not to sob.
Yes, absolutely.
Yeah, it's funny because I was doing asession this week and I could feel a tear
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emerging.
And because of the subject I had said thismight happen and it's and it's really okay
with me as you know, is it okay with you?
We'd have that conversation at thebeginning.
But the really interesting thing is thattear kept coming all day.
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And that's okay, right, because we'rehuman.
Yeah, we're human.
That's the point, that we are human.
And I do think that...
So it's certainly one of the things thatcoaching clients have said to me that
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they.
One of the things that they liked was thatI met their humanity, that it's not, you
know, I'm somehow setting myself up on apedestal here.
It's that, you know, we're kind of in thistogether and we're both human.
(15:54):
I'm rambling, sorry.
No, you're not.
I'm sitting here processing.
Because what you've just described isabsolutely beautiful partnership.
And sometimes when people are experiencinga conversation between two people and one
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person doesn't say anything, it'sexperienced as a real differential of
power.
Yeah.
Yes.
So I'm, you might not be able to answerthis, but the question that I'm asking
myself is what is it in the way that youare?
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that makes you get that kind of feedback.
Because there must be something.
It's something that I ask myself a lotbecause the answer is I don't know.
People frequently say that they feel safewith me.
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And I have absolutely no idea what it isI'm doing or not doing or being or not
being that creates that impact.
So is that about you or is that about theprocess?
I wonder.
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I think it's probably a bit of both.
I do think -
One of the things about coaching in athinking environment is that...
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Because it's quite unusual as an approachin that typically you would be not
interrupting somebody unless you're askedfor your input or unless something happens
and you think, I need to say somethinghere.
(18:15):
And people think that you're not allowedto interrupt at all when you're coaching
and thinking that's not the case.
OK.
That's good to know.
You know, if you hear somebody sayingsomething and you absolutely know that
they've got their facts wrong and that'shaving an impact on their thinking and you
happen to have the facts, you'd be...
(18:39):
what's the word I'm looking for?
It would be wrong not to interrupt.
Can I just interrupt you for a second?
Let me tell you, I happen to know this.
And equally, you know, all the same sortof features of, you know, if we hear
something that makes us think that theperson is at risk or somebody around them
is at risk, or if somebody, if they'reabout to do something illegal, you know,
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all of those sort of normal things, theystill apply in a time to think coaching
session.
So you would interrupt and no, I've lostmy train of thought.
Where do we start?
Where do we start this?
We started on the power equal power overpower difference.
Yeah, but putting all of that to one sidefor a moment, because it's usually
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experienced as a different approach tocoaching and somewhat unexpected.
You always...
as a time to think coach, have to explainto somebody, to your coaching, how this is
going to work, which may not always be thecase in other coaching modalities.
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So you've kind of already set it up that,you know, this is going to be the shape of
it.
And, you know, I may be the expert in
in this way of doing this coachingsession, but I'm certainly not the expert
in your life and your work.
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So because one of, and one of thecomponents of the thing, the 10 components
that I referred to earlier about, one ofthe components is equality.
that we aim as far as we can to create, towork with an attitude of we are equals in
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this, we are partners in this process.
So you, you endeavor partly from the...
from the principles of the thinkingenvironment, partly because that's how you
sort of set it up with your client as faras possible to mitigate that sort of power
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imbalance.
And having said all of that, you know,there are...
there are almost moments of temptation.
Of course, because you're human.
You're human, you know, so you sit in thecoaching, and somebody's thinking away
and, you know, I can sit there going,actually, I know something about this.
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Yeah.
I could actually, I could actually saysomething here.
I could add value here, the mostdangerous, the most dangerous internal
narrative in coaching.
And then of course, you
When you don't say anything, you thendiscover listening to the person that
actually they move in a completelydifferent direction than you would have
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taken them.
And they have solutions that you'd neverhave thought of.
Yeah, so for the listeners, the bigdifference between Time to Think and the
work that we do around simplifyingcoaching is that we co -create a
container.
So we work out what the work is going tobe before we do the work.
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But then once we do the work, we do theleast that we need to do in service of
them getting heard and having newinsights.
So the middle bit often will look quitesimilar.
Although we would probably say less thanwhat else do you want to think or feel?
We might just go up.
And often the feedback we get is, youknow, the container's a bit directive, but
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actually working out what we're doingtoday might be working out that we don't
know what we're doing.
and that we want to do the thinkingenvironment kind of style stuff.
It could be, but it's about, it's about co-creating that and not assuming that when
they come, we know, we know what they wantto do.
But I just want to, I want to share withyou some feedback that I've received from
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a few coaches over time.
And I'm really interested in your responseto it.
So most of the coaches that I encounter inmy journey absolutely love Time to Think.
And a few really don't.
But the thing that has made me curious isthat I now say, what is it that makes you
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not like it?
is it's best not to assume, right?
So what's been really interesting is thatthe people who've expressed quite how much
they hate it are people who've experiencedit as a thinking part.
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So I would have assumed it was people whodidn't want to stop talking.
But it's people who've experienced as athinking partner and who have absolutely
loved it until the facilitator, the coach,I don't know what you call them, but says,
what else do you think?
I might get the words wrong, but what elsedo you think or feel I want to say?
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And the person kind of goes, that'senough.
And then they ask it again.
What else do you think or feel I want tosay?
And, and that's the moment where theseit's only a small handful, but what's
really interesting is that they alldescribe exactly the same experience, that
suddenly, they feel that it's power underthat they have less power than the other
(24:32):
person.
As the other person sounds as though theyknow that they've got something that
hasn't come out yet.
And it makes me sad.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I'm just curious about yourresponse, because I know that some of our
listeners have experienced that.
(24:55):
Well, that makes me sad too, Claire,actually, because that's...
That's the thinking partner not listeningto the thinker when they say, actually,
that's enough.
Thank you very much.
Yeah.
(25:17):
So that's a serving the process.
This is what the rules say rather thanserving the what you see or hear or sense.
A bit.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I suspect that...
(25:42):
Sometimes if you're watching and listeningto somebody thinking, you have you, I
might have a sense that maybe there's abit more.
But I would always...
(26:05):
Say.
If I was going to, if they'd said, thanksthat enough, I would always say, can I
just check with you?
What more do you think or feel or want tosay?
So I would ask permission to ask.
(26:27):
Yeah.
Isn't permission important?
It's the permission that's important.
Whereas I think if you just go in with,well, what more do you think or feel I
want to say?
It does give the impression of, youhaven't listened to me.
I've just said, that's enough.
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So yeah, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry to anybody who's experiencedthat.
And it's not.
That's lack of skill.
I don't think it's ill will.
No, and I think as I'm as we're havingthis conversation, I think it's made me
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recognise again.
that if the only coaching we get is fromother people in training environments,
yeah, then we're all on a learningjourney.
And in a training environment, we're on aparticular kind of learning journey.
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Yeah.
And, and coach's capacity to createamazing space is amazing.
Except when it
And it's suddenly shut off.
Which is, I think as I'm, as we're talkingabout that now is I, it might be what's
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being described there in the same way thatthe, where, where the coach is creating
this beautiful space and then go, goes,we've got to finish now.
The person goes, okay.
That's a bit of a shock.
Yeah.
Yeah.
thank you for that.
That's a really useful.
It's a really useful thing, but.
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I think it's also an observation that whenwe want really high quality engagement,
sometimes having it from another studentif you're training or if you're doing CPD
or anything is a great thing.
But actually, sometimes we need to gosomewhere where there's a deeper embodied
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wisdom in the practitioner.
And, and, you know, it's, it's back to thesort of, you know, what we were talking
about at the beginning of the conversationabout being human.
That's sort of, you know, that,
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Forgiving one practitioner for making amistake might be needed.
Yeah, and we all make mistakes, don't we?
And we all have bad days.
Yeah, exactly.
I did a chemistry session with aprospective coaching client a couple of
weeks ago and I came away and went...
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dear.
I said that to someone the other daybecause...
We all aspire, don't we, to do our bestwork.
But if we're going to do our best work,we're also going to do our worst work.
Yes.
Yeah, sorry.
I realised at that moment that yourlisteners won't know that I had my head in
my hands.
(29:45):
I think we could hear it.
So I have got, I know that there are somelisteners going, tell us more about the
supervision training.
So please tell us about the supervisiontraining.
so, yes, so what can I say?
(30:07):
the,
I suppose it came out of a number ofthings.
various Time to Think colleagues doingtrainings with CSA and other schools.
(30:34):
And also me having gone, actually I don'twant to do this, I sort of invented the
process that I use for supervising peopledoing their practicums.
Because Nancy always used to basicallysort of get them to send in recordings and
(30:57):
essays and so on.
And all in one great lump.
And then...
look at it all and then write them themost beautiful letter in the way that
Nancy does.
Very carefully sort of explaining thethings that they might look at and then
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also commenting on the things that theywere doing terribly well.
And when she asked me to take on the
I've just realised I'm making this aboutme and it shouldn't be about me.
Anyway, just briefly, when she asked me totake over the supervision and assessment
(31:38):
from her, I said to her, look, you know,you'd be very happy to do it, but I can't
do it in the way that you do it.
Not least because I can't, my expertisewith words is not remotely of the same
level.
And also, I think that, you know, if youwait till the end, you know, you haven't
(32:02):
covered people's questions in the middleand they may have embedded some habits
that you could have caught earlier.
So basically, I agreed with her that Iwould do a sort of session series of face
-to -face, voice -to -voice, video -to-video sessions.
(32:26):
And my safe fundamentally, and the so thesupervision process came out of that and
and input from from other colleagueswho've done, as I say, formal shownings.
And the fundamental premise behind the thetime to think approach to supervision and
(32:55):
And we really don't like the wordsupervision because it implies a power
imbalance.
Yeah.
But it's the word that's out there andnobody else recognises what you would be
doing.
I don't like the word coaching though.
Well, what can we say?
So the basis of it is that fundamentallythe conversation would start with...
(33:23):
what's going well in your practice.
and move on to what are you findingchallenging or have questions about.
And most of the time...
given uninterrupted and keenly interestedtime, it turns out a coach will know
(33:47):
what's not going well and what they woulddo differently the next time and what
they've learned from that without youhaving to tell them.
And just ever so occasionally, so thenthere's a third phase, which is,
(34:10):
me or the supervisor going, have you gotany questions for me?
which, you know, again, anotherconversation.
And then the fourth phase might be if ithasn't already come up and nine times of
(34:31):
10 it usually has.
I've got some observations that I'd liketo share with you.
So.
And during all of that, particularly inthe phase where the coach is thinking
about, I say coach, it could befacilitator or anybody who's working with
(34:57):
people essentially who needs somewhere togo and think through the stuff that
happens when we work with people.
So, yeah, so most of the time, so in thecourse of them thinking about there may be
some limiting assumptions that come up.
(35:17):
And so then there's a piece of work tosort of examine those assumptions, whether
they're true and replace them with a trueand liberating alternative.
So the supervision training is essentiallya...
(35:38):
sort of further stage after.
So in order to do it effectively, youwould need to have gone through the
coaching qualification and develop someexpertise in the thinking partnership in
order to do that.
(35:59):
Sorry, that's generally very long andfeels like - No, that's a useful answer.
So what I think, there's something thereabout
The development journey is about becomingvery competent and fluent in being able to
create a thinking environment because inyour supervision training, you're creating
(36:24):
a thinking environment in a slightlydifferent way.
Yeah.
But I think I also heard that you won'tnecessarily be supervising thinking
environment people, you could besupervising anybody.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, it would need to be, and I have,but I guess the agreement would always
(36:48):
need to be, it would need to be somebodywho was happy to be supervised in that
way.
Absolutely.
And because the whole, for me, the wholepoint is to develop one's own reflective
practice.
Yeah, yeah.
So that actually when you come out of a,out of a...
coaching call or in -person session andyou think, I'm not sure I'm happy with
(37:14):
that.
You can actually say to yourself, okay, sowhat am I assuming here about how I was or
how I behaved or something?
So you're carrying around that sort ofreflective practice.
So.
That is so useful because we get thisweek.
(37:34):
It's Wednesday, isn't it?
And this week I've already had threepeople ask me if I run supervision
training.
And I don't, and I'm not going to.
And then they say, where do you recommend?
And I say, well, one of the interestingthings about supervision training is that
often there's a complexity in it.
And you've just described a supervisiontraining that has a depth but not a
(37:56):
complexity, I think.
lovely way to put it.
I mean, you know, fundamentally, it isactually the whole creating a thinking
environment is actually a very simpleprocess.
So is coaching.
But that's not to say that it's easy.
Exactly.
Exactly.
(38:17):
Which is how you and I have developed ourcareers.
Because simple isn't easy.
At all.
But it's also very beautiful and veryeffective.
So I'll put a link in the show noteslisteners so that you can have a look at
that if you're going.
Where can I go and think about that?
(38:38):
Anne, what an absolute delight to have aconversation with you today.
Well, likewise, thank you so much.
I mean, I had no idea.
I have to say it was quite anxious becauseI had no idea about this conversation.
You make it very easy to.
(38:59):
talk to you and talk sensibly to you, Ihope sensibly to you.
Thank you, thank you.
It's back co -creation isn't it, which isexactly the same as other work.
Yes.
So if people want to talk to you, how dothey get in touch with you Anne?
My website has a contact page, so it'sbasically just my name, it's www
(39:24):
.annethaway .co .uk.
I'll put that in the show notes.
And they can contact you that way.
Yeah, that's probably the easiest way tocontact me unless you want to.
my email is basically an at an Hathawaydot go dot.
Marvelous.
Well, thank you for coming, everybody.
(39:45):
Thank you for listening and enjoy the restof your week.
Bye bye.
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(40:08):
You've been listening to The Coaching In,3D Coaching's virtual pub.
For more information, check out 3dcoaching.com.
You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching'svirtual pub where we enjoy conversations
with people who engage in the world ofcoaching.
Hello and welcome to this week's editionof The Coaching In.
Today I'm in conversation with AnneHathaway and this is a much -waited -for
(00:23):
episode.
I can't tell you how many listeners havecontacted us and said, I think you should
talk to someone from Time to Think.
So Anne Hathaway, welcome.
Well, thank you.
And dear, the responsibility.
Yeah, it's only a conversation though,right?
So.
Before we talk about that, I really, we'dlove to know about you and a little bit
(00:47):
about your journey to this point.
gosh.
Well, I'll try and give you this sort oftwo minute version rather than the full
half hour number.
I thought you were going to say the fulllifetime version.
Well, yes.
So early background post a degree inmodern languages in the recruitment
(01:08):
industry.
ending up as a manager of a number ofbranches.
From there went and did an MBA at INSEAD.
ended up in a senior HR role in a majorindustrial blue chip company, was made
(01:42):
redundant, well, was made redundant fromthe subsidiary of which I was the HR
director and went off to Brussels for ashort while to do...
a secondment to the European Foundationfor Management Development.
While I was there, I went skiing over anew year, fell down a mountain, broke my
(02:03):
back.
The fallout from that was I got maderedundant.
And in the course of my recovery, about ayear in, an old boss of mine from my first
post -university job,
(02:24):
called me up and said, I've just met thisamazing woman.
I've read her book and I really want totrain with her.
And...
but I need a partner to do it with, wouldyou come and do it with me?
Wow.
I had never heard of this person calledNancy Klein and I certainly hadn't read
her book, but I trusted Val.
(02:45):
So I went along and that was how I metNancy.
That was extraordinarily enough back inMarch of 1993.
So this year, it's 31 years since I metNancy.
And in common with quite a lot of people,I found myself thinking.
(03:12):
how much teaching resonated with me andthat actually I'd been pretty much doing
an awful lot of listening to people inthat way for a long time.
And having done the training and sort ofas I started to recover, I found myself
being called up and asked if I would do aparticular project and magically the
(03:38):
answer to the project.
usually turned out to be something to dowith introducing people to the thinking
environment.
So I found myself working with a mixedFrench and English group who were at odds
with each other and I basically just gotthem to listen and they went, hang on,
(04:01):
we're all on the same side.
And things just sort of snowballed fromthere, so I found myself being asked to
coach people and...
increasingly to work with them in athinking environment.
And fast forward a number of years to2009.
(04:24):
And Nancy asked me if I would take overfrom her the supervision and assessment of
people who wanted to qualify as Time toThink coaches and facilitators and
consultants, which I did for 11 years, andwhich was one of the
the most satisfying periods of myprofessional life.
(04:45):
And led to increasingly people asking meto carry on supervising them after their
qualification, which then led to thecreation of the time to think supervision
qualification.
I think you've just answered a questionyou didn't know I was asking.
(05:08):
okay right, supervision course.
Well it's a course rather than aqualification I would say.
Yeah.
And yeah so broadly speaking my workinvolves coaching individuals, supervising
(05:30):
individual and groups of coaches and
and
teaching time to think courses.
And I seem to be, after a period of beingvery involved with family issues, seem to
(05:50):
be sort of finding myself doing sort ofculture change work with organisations to
sort of introduce them to the thinkingenvironment.
So, sorry, that turns into a very longextra.
That sounds, that's such an interestingstory.
And I love, I love the fact that youbumped into it by accident.
(06:12):
That's such a beautiful story.
So for listeners who don't know what we'retalking about.
What is the thinking environment?
So, again, I shall try to give you theshort version.
So.
(06:34):
Quite a number of years ago now, NancyKlein found herself thinking about the
question of how you create the conditionsfor people to think at their best.
Starting from the premise that the actionthat we take is only as good as the
(06:57):
thinking that's gone behind it.
So if that's the case, then how do youmake the thinking the best it can possibly
be?
And essentially by a process ofobservation, which is ongoing and
continues to this day, she observed thatit seemed to be all about the way that
(07:18):
people were treated while they werethinking.
That fundamentally, our behaviour and ourattitude towards another person will have
a significant impact.
impact on the quality of their thinking.
And this got distilled down into what wecall the 10 components of the thinking
(07:41):
environment, which you could summariseessentially as treating people with the
deepest possible respect.
There's no sort of hierarchy of those 10components.
They mostly are ways of being or behaving.
(08:02):
But if there's one that's possibly moreimportant than any others and that the
others all feed into, it's the quality ofour listening.
And we refer to this as listening toignite.
Yes.
So most of the time when people arelistening to us, they are listening in
(08:26):
order to reply.
Absolutely.
So she replied.
Well, see, one of the problems with beinga thinking environment practitioner is
you'll find yourself in any conversationthinking, is it OK for me to say
something?
Is it OK for me to interrupt?
So I think there has to be an agreementthat either we're in a thinking session,
(08:51):
in which case it is not OK to interrupt,or we're in a conversation.
So we're in a conversation.
It's fine.
Thank you, Anne.
I'm really interested in what you saidabout the highest possible respect.
(09:12):
Because it feels really different fromthat phrase, unconditional positive
regard.
I'm just wondering what that's about forme.
And I wonder what you think.
Well, I'd love to know what more you thinkabout that.
(09:36):
listeners gonna laugh in the way that wehave this dialogue.
So.
I've just written a book called The HumanBehind the Coach and one of the things
that we talk about in there isunconditional positive regard, which feels
really out there.
(09:56):
If I'm really direct, if feels a bitarrogant, I can have unconditional
positive regard for you.
I can't.
I can have the most unconditional, mostpositive regard I can possibly have.
But that's not the same as unconditionalpositive regard.
And when you, what was your line again?
The highest?
(10:17):
The deepest possible respect, I think Isaid.
And for me, I think as you said that, Ijust breathed a huge sigh of relief
because that was the deepest possiblerespect, which is I'm going to do my very
best here and it's not going to beabsolutely perfect.
(10:38):
Whereas unconditional positive regard justfeels as though it's an aspirational
thing.
That when we start actually honestlythinking that's what we're doing, I have a
little bit of a concern about that becausenobody's perfect.
And what a marvelous thing that is.
(11:00):
Yes, so I'll now have to go and write in.
in my second, in my pen, in my, my copy ofthe book, your, your, your description,
because that's a beautiful way to describethat, I think.
Thank you.
(11:21):
I mean, it's, I think you're right aboutthat.
That the idea of unconditional positiveregard is, is an aspiration.
I also think that...
The problem with races like that that weas coaches have lived with typically for
(11:47):
some time is that.
At some level they start to lose meaning.
Yes, and or we start to believe them.
Yes, and the belief that we're there.
Yeah.
(12:07):
Whereas, I mean, one of the things aboutwhen we teach the thinking environment,
one of the things we talk about is thethree streams of attention.
And it's so the idea is actually you'vealways when you're listening to somebody,
you've always got your attention, 100 % ofyour attention in three different places,
(12:31):
which of course is mathematicallyimpossible.
But, you know, the idea is that you'resort of trying to focus in three different
places.
And so one of them is the creation of thethinking environment.
And now I'm going to have a sudden panicand think, God, I can't remember the three
streams of attention.
(12:52):
That's OK.
But one of them is absolutely our reactionto what we're hearing.
Yeah.
And I think.
And we can't get away from that, you know,but the point is not to allow it to
(13:14):
overtake.
Absolutely.
so the other one is this, is you'relistening to the content of what you're
hearing, but the other piece is absolutelyabout your reaction to it.
And you can't stop happening, thathappening, you know, it's...
(13:36):
I remember people typically, particularlywhen they were sort of doing their coach
practicum.
And so they would come back to me for asupervision session and sort of reporting
on the pro bono sessions that they've beendoing.
And I remember people sort of asking,saying, on one particular occasion that
(14:01):
somebody had been sort of terribly upsetby what...
what she'd been hearing from her coacheeand really wanted to cry and was really
sort of, you know, struggling with thatbecause, you know, I shouldn't be
responding like that as a coach.
And I reminded her that one of the thingsthat, that, Nancy said to me back in the
(14:23):
day was that, it was absolutely okay tocry in a coaching session if you were
moved by what you were hearing.
But the key thing was not to cry more thanthe client.
Yes.
And also probably not to sob.
Yes, absolutely.
Yeah, it's funny because I was doing asession this week and I could feel a tear
(14:47):
emerging.
And because of the subject I had said thismight happen and it's and it's really okay
with me as you know, is it okay with you?
We'd have that conversation at thebeginning.
But the really interesting thing is thattear kept coming all day.
(15:11):
And that's okay, right, because we'rehuman.
Yeah, we're human.
That's the point, that we are human.
And I do think that...
So it's certainly one of the things thatcoaching clients have said to me that
(15:32):
they.
One of the things that they liked was thatI met their humanity, that it's not, you
know, I'm somehow setting myself up on apedestal here.
It's that, you know, we're kind of in thistogether and we're both human.
(15:54):
I'm rambling, sorry.
No, you're not.
I'm sitting here processing.
Because what you've just described isabsolutely beautiful partnership.
And sometimes when people are experiencinga conversation between two people and one
(16:18):
person doesn't say anything, it'sexperienced as a real differential of
power.
Yeah.
Yes.
So I'm, you might not be able to answerthis, but the question that I'm asking
myself is what is it in the way that youare?
(16:41):
that makes you get that kind of feedback.
Because there must be something.
It's something that I ask myself a lotbecause the answer is I don't know.
People frequently say that they feel safewith me.
(17:08):
And I have absolutely no idea what it isI'm doing or not doing or being or not
being that creates that impact.
So is that about you or is that about theprocess?
I wonder.
(17:31):
I think it's probably a bit of both.
I do think -
One of the things about coaching in athinking environment is that...
(17:54):
Because it's quite unusual as an approachin that typically you would be not
interrupting somebody unless you're askedfor your input or unless something happens
and you think, I need to say somethinghere.
(18:15):
And people think that you're not allowedto interrupt at all when you're coaching
and thinking that's not the case.
OK.
That's good to know.
You know, if you hear somebody sayingsomething and you absolutely know that
they've got their facts wrong and that'shaving an impact on their thinking and you
happen to have the facts, you'd be...
(18:39):
what's the word I'm looking for?
It would be wrong not to interrupt.
Can I just interrupt you for a second?
Let me tell you, I happen to know this.
And equally, you know, all the same sortof features of, you know, if we hear
something that makes us think that theperson is at risk or somebody around them
is at risk, or if somebody, if they'reabout to do something illegal, you know,
(19:02):
all of those sort of normal things, theystill apply in a time to think coaching
session.
So you would interrupt and no, I've lostmy train of thought.
Where do we start?
Where do we start this?
We started on the power equal power overpower difference.
Yeah, but putting all of that to one sidefor a moment, because it's usually
(19:29):
experienced as a different approach tocoaching and somewhat unexpected.
You always...
as a time to think coach, have to explainto somebody, to your coaching, how this is
going to work, which may not always be thecase in other coaching modalities.
(19:56):
So you've kind of already set it up that,you know, this is going to be the shape of
it.
And, you know, I may be the expert in
in this way of doing this coachingsession, but I'm certainly not the expert
in your life and your work.
(20:20):
So because one of, and one of thecomponents of the thing, the 10 components
that I referred to earlier about, one ofthe components is equality.
that we aim as far as we can to create, towork with an attitude of we are equals in
(20:43):
this, we are partners in this process.
So you, you endeavor partly from the...
from the principles of the thinkingenvironment, partly because that's how you
sort of set it up with your client as faras possible to mitigate that sort of power
(21:05):
imbalance.
And having said all of that, you know,there are...
there are almost moments of temptation.
Of course, because you're human.
You're human, you know, so you sit in thecoaching, and somebody's thinking away
and, you know, I can sit there going,actually, I know something about this.
(21:28):
Yeah.
I could actually, I could actually saysomething here.
I could add value here, the mostdangerous, the most dangerous internal
narrative in coaching.
And then of course, you
When you don't say anything, you thendiscover listening to the person that
actually they move in a completelydifferent direction than you would have
(21:50):
taken them.
And they have solutions that you'd neverhave thought of.
Yeah, so for the listeners, the bigdifference between Time to Think and the
work that we do around simplifyingcoaching is that we co -create a
container.
So we work out what the work is going tobe before we do the work.
(22:13):
But then once we do the work, we do theleast that we need to do in service of
them getting heard and having newinsights.
So the middle bit often will look quitesimilar.
Although we would probably say less thanwhat else do you want to think or feel?
We might just go up.
And often the feedback we get is, youknow, the container's a bit directive, but
(22:36):
actually working out what we're doingtoday might be working out that we don't
know what we're doing.
and that we want to do the thinkingenvironment kind of style stuff.
It could be, but it's about, it's about co-creating that and not assuming that when
they come, we know, we know what they wantto do.
But I just want to, I want to share withyou some feedback that I've received from
(22:58):
a few coaches over time.
And I'm really interested in your responseto it.
So most of the coaches that I encounter inmy journey absolutely love Time to Think.
And a few really don't.
But the thing that has made me curious isthat I now say, what is it that makes you
(23:25):
not like it?
is it's best not to assume, right?
So what's been really interesting is thatthe people who've expressed quite how much
they hate it are people who've experiencedit as a thinking part.
(23:46):
So I would have assumed it was people whodidn't want to stop talking.
But it's people who've experienced as athinking partner and who have absolutely
loved it until the facilitator, the coach,I don't know what you call them, but says,
what else do you think?
I might get the words wrong, but what elsedo you think or feel I want to say?
(24:09):
And the person kind of goes, that'senough.
And then they ask it again.
What else do you think or feel I want tosay?
And, and that's the moment where theseit's only a small handful, but what's
really interesting is that they alldescribe exactly the same experience, that
suddenly, they feel that it's power underthat they have less power than the other
(24:32):
person.
As the other person sounds as though theyknow that they've got something that
hasn't come out yet.
And it makes me sad.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I'm just curious about yourresponse, because I know that some of our
listeners have experienced that.
(24:55):
Well, that makes me sad too, Claire,actually, because that's...
That's the thinking partner not listeningto the thinker when they say, actually,
that's enough.
Thank you very much.
Yeah.
(25:17):
So that's a serving the process.
This is what the rules say rather thanserving the what you see or hear or sense.
A bit.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I suspect that...
(25:42):
Sometimes if you're watching and listeningto somebody thinking, you have you, I
might have a sense that maybe there's abit more.
But I would always...
(26:05):
Say.
If I was going to, if they'd said, thanksthat enough, I would always say, can I
just check with you?
What more do you think or feel or want tosay?
So I would ask permission to ask.
(26:27):
Yeah.
Isn't permission important?
It's the permission that's important.
Whereas I think if you just go in with,well, what more do you think or feel I
want to say?
It does give the impression of, youhaven't listened to me.
I've just said, that's enough.
(26:51):
So yeah, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry to anybody who's experiencedthat.
And it's not.
That's lack of skill.
I don't think it's ill will.
No, and I think as I'm as we're havingthis conversation, I think it's made me
(27:13):
recognise again.
that if the only coaching we get is fromother people in training environments,
yeah, then we're all on a learningjourney.
And in a training environment, we're on aparticular kind of learning journey.
(27:34):
Yeah.
And, and coach's capacity to createamazing space is amazing.
Except when it
And it's suddenly shut off.
Which is, I think as I'm, as we're talkingabout that now is I, it might be what's
(27:55):
being described there in the same way thatthe, where, where the coach is creating
this beautiful space and then go, goes,we've got to finish now.
The person goes, okay.
That's a bit of a shock.
Yeah.
Yeah.
thank you for that.
That's a really useful.
It's a really useful thing, but.
(28:17):
I think it's also an observation that whenwe want really high quality engagement,
sometimes having it from another studentif you're training or if you're doing CPD
or anything is a great thing.
But actually, sometimes we need to gosomewhere where there's a deeper embodied
(28:41):
wisdom in the practitioner.
And, and, you know, it's, it's back to thesort of, you know, what we were talking
about at the beginning of the conversationabout being human.
That's sort of, you know, that,
(29:01):
Forgiving one practitioner for making amistake might be needed.
Yeah, and we all make mistakes, don't we?
And we all have bad days.
Yeah, exactly.
I did a chemistry session with aprospective coaching client a couple of
weeks ago and I came away and went...
(29:24):
dear.
I said that to someone the other daybecause...
We all aspire, don't we, to do our bestwork.
But if we're going to do our best work,we're also going to do our worst work.
Yes.
Yeah, sorry.
I realised at that moment that yourlisteners won't know that I had my head in
my hands.
(29:45):
I think we could hear it.
So I have got, I know that there are somelisteners going, tell us more about the
supervision training.
So please tell us about the supervisiontraining.
so, yes, so what can I say?
(30:07):
the,
I suppose it came out of a number ofthings.
various Time to Think colleagues doingtrainings with CSA and other schools.
(30:34):
And also me having gone, actually I don'twant to do this, I sort of invented the
process that I use for supervising peopledoing their practicums.
Because Nancy always used to basicallysort of get them to send in recordings and
(30:57):
essays and so on.
And all in one great lump.
And then...
look at it all and then write them themost beautiful letter in the way that
Nancy does.
Very carefully sort of explaining thethings that they might look at and then
(31:18):
also commenting on the things that theywere doing terribly well.
And when she asked me to take on the
I've just realised I'm making this aboutme and it shouldn't be about me.
Anyway, just briefly, when she asked me totake over the supervision and assessment
(31:38):
from her, I said to her, look, you know,you'd be very happy to do it, but I can't
do it in the way that you do it.
Not least because I can't, my expertisewith words is not remotely of the same
level.
And also, I think that, you know, if youwait till the end, you know, you haven't
(32:02):
covered people's questions in the middleand they may have embedded some habits
that you could have caught earlier.
So basically, I agreed with her that Iwould do a sort of session series of face
-to -face, voice -to -voice, video -to-video sessions.
(32:26):
And my safe fundamentally, and the so thesupervision process came out of that and
and input from from other colleagueswho've done, as I say, formal shownings.
And the fundamental premise behind the thetime to think approach to supervision and
(32:55):
And we really don't like the wordsupervision because it implies a power
imbalance.
Yeah.
But it's the word that's out there andnobody else recognises what you would be
doing.
I don't like the word coaching though.
Well, what can we say?
So the basis of it is that fundamentallythe conversation would start with...
(33:23):
what's going well in your practice.
and move on to what are you findingchallenging or have questions about.
And most of the time...
given uninterrupted and keenly interestedtime, it turns out a coach will know
(33:47):
what's not going well and what they woulddo differently the next time and what
they've learned from that without youhaving to tell them.
And just ever so occasionally, so thenthere's a third phase, which is,
(34:10):
me or the supervisor going, have you gotany questions for me?
which, you know, again, anotherconversation.
And then the fourth phase might be if ithasn't already come up and nine times of
(34:31):
10 it usually has.
I've got some observations that I'd liketo share with you.
So.
And during all of that, particularly inthe phase where the coach is thinking
about, I say coach, it could befacilitator or anybody who's working with
(34:57):
people essentially who needs somewhere togo and think through the stuff that
happens when we work with people.
So, yeah, so most of the time, so in thecourse of them thinking about there may be
some limiting assumptions that come up.
(35:17):
And so then there's a piece of work tosort of examine those assumptions, whether
they're true and replace them with a trueand liberating alternative.
So the supervision training is essentiallya...
(35:38):
sort of further stage after.
So in order to do it effectively, youwould need to have gone through the
coaching qualification and develop someexpertise in the thinking partnership in
order to do that.
(35:59):
Sorry, that's generally very long andfeels like - No, that's a useful answer.
So what I think, there's something thereabout
The development journey is about becomingvery competent and fluent in being able to
create a thinking environment because inyour supervision training, you're creating
(36:24):
a thinking environment in a slightlydifferent way.
Yeah.
But I think I also heard that you won'tnecessarily be supervising thinking
environment people, you could besupervising anybody.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, it would need to be, and I have,but I guess the agreement would always
(36:48):
need to be, it would need to be somebodywho was happy to be supervised in that
way.
Absolutely.
And because the whole, for me, the wholepoint is to develop one's own reflective
practice.
Yeah, yeah.
So that actually when you come out of a,out of a...
coaching call or in -person session andyou think, I'm not sure I'm happy with
(37:14):
that.
You can actually say to yourself, okay, sowhat am I assuming here about how I was or
how I behaved or something?
So you're carrying around that sort ofreflective practice.
So.
That is so useful because we get thisweek.
(37:34):
It's Wednesday, isn't it?
And this week I've already had threepeople ask me if I run supervision
training.
And I don't, and I'm not going to.
And then they say, where do you recommend?
And I say, well, one of the interestingthings about supervision training is that
often there's a complexity in it.
And you've just described a supervisiontraining that has a depth but not a
(37:56):
complexity, I think.
lovely way to put it.
I mean, you know, fundamentally, it isactually the whole creating a thinking
environment is actually a very simpleprocess.
So is coaching.
But that's not to say that it's easy.
Exactly.
Exactly.
(38:17):
Which is how you and I have developed ourcareers.
Because simple isn't easy.
At all.
But it's also very beautiful and veryeffective.
So I'll put a link in the show noteslisteners so that you can have a look at
that if you're going.
Where can I go and think about that?
(38:38):
Anne, what an absolute delight to have aconversation with you today.
Well, likewise, thank you so much.
I mean, I had no idea.
I have to say it was quite anxious becauseI had no idea about this conversation.
You make it very easy to.
(38:59):
talk to you and talk sensibly to you, Ihope sensibly to you.
Thank you, thank you.
It's back co -creation isn't it, which isexactly the same as other work.
Yes.
So if people want to talk to you, how dothey get in touch with you Anne?
My website has a contact page, so it'sbasically just my name, it's www
(39:24):
.annethaway .co .uk.
I'll put that in the show notes.
And they can contact you that way.
Yeah, that's probably the easiest way tocontact me unless you want to.
my email is basically an at an Hathawaydot go dot.
Marvelous.
Well, thank you for coming, everybody.
(39:45):
Thank you for listening and enjoy the restof your week.
Bye bye.
If you've enjoyed what you've heard today,we'd love you to share the podcast with a
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We look forward to welcoming you nexttime.
(40:08):
You've been listening to The Coaching In,3D Coaching's virtual pub.
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