March 12, 2025 • 53 mins
Join Claire Pedrick and Tony Castro as they explore the fascinating link between music and coaching. Discover how Tony's background in music shapes his coaching style, emphasising the power of listening, improvisation, and understanding the unspoken. We delve into how a coach's attentiveness to a client's voice, breathing, and even silence can lead to profound breakthroughs.
What we cover:
- Tony's journey from music to coaching
- The importance of active listening and noticing non-verbal cues
- How improvisation enhances coaching sessions
- The vulnerability of both singing and being coached
- Tips for facilitating "non-professional thinkers"
- Why confidence is key in both music and coaching
Key Takeaways:
- Listening goes beyond words – pay attention to sound and silence.
- Confidence is a powerful "sound".
- Coaching is about being present and attuned to the client.
- Note-taking can disrupt the flow – try listening deeply instead.
Sound Bites:
- "The sound of silence is really interesting."
- "Our voices betray us every day."
- "It's about confidence, not just notes."
Contact details
- Contact Tony via LinkedIn
- Contact Claire by emailing info@3dcoaching.com or checking out her 3D Coaching Supervision Community
If you like this episode, subscribe or follow The Coaching Inn on your podcast platform or our YouTube Channel to hear or see new episodes as they drop.
If you’d like to find out more about 3D Coaching, you can get all our new ideas and offers in our weekly email.
Coming Up:
- Join Claire for an Open House at The Coaching Inn on Friday 28th March 2025 08.00-18.00 (UK). Come when you like. Stay as long as you like. Book here
- Next week Victoria Rennoldson will be here to talk about cultural intelligence
Key Words
coaching, music, improvisation, Tony Castro, higher education, community choirs, coaching techniques, emotional intelligence, non-verbal communication, storytelling, coaching, listening, client processing, note-taking, sound awareness, musical direction, confidence, community, transformation
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:13):
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn.
I'm Claire Pedrick and today it's an absolute delight to be in the company of Tony Castro.
A couple of things before we meet Tony.
Open House at The Coaching Inn, Friday the 28th of March, all day, 8am UK to 6pm UK.
The link will be in the show notes.
(00:34):
Come whenever you like, stay for however long you like.
It's an opportunity for you to meet other listeners to The Coaching Inn and to meet me andother members of the team who will be around most of the day except when we go to get
coffee.
Also, if you love The Coaching Inn, do review it on the podcast platform where you arebecause it allows people to know more about us, which would be great.
(00:58):
So down to business.
Tony Castro, hello.
Good morning, Claire.
How absolutely delightful to have you finally here at The Coaching Inn
Thank you so much for inviting me, it's a real privilege.
Well, it's a privilege both ways.
So a bit of heads up, lovely listeners.
Tony is a musician and you will know my obsession with coaching and the sound of.
(01:23):
So I've been stalking him on LinkedIn for a very long time.
So here we finally are.
Tony, tell us about your journey to coaching.
Uh, I'm still, uh, relatively new to formal coaching.
got, um, work backwards.
I, uh, got my EMCC practitioner August, April 24.
(01:48):
Um, uh, I, my training was run through, uh, when I was working at the Guildhall school,they were, they run their catalyst program.
Um, uh, prior to that.
I've had sort of slightly strange parallel careers in, I've been working in highereducation, performing arts departments for 30 plus years, including a brief stint in the
(02:11):
Brit school.
And meanwhile, also in a previous life, I was a full-time music director, musician,working in the West End, mainly, it's sort of a thing, mainly working in theater.
just sort of gravitated towards it, conducting some of the big shows.
(02:33):
And then I carried on doing my music work in parallel with my HE work throughout.
And I have this sense that when I came to coaching training, it felt very familiaralready, notwithstanding the endless
(02:59):
rules that one is supposed to learn.
The basic impulse of it felt to me very similar to what I was doing as a teacher, as ahigher education lecturer, but weirdly also as an MD.
I thought there's a similar spirit going on here.
(03:24):
So coming to coaching felt relatively easy.
And it was then about formalizing those coaching skills in a way that gave me, suppose, abit more coaching confidence, just some railroad tracks.
But I'm going to jump in quickly, interrupt myself on the railroad tracks, because aspooky thing happened about halfway through my coaching training when I was just beginning
(03:51):
to think, I am so, I feel like I'm being hit over the head with Oscar.
and etc.
It's, you know, whatever it was.
Gotta do this.
Until I discovered and no flattery intended, simplifying coaching totally opened the doorfor me because it's something that, I get it.
(04:15):
It's this.
It's I have a habit.
I know it's a bad habit or a good habit, but I do scribble in my textbooks that I buy forme scribble all over the margins and things like that.
And often there's lots of question mark.
Don't know what this means to think about this.
Simplifying coaching.
There's endless big, big ticks.
Yes.
(04:37):
So I just, it just made sense and it made sense of what coaching seems to be to me.
do have a question as a fellow writer in books, or pencil?
pencil so it can't ink no that's that's
(05:01):
But I don't know why, actually, because I'm not going to give it away to anybody else.
the note is for me.
If I put it in pen, I feel like I'm being a proofreader and doing it for the author andI'm commenting on the authors.
And I'm not when I'm noting for me, it's for me.
(05:22):
It's a reminder to me so that when I go back into it, yeah, yeah, that was the question Ihad about this.
beautiful thing well thank you for saying that makes it I don't know I really I reallyappreciate that I write all over my own books in ink but I write on other people's books
(05:43):
in pencil so I think I'm probably following your rules
Yeah, you're allowed to, you're the author, so...
Well, it's because I learn things and then I write, you should have written this.
It's good because it's all learning.
That's an interesting thing from a creative's perspective.
(06:04):
And I don't know if this is a parallel we're coaching as a composer.
I could spend a lot of time going back over pieces I wrote a while ago and thinking,should have, I want to write this.
should, there should, don't say should.
And you think, if I change it, it's become the me now.
(06:26):
And it's not the me a year ago, 10 years ago.
And you think, what am I doing there?
Am I erasing the me that was?
in all my horrible mistakes and errors and oopsies and or should I think, nah, just leaveit as it is.
If it still works legitimately in terms of what I was saying then, if it still works,leave it alone.
(06:50):
Otherwise we're in some pursuit of perfect.
you think, don't go, don't even, don't even look at the roadmap to perfect.
really interesting, isn't it?
If you were conducting a piece of your own and there was a bit that you could see wastricky for the orchestra or the choir, would you change that?
(07:15):
If, probably, I'd look at it, particularly if it's a choir and even more particularly, mything is mainly community choirs.
So working with very much untrained, enthusiastic, but not got a clue what they're doingsingers.
(07:36):
And so if they are after some period of rehearsal, if they are genuinely still struggling,I have to...
take the blame for that and think I've not written it very well.
Not necessarily, there's a slight, there's a subtle difference between the composingprocess, which is the sort of getting the ideas down on paper and then making it fit
(07:56):
people's voices that sort of orchestrating the voices.
And sometimes that's the bit we make mistakes on, whether it's, it could be that you'velanded, oh, what were we looking at yesterday?
I had a choir rehearsal last night.
That's why it's in my mind.
And it's a song we're re-rehearsing and poor choir, I've made them end up on a high noteon the word you.
(08:20):
Daft, just daft.
Why have I done that?
I don't know.
you know, unfortunately I can't change the lyric because it then wouldn't make any sense.
So it, but it throws up some interesting choral issues for them about how do you sing theword or o-vowels.
(08:41):
because oo naturally closes down the front of your face.
So it's not a great thing to sing on where we're constantly trying to sing on some versionof art, you know, a nice open mouth, close it down.
Ooh, so we have to find a way of cheating it.
So there's some useful learning for them in terms of singing technique.
(09:03):
Sorry, that was me just stealing your knowledge for my own purposes.
Yeah, when I revisit some of my stuff, will revisit it in a slightly different way.
Thank you.
So.
Interesting journey.
(09:24):
We lived in the road that the Brits school was on once.
Yeah, yeah.
Funny old world.
Lovely.
Really interesting students.
Really interesting because they were from such diverse backgrounds and all their.
I mean, I was was the director of music for a while there.
(09:45):
And so all the music students.
Really interestingly talented.
And why I say interestingly is not necessarily because they had
by that point, you know, 12 years of violin lessons.
They were interestingly talented because they'd found their own way through.
(10:07):
Many of them came from significantly less privileged backgrounds and had found a waythrough in spite of, and they were quite extraordinary.
It was a really interesting time.
I don't think I've ever worked quite so hard.
as I did in teaching in what was effectively just, you know, comprehensive secondaryschool.
(10:32):
Absolutely exhausted at the end of every day.
So my constantly hats off to secondary school teachers in particular.
Gosh, that's a hard job.
Wow.
Yeah.
I am really interested in what you said about coaching being familiar for you as amusician.
(10:55):
I was thinking about this the other day, trying to find the parallels and the differences.
Well, a little bit of context.
never, whilst I, I don't say I trained to be a pianist.
I didn't.
I had piano lessons and I did go to a music university and though we did weird stuff, wedid ethno music and science and stuff like that.
(11:25):
And I did go to the Guildhall, so I'm a qualified musician as it were.
never interested in being a concert pianist or that kind of playing at all.
Only ever wanted to work with singers.
And it's something about they've always got, and it is this, they've always got somethingto say, literally, because in the music, they're singing somebody's words.
(11:49):
So there's something, and maybe it's the sort of innate drama person in me that likes...
the storytelling side of words, the narrative that you can't escape with words.
Everything's a story.
Absolutely everything's a story.
(12:11):
so singers have always got something to say, which is interesting.
working with a group, so group music is just inherently collaborative.
have to really to a large extent you leave your ego at the door because it just gets inthe way.
(12:36):
It's not relevant to what we're doing.
have a, I'm really blessed.
have a lovely semi-regular gig playing for a lovely group called Shelley Van Owen.
It's a, we do palm court music.
Nice.
from the 1920s and all that kind of stuff that used to be on, you know, workers play timeand stuff like that.
(13:02):
And for a start musically, it's outstanding.
There is so much really, really good stuff.
And it's a lovely gig because it's low pressure.
We turn up, we just play what's in front of us.
We have a good time and that's it.
And there's no autopsy.
There's no, you did this wrong or we could have done this, but it is absolutely in themoment.
(13:24):
And for me, that's the most exciting thing about music making.
It's the in the moment-ness of it.
And I wonder whether that's a parallel with coaching because what's happening in the spaceis happening in the moment right now.
What happened before is not terribly relevant and what happens next, maybe we'll get to.
(13:44):
But again, if we're thinking about, I mean, and I speak as a, as a, still a coach verymuch learning, learning, learning.
If in the session I'm thinking about what happens next, I'm not with the client.
And it's the hardest thing I have found.
I've got out of the habit of thinking of the next question.
(14:07):
So, well, I have to ask my clients, but I think I'm making progress on that one.
But when you come to it new, that's really hard.
Yeah, and I think it's really interesting what you've said about your Palm Court music,because I'm guessing in that you're not following the rules.
(14:28):
But you kind of are following the rules, but you're not following the rules.
you're doing your thing, but you're not thinking about the scales that you practiced whenyou were told to practice them by your piano teacher.
It's, I mean, one hopes.
mean, I am, I am so not a really high class piano player by a mile.
(14:51):
you know, remember somebody saying once, they're comparing me with an, this is when I wasa student, somebody, the teacher compared me with another student and said, you know, Tony
may play very well, but the other fellow has got a really good technique.
I thought, thanks.
Thanks for that.
but it is actually true.
(15:11):
I get away with it.
That's fine.
get away.
But what's interesting about the the quartet, the palm court gig is that I get given apiano part, what's called a conductor's score.
So it's got the piano part on it, but it's also got lots of other instruments queued in.
(15:33):
So it's quite a lot on a very small score.
Now,
We're playing on a score which was intended for like a little in the 1920s or 1930s, 40s,a little theater orchestra, which were very flexible, partly to do with the war and things
like that.
You know, if you had five players, you had a five piece band.
If you had seven and whether that was, you know, a string quartet and a piano or threesaxophones in a kazoo, it just depended what you had.
(16:02):
So it's all very flexible.
So when I'm playing that piano part, I am not
actually playing what's written.
I'm playing around it and I'm listening to what my colleagues are doing and thinking, Icould put in that line there.
So it's again, it's a weird kind of, it's sort of improvisation on railroad tracks again.
(16:24):
Yeah, what a beautiful thing.
Improvisational railroad tracks, I love that.
And that improvising, improvisational side of coaching plays in my head quite nicely.
The idea that we're sort of riffing over a sort of existing base in every sense, baseline,if you like.
(16:51):
Because it's weird whilst we're there entirely for the client, da da da, nonetheless,someone in that room's got to keep an eye on the time.
So someone has to be in it, but slightly not.
And yet the slightly not is at odds with the presence.
And that's slightly weird contradiction going on, but it works.
(17:18):
We can't be there forever.
No, no.
And.
Give me, let me give you an example of the improvisation.
I had a session with a client.
End of last week.
And in fact, it wasn't really intended to be a proper coaching session.
It was I finished coaching with him before Christmas.
(17:44):
And with the new year, I thought, well, I'll just touch base with some recent clients andliterally just see how you get.
I wasn't, wasn't trying to propagate anymore work.
was literally just a catch up partly because I knew he, this particular client had a, he'squite young and it was, there's quite a pile of issues.
I I'm just, I'm just going to check in no more.
(18:07):
So we arranged to check in and
He was, he was delightful.
was full of enthusiasm of all the exciting things he'd done since we last met and blah,blah, blah.
It was great.
And then as we were just chatting.
his, and I can't remember what the trigger was, his tone of voice changed, his bodylanguage changed, and we were just talking about how's it all going, da da da da, yes,
(18:31):
this good, this was, and it was then, he then steered us into a coaching session, becausehe was suddenly talking about work-related things that are quite immediate and happening
to him right now that were affecting him.
(18:51):
And we'd actually come up to the end of our time and I thought, can't leave him right now.
No, actually, no, that's unfair to him.
He's a grown up.
Of course I could.
I didn't feel I wanted to leave him.
I wouldn't have felt...
You know, that's like running away from someone who you think might be in need of a hand,no more or less than that.
(19:17):
So I just noticed with him and said, notice...
Your energy now is not where we were when we started and we talked it through and he thenfound it useful.
He said he found it useful when we got to the end of it and he got some, it became acoaching.
But that's what I mean about the improvising.
You go with where the client wants to go and even when it's just a catch up.
(19:45):
you're listening to the sound of the mood.
Yeah, and the sound, I mean, it's a Simon Garfunkel cliche, but you know, the sound ofsilence is really interesting.
Because it's not silent.
And I don't mean, I know this processing going on.
I mean, it's not actually really silent.
If you listen, there is stuff going on.
(20:07):
There's a change of breathing.
There's suddenly it's got a bit, or there's sort of sigh.
as they have a thought and it was either a good thought or a bad thought or a whateverthought.
you think I really need to...
I think that's my big focus at the moment in terms of my own development is really tryingto tune into that stuff.
(20:34):
The nonverbal utterances.
I don't mean nonvocal, but not words.
The little tiny little grippity things we do in between talking, particularly...
when we're thinking and the tone, I can't think of a better word, but there's a texture tothe voice as well, which is different from tone.
(20:56):
There's a softness, a hardness, which you can connect perhaps to, there's a confidence oran uncertainty.
Our voices, I bore my quiet death with this.
Our voices betray us every day.
all the time.
You cannot hide.
(21:17):
It's in your voice.
one of the most peculiar and fascinating things about singing is it's the only instrumentyou can't take apart and see how it works while you're using it.
Everything else you can take apart.
You can stick cameras down, but now you've changed the context.
Now it's different.
You can literally do autopsies, but now there's something about that that doesn't work.
(21:42):
So
It's a mysterious thing.
when we're talking, when we're working with singers, when I'm working with singers, youinevitably use lots of metaphor, lots of imagery to try and get the singer to find a
sound.
(22:02):
But because the sound again is hard to separate the sound from your inner emotion.
I don't mean the one, the superficial one that we parade around the street.
The one that's in sight.
The three o'clock in the morning you.
That one, it's, it's, it's hard, but that's the interesting voice to try and get in acoaching session.
(22:23):
It seems to me if the client is in that place where they're prepared to let you see orhear that voice, it's different.
It's inevitably different.
And I think if we can catch it, there's a lot to be found in it.
(22:49):
What a beautiful description of the sound.
And right at the beginning of that, and in different parts of this conversation, you'vesaid things about facial expressions.
And I'm guessing with your choir you're trying to get their faces to match the sound sothat it makes a fun performance.
(23:16):
That's an interesting way of putting it.
No, it's the other way around.
I will say to them, if you smile, I get a better sound.
Not because it's a happy thing, I want you to smile.
(23:39):
If you smile, I get a better sound.
Always.
And that's literally a biomechanical thing about what's going on.
If you're smiling, things in here are differently placed.
then if you're not smiling, it's just muscles.
It's just, again, a spooky thing about singing is those muscles are teeny tiny and they'requite hard to learn how to control them.
(24:12):
so yeah, I will, I mean, the choir think it's hysteric.
mean, God forbid that there is ever a camera on me when I'm conducting the choir, becausethe choir can see what the audience can't, which is I'm pulling the most ridiculous faces,
trying to get them to open or smile or heads up all sorts of stuff, things like that.
(24:33):
But it's their biomechanics that changes the sound.
that affects the sound.
And if they can match that with understanding the intention of the lyric and crucially theclues that the composer has given them in setting that lyric.
(24:56):
then they're on the way to doing some really interesting work.
Always regardless of the innate quality of one person's voice.
I'm sure other choir directors will come along and see me work in the choir and think,what on earth is he doing?
That's just as ridiculous.
(25:18):
I'm forever saying to the choir, don't worry about singing the right notes.
Just open your gold and sing.
know, just get, the point is that
in my experience, community choirs, the smell of fear can be quite ripe in the room ifyou're not careful because they're not used to doing it, they're frightened of exposing
(25:39):
themselves.
Again, parallels with coaching.
They're frightened of being vulnerable.
And why do they feel vulnerable?
Because they're singing.
And singing is a peculiarly vulnerable making thing, much more so than talking in public.
And most people would talk in public, singing in public.
(26:02):
I think what's going on there?
Who cares what you sound like?
Why do you care what you sound like?
Well, why do we care what people think?
that's a couple of chapters.
Yeah, but what you've described is, is facilitating people who aren't professionalmusicians.
(26:25):
And actually most of the time in coaching, we're facilitating people who aren'tprofessional thinkers.
Which is, I think, what disturbs me about the quantity of coaching hours that some coachesrack up coaching other coaches.
Because what you're doing then is you're, you're...
(26:45):
you're facilitating the thinking of professional thinkers.
So when you get into the space where people are just ordinary people and they're notcoaches, they don't engage in the same way.
Yeah, I do wonder about the real value of coaching coaches.
(27:09):
I'm not sure.
mean, a couple of, I've got a couple of peer colleagues who we were on the Guildhall thingtogether.
So we've kind of stayed in touch and certainly with one of them every so often we'll do aparallel coach.
So we'll coach each other, but we do it specifically to give feedback to each other at theend.
(27:31):
But we've talked about this, both of us know it's not real.
It's, it's slightly.
Odd.
I was very minded when we first started doing it.
I thought this is a bit strange because we, we it's like, both know the rules of the game.
And that means we're not really thinking about the right thing somehow.
(27:56):
so, yeah, I don't, I, yeah, I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Apart from racking up hours, there was a thing, Sarah Short put a thing on the.
LinkedIn just the other day about whether these are credited as being paid or not.
And how that the the accrediting bodies are perhaps inadvertently encouraging somethingwhich is not terribly
(28:27):
meaningful in the end.
So say I get a gazillion coaching hours, does that mean I'm a good coach?
Just means I've done a lot.
It's not the same.
I'd rather work with somebody who had fewer hours under their belt, but was a fabulouscoach.
(28:48):
And I thought, you've given me, and I'm not sure about that language there, but so.
Don't beat me up about that.
I have gained a lot of stuff to think about out of that session.
In the session, the podcast you had with, think, is it Chris Patterson?
(29:12):
I love that, that I've listened to it a number of times.
And particularly, I hope I get this right, his definition of coaching, which is along thelines of asking questions that...
get you thinking in new ways.
And it was the thinking in new ways.
(29:32):
It's not new thinking because that presumes you were in deficit beforehand.
It's taking the thinking you've already got.
and kind of re- repositioning it and thinking, and it's that,
That I think is what a client gets in terms of value.
(29:57):
Wherever it takes next, that's up to them.
But the moment they go,
Or when you ask, when you ask a question and it wasn't from a coach point of view, youcertainly want, weren't intending it as a bombshell question or anything like that.
You just ask the question that was in your head right then.
(30:20):
and you can just see the processing.
It's like their hard drive goes bonkers and they go quiet.
Except they don't.
The breathing's there, the sigh, and it's particularly weird when they go quiet and thenthere's a sigh in the middle and then they go on, you think?
(30:46):
And then there's something about the difference between, I've noticed, I don't know whatit means, but the difference between, so the client, you've said something that has
provoked them in some way, and I don't mean that negatively.
Trumped them, whatever.
They look away because they're accessing that kind of processing side of their brain.
(31:12):
and their breathing changes.
And then the next interesting moment for me is whether they start speaking, still lookingaway, which means they're absolutely not talking to me and they're not answering the
question.
They're just verbalizing what's, or whether they look at me first.
Beautiful.
(31:32):
there's a difference.
It's just so interesting.
That is such a beautiful distinction.
And I'd never thought about it like that.
Thank you so much for that.
And if I build on what you've just said, of course our response is different.
(31:53):
Absolutely.
Because if we move when they're still looking away, then we'll cause them to look back tous.
And that's an interruption.
It's yeah again just referencing one of your previous post podcasts about note-takingWhich I'm afraid I was shouting at it.
(32:15):
I was It's such
It's so hard to get right.
I've been in the end.
I mean, there is no right rights, whatever works for you and the client.
I'm terribly aware that every time I've tried to minimize it, I've tried to.
Well, what I really tried to do is to do without.
(32:38):
And yet then the client will say something and think, I'm going to remember that, I'mgoing to remember that.
And so, know, surreptitiously and even that, so why surreptitious?
Because I don't want to disturb their flow.
I don't want to say, do you mind if I look away and run?
And even if I say that at the beginning, I'm looking away every time I look away, I feellike I've missed an episode.
(33:00):
And I know it's a micro moment, but actually in that micro moment, there might besomething that is worth exploring.
So if I check in with the musical director bit of you, I'm guessing you never look away.
(33:24):
Ideally not.
Ideally you're with them throughout, which is why conductors tend to do things frommemory.
tend to because it means you can be looking at everybody, know, you can be picked partlyabout queuing people if necessary and things like that and shaping a piece in the moment.
(33:52):
yeah, there's something there, but the looking away I find it's the parallel certainlywith a community choir is that they have said, my choir have said,
They always prefer it when I conduct because they feel safe.
They feel that I am going to nod them in or, or dare I say, no, stop, stop, stop.
(34:17):
You know, that happens one or two times.
This is all right.
and I suppose there's a parallel with coaching and looking away feels like not meant, butnot quite interested or
There's some, it feels like there's something going on in the client, in the coach, andthe client notices that.
(34:42):
It's no different from an ordinary conversation, is it?
If you're sitting, I mean, Zoom is spooky.
It's a different world.
But you know, you would notice if you and I were sitting together in the pub.
And we talk and while I'm talking, I look away or while I'm talking to you, you look away.
(35:03):
How does that make me feel?
You looking away?
You probably mean nothing by it.
You've you may have been distracted by some weirdness in the pub over there.
But there's a moment where I think, you're not interested.
Am I boring?
and in the client space, I'm not, I don't, I'm not saying that the client is picking upevery tiny little gesture of the coach, but if we're genuinely in service of the client
(35:36):
and we say we pay full attention, I don't see how that sits with note taking.
at all.
And it's full attention particularly while they're doing their thing, which is the timethat we're most, if someone's a note taker, that's the time that they're most likely to
(36:03):
disconnect because the other person's holding the responsibility.
So you go, I'll quickly write or I'll quickly look.
But there's something about flow, isn't there?
And breaking the flow.
And if you just sort of build on that, think, what, what, what is the coach implicitlysaying at that moment?
(36:24):
there's a gap.
I'll just do it.
Gap gap.
Gap.
gap?
There's no gap.
There's just no noise.
That doesn't mean you look away because the, the reason there's no noise is because theclient is working really hard right now.
(36:44):
Pay attention.
That's, that's what you need to be.
It's not possible.
You'd be better off taking notes while you're talking.
Yes, exactly.
You know, can't, so I don't know.
mean, and it's, it's a tricky one.
Um, perhaps more so at the beginning of a client relationship where there's quite a lot oflearning to be going on, learning their context and learning the issues and things like
(37:11):
that.
And maybe you do need to, I, I, I dunno, but, I'm, I'm squeamish about it every time Ifind myself doing it and I'm trying to wean myself off it.
Um, and.
What I found that does mean a solution, not ideal, is that I then spend more time afterthe session making notes.
(37:36):
And most of those notes, some of them are just reminders for myself.
More of those notes are my own reflection on what happened in the space.
What could, would I do differently?
(37:57):
Maybe a question that I asked in the moment.
I thought, actually, that's I could have worded that better.
Or, actually, that's quite, that's quite a tight format.
That question.
That's quite a useful template that I can maybe, have as part of my, I want to sayarsenal.
(38:19):
That feels like the wrong battleground.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because there's something for me as you're talking about those things about flow when yousaid, maybe that was a badly worded question.
My offer to you would be maybe it was too long because actually.
(38:42):
The thing I love that I laugh about endlessly is that actually we were both in theconversation when whatever just happened happened.
They may have been having another one inside at the same time, but we were certainlypresent together for part of this.
So I think often we can explain questions or try and make them into beautiful questionswhere actually a couple of words would do the whole job of the whole question and they're
(39:08):
never beautiful.
I listened again to your Oscar Trimboli podcast and I can't remember what, was about apart way through you were talking and there was a pause, I can't even remember what you
said, there was a pause and he said, and he just said, and then.
(39:32):
I thought, yeah, that's exactly, that was exactly the right question at that moment.
And didn't need, didn't need anymore.
I know it wasn't a coaching session.
I thought that's good coaching because it was minimal.
but useful.
(39:54):
Because there was a definite tone in what you were saying where when you'd stopped, it waslike you hadn't finished your thought.
But you'd stopped talking.
And so he just effectively nudged you to keep going.
That was...
(40:15):
I know, and I think in I've seen one of your coaching demonstrations and it's lovely whenwhen sometimes you'll just say and.
you seen the one on YouTube, which I did with Coaching Journeys in India, where I askedthis really great question.
I was so proud of the question.
(40:35):
I asked a question with my hand, so it was silent.
And I don't know whether it was to do with something he'd said or something he'd done, butI asked this quite big physical question.
And then he started thinking about the thing he was thinking about before.
So my question is now wrong.
Mm-hmm.
(40:56):
But I knew that if I just put my hand down, he would have stopped and deferred to me.
So I had to get rid of my hand.
So there's 150 people live in the audience watching this.
It's going on YouTube.
And I've got a question that is in the wrong place.
So slowly, slowly, slowly, I had to try and get rid of it down and down and down and downthe screen until he couldn't see it.
(41:20):
And somebody asked a question about that afterwards.
And I just said, I was trying not to interrupt.
I mean, I was also trying not to laugh.
because it was really funny because it was just the best example I've ever experienced ofa question that needs dropping and it needed physically dropping.
yeah, funny.
(41:41):
So as we begin to move towards the end, Tony, I'm really interested in talking to you as amusical director, conductor, composer about the two and the
the sound of the to and the fro, the sound of the flow and what you notice in the to andthe flow when you're conducting and what you notice in the to and fro when you're
(42:09):
coaching.
If I give you two, two slightly different contexts that sort of reference back to whatwe've said earlier, when I'm with the Palm Court Trio, my listening is very much based on
(42:31):
what can I hear the other instruments doing?
What have I got written in front of me?
And what can I add that brings value to it?
I don't need to add anything, but we typically go out as a violin, cello, bass and piano.
(42:52):
But if I can see on my part that there, so the violin more often than not has the tune.
But if I can see on my part that there are counter melodies that were originally writtenin that we can't have because we haven't got a flute say, but they're written into my, so
I can put them in.
But all the time I'm listening as to does that work?
(43:13):
Does that, so I'm making a judgment as we go as to what works and what doesn't work.
Similarly with the, you we've got a double bass playing.
My piano part has got the bass part written.
Well, what's the point of me just doubling what they're doing?
We're only four.
So again, you know, can I shift things around?
Is it more appropriate if I'd play slightly differently?
(43:37):
Stuff like that.
Now with the choir.
And for all I know, other choir directors will throw their hands up in horror at what I doand what I say.
What I'm really listening for in my community choir is confidence.
That's what I want to hear.
(43:59):
Yes, it will be good if we had all the right notes in the right order with the right wordat the right time.
But if I bang on about that, I won't get confidence.
And in fact, a number of my choir members have said they have been in or, you know,they've been in other choirs and the MD just seems to spend the whole time either trying
(44:23):
to get eight bars perfect.
Well, that's just daft.
Or it's a sort of shouty shouty.
Why aren't you doing this right?
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
That, that, and you think it's not about that.
It's really not though the community choirs come together because a bunch of people wantto have a good time singing together and singing together is a very, special activity.
(44:49):
It's there's so much sense of community of social in that.
I mean, the choir is very kind to me in that they commissioned me every so often to writepieces for them.
So I wrote them a piece 18 months ago now.
which was based on the notion of being human.
And it's just because I've got into a style which suits me where I will write songs.
(45:15):
In this case, it was five songs that are linked with some kind of narrative.
And the narrative was the idea of, know, the Anthony Gormley figures.
Yeah.
Indeed.
So there's one near here outside Turner Contemporary in Margate.
And it's just one.
facing out to sea.
(45:37):
And so my proposition was, what would happen if somebody asked that statue, what is it tobe human?
So I then turned around and said, well, supposing that statue could speak and think, andasked us, what is it to be human?
So that was the linking narrative.
And the songs were very various how they came about.
(46:00):
But one of them, the song that we use at the end, could let me sing.
came out, resulted from me asking the choir, sent them a questionnaire and said, what doyou get out of singing in a choir, in a community choir in particular?
And nobody said to improve my voice.
(46:21):
Lots, most, the most common response was sense of community.
Being together, singing with others.
Somebody said lines like, the, the, the, the feeling that the singing just bubbles upinside you.
sense of belonging, many members of choir, community choirs.
It's the only social engagement they have all week with anybody.
(46:46):
So it's a big thing.
So am I going to heck to them about getting a note perfect?
No, we do our best, of course, because not least of which one is my music.
I want it to sound the way I imagined it to sound.
But the issue is, confidence.
I'm listening for confidence.
What does confidence sound like?
There's a strength to it.
(47:07):
And I don't mean loud or soft.
There is an internal strength to it.
It emanates from a place of confidence.
They are not in that moment feeling vulnerable.
And in fact, they will say they feel invulnerable at that moment because they areliterally in the moment.
(47:38):
They're not worrying about it.
They're not thinking about what happens next.
They're just there.
They're just doing their bit, contributing to the whole.
And then the whole is something special.
So it's that confidence.
And I think you hear that in coaching as well.
Yeah, I think you do.
And again, it's not loud, soft.
is subtle things, tone, texture, what the breathing's doing.
(48:06):
Yeah, does that answer the question?
I think it answers another question.
That's great.
Because I think what you beautifully described there, if you take it into the coachingspace, is the change of sound when transformation happens.
And one of the things that I notice is that the sound changes when the words might stillbe catching up.
(48:36):
And so I actually listen more to the sound and I love your texture.
I'm going to really look out for that.
Listen out for that, the texture and the tone.
I will pay more attention to that than the words.
Hmm.
because I think there's more data there.
Yeah, and when you align that with body language insofar as you can read it on Zoom and akind of.
(49:09):
you get the sense of someone's energy from their voice.
and their state of being, I think.
That's what I mean about our voices betray us all the time.
You can't hide it.
You can hear it even if somebody's speaking and then suddenly the voice, you just noticethat change.
(49:35):
I think, what was that?
And actually, that's a legitimate question at that moment in time.
Even not to say to the client,
I notice you did it.
Don't need to do that.
I can just throw it back.
So what was that?
Beautiful question.
(49:55):
Because I bet they noticed the change.
That little...
Maybe they're describing...
a situation that they are finding particularly emotionally difficult and in describing itthere's that little catch in the voice.
And just, and they know they noticed it.
(50:18):
They're kind of hoping you didn't.
Because that's what we do is, God, was a little, it was that vulnerable for a moment.
no, don't look at me.
It's the sound.
And if you can get them to tune into it, what was what, what was that?
What?
I think they'll find the words that are better than your words.
(50:41):
Because otherwise I'm going to put a label on it which instantly steers them in adirection.
Yes, and the thing that mattered there was what you saw or heard or sensed, not what itwas.
Yes, absolutely.
I could talk forever to you.
(51:01):
That is so...
unfortunately.
We are going to return to sound and music and I'd love to have you back to the coaching inTony and if you're one of my musician people who I've met recently you'll know that I've
been pestering all of you to come to the coaching in and maybe we'll get all of youtogether because that'd be amazing.
(51:25):
What would your challenge be for our listeners today if they could do one thingdifferently what would you encourage them to do?
if you're a coach.
(51:48):
then next time you're coaching.
notice more about the voice.
No, I'm going to scrub that.
Notice more about the sound.
Because I want to include the silence in there and see if you can...
How detailed listening can you get?
(52:10):
Can you hear their breathing when they're not speaking?
Can you catch that little sigh or that little change?
Can you notice a change of tone that didn't seem to be one that...
was to do with the words they used.
(52:31):
So just notice the sound in more detail.
Thank you.
And rewind two minutes and notice that silence because there's a place to start.
So Tony, if people want to talk to you, how do they get in touch?
I'm on LinkedIn.
(52:51):
It's the best place.
I'll put your thing in the show notes.
Thank you, Tony Castro for coming and satisfying my desire to talk more about the sound ofcoaching.
Thank you so much for asking me, it's been fascinating, so thank you.
And thank you everyone for listening.
We'll be back next week with another episode.
(53:12):
Take care.
Bye bye.
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn.
I'm Claire Pedrick and today it's an absolute delight to be in the company of Tony Castro.
A couple of things before we meet Tony.
Open House at The Coaching Inn, Friday the 28th of March, all day, 8am UK to 6pm UK.
The link will be in the show notes.
(00:34):
Come whenever you like, stay for however long you like.
It's an opportunity for you to meet other listeners to The Coaching Inn and to meet me andother members of the team who will be around most of the day except when we go to get
coffee.
Also, if you love The Coaching Inn, do review it on the podcast platform where you arebecause it allows people to know more about us, which would be great.
(00:58):
So down to business.
Tony Castro, hello.
Good morning, Claire.
How absolutely delightful to have you finally here at The Coaching Inn
Thank you so much for inviting me, it's a real privilege.
Well, it's a privilege both ways.
So a bit of heads up, lovely listeners.
Tony is a musician and you will know my obsession with coaching and the sound of.
(01:23):
So I've been stalking him on LinkedIn for a very long time.
So here we finally are.
Tony, tell us about your journey to coaching.
Uh, I'm still, uh, relatively new to formal coaching.
got, um, work backwards.
I, uh, got my EMCC practitioner August, April 24.
(01:48):
Um, uh, I, my training was run through, uh, when I was working at the Guildhall school,they were, they run their catalyst program.
Um, uh, prior to that.
I've had sort of slightly strange parallel careers in, I've been working in highereducation, performing arts departments for 30 plus years, including a brief stint in the
(02:11):
Brit school.
And meanwhile, also in a previous life, I was a full-time music director, musician,working in the West End, mainly, it's sort of a thing, mainly working in theater.
just sort of gravitated towards it, conducting some of the big shows.
(02:33):
And then I carried on doing my music work in parallel with my HE work throughout.
And I have this sense that when I came to coaching training, it felt very familiaralready, notwithstanding the endless
(02:59):
rules that one is supposed to learn.
The basic impulse of it felt to me very similar to what I was doing as a teacher, as ahigher education lecturer, but weirdly also as an MD.
I thought there's a similar spirit going on here.
(03:24):
So coming to coaching felt relatively easy.
And it was then about formalizing those coaching skills in a way that gave me, suppose, abit more coaching confidence, just some railroad tracks.
But I'm going to jump in quickly, interrupt myself on the railroad tracks, because aspooky thing happened about halfway through my coaching training when I was just beginning
(03:51):
to think, I am so, I feel like I'm being hit over the head with Oscar.
and etc.
It's, you know, whatever it was.
Gotta do this.
Until I discovered and no flattery intended, simplifying coaching totally opened the doorfor me because it's something that, I get it.
(04:15):
It's this.
It's I have a habit.
I know it's a bad habit or a good habit, but I do scribble in my textbooks that I buy forme scribble all over the margins and things like that.
And often there's lots of question mark.
Don't know what this means to think about this.
Simplifying coaching.
There's endless big, big ticks.
Yes.
(04:37):
So I just, it just made sense and it made sense of what coaching seems to be to me.
do have a question as a fellow writer in books, or pencil?
pencil so it can't ink no that's that's
(05:01):
But I don't know why, actually, because I'm not going to give it away to anybody else.
the note is for me.
If I put it in pen, I feel like I'm being a proofreader and doing it for the author andI'm commenting on the authors.
And I'm not when I'm noting for me, it's for me.
(05:22):
It's a reminder to me so that when I go back into it, yeah, yeah, that was the question Ihad about this.
beautiful thing well thank you for saying that makes it I don't know I really I reallyappreciate that I write all over my own books in ink but I write on other people's books
(05:43):
in pencil so I think I'm probably following your rules
Yeah, you're allowed to, you're the author, so...
Well, it's because I learn things and then I write, you should have written this.
It's good because it's all learning.
That's an interesting thing from a creative's perspective.
(06:04):
And I don't know if this is a parallel we're coaching as a composer.
I could spend a lot of time going back over pieces I wrote a while ago and thinking,should have, I want to write this.
should, there should, don't say should.
And you think, if I change it, it's become the me now.
(06:26):
And it's not the me a year ago, 10 years ago.
And you think, what am I doing there?
Am I erasing the me that was?
in all my horrible mistakes and errors and oopsies and or should I think, nah, just leaveit as it is.
If it still works legitimately in terms of what I was saying then, if it still works,leave it alone.
(06:50):
Otherwise we're in some pursuit of perfect.
you think, don't go, don't even, don't even look at the roadmap to perfect.
really interesting, isn't it?
If you were conducting a piece of your own and there was a bit that you could see wastricky for the orchestra or the choir, would you change that?
(07:15):
If, probably, I'd look at it, particularly if it's a choir and even more particularly, mything is mainly community choirs.
So working with very much untrained, enthusiastic, but not got a clue what they're doingsingers.
(07:36):
And so if they are after some period of rehearsal, if they are genuinely still struggling,I have to...
take the blame for that and think I've not written it very well.
Not necessarily, there's a slight, there's a subtle difference between the composingprocess, which is the sort of getting the ideas down on paper and then making it fit
(07:56):
people's voices that sort of orchestrating the voices.
And sometimes that's the bit we make mistakes on, whether it's, it could be that you'velanded, oh, what were we looking at yesterday?
I had a choir rehearsal last night.
That's why it's in my mind.
And it's a song we're re-rehearsing and poor choir, I've made them end up on a high noteon the word you.
(08:20):
Daft, just daft.
Why have I done that?
I don't know.
you know, unfortunately I can't change the lyric because it then wouldn't make any sense.
So it, but it throws up some interesting choral issues for them about how do you sing theword or o-vowels.
(08:41):
because oo naturally closes down the front of your face.
So it's not a great thing to sing on where we're constantly trying to sing on some versionof art, you know, a nice open mouth, close it down.
Ooh, so we have to find a way of cheating it.
So there's some useful learning for them in terms of singing technique.
(09:03):
Sorry, that was me just stealing your knowledge for my own purposes.
Yeah, when I revisit some of my stuff, will revisit it in a slightly different way.
Thank you.
So.
Interesting journey.
(09:24):
We lived in the road that the Brits school was on once.
Yeah, yeah.
Funny old world.
Lovely.
Really interesting students.
Really interesting because they were from such diverse backgrounds and all their.
I mean, I was was the director of music for a while there.
(09:45):
And so all the music students.
Really interestingly talented.
And why I say interestingly is not necessarily because they had
by that point, you know, 12 years of violin lessons.
They were interestingly talented because they'd found their own way through.
(10:07):
Many of them came from significantly less privileged backgrounds and had found a waythrough in spite of, and they were quite extraordinary.
It was a really interesting time.
I don't think I've ever worked quite so hard.
as I did in teaching in what was effectively just, you know, comprehensive secondaryschool.
(10:32):
Absolutely exhausted at the end of every day.
So my constantly hats off to secondary school teachers in particular.
Gosh, that's a hard job.
Wow.
Yeah.
I am really interested in what you said about coaching being familiar for you as amusician.
(10:55):
I was thinking about this the other day, trying to find the parallels and the differences.
Well, a little bit of context.
never, whilst I, I don't say I trained to be a pianist.
I didn't.
I had piano lessons and I did go to a music university and though we did weird stuff, wedid ethno music and science and stuff like that.
(11:25):
And I did go to the Guildhall, so I'm a qualified musician as it were.
never interested in being a concert pianist or that kind of playing at all.
Only ever wanted to work with singers.
And it's something about they've always got, and it is this, they've always got somethingto say, literally, because in the music, they're singing somebody's words.
(11:49):
So there's something, and maybe it's the sort of innate drama person in me that likes...
the storytelling side of words, the narrative that you can't escape with words.
Everything's a story.
Absolutely everything's a story.
(12:11):
so singers have always got something to say, which is interesting.
working with a group, so group music is just inherently collaborative.
have to really to a large extent you leave your ego at the door because it just gets inthe way.
(12:36):
It's not relevant to what we're doing.
have a, I'm really blessed.
have a lovely semi-regular gig playing for a lovely group called Shelley Van Owen.
It's a, we do palm court music.
Nice.
from the 1920s and all that kind of stuff that used to be on, you know, workers play timeand stuff like that.
(13:02):
And for a start musically, it's outstanding.
There is so much really, really good stuff.
And it's a lovely gig because it's low pressure.
We turn up, we just play what's in front of us.
We have a good time and that's it.
And there's no autopsy.
There's no, you did this wrong or we could have done this, but it is absolutely in themoment.
(13:24):
And for me, that's the most exciting thing about music making.
It's the in the moment-ness of it.
And I wonder whether that's a parallel with coaching because what's happening in the spaceis happening in the moment right now.
What happened before is not terribly relevant and what happens next, maybe we'll get to.
(13:44):
But again, if we're thinking about, I mean, and I speak as a, as a, still a coach verymuch learning, learning, learning.
If in the session I'm thinking about what happens next, I'm not with the client.
And it's the hardest thing I have found.
I've got out of the habit of thinking of the next question.
(14:07):
So, well, I have to ask my clients, but I think I'm making progress on that one.
But when you come to it new, that's really hard.
Yeah, and I think it's really interesting what you've said about your Palm Court music,because I'm guessing in that you're not following the rules.
(14:28):
But you kind of are following the rules, but you're not following the rules.
you're doing your thing, but you're not thinking about the scales that you practiced whenyou were told to practice them by your piano teacher.
It's, I mean, one hopes.
mean, I am, I am so not a really high class piano player by a mile.
(14:51):
you know, remember somebody saying once, they're comparing me with an, this is when I wasa student, somebody, the teacher compared me with another student and said, you know, Tony
may play very well, but the other fellow has got a really good technique.
I thought, thanks.
Thanks for that.
but it is actually true.
(15:11):
I get away with it.
That's fine.
get away.
But what's interesting about the the quartet, the palm court gig is that I get given apiano part, what's called a conductor's score.
So it's got the piano part on it, but it's also got lots of other instruments queued in.
(15:33):
So it's quite a lot on a very small score.
Now,
We're playing on a score which was intended for like a little in the 1920s or 1930s, 40s,a little theater orchestra, which were very flexible, partly to do with the war and things
like that.
You know, if you had five players, you had a five piece band.
If you had seven and whether that was, you know, a string quartet and a piano or threesaxophones in a kazoo, it just depended what you had.
(16:02):
So it's all very flexible.
So when I'm playing that piano part, I am not
actually playing what's written.
I'm playing around it and I'm listening to what my colleagues are doing and thinking, Icould put in that line there.
So it's again, it's a weird kind of, it's sort of improvisation on railroad tracks again.
(16:24):
Yeah, what a beautiful thing.
Improvisational railroad tracks, I love that.
And that improvising, improvisational side of coaching plays in my head quite nicely.
The idea that we're sort of riffing over a sort of existing base in every sense, baseline,if you like.
(16:51):
Because it's weird whilst we're there entirely for the client, da da da, nonetheless,someone in that room's got to keep an eye on the time.
So someone has to be in it, but slightly not.
And yet the slightly not is at odds with the presence.
And that's slightly weird contradiction going on, but it works.
(17:18):
We can't be there forever.
No, no.
And.
Give me, let me give you an example of the improvisation.
I had a session with a client.
End of last week.
And in fact, it wasn't really intended to be a proper coaching session.
It was I finished coaching with him before Christmas.
(17:44):
And with the new year, I thought, well, I'll just touch base with some recent clients andliterally just see how you get.
I wasn't, wasn't trying to propagate anymore work.
was literally just a catch up partly because I knew he, this particular client had a, he'squite young and it was, there's quite a pile of issues.
I I'm just, I'm just going to check in no more.
(18:07):
So we arranged to check in and
He was, he was delightful.
was full of enthusiasm of all the exciting things he'd done since we last met and blah,blah, blah.
It was great.
And then as we were just chatting.
his, and I can't remember what the trigger was, his tone of voice changed, his bodylanguage changed, and we were just talking about how's it all going, da da da da, yes,
(18:31):
this good, this was, and it was then, he then steered us into a coaching session, becausehe was suddenly talking about work-related things that are quite immediate and happening
to him right now that were affecting him.
(18:51):
And we'd actually come up to the end of our time and I thought, can't leave him right now.
No, actually, no, that's unfair to him.
He's a grown up.
Of course I could.
I didn't feel I wanted to leave him.
I wouldn't have felt...
You know, that's like running away from someone who you think might be in need of a hand,no more or less than that.
(19:17):
So I just noticed with him and said, notice...
Your energy now is not where we were when we started and we talked it through and he thenfound it useful.
He said he found it useful when we got to the end of it and he got some, it became acoaching.
But that's what I mean about the improvising.
You go with where the client wants to go and even when it's just a catch up.
(19:45):
you're listening to the sound of the mood.
Yeah, and the sound, I mean, it's a Simon Garfunkel cliche, but you know, the sound ofsilence is really interesting.
Because it's not silent.
And I don't mean, I know this processing going on.
I mean, it's not actually really silent.
If you listen, there is stuff going on.
(20:07):
There's a change of breathing.
There's suddenly it's got a bit, or there's sort of sigh.
as they have a thought and it was either a good thought or a bad thought or a whateverthought.
you think I really need to...
I think that's my big focus at the moment in terms of my own development is really tryingto tune into that stuff.
(20:34):
The nonverbal utterances.
I don't mean nonvocal, but not words.
The little tiny little grippity things we do in between talking, particularly...
when we're thinking and the tone, I can't think of a better word, but there's a texture tothe voice as well, which is different from tone.
(20:56):
There's a softness, a hardness, which you can connect perhaps to, there's a confidence oran uncertainty.
Our voices, I bore my quiet death with this.
Our voices betray us every day.
all the time.
You cannot hide.
(21:17):
It's in your voice.
one of the most peculiar and fascinating things about singing is it's the only instrumentyou can't take apart and see how it works while you're using it.
Everything else you can take apart.
You can stick cameras down, but now you've changed the context.
Now it's different.
You can literally do autopsies, but now there's something about that that doesn't work.
(21:42):
So
It's a mysterious thing.
when we're talking, when we're working with singers, when I'm working with singers, youinevitably use lots of metaphor, lots of imagery to try and get the singer to find a
sound.
(22:02):
But because the sound again is hard to separate the sound from your inner emotion.
I don't mean the one, the superficial one that we parade around the street.
The one that's in sight.
The three o'clock in the morning you.
That one, it's, it's, it's hard, but that's the interesting voice to try and get in acoaching session.
(22:23):
It seems to me if the client is in that place where they're prepared to let you see orhear that voice, it's different.
It's inevitably different.
And I think if we can catch it, there's a lot to be found in it.
(22:49):
What a beautiful description of the sound.
And right at the beginning of that, and in different parts of this conversation, you'vesaid things about facial expressions.
And I'm guessing with your choir you're trying to get their faces to match the sound sothat it makes a fun performance.
(23:16):
That's an interesting way of putting it.
No, it's the other way around.
I will say to them, if you smile, I get a better sound.
Not because it's a happy thing, I want you to smile.
(23:39):
If you smile, I get a better sound.
Always.
And that's literally a biomechanical thing about what's going on.
If you're smiling, things in here are differently placed.
then if you're not smiling, it's just muscles.
It's just, again, a spooky thing about singing is those muscles are teeny tiny and they'requite hard to learn how to control them.
(24:12):
so yeah, I will, I mean, the choir think it's hysteric.
mean, God forbid that there is ever a camera on me when I'm conducting the choir, becausethe choir can see what the audience can't, which is I'm pulling the most ridiculous faces,
trying to get them to open or smile or heads up all sorts of stuff, things like that.
(24:33):
But it's their biomechanics that changes the sound.
that affects the sound.
And if they can match that with understanding the intention of the lyric and crucially theclues that the composer has given them in setting that lyric.
(24:56):
then they're on the way to doing some really interesting work.
Always regardless of the innate quality of one person's voice.
I'm sure other choir directors will come along and see me work in the choir and think,what on earth is he doing?
That's just as ridiculous.
(25:18):
I'm forever saying to the choir, don't worry about singing the right notes.
Just open your gold and sing.
know, just get, the point is that
in my experience, community choirs, the smell of fear can be quite ripe in the room ifyou're not careful because they're not used to doing it, they're frightened of exposing
(25:39):
themselves.
Again, parallels with coaching.
They're frightened of being vulnerable.
And why do they feel vulnerable?
Because they're singing.
And singing is a peculiarly vulnerable making thing, much more so than talking in public.
And most people would talk in public, singing in public.
(26:02):
I think what's going on there?
Who cares what you sound like?
Why do you care what you sound like?
Well, why do we care what people think?
that's a couple of chapters.
Yeah, but what you've described is, is facilitating people who aren't professionalmusicians.
(26:25):
And actually most of the time in coaching, we're facilitating people who aren'tprofessional thinkers.
Which is, I think, what disturbs me about the quantity of coaching hours that some coachesrack up coaching other coaches.
Because what you're doing then is you're, you're...
(26:45):
you're facilitating the thinking of professional thinkers.
So when you get into the space where people are just ordinary people and they're notcoaches, they don't engage in the same way.
Yeah, I do wonder about the real value of coaching coaches.
(27:09):
I'm not sure.
mean, a couple of, I've got a couple of peer colleagues who we were on the Guildhall thingtogether.
So we've kind of stayed in touch and certainly with one of them every so often we'll do aparallel coach.
So we'll coach each other, but we do it specifically to give feedback to each other at theend.
(27:31):
But we've talked about this, both of us know it's not real.
It's, it's slightly.
Odd.
I was very minded when we first started doing it.
I thought this is a bit strange because we, we it's like, both know the rules of the game.
And that means we're not really thinking about the right thing somehow.
(27:56):
so, yeah, I don't, I, yeah, I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Apart from racking up hours, there was a thing, Sarah Short put a thing on the.
LinkedIn just the other day about whether these are credited as being paid or not.
And how that the the accrediting bodies are perhaps inadvertently encouraging somethingwhich is not terribly
(28:27):
meaningful in the end.
So say I get a gazillion coaching hours, does that mean I'm a good coach?
Just means I've done a lot.
It's not the same.
I'd rather work with somebody who had fewer hours under their belt, but was a fabulouscoach.
(28:48):
And I thought, you've given me, and I'm not sure about that language there, but so.
Don't beat me up about that.
I have gained a lot of stuff to think about out of that session.
In the session, the podcast you had with, think, is it Chris Patterson?
(29:12):
I love that, that I've listened to it a number of times.
And particularly, I hope I get this right, his definition of coaching, which is along thelines of asking questions that...
get you thinking in new ways.
And it was the thinking in new ways.
(29:32):
It's not new thinking because that presumes you were in deficit beforehand.
It's taking the thinking you've already got.
and kind of re- repositioning it and thinking, and it's that,
That I think is what a client gets in terms of value.
(29:57):
Wherever it takes next, that's up to them.
But the moment they go,
Or when you ask, when you ask a question and it wasn't from a coach point of view, youcertainly want, weren't intending it as a bombshell question or anything like that.
You just ask the question that was in your head right then.
(30:20):
and you can just see the processing.
It's like their hard drive goes bonkers and they go quiet.
Except they don't.
The breathing's there, the sigh, and it's particularly weird when they go quiet and thenthere's a sigh in the middle and then they go on, you think?
(30:46):
And then there's something about the difference between, I've noticed, I don't know whatit means, but the difference between, so the client, you've said something that has
provoked them in some way, and I don't mean that negatively.
Trumped them, whatever.
They look away because they're accessing that kind of processing side of their brain.
(31:12):
and their breathing changes.
And then the next interesting moment for me is whether they start speaking, still lookingaway, which means they're absolutely not talking to me and they're not answering the
question.
They're just verbalizing what's, or whether they look at me first.
Beautiful.
(31:32):
there's a difference.
It's just so interesting.
That is such a beautiful distinction.
And I'd never thought about it like that.
Thank you so much for that.
And if I build on what you've just said, of course our response is different.
(31:53):
Absolutely.
Because if we move when they're still looking away, then we'll cause them to look back tous.
And that's an interruption.
It's yeah again just referencing one of your previous post podcasts about note-takingWhich I'm afraid I was shouting at it.
(32:15):
I was It's such
It's so hard to get right.
I've been in the end.
I mean, there is no right rights, whatever works for you and the client.
I'm terribly aware that every time I've tried to minimize it, I've tried to.
Well, what I really tried to do is to do without.
(32:38):
And yet then the client will say something and think, I'm going to remember that, I'mgoing to remember that.
And so, know, surreptitiously and even that, so why surreptitious?
Because I don't want to disturb their flow.
I don't want to say, do you mind if I look away and run?
And even if I say that at the beginning, I'm looking away every time I look away, I feellike I've missed an episode.
(33:00):
And I know it's a micro moment, but actually in that micro moment, there might besomething that is worth exploring.
So if I check in with the musical director bit of you, I'm guessing you never look away.
(33:24):
Ideally not.
Ideally you're with them throughout, which is why conductors tend to do things frommemory.
tend to because it means you can be looking at everybody, know, you can be picked partlyabout queuing people if necessary and things like that and shaping a piece in the moment.
(33:52):
yeah, there's something there, but the looking away I find it's the parallel certainlywith a community choir is that they have said, my choir have said,
They always prefer it when I conduct because they feel safe.
They feel that I am going to nod them in or, or dare I say, no, stop, stop, stop.
(34:17):
You know, that happens one or two times.
This is all right.
and I suppose there's a parallel with coaching and looking away feels like not meant, butnot quite interested or
There's some, it feels like there's something going on in the client, in the coach, andthe client notices that.
(34:42):
It's no different from an ordinary conversation, is it?
If you're sitting, I mean, Zoom is spooky.
It's a different world.
But you know, you would notice if you and I were sitting together in the pub.
And we talk and while I'm talking, I look away or while I'm talking to you, you look away.
(35:03):
How does that make me feel?
You looking away?
You probably mean nothing by it.
You've you may have been distracted by some weirdness in the pub over there.
But there's a moment where I think, you're not interested.
Am I boring?
and in the client space, I'm not, I don't, I'm not saying that the client is picking upevery tiny little gesture of the coach, but if we're genuinely in service of the client
(35:36):
and we say we pay full attention, I don't see how that sits with note taking.
at all.
And it's full attention particularly while they're doing their thing, which is the timethat we're most, if someone's a note taker, that's the time that they're most likely to
(36:03):
disconnect because the other person's holding the responsibility.
So you go, I'll quickly write or I'll quickly look.
But there's something about flow, isn't there?
And breaking the flow.
And if you just sort of build on that, think, what, what, what is the coach implicitlysaying at that moment?
(36:24):
there's a gap.
I'll just do it.
Gap gap.
Gap.
gap?
There's no gap.
There's just no noise.
That doesn't mean you look away because the, the reason there's no noise is because theclient is working really hard right now.
(36:44):
Pay attention.
That's, that's what you need to be.
It's not possible.
You'd be better off taking notes while you're talking.
Yes, exactly.
You know, can't, so I don't know.
mean, and it's, it's a tricky one.
Um, perhaps more so at the beginning of a client relationship where there's quite a lot oflearning to be going on, learning their context and learning the issues and things like
(37:11):
that.
And maybe you do need to, I, I, I dunno, but, I'm, I'm squeamish about it every time Ifind myself doing it and I'm trying to wean myself off it.
Um, and.
What I found that does mean a solution, not ideal, is that I then spend more time afterthe session making notes.
(37:36):
And most of those notes, some of them are just reminders for myself.
More of those notes are my own reflection on what happened in the space.
What could, would I do differently?
(37:57):
Maybe a question that I asked in the moment.
I thought, actually, that's I could have worded that better.
Or, actually, that's quite, that's quite a tight format.
That question.
That's quite a useful template that I can maybe, have as part of my, I want to sayarsenal.
(38:19):
That feels like the wrong battleground.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because there's something for me as you're talking about those things about flow when yousaid, maybe that was a badly worded question.
My offer to you would be maybe it was too long because actually.
(38:42):
The thing I love that I laugh about endlessly is that actually we were both in theconversation when whatever just happened happened.
They may have been having another one inside at the same time, but we were certainlypresent together for part of this.
So I think often we can explain questions or try and make them into beautiful questionswhere actually a couple of words would do the whole job of the whole question and they're
(39:08):
never beautiful.
I listened again to your Oscar Trimboli podcast and I can't remember what, was about apart way through you were talking and there was a pause, I can't even remember what you
said, there was a pause and he said, and he just said, and then.
(39:32):
I thought, yeah, that's exactly, that was exactly the right question at that moment.
And didn't need, didn't need anymore.
I know it wasn't a coaching session.
I thought that's good coaching because it was minimal.
but useful.
(39:54):
Because there was a definite tone in what you were saying where when you'd stopped, it waslike you hadn't finished your thought.
But you'd stopped talking.
And so he just effectively nudged you to keep going.
That was...
(40:15):
I know, and I think in I've seen one of your coaching demonstrations and it's lovely whenwhen sometimes you'll just say and.
you seen the one on YouTube, which I did with Coaching Journeys in India, where I askedthis really great question.
I was so proud of the question.
(40:35):
I asked a question with my hand, so it was silent.
And I don't know whether it was to do with something he'd said or something he'd done, butI asked this quite big physical question.
And then he started thinking about the thing he was thinking about before.
So my question is now wrong.
Mm-hmm.
(40:56):
But I knew that if I just put my hand down, he would have stopped and deferred to me.
So I had to get rid of my hand.
So there's 150 people live in the audience watching this.
It's going on YouTube.
And I've got a question that is in the wrong place.
So slowly, slowly, slowly, I had to try and get rid of it down and down and down and downthe screen until he couldn't see it.
(41:20):
And somebody asked a question about that afterwards.
And I just said, I was trying not to interrupt.
I mean, I was also trying not to laugh.
because it was really funny because it was just the best example I've ever experienced ofa question that needs dropping and it needed physically dropping.
yeah, funny.
(41:41):
So as we begin to move towards the end, Tony, I'm really interested in talking to you as amusical director, conductor, composer about the two and the
the sound of the to and the fro, the sound of the flow and what you notice in the to andthe flow when you're conducting and what you notice in the to and fro when you're
(42:09):
coaching.
If I give you two, two slightly different contexts that sort of reference back to whatwe've said earlier, when I'm with the Palm Court Trio, my listening is very much based on
(42:31):
what can I hear the other instruments doing?
What have I got written in front of me?
And what can I add that brings value to it?
I don't need to add anything, but we typically go out as a violin, cello, bass and piano.
(42:52):
But if I can see on my part that there, so the violin more often than not has the tune.
But if I can see on my part that there are counter melodies that were originally writtenin that we can't have because we haven't got a flute say, but they're written into my, so
I can put them in.
But all the time I'm listening as to does that work?
(43:13):
Does that, so I'm making a judgment as we go as to what works and what doesn't work.
Similarly with the, you we've got a double bass playing.
My piano part has got the bass part written.
Well, what's the point of me just doubling what they're doing?
We're only four.
So again, you know, can I shift things around?
Is it more appropriate if I'd play slightly differently?
(43:37):
Stuff like that.
Now with the choir.
And for all I know, other choir directors will throw their hands up in horror at what I doand what I say.
What I'm really listening for in my community choir is confidence.
That's what I want to hear.
(43:59):
Yes, it will be good if we had all the right notes in the right order with the right wordat the right time.
But if I bang on about that, I won't get confidence.
And in fact, a number of my choir members have said they have been in or, you know,they've been in other choirs and the MD just seems to spend the whole time either trying
(44:23):
to get eight bars perfect.
Well, that's just daft.
Or it's a sort of shouty shouty.
Why aren't you doing this right?
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
That, that, and you think it's not about that.
It's really not though the community choirs come together because a bunch of people wantto have a good time singing together and singing together is a very, special activity.
(44:49):
It's there's so much sense of community of social in that.
I mean, the choir is very kind to me in that they commissioned me every so often to writepieces for them.
So I wrote them a piece 18 months ago now.
which was based on the notion of being human.
And it's just because I've got into a style which suits me where I will write songs.
(45:15):
In this case, it was five songs that are linked with some kind of narrative.
And the narrative was the idea of, know, the Anthony Gormley figures.
Yeah.
Indeed.
So there's one near here outside Turner Contemporary in Margate.
And it's just one.
facing out to sea.
(45:37):
And so my proposition was, what would happen if somebody asked that statue, what is it tobe human?
So I then turned around and said, well, supposing that statue could speak and think, andasked us, what is it to be human?
So that was the linking narrative.
And the songs were very various how they came about.
(46:00):
But one of them, the song that we use at the end, could let me sing.
came out, resulted from me asking the choir, sent them a questionnaire and said, what doyou get out of singing in a choir, in a community choir in particular?
And nobody said to improve my voice.
(46:21):
Lots, most, the most common response was sense of community.
Being together, singing with others.
Somebody said lines like, the, the, the, the feeling that the singing just bubbles upinside you.
sense of belonging, many members of choir, community choirs.
It's the only social engagement they have all week with anybody.
(46:46):
So it's a big thing.
So am I going to heck to them about getting a note perfect?
No, we do our best, of course, because not least of which one is my music.
I want it to sound the way I imagined it to sound.
But the issue is, confidence.
I'm listening for confidence.
What does confidence sound like?
There's a strength to it.
(47:07):
And I don't mean loud or soft.
There is an internal strength to it.
It emanates from a place of confidence.
They are not in that moment feeling vulnerable.
And in fact, they will say they feel invulnerable at that moment because they areliterally in the moment.
(47:38):
They're not worrying about it.
They're not thinking about what happens next.
They're just there.
They're just doing their bit, contributing to the whole.
And then the whole is something special.
So it's that confidence.
And I think you hear that in coaching as well.
Yeah, I think you do.
And again, it's not loud, soft.
is subtle things, tone, texture, what the breathing's doing.
(48:06):
Yeah, does that answer the question?
I think it answers another question.
That's great.
Because I think what you beautifully described there, if you take it into the coachingspace, is the change of sound when transformation happens.
And one of the things that I notice is that the sound changes when the words might stillbe catching up.
(48:36):
And so I actually listen more to the sound and I love your texture.
I'm going to really look out for that.
Listen out for that, the texture and the tone.
I will pay more attention to that than the words.
Hmm.
because I think there's more data there.
Yeah, and when you align that with body language insofar as you can read it on Zoom and akind of.
(49:09):
you get the sense of someone's energy from their voice.
and their state of being, I think.
That's what I mean about our voices betray us all the time.
You can't hide it.
You can hear it even if somebody's speaking and then suddenly the voice, you just noticethat change.
(49:35):
I think, what was that?
And actually, that's a legitimate question at that moment in time.
Even not to say to the client,
I notice you did it.
Don't need to do that.
I can just throw it back.
So what was that?
Beautiful question.
(49:55):
Because I bet they noticed the change.
That little...
Maybe they're describing...
a situation that they are finding particularly emotionally difficult and in describing itthere's that little catch in the voice.
And just, and they know they noticed it.
(50:18):
They're kind of hoping you didn't.
Because that's what we do is, God, was a little, it was that vulnerable for a moment.
no, don't look at me.
It's the sound.
And if you can get them to tune into it, what was what, what was that?
What?
I think they'll find the words that are better than your words.
(50:41):
Because otherwise I'm going to put a label on it which instantly steers them in adirection.
Yes, and the thing that mattered there was what you saw or heard or sensed, not what itwas.
Yes, absolutely.
I could talk forever to you.
(51:01):
That is so...
unfortunately.
We are going to return to sound and music and I'd love to have you back to the coaching inTony and if you're one of my musician people who I've met recently you'll know that I've
been pestering all of you to come to the coaching in and maybe we'll get all of youtogether because that'd be amazing.
(51:25):
What would your challenge be for our listeners today if they could do one thingdifferently what would you encourage them to do?
if you're a coach.
(51:48):
then next time you're coaching.
notice more about the voice.
No, I'm going to scrub that.
Notice more about the sound.
Because I want to include the silence in there and see if you can...
How detailed listening can you get?
(52:10):
Can you hear their breathing when they're not speaking?
Can you catch that little sigh or that little change?
Can you notice a change of tone that didn't seem to be one that...
was to do with the words they used.
(52:31):
So just notice the sound in more detail.
Thank you.
And rewind two minutes and notice that silence because there's a place to start.
So Tony, if people want to talk to you, how do they get in touch?
I'm on LinkedIn.
(52:51):
It's the best place.
I'll put your thing in the show notes.
Thank you, Tony Castro for coming and satisfying my desire to talk more about the sound ofcoaching.
Thank you so much for asking me, it's been fascinating, so thank you.
And thank you everyone for listening.
We'll be back next week with another episode.
(53:12):
Take care.
Bye bye.
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