July 9, 2025 • 46 mins
In this episode, Claire Pedrick, Anna Inama and Andy Fryer talk about writing a book together. They cover the challenges and joys of co-writing, and the importance of finding a common voice.
We delve into the practical aspects of writing, including setting deadlines, managing feedback, and involving beta readers.
The trio also explore how AI can assist in untangling complex writing, generating reflection questions, and facilitating collaborative writing. They highlight the importance of creating practical and accessible content for a global audience and invite listener interaction and feedback.
Key Takeaways:
- Co-writing requires alignment and a common voice.
- Setting clear deadlines is crucial.
- Feedback from beta readers is essential for improvement.
- The writing process can be emotionally challenging.
- It's important to balance writing with ongoing coaching work.
- Revisions are a natural part of the writing process.
- Clear guidance for beta readers enhances their feedback.
- Writing should be accessible to non-native English speakers.
- The writing process can be enhanced through technology and collaboration.
Sound Bites:
- "It's much bigger than I'd realized."
- "We cannot fall out on this book."
Pre-order Anna and Andy’s book Starting Fast
Contact:
- Contact Anna Inama and Andy Fryer through Linked In
- Contact Claire by emailing info@3dcoaching.com or check out our Substack where you can talk with other listeners.
Further Information:
- Subscribe or follow The Coaching Inn on your podcast platform or our YouTube Channel to hear or see new episodes as they drop.
- Find out more about 3D Coaching and get new ideas and offers in our weekly email.
Coming Up:
- Georgina Woudstra is back to talk about The Art of Team Coaching
Keywords:
book writing, coaching, collaboration, insights, practical guide, leadership, team coaching, writing process, feedback, deadlines, endorsements, beta readers, AI in writing, practical writing, global audience, reflection questions, marketing
We love having a variety of guests join us! Please remember that inviting someone to participate does not mean we necessarily endorse their views or opinions. We believe in open conversation and sharing different perspectives.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:15):
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn.
I'm your host, Claire Pedrick.
And today we're going to be talking about book writing with the lovely Anna Inama and AndyFryer, because we talked about talking about book writing and then we said if we were
going to do it, we might as well have you listening in and do it as a podcast.
(00:37):
So we'll come onto that in a moment.
If you don't follow or subscribe to the podcast on your favorite.
podcast platform, please do that because it really helps us.
And also if you like or comment on this episode would make it even more amazing.
So as we arrive today, Anna and Andy, welcome.
(00:57):
Thank you.
It's lovely to be here.
Yeah, thank you, Claire.
It's great to be here.
And Anna, you're coming in from Germany.
Yes, I'm sitting here in Munich in southern Germany and as I was just telling you, I'mgetting very excited because my friend's dropping off some tea bags freshly flown in from
England for me to have a good old cuppa later.
(01:18):
But yes, I've been here for 12 years, thought we were going for three and extended.
Nice and the great thing about us being virtual is we're not drinking your tea.
Well, I know, because I wouldn't be offering it to you because it's going to be veryspecial and it's here.
see that.
I can see that's really important to not share.
Andy, hello, where are you in the world?
(01:39):
I'm in Krakow, but I live in Surrey, so I've just been working with a team out here.
So, Krakow today and then flying back to London tonight.
Great, good, good.
So let's start with you, Anna.
Tell us a bit about your coaching journey and then we'll hear about yours, Andy, and thenwe'll hear about your book process thing.
(02:04):
my background is in the corporate sector, having worked in FMCG with amazing brands.
It says a bit about me, chocolate, booze, fragrance.
And the brands were amazing, but the thing that really stood out was the human connection,the people connection, growing teams, leading teams, helping people who were really stuck.
(02:30):
mentoring people and that led me to think, I'm quite curious about what this coachingmalarkey is.
And so I decided to do some baby steps uh and then decided to take the plunge, retrained,did a masters in organizational development and executive coaching.
(02:51):
And boom, that was the catalyst about 14 years ago to then set up my own company.
And so since then,
me, work as an executive coach to leaders and teams like I you do and like Andy does andalso do a bit of mentoring and supervision but coaching is my space and I just love
working with people and seeing them unlock more choice through greater awareness and Ifeel very privileged actually to be part of so many people's journeys and to see where
(03:23):
they take themselves.
That's me in a nutshell.
And we were introduced by a mutual friend.
We were introduced by a gorgeous mutual friend.
Yes.
So here's to Catherine, if you're listening to this podcast.
And yeah, she was very inspiring about how she's working with you.
And actually that led us to have conversations about book writing and actually Claire, Icould probably say, we'll talk a bit more about this, but you are probably the reason why
(03:51):
we've got this off the ground.
that is food for thought for a bit further on in the podcast, dot, dot, dot.
And if you're in that ghastly thing of birthing a book when the birth gets a bit tricky, Iapologise.
We are in that cloud, absolutely.
OK so Andy hello what's your
(04:13):
they've quite a lot of overlaps with Anna really in that sense, my first, my first careerwas in the military.
So I was in the Royal Air Force for 33 years.
And I was always interested in the sort of the leadership, human side of things.
I did a degree in psychology as a mature student.
And then I popped out the other end of that and thought about the sort of coachingmentoring space, which I didn't understand at all.
(04:37):
But I thought I really only know how things work in uniform.
So I spent five years in a startup as the ops director of tech startup and was also at thesame time the chairman of the board of a charity, homeless charity.
So by the time I'd done that and I did an MBA at the same time, so I of came out of thatlittle piece thinking, okay, I understand a little bit about things that are not in
(05:00):
uniform now and I understand a little bit about the world of business.
So then at the Rydport age of, I think it was 55, I then retrained, went to PortsmouthUni.
trained as a coach and and here I am almost 10 years later I do a mix of one-to-onecoaching and team coaching probably about 50-50 and and I love it too I found in my Air
(05:24):
Force career that the as I came towards the end I'd done some really interesting and quitedemanding jobs along the way but I found that I was getting more and more joy from
actually giving space and supporting people that were around me to really grow
And that's where I was getting my joy from.
And when I discovered what coaching really was, I realised that actually that's the wayI'd led in the Royal Air Force.
(05:48):
It's the way I parented.
was sort of in my bones.
And so it was a very natural space for me.
And I found it a really good fit.
Nice.
So we're going to do another podcast about your actual book when it launches.
So we just said that we'd talk about the book writing process in today's episode.
(06:12):
So how is the book writing process going?
Yes, I noticed the chuckle in your voice Claire.
I think you've honed in on where we're at right now.
I think we're right in the middle of it.
But actually, it's hugely, hugely enjoyable and we could almost write a book on writing abook.
(06:39):
And I think we underestimated how much we're learning about
writing a book and that's why we reached out to you just to hear your experiences ofwriting the book because it's fascinating what you learn and what's evolving and so I
think we've kind of gone we've started from a place of coming together as two individualswho really wanted to write a book together and that was the starting point actually us
(07:06):
wanting to be together to write a book and then it was like okay what should we write thebook on?
and then we had a range of titles and then we landed on one and Andy can talk a bit aboutit.
And then it was quite hard to come together because we had different writing styles, wehad different things going on in our lives in terms of trying to create time together.
(07:31):
We weren't sure how much time we needed together versus how much time we neededseparately.
And it really feels like we're now at a really good inflection point where we have reallycome together.
We've got one joined up style that's pretty much aligned.
And we found the sweet spot of when we need to be together versus when we need to beseparate writing.
(07:51):
So all of this is kind of learnings, I think, about co-writing.
And then there's probably another whole conversation about the actual book writing.
But those are my thoughts on co-writing.
And I'll stop there for a minute.
interesting isn't it because I'm writing at the moment with Nathan Whitbread and KimWhitten and we've taken a year to work out what we're doing.
We've been writing for a year and we've taken a year to work out what we're doing and nowwe still haven't worked out how we do it together so we're all writing bits and then we're
(08:20):
going to somehow somewhere it will come into a fluency.
You can of course be an organised person who's pre-decided that, but that's not my nature.
No, it wasn't ours as well.
And it's probably, I don't know, Andy, would you agree, it's probably taken us a year toland to this place as well.
(08:41):
yes.
I mean, it's a fascinating journey because, you when we started this, a couple of thingsoccurred to me is first of all, it's about writing books.
Clearly, there's going to be a lot of writing involved.
And I didn't think much beyond that, apart from the fact that I'm writing with someone andtherefore I don't even have to do half as much.
And therefore it would be easier.
Oh, goodness me.
There is so much more to it than I'd realised.
(09:04):
There's so much more to learn.
And yet it's such an amazing journey.
It's frustrating.
It's joyous.
It's everything.
It's every emotion in there and in a way that I had no idea that it would be.
Yeah, yeah, I do think it is like having a baby, you know.
(09:28):
goodness.
Yeah.
that you've probably had one Andy, personally.
personally.
But yeah, actually, there's a yeah, actually, in terms of some nurturing a child.
Yeah, yeah, it is.
It's much bigger than I'd realised.
uh So what have been your biggest insights and what questions are emerging from that?
(09:52):
takes a lot longer than you think.
yes.
I think there's this almost parallel process of writing in the book and working on thebook.
And the working on the book piece, we totally underestimated and yet is super important.
(10:18):
So are we going to be doing research?
Who do we want to be our readers?
Are readers who are going to give us some input?
How are we going to design the book?
All of that is kind of a separate piece to actually what's chapter one, chapter two,chapter three, get the piece.
So that's been really interesting.
And I think the second insight for me has been uh how important is a table of contents?
(10:44):
It sounds ridiculous when you just think about books you read and I never even read andlook at a table of contents, but actually the talk, as we call it,
is just the shell and the shape and everything comes back to our talk.
And is there a strand, know, common thread through the talk and which bits go in where?
(11:07):
That's been for me a second insight.
And then the third insight is what I alluded to actually, the power of writing withsomeone.
And actually it really tests your relationship because you've got to be in this 100 %together.
There's no ego, there's no my side, you I'm writing this, you're writing that, you're init 100%.
(11:28):
And we've really loved that journey.
And we contracted around that at beginning, which is like, we cannot fall out of thisbook.
So what do we need to do to make this happen?
And there's no way I could have written this on my own and there's no way I could havewritten it without Andy.
So that's been another really great insight.
No, I completely agree with you.
(11:48):
Well, I think one of the lovely things right now is certainly part one, and we finishedpart one now, and we're now on to part two.
But part one, we did individual chapters and we didn't come together for quite a longtime.
We basically write four or five chapters each.
And then we would start to look at each other's and, oh my goodness, there's no commonvoice.
You write a different way to my, how are we gonna deal with that?
(12:10):
So there was a lot of churn with.
with part one.
And when I read a chapter of part one, I don't know whether I wrote it originally or not,which I think is a really lovely place to be.
I've completely I just don't know anymore.
But we've taken all that learning into part two, and we're doing part two in a quite adifferent way.
We're doing it much more incrementally, we're much more together.
We've already we already have our own structure and style, which we didn't have at thebeginning.
(12:34):
And so now what we're doing as we launch part two is we both write a chapter.
and then we come together and then we work on that chapter together until it's nearly doneand then we move on to the next chapter.
It's quite a different way to doing it from the first one.
So you found your voice.
Yeah, we have and in doing that we've found a common voice.
(12:54):
We wrote quite differently in the beginning.
But yeah, I think we're right.
I think we've aligned in that sense.
Nice.
I found in every book that I've written, whether I've written on my own or with others,it's the finding the voice bit that takes all the time, not the content.
(13:16):
And once I found my voice or we found our voice, then everything else comes much morequickly after that.
Yeah.
And I think we went from a voice that was a bit too intellectual and probably a bitunapproachable.
And where we've landed is a voice that is informal, practical.
(13:37):
And we kind of have this visual that we're talking to each other over the kitchen table.
And that's the voice.
And that's a really good lens, actually, when you sort of get a bit...
all caught up in something really interesting.
It's like, would you really be having this conversation over the dinner table?
No, you wouldn't.
Right.
OK So cut it out, make it simpler.
Yeah, yeah.
So we use a lot of examples now.
We do some reflection questions.
(14:00):
So it's quite different to how we started.
But yeah, being approachable.
We always try and hold the audience in mind too.
And we have this sort of image of somebody that's perhaps 26.
They're stepping out our book is for people who are stepping into their first teamleadership role.
And so we imagine this person of perhaps 26, maybe 29.
They spent
(14:21):
maybe three years post university and work and they're being told for the first time,you're now going to lead the team that you're on.
And then sort of, oh my goodness.
And so we're trying to imagine somebody that's in that space is that they're not, they'renot 45.
They're not necessarily particularly academic, but they want to know how to actually dothis thing on a practical level.
So we sort of hold that in mind as we write.
(14:42):
And that's really useful as well.
Sounds like they're at the table as well.
Yeah.
We both coach people of that target audience, which is what led us to think there is aneed here.
And so, it can really help to almost have, you know, that person we coached, what wouldthey say if they read this that we had written?
And the other, the other funny journey we've had is, as Andy said, our book is called,Starting Fast, a Practical Guide for New Team Leaders.
(15:11):
And we spent a few, a bit of time overlooking that we had the word practical.
in the book title.
And so a lot of it, when we were bit intellectual, it was like, ah, okay.
And that was some really lovely challenge actually from our publisher who said, you know,you need to make this more practical.
So that also ground us a little bit more and say, okay, that's not only the language, it'sthe layout, it's the reflection questions.
(15:35):
And even when we're giving exercises, they need to be really quick, crisp, clear.
and they're not complicated and you don't need a fully trained executive coach to deliverthem.
You can pick them up as a team leader and run.
And that took a little bit of grounding for us.
Yeah.
And I think what was underneath that was our own sort of stepping into this space andperhaps a bit of lack of confidence thinking, who are we to be writing a book?
(16:03):
What are people going to say about it?
And so I think what without actually, I probably haven't thought about it until now, Isuspect we probably both thought, well, let's try and be as clever as we can to protect
ourselves against people going, who are you to write?
in the hope they might go, well, actually, yes, you've written some quite academic stuffhere.
Well done.
Which of course is not for the audience at all.
(16:24):
So I think as time has gone by, we thought, you know what, this isn't for them.
This is for this 26-year-old.
And so I think that enabled us to uh find that voice.
But it shows up in other ways, too.
Just simple things.
Are we talking from the we?
Are we talking from the I?
Just things like that.
(16:46):
So there's so many little things to think about in a line around.
And just picking up on what you said, Andy, I remember that pivotal conversation we hadwhere we had a draft chapter and it had lots of theories of all the things that other
people had said and their models.
And then Andy said, hang on a second, we also know this.
(17:06):
Like we don't need to refer to all these models.
What's our version of this?
And then we were like, yeah, we actually do have a version that we can write about.
And so that a pivotal moment because it led us to then scrapping
all references to any other thing that anyone else had said.
I mean, we will put references and suggested reading material in the appendix.
(17:29):
But actually, what's our take on all of this?
Because we're coming from our experience and we've both got enough experience to be ableto bring something to the table.
And that's the bit that was hiding, I think, because we were lacking in confidence.
And now that's coming through.
And we sometimes have wobbles and we're going, well, are we really writing anything that'srocket science and sorry, are we writing something that's brand new here?
(17:52):
No, we're probably not, but how we're writing it, we hope will be very practical andcondensing a lot of what's out there with a twist of our own experience.
Nice, nice.
Because actually what matters is whether your reader can understand it, whether it'suseful to them, isn't it?
Not how impressive people think your back reading has been.
(18:16):
Yes.
Yes, exactly right.
And we know there's a need.
We come across people all the time, and I'm sure you do as well, uh who have made thisjump, who have made this step, and they had no support.
Some large organizations can do it.
But many medium and small organizations don't have the resources.
(18:37):
And so people step into these positions, into these team leadership positions.
And the only thing they're able to draw on is how they've been led themselves.
which is, can be good, it can be not so good.
So we know that there's a space for this, so even though I'm sure there other books thatwrite to this space, they're not getting through to, there's still an audience out there
(18:59):
that can benefit from this, that's all, we're convinced of that.
Yeah, because if they can understand it and it's easy to read and easy to apply, thenyou're then you're being in a very distinctive place in the marketplace.
And that's why we put the word practical in the book title and that's what we need to holdourselves to account to all the way through.
(19:22):
Can I tell you a funny story about simplifying coaching?
Lots of people have told me that it's the only coaching book they really understandbecause it's written simply.
I've just reread chapter one and it is not written simply because I was writing to the,it's got a little, the language is a little bit pompous because I'm writing what I thought
(19:46):
a publisher like McGraw Hill would want to be.
And I'm looking at it and going,
That is the most complex sentence construction you could ever have done.
Can you not just go?
verb noun.
m
But I think that that highlights a couple.
Firstly, by the way, I love that coaching book of yours and we recommend it to many peoplewho are embarking on a coaching journey.
(20:13):
And if they say what's the one book I should buy, it's your book, just as a side.
I don't think it's chapter, I don't think your chapter one is complicated from memory.
But I think what you remind us of is we had this quite funny moment where we decided tobook a three day writing retreat.
to write part two, which is 50 % of the book with part one, as Andy said, already written.
(20:40):
And we thought for the first couple of hours, we should just check in on part one, just tocheck, just to get the link as where we were going with part two.
And anyway, to cut a long story short, finished the retreat after three days, hadn't movedon at all.
We'd rewritten part one about two or three times.
And actually we are wondering when is the point where you don't rewrite the book and wejust have
(21:03):
they do not look at that anymore, it's gone.
And there's this constant, actually, that could be different.
And we've just got to put that to bed.
Yeah, which is why deadlines, when you get closer to the end, think matter a lot.
Because it's got to be good enough.
I mean, one of the things, one of the things that I've noticed in my books, all of them,is that the minute it's published, I change my mind.
(21:31):
You
Hahaha!
uh
And I go, oh, but there's also this.
So all my books I have here at my desk and they are full of notes.
So this crazy thing that's absolutely covered in stuff is the book I would write if I waswriting it now.
(21:55):
But the book that I wrote then was good enough.
It was fine.
It's fine.
And knowing the new stuff is useful when you do webinars and talks and everything, becausepeople love to hear.
And actually now the things that I've learned since the book was published are thesethings.
And it's about not feeling bad about it, I think, because it is a moment in time.
(22:19):
I don't think we're handling this very well yet, because our way of dealing with this atthe moment is just to keep pushing the deadline out, which clearly is not a sustainable
approach.
So what advice would you give us then, Claire, about how we put something to bed?
Well, you've just said what you need to do with it, so why don't you just do that?
No.
(22:41):
We are better than we were.
think you're right.
I think that you write a book three times.
But we've written part one three times now, so enough.
so you need to remember that when it comes back from the development edit, there will bechanges that they suggest that you make to it.
So you don't have to send it in perfect at that point.
(23:02):
You're sending in as good as it is.
And then the development editor comes back and goes, this bit doesn't make sense, or thisbit you've written twice with my books.
go, this bit you've written four times in four different places.
OK , okay.
It's very good on getting the word count right because you could...
(23:23):
OK, which is the one place it needs to be and which are the three places it can bedeleted.
So I think, you know, there's nothing wrong with having a folder on your computer calledbed and putting part one in bed.
That's a nice analogy, actually.
Yeah.
I think we're there with part one now.
And we've got to the point where enough already.
(23:46):
So who knows, but of course, we've not gone into the development of the process oranything like that yet.
So we await that.
Yeah.
That great and glorious day when you press go on the manuscript, you send the manuscriptto the publisher, you take a deep breath and it's done.
(24:08):
If it hadn't been COVID when Simplifying Coaching was published, I would not have beenable to manage phase two, which is when it comes back and you've got to kind of start the
work again in a slightly different way.
And then, yes, and then part three.
In fact, let's come back to the going to bed bit, the putting it to bed bit.
(24:32):
Part three is when it comes out, when it's another piece of work, all of its own.
The thing that I've learnt now with my books is to leave them for at least a month betweenfinishing the manuscript and sending it to the publisher.
because when you read it after a month as a reader, you will notice things that the readerwill notice that you never noticed as the writer, and you've got the chance to do some
(25:00):
quite big changes before you send it off to the editor.
So putting an internal deadline in your external deadline is a really useful thing, Ithink.
That's a good tip.
Thank you.
that's good too.
We're much more organized with our timing and I think that's another piece of learning.
You know, for the rest of the year now we've blocked time to write and then come together.
(25:22):
So we've got a schedule now which actually looks to me like it's probably, I say this,probably doable for us to finish part two by the end of the year.
But laughably, when we first entered this process, I think it was November, probably,goodness, two and a half years ago now.
where we thought we might write it over Christmas and that might be done.
(25:46):
Goodness me.
wrote two.
I wrote two of my books in a week each.
well.
Goodness me.
Wow, wow Claire, wow.
are quite skinny.
I sent my kids to summer camp and it had to be finished by the time they came back.
Wow.
(26:06):
Respect.
But I can see that giving yourself a really hard deadline would force you to be much morerigorous about it.
And I think what we're noticing is we set the goal at the beginning and said, A, we wantthis to be fun and we don't want to fall out.
And B, we need to recognize that we are working as team coaches in parallel to writing abook about team coaching.
(26:30):
And therefore we can't, we don't want to stop the work we're doing.
And that's always the juggle.
Whereas if actually someone, they said, if it was like, right, you need to have part twofinished by the end of the month, we then have to carve out things and make it happen.
But we're trying to keep everything going and holding various balls in the air at themoment.
And hopefully that approach will carry on to work.
(26:51):
I've another tip that I've just remembered.
I always say at some point in the evolution of the book, today is the last day that youcan put new learning in.
So any new learning that you get from today onwards can't go in the book.
That sounds hard.
(27:12):
It is, but otherwise...
No, because if you're always...
As you said that, that was a bit of an insight for me.
You never end because we're always learning and if you're to have to put the linesomewhere, it's easier to put the line while you're still writing than say, I will put in
every single thing I learned until the day I press send.
(27:34):
That's good to know.
eh I like the rigor of these deadlines you're mentioning.
You know me a bit, my deadlines are always a bit squishy, except when the kids went tosummer camp and that deadline I couldn't move and that made for a very different kind of
experience.
I think the next phase we're going to have coming up is then how we involve other peoplein the book, which we're a little bit nervous about.
(27:59):
And we know we've got lots of lovely, lovely trusted colleagues who have offered or willoffer to read it.
We've got leaders who we've worked with, who we know we could share it with.
And I think we've got to then be quite disciplined about who are, I think the technicalterm is our beta readers.
Any tips on that?
oh
Yes.
(28:20):
There are three things that you need for your beta readers.
And if you do them in three, all in one go, you're going to have a much easier life.
one, number one, ask them to beta read it and give you some really good feedback and tellthem why you've asked them, because you'll be asking them for different reasons.
(28:41):
Number two, uh ask them to do an endorsement while they are beta reading.
So if you're willing to do an endorsement to go at the front of the book, can you do itnow?
And the third one is get their address because you're going to be sending them a free copyof the book when it's published to say thank you.
(29:01):
And if you do all those three things in one go, you won't have to do them in three goes,which is a lot more relational and a lot easier.
So I did a beta read of a book recently.
and I wondered if they were going to ask me to endorse it, but they didn't say, so Ididn't write an endorsement.
(29:26):
And now I've been asked to write an endorsement and now I can't remember what I read.
No.
that's, yeah.
So now I've got to read it again.
goodness.
And I will, because I really like the person that it is.
But if they'd said to me, can you write an endorsement?
Even if they'd not then used it, it would have just been off my desk.
(29:48):
And now it's back on my desk.
But the address thing is really annoying at the end, because your publisher will say, so Ido recommend that you send a free copy, signed copy to all your beta readers.
And then one of you is going to go, we haven't got their addresses.
And then off you go again.
So if you can do all three things in one go, there are lots, there are other places whereyou can be a bit efficient about those things, even if you're thinking this could be
(30:17):
another year or two years or 18 months or whatever, because of course, once you've giventhe baby to the publisher, it's at least nine months before it comes out.
Sometimes with some publishers, it's a year.
But yeah, the more you can multitask, eh the easier it will be in the long run.
Yeah.
And actually I remember, think I was, I don't know if I was a beta reader or I was one ofthe readers for your human behind the coach.
(30:43):
And I remember Nat, this conversation is making me remember that you were very explicitwhat lens you wanted me to have as the reader when I was reading it.
And that also really helped me as the beta reader that you weren't asking me to, you know,give new models, theories.
You just were very specific.
This is the lens.
(31:04):
And so I'm guessing,
having different people that are covering different lenses, so all added up together, weget a really big lens, will be quite important.
and telling them that they don't have to do the other lenses.
So there will be spelling mistakes and grammar errors that your beta readers will see, butthat's not their job because the copy editor will deal with that.
(31:27):
So just saying, we know that there are probably some glitches.
That's not what you're reading for.
Because what you want them to do is you want to do their equivalent of speed reading andgive you...
We want them to be at your dining table or your kitchen table as you're having thisconversation with the reader and say, oh, it's really interesting because she haven't
(31:51):
talked about this.
Yeah, yeah, that's super helpful.
That's really helpful, yeah.
And I think the other, in terms of other people that we're wondering about is who isappropriate to be our forward.
And if the target, you know, back to the target audience, if this target audience is, Andysaid, is this 24 year old leader who's just stepped up, the forward needs to be written by
(32:21):
somebody who is credible to that uh target audience.
m
or if you were going to be radical, somebody who is that target audience.
Oh goodness me I love that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love that idea.
(32:43):
Oh yes.
mean that your foreword is written by somebody nobody's heard of and I love that.
Yeah.
I do too.
One of my books has a foreword by somebody who's quite well known.
I don't think it's added anything to the book.
(33:03):
And I said to the publisher and my co-writer, either I think this is a really good idea orit's a really bad idea.
And I don't think it's had any dis-benefit, but I don't think it's had any benefit either.
I don't think people read the forward unless they do.
And if you want the reader to read the forward, you want the forward to really captivatethe reader.
(33:26):
So if I was writing that book, I would want the forward to go.
Oh, I wish I'd had this book a year ago.
Lovely.
That's lovely thinking.
is brilliant.
unless you're gonna put on the cover with forward by very important person, which isanother marketing tool, which you can do.
(33:48):
But if you're not gonna do that.
people generally go straight in for the beginning of chapter one.
Yeah, okay.
And then we
think about books that I've read or bought.
Who wrote The Forward does not influence my decision to buy and most of the time I didn'teven read it.
And presumably we could still get a few testimonials of people who are well known thatwould go somewhere in the pages, whether it's on the back cover or in the couple of pages.
(34:16):
yeah, that's a lovely idea.
Hmm.
like to mix up in the endorsements because now I know about endorsements because if youread Simplified Coaching there are two endorsements because I didn't know that you had to
have them and the day the publisher asked for them we had a really short deadline so Irang up two people and said can you write an endorsement for this book and they went yeah
(34:38):
and those are the two endorsements and it says praise page and you've got these twoendorsements then lots of white space
Then when you look at other people's books, because I never read the endorsements, they'vegot pages.
And simplifying catching looks like nobody wants to read this book.
So for me now, my formula, if you want a formula, is some people people will have heard offrom around the world.
(35:03):
So I would pick people in different continents for that reason.
And then, well, my decision and you know,
make what I'm saying your own and do what you like, but my decision is, and a whole loadof people that nobody's ever heard of.
who are speaking genuinely from the heart that talk about hopefully the value the bookwill give them or has given them.
(35:24):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, nice.
I uh just say we're going to have to re-listen to this podcast in about nine months timewhen we're moving into these phases.
Yeah.
I was thinking I'll take notes and I thought, no, I don't need to take notes.
can just listen to the podcast later.
Lovely.
(35:47):
Yes.
Thank you.
we go.
In fact, we might do this as a top 10 tips about writing a book.
We might have that as a document.
Well, that would be cool, wouldn't it?
Yeah, that would be very good.
I'll do that with my friend Gemini.
Well, we were talking about chat GBT earlier actually in the role of AI and the role of AIin book writing.
(36:11):
How's what's been your experience of that?
The thing I'm using it for is if I get stuck on a paragraph and it's really complicatedand I can't untangle it I'll say simplify this paragraph and Then I'll build it back into
my own from the simplification, but it can often unlock that knotty bit You know what I doknitting and I if I can't undo a knot I'll say to someone else Can you undo this knot
(36:39):
because I've looked at the knot for so long that I can't undo it.
So I use it for that
I have a stream of consciousness document where I drop in ideas that I think need to be ina book and it just becomes pages and pages of
What seemed to be like a good idea when I dropped it in, but now I don't understand.
(37:01):
So I ask AI to say, what are the 10 points that you're making in this document?
And then that at least gives me some headings that I can then go back in and say, oh,well, that one must fit with that one.
And then if I don't agree, that's fine.
And the other one, I get it to help me think about the questions, the reflective questionsto ask at the end of the chapter, because...
(37:26):
If you think about it logically, I should always have been asking other people to do thereflective questions at the end of the chapter because they're from the reader and if we
write them from ourselves, we're writing it in the same way.
We're marking our own homework.
Yeah.
(37:47):
Yeah.
Again, I don't use exactly what they say, but it just, you know, give 10 possiblereflection questions out of this chapter.
That's a, that's a useful thing.
So I use it for untangling.
I use it for.
helping me to find myself when I'm lost and I help it to have a bit of an external view ofthe kind of reflection questions.
(38:16):
I think I found we was talking about it earlier and I think I agree with you certainly onthe untangling.
I hadn't thought of the reflection questions from the side of AI.
That's a really good build.
We've also found it helpful to give a bit of a critique.
know, read this, are we being practical enough?
And also, literally yesterday, it helped with a bit of a structure, how are we going tosort of get out these tools that we want leaders to play around with with their teams?
(38:44):
uh
We could write a whole book on tools and we don't want to write a whole book.
So the AI has been very helpful for giving a sort of framework, a couple of frameworks.
And again, a bit like you, we've then played around with which one and added a bit andthat's been really helpful.
So it's kind of like this lovely reference in the background when we need it.
But I don't think we used it at all in the beginning.
(39:04):
It's sort of coming more in now.
The other thing that we're doing with the current book, which is about neurodiversity isthat we, because we're all neurodivergent, we do a lot of our co-working dialogue like
this.
And then we get AI to do a summary of what we've said.
Yes.
(39:25):
Riverside does a top 10 quotes.
Huh.
That's nice.
Yeah.
is quite fun because it just helps us.
It's like having a fourth person in the room who is able to support us to get to be ournote taker.
(39:48):
So it's all genuinely our content, but we're just, instead of using people to fill some ofthe gaps, we're using AI a bit.
I found chapter GPT to be incredibly useful.
As Anna says, didn't really use it.
Of course, really didn't, it's really only burst into the, into our consciousness reallyin the last, probably less than 12 months.
(40:13):
So it's been a bit of a journey alongside it.
But I mean, I was writing, the weekend, writing a chapter on different types of teams atthe moment.
And I did two or three pages on different sorts of teams, intact teams.
cross border teams, et cetera, et cetera.
And then I just pumped that into ChatGPT and said, what I've been missing.
And it said, oh, nice comprehensive list.
(40:34):
You might want to talk about scrums.
thought, oh, that's a point.
I don't really think that's scrums.
So said, tell me about scrums.
So it talked me about scrums.
And then it then wrote a short paragraph on scrums that it included in.
So again, it's my work, but it's informed by ChatGPT.
So I find it incredibly useful.
And you'd have only got that if one of your beta readers knew about scrums.
(41:00):
Yeah, there we go.
And if scrums are outside of the kind of tribes that you know people in, you might neverhave got that.
Yeah.
And we also, and I both love the work of Nancy Klein and Time to Think.
And one of the one of our other learnings has been we've had thinking sessions with eachother, thinking pairs, where we're holding the space for the other person to just think in
(41:27):
waves.
And then another wave comes and another wave comes without interruption.
And we've recorded that conversation.
And then we've said to chat GBT afterwards, what have been the themes that have come out?
And then it just means we can be like super present with each other because we're nottrying to figure out what the other one's saying that we need to capture.
Lovely.
Well thank you for coming to the Coaching Inn and showing the inside of your book writingprocess.
(41:53):
Well, thank you for inviting us.
And also thank you for getting us in on this, because for the listeners, shared herjourney right at the beginning, which gave us the impetus to get going and to find a
publisher.
so that really, Claire, you've played an instrumental role in getting us off the ground.
And so it's super special to be back with you a year and a half later, uh halfway throughhopefully the book.
(42:19):
Yeah, who knows, maybe we'll inspire somebody along the way.
I hope you will.
think there's a real need for practical stuff that's written in a way that peopleunderstand.
And when you're thinking about an international audience, so we have listeners in 128countries and people from around the world who, where English may not be their first or
(42:42):
second or even third language have said to me, we like your book because we understand it.
Because it's written.
in spoken English.
And that's the gift that you're bringing to the world.
Thank you.
Yes.
Thank you.
feels like big shoes to fill now.
(43:04):
I feel I'm gonna have to go back into part one, back through it again.
It's been put to bed, remember.
It's been to bed.
Not allowed to.
uh
thought of a beta reader for you in India.
That'd
would be wonderful.
Yeah, it never occurred to me to seek beta readers anywhere but the UK.
(43:25):
But I mean, that's just such an obvious and brilliant idea.
And living in Germany, I know what it's like to not understand all the time and also todeal with Germans who are then trying to speak English.
But I hadn't really kind of made the connection with the book.
So thank you for that challenge, Claire.
It's great.
Yeah.
your readers do not want to be reading with Google Translate on the side.
(43:49):
And even when there are words that they don't understand, they want to get the gist.
So when I read things in Spanish, my Spanish is improving, it's not great.
If I know that this thing I'm reading is about food,
then I can fill the gaps in for the words that I don't understand because it doesn'tactually, the words I don't understand probably don't matter.
(44:13):
um But that's because I'm reading stuff that's straight written in a fairlystraightforward way.
I wouldn't read a university, book in a university library because that I wouldn'tunderstand.
Yeah.
It's how we learn to speak, isn't it, as children?
Yeah.
And I think we certainly want this to be inclusive.
And maybe that's something we need to even say, Andy, is one of our, some of ourintentions upfront, which we haven't actually named.
(44:42):
So that will also help you with your beta readers.
So if people want to talk to you or indeed be a beta reader in another part of the world,how do they?
Yeah.
stories of new leaders who've stepped up.
What's worked, what hasn't worked.
We'd love to hear from you.
(45:03):
Hmm?
very much so
So how do they contact you?
Well, why don't we put our email addresses on, give you the email addresses in the shownotes.
OK .
we'd love to for anybody.
There you are listeners.
There's your challenge.
Contact Anna and Andy if you've got something to offer or a question that you want them toaddress in the book.
(45:27):
And thank you so much for coming to The Coaching Inn.
It's a real pleasure being with you.
Thank you.
Thanks for inviting us.
yeah you need to have written it before I'm dead and gone so we can have you back foranother episode
We'd love to.
We'd take the challenge on.
Yeah, next year, next year.
(45:48):
Thank you Anna, thank you Andy and thank you all for listening.
We'll be back next week.
Bye bye.
Bye.
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn.
I'm your host, Claire Pedrick.
And today we're going to be talking about book writing with the lovely Anna Inama and AndyFryer, because we talked about talking about book writing and then we said if we were
going to do it, we might as well have you listening in and do it as a podcast.
(00:37):
So we'll come onto that in a moment.
If you don't follow or subscribe to the podcast on your favorite.
podcast platform, please do that because it really helps us.
And also if you like or comment on this episode would make it even more amazing.
So as we arrive today, Anna and Andy, welcome.
(00:57):
Thank you.
It's lovely to be here.
Yeah, thank you, Claire.
It's great to be here.
And Anna, you're coming in from Germany.
Yes, I'm sitting here in Munich in southern Germany and as I was just telling you, I'mgetting very excited because my friend's dropping off some tea bags freshly flown in from
England for me to have a good old cuppa later.
(01:18):
But yes, I've been here for 12 years, thought we were going for three and extended.
Nice and the great thing about us being virtual is we're not drinking your tea.
Well, I know, because I wouldn't be offering it to you because it's going to be veryspecial and it's here.
see that.
I can see that's really important to not share.
Andy, hello, where are you in the world?
(01:39):
I'm in Krakow, but I live in Surrey, so I've just been working with a team out here.
So, Krakow today and then flying back to London tonight.
Great, good, good.
So let's start with you, Anna.
Tell us a bit about your coaching journey and then we'll hear about yours, Andy, and thenwe'll hear about your book process thing.
(02:04):
my background is in the corporate sector, having worked in FMCG with amazing brands.
It says a bit about me, chocolate, booze, fragrance.
And the brands were amazing, but the thing that really stood out was the human connection,the people connection, growing teams, leading teams, helping people who were really stuck.
(02:30):
mentoring people and that led me to think, I'm quite curious about what this coachingmalarkey is.
And so I decided to do some baby steps uh and then decided to take the plunge, retrained,did a masters in organizational development and executive coaching.
(02:51):
And boom, that was the catalyst about 14 years ago to then set up my own company.
And so since then,
me, work as an executive coach to leaders and teams like I you do and like Andy does andalso do a bit of mentoring and supervision but coaching is my space and I just love
working with people and seeing them unlock more choice through greater awareness and Ifeel very privileged actually to be part of so many people's journeys and to see where
(03:23):
they take themselves.
That's me in a nutshell.
And we were introduced by a mutual friend.
We were introduced by a gorgeous mutual friend.
Yes.
So here's to Catherine, if you're listening to this podcast.
And yeah, she was very inspiring about how she's working with you.
And actually that led us to have conversations about book writing and actually Claire, Icould probably say, we'll talk a bit more about this, but you are probably the reason why
(03:51):
we've got this off the ground.
that is food for thought for a bit further on in the podcast, dot, dot, dot.
And if you're in that ghastly thing of birthing a book when the birth gets a bit tricky, Iapologise.
We are in that cloud, absolutely.
OK so Andy hello what's your
(04:13):
they've quite a lot of overlaps with Anna really in that sense, my first, my first careerwas in the military.
So I was in the Royal Air Force for 33 years.
And I was always interested in the sort of the leadership, human side of things.
I did a degree in psychology as a mature student.
And then I popped out the other end of that and thought about the sort of coachingmentoring space, which I didn't understand at all.
(04:37):
But I thought I really only know how things work in uniform.
So I spent five years in a startup as the ops director of tech startup and was also at thesame time the chairman of the board of a charity, homeless charity.
So by the time I'd done that and I did an MBA at the same time, so I of came out of thatlittle piece thinking, okay, I understand a little bit about things that are not in
(05:00):
uniform now and I understand a little bit about the world of business.
So then at the Rydport age of, I think it was 55, I then retrained, went to PortsmouthUni.
trained as a coach and and here I am almost 10 years later I do a mix of one-to-onecoaching and team coaching probably about 50-50 and and I love it too I found in my Air
(05:24):
Force career that the as I came towards the end I'd done some really interesting and quitedemanding jobs along the way but I found that I was getting more and more joy from
actually giving space and supporting people that were around me to really grow
And that's where I was getting my joy from.
And when I discovered what coaching really was, I realised that actually that's the wayI'd led in the Royal Air Force.
(05:48):
It's the way I parented.
was sort of in my bones.
And so it was a very natural space for me.
And I found it a really good fit.
Nice.
So we're going to do another podcast about your actual book when it launches.
So we just said that we'd talk about the book writing process in today's episode.
(06:12):
So how is the book writing process going?
Yes, I noticed the chuckle in your voice Claire.
I think you've honed in on where we're at right now.
I think we're right in the middle of it.
But actually, it's hugely, hugely enjoyable and we could almost write a book on writing abook.
(06:39):
And I think we underestimated how much we're learning about
writing a book and that's why we reached out to you just to hear your experiences ofwriting the book because it's fascinating what you learn and what's evolving and so I
think we've kind of gone we've started from a place of coming together as two individualswho really wanted to write a book together and that was the starting point actually us
(07:06):
wanting to be together to write a book and then it was like okay what should we write thebook on?
and then we had a range of titles and then we landed on one and Andy can talk a bit aboutit.
And then it was quite hard to come together because we had different writing styles, wehad different things going on in our lives in terms of trying to create time together.
(07:31):
We weren't sure how much time we needed together versus how much time we neededseparately.
And it really feels like we're now at a really good inflection point where we have reallycome together.
We've got one joined up style that's pretty much aligned.
And we found the sweet spot of when we need to be together versus when we need to beseparate writing.
(07:51):
So all of this is kind of learnings, I think, about co-writing.
And then there's probably another whole conversation about the actual book writing.
But those are my thoughts on co-writing.
And I'll stop there for a minute.
interesting isn't it because I'm writing at the moment with Nathan Whitbread and KimWhitten and we've taken a year to work out what we're doing.
We've been writing for a year and we've taken a year to work out what we're doing and nowwe still haven't worked out how we do it together so we're all writing bits and then we're
(08:20):
going to somehow somewhere it will come into a fluency.
You can of course be an organised person who's pre-decided that, but that's not my nature.
No, it wasn't ours as well.
And it's probably, I don't know, Andy, would you agree, it's probably taken us a year toland to this place as well.
(08:41):
yes.
I mean, it's a fascinating journey because, you when we started this, a couple of thingsoccurred to me is first of all, it's about writing books.
Clearly, there's going to be a lot of writing involved.
And I didn't think much beyond that, apart from the fact that I'm writing with someone andtherefore I don't even have to do half as much.
And therefore it would be easier.
Oh, goodness me.
There is so much more to it than I'd realised.
(09:04):
There's so much more to learn.
And yet it's such an amazing journey.
It's frustrating.
It's joyous.
It's everything.
It's every emotion in there and in a way that I had no idea that it would be.
Yeah, yeah, I do think it is like having a baby, you know.
(09:28):
goodness.
Yeah.
that you've probably had one Andy, personally.
personally.
But yeah, actually, there's a yeah, actually, in terms of some nurturing a child.
Yeah, yeah, it is.
It's much bigger than I'd realised.
uh So what have been your biggest insights and what questions are emerging from that?
(09:52):
takes a lot longer than you think.
yes.
I think there's this almost parallel process of writing in the book and working on thebook.
And the working on the book piece, we totally underestimated and yet is super important.
(10:18):
So are we going to be doing research?
Who do we want to be our readers?
Are readers who are going to give us some input?
How are we going to design the book?
All of that is kind of a separate piece to actually what's chapter one, chapter two,chapter three, get the piece.
So that's been really interesting.
And I think the second insight for me has been uh how important is a table of contents?
(10:44):
It sounds ridiculous when you just think about books you read and I never even read andlook at a table of contents, but actually the talk, as we call it,
is just the shell and the shape and everything comes back to our talk.
And is there a strand, know, common thread through the talk and which bits go in where?
(11:07):
That's been for me a second insight.
And then the third insight is what I alluded to actually, the power of writing withsomeone.
And actually it really tests your relationship because you've got to be in this 100 %together.
There's no ego, there's no my side, you I'm writing this, you're writing that, you're init 100%.
(11:28):
And we've really loved that journey.
And we contracted around that at beginning, which is like, we cannot fall out of thisbook.
So what do we need to do to make this happen?
And there's no way I could have written this on my own and there's no way I could havewritten it without Andy.
So that's been another really great insight.
No, I completely agree with you.
(11:48):
Well, I think one of the lovely things right now is certainly part one, and we finishedpart one now, and we're now on to part two.
But part one, we did individual chapters and we didn't come together for quite a longtime.
We basically write four or five chapters each.
And then we would start to look at each other's and, oh my goodness, there's no commonvoice.
You write a different way to my, how are we gonna deal with that?
(12:10):
So there was a lot of churn with.
with part one.
And when I read a chapter of part one, I don't know whether I wrote it originally or not,which I think is a really lovely place to be.
I've completely I just don't know anymore.
But we've taken all that learning into part two, and we're doing part two in a quite adifferent way.
We're doing it much more incrementally, we're much more together.
We've already we already have our own structure and style, which we didn't have at thebeginning.
(12:34):
And so now what we're doing as we launch part two is we both write a chapter.
and then we come together and then we work on that chapter together until it's nearly doneand then we move on to the next chapter.
It's quite a different way to doing it from the first one.
So you found your voice.
Yeah, we have and in doing that we've found a common voice.
(12:54):
We wrote quite differently in the beginning.
But yeah, I think we're right.
I think we've aligned in that sense.
Nice.
I found in every book that I've written, whether I've written on my own or with others,it's the finding the voice bit that takes all the time, not the content.
(13:16):
And once I found my voice or we found our voice, then everything else comes much morequickly after that.
Yeah.
And I think we went from a voice that was a bit too intellectual and probably a bitunapproachable.
And where we've landed is a voice that is informal, practical.
(13:37):
And we kind of have this visual that we're talking to each other over the kitchen table.
And that's the voice.
And that's a really good lens, actually, when you sort of get a bit...
all caught up in something really interesting.
It's like, would you really be having this conversation over the dinner table?
No, you wouldn't.
Right.
OK So cut it out, make it simpler.
Yeah, yeah.
So we use a lot of examples now.
We do some reflection questions.
(14:00):
So it's quite different to how we started.
But yeah, being approachable.
We always try and hold the audience in mind too.
And we have this sort of image of somebody that's perhaps 26.
They're stepping out our book is for people who are stepping into their first teamleadership role.
And so we imagine this person of perhaps 26, maybe 29.
They spent
(14:21):
maybe three years post university and work and they're being told for the first time,you're now going to lead the team that you're on.
And then sort of, oh my goodness.
And so we're trying to imagine somebody that's in that space is that they're not, they'renot 45.
They're not necessarily particularly academic, but they want to know how to actually dothis thing on a practical level.
So we sort of hold that in mind as we write.
(14:42):
And that's really useful as well.
Sounds like they're at the table as well.
Yeah.
We both coach people of that target audience, which is what led us to think there is aneed here.
And so, it can really help to almost have, you know, that person we coached, what wouldthey say if they read this that we had written?
And the other, the other funny journey we've had is, as Andy said, our book is called,Starting Fast, a Practical Guide for New Team Leaders.
(15:11):
And we spent a few, a bit of time overlooking that we had the word practical.
in the book title.
And so a lot of it, when we were bit intellectual, it was like, ah, okay.
And that was some really lovely challenge actually from our publisher who said, you know,you need to make this more practical.
So that also ground us a little bit more and say, okay, that's not only the language, it'sthe layout, it's the reflection questions.
(15:35):
And even when we're giving exercises, they need to be really quick, crisp, clear.
and they're not complicated and you don't need a fully trained executive coach to deliverthem.
You can pick them up as a team leader and run.
And that took a little bit of grounding for us.
Yeah.
And I think what was underneath that was our own sort of stepping into this space andperhaps a bit of lack of confidence thinking, who are we to be writing a book?
(16:03):
What are people going to say about it?
And so I think what without actually, I probably haven't thought about it until now, Isuspect we probably both thought, well, let's try and be as clever as we can to protect
ourselves against people going, who are you to write?
in the hope they might go, well, actually, yes, you've written some quite academic stuffhere.
Well done.
Which of course is not for the audience at all.
(16:24):
So I think as time has gone by, we thought, you know what, this isn't for them.
This is for this 26-year-old.
And so I think that enabled us to uh find that voice.
But it shows up in other ways, too.
Just simple things.
Are we talking from the we?
Are we talking from the I?
Just things like that.
(16:46):
So there's so many little things to think about in a line around.
And just picking up on what you said, Andy, I remember that pivotal conversation we hadwhere we had a draft chapter and it had lots of theories of all the things that other
people had said and their models.
And then Andy said, hang on a second, we also know this.
(17:06):
Like we don't need to refer to all these models.
What's our version of this?
And then we were like, yeah, we actually do have a version that we can write about.
And so that a pivotal moment because it led us to then scrapping
all references to any other thing that anyone else had said.
I mean, we will put references and suggested reading material in the appendix.
(17:29):
But actually, what's our take on all of this?
Because we're coming from our experience and we've both got enough experience to be ableto bring something to the table.
And that's the bit that was hiding, I think, because we were lacking in confidence.
And now that's coming through.
And we sometimes have wobbles and we're going, well, are we really writing anything that'srocket science and sorry, are we writing something that's brand new here?
(17:52):
No, we're probably not, but how we're writing it, we hope will be very practical andcondensing a lot of what's out there with a twist of our own experience.
Nice, nice.
Because actually what matters is whether your reader can understand it, whether it'suseful to them, isn't it?
Not how impressive people think your back reading has been.
(18:16):
Yes.
Yes, exactly right.
And we know there's a need.
We come across people all the time, and I'm sure you do as well, uh who have made thisjump, who have made this step, and they had no support.
Some large organizations can do it.
But many medium and small organizations don't have the resources.
(18:37):
And so people step into these positions, into these team leadership positions.
And the only thing they're able to draw on is how they've been led themselves.
which is, can be good, it can be not so good.
So we know that there's a space for this, so even though I'm sure there other books thatwrite to this space, they're not getting through to, there's still an audience out there
(18:59):
that can benefit from this, that's all, we're convinced of that.
Yeah, because if they can understand it and it's easy to read and easy to apply, thenyou're then you're being in a very distinctive place in the marketplace.
And that's why we put the word practical in the book title and that's what we need to holdourselves to account to all the way through.
(19:22):
Can I tell you a funny story about simplifying coaching?
Lots of people have told me that it's the only coaching book they really understandbecause it's written simply.
I've just reread chapter one and it is not written simply because I was writing to the,it's got a little, the language is a little bit pompous because I'm writing what I thought
(19:46):
a publisher like McGraw Hill would want to be.
And I'm looking at it and going,
That is the most complex sentence construction you could ever have done.
Can you not just go?
verb noun.
m
But I think that that highlights a couple.
Firstly, by the way, I love that coaching book of yours and we recommend it to many peoplewho are embarking on a coaching journey.
(20:13):
And if they say what's the one book I should buy, it's your book, just as a side.
I don't think it's chapter, I don't think your chapter one is complicated from memory.
But I think what you remind us of is we had this quite funny moment where we decided tobook a three day writing retreat.
to write part two, which is 50 % of the book with part one, as Andy said, already written.
(20:40):
And we thought for the first couple of hours, we should just check in on part one, just tocheck, just to get the link as where we were going with part two.
And anyway, to cut a long story short, finished the retreat after three days, hadn't movedon at all.
We'd rewritten part one about two or three times.
And actually we are wondering when is the point where you don't rewrite the book and wejust have
(21:03):
they do not look at that anymore, it's gone.
And there's this constant, actually, that could be different.
And we've just got to put that to bed.
Yeah, which is why deadlines, when you get closer to the end, think matter a lot.
Because it's got to be good enough.
I mean, one of the things, one of the things that I've noticed in my books, all of them,is that the minute it's published, I change my mind.
(21:31):
You
Hahaha!
uh
And I go, oh, but there's also this.
So all my books I have here at my desk and they are full of notes.
So this crazy thing that's absolutely covered in stuff is the book I would write if I waswriting it now.
(21:55):
But the book that I wrote then was good enough.
It was fine.
It's fine.
And knowing the new stuff is useful when you do webinars and talks and everything, becausepeople love to hear.
And actually now the things that I've learned since the book was published are thesethings.
And it's about not feeling bad about it, I think, because it is a moment in time.
(22:19):
I don't think we're handling this very well yet, because our way of dealing with this atthe moment is just to keep pushing the deadline out, which clearly is not a sustainable
approach.
So what advice would you give us then, Claire, about how we put something to bed?
Well, you've just said what you need to do with it, so why don't you just do that?
No.
(22:41):
We are better than we were.
think you're right.
I think that you write a book three times.
But we've written part one three times now, so enough.
so you need to remember that when it comes back from the development edit, there will bechanges that they suggest that you make to it.
So you don't have to send it in perfect at that point.
(23:02):
You're sending in as good as it is.
And then the development editor comes back and goes, this bit doesn't make sense, or thisbit you've written twice with my books.
go, this bit you've written four times in four different places.
OK , okay.
It's very good on getting the word count right because you could...
(23:23):
OK, which is the one place it needs to be and which are the three places it can bedeleted.
So I think, you know, there's nothing wrong with having a folder on your computer calledbed and putting part one in bed.
That's a nice analogy, actually.
Yeah.
I think we're there with part one now.
And we've got to the point where enough already.
(23:46):
So who knows, but of course, we've not gone into the development of the process oranything like that yet.
So we await that.
Yeah.
That great and glorious day when you press go on the manuscript, you send the manuscriptto the publisher, you take a deep breath and it's done.
(24:08):
If it hadn't been COVID when Simplifying Coaching was published, I would not have beenable to manage phase two, which is when it comes back and you've got to kind of start the
work again in a slightly different way.
And then, yes, and then part three.
In fact, let's come back to the going to bed bit, the putting it to bed bit.
(24:32):
Part three is when it comes out, when it's another piece of work, all of its own.
The thing that I've learnt now with my books is to leave them for at least a month betweenfinishing the manuscript and sending it to the publisher.
because when you read it after a month as a reader, you will notice things that the readerwill notice that you never noticed as the writer, and you've got the chance to do some
(25:00):
quite big changes before you send it off to the editor.
So putting an internal deadline in your external deadline is a really useful thing, Ithink.
That's a good tip.
Thank you.
that's good too.
We're much more organized with our timing and I think that's another piece of learning.
You know, for the rest of the year now we've blocked time to write and then come together.
(25:22):
So we've got a schedule now which actually looks to me like it's probably, I say this,probably doable for us to finish part two by the end of the year.
But laughably, when we first entered this process, I think it was November, probably,goodness, two and a half years ago now.
where we thought we might write it over Christmas and that might be done.
(25:46):
Goodness me.
wrote two.
I wrote two of my books in a week each.
well.
Goodness me.
Wow, wow Claire, wow.
are quite skinny.
I sent my kids to summer camp and it had to be finished by the time they came back.
Wow.
(26:06):
Respect.
But I can see that giving yourself a really hard deadline would force you to be much morerigorous about it.
And I think what we're noticing is we set the goal at the beginning and said, A, we wantthis to be fun and we don't want to fall out.
And B, we need to recognize that we are working as team coaches in parallel to writing abook about team coaching.
(26:30):
And therefore we can't, we don't want to stop the work we're doing.
And that's always the juggle.
Whereas if actually someone, they said, if it was like, right, you need to have part twofinished by the end of the month, we then have to carve out things and make it happen.
But we're trying to keep everything going and holding various balls in the air at themoment.
And hopefully that approach will carry on to work.
(26:51):
I've another tip that I've just remembered.
I always say at some point in the evolution of the book, today is the last day that youcan put new learning in.
So any new learning that you get from today onwards can't go in the book.
That sounds hard.
(27:12):
It is, but otherwise...
No, because if you're always...
As you said that, that was a bit of an insight for me.
You never end because we're always learning and if you're to have to put the linesomewhere, it's easier to put the line while you're still writing than say, I will put in
every single thing I learned until the day I press send.
(27:34):
That's good to know.
eh I like the rigor of these deadlines you're mentioning.
You know me a bit, my deadlines are always a bit squishy, except when the kids went tosummer camp and that deadline I couldn't move and that made for a very different kind of
experience.
I think the next phase we're going to have coming up is then how we involve other peoplein the book, which we're a little bit nervous about.
(27:59):
And we know we've got lots of lovely, lovely trusted colleagues who have offered or willoffer to read it.
We've got leaders who we've worked with, who we know we could share it with.
And I think we've got to then be quite disciplined about who are, I think the technicalterm is our beta readers.
Any tips on that?
oh
Yes.
(28:20):
There are three things that you need for your beta readers.
And if you do them in three, all in one go, you're going to have a much easier life.
one, number one, ask them to beta read it and give you some really good feedback and tellthem why you've asked them, because you'll be asking them for different reasons.
(28:41):
Number two, uh ask them to do an endorsement while they are beta reading.
So if you're willing to do an endorsement to go at the front of the book, can you do itnow?
And the third one is get their address because you're going to be sending them a free copyof the book when it's published to say thank you.
(29:01):
And if you do all those three things in one go, you won't have to do them in three goes,which is a lot more relational and a lot easier.
So I did a beta read of a book recently.
and I wondered if they were going to ask me to endorse it, but they didn't say, so Ididn't write an endorsement.
(29:26):
And now I've been asked to write an endorsement and now I can't remember what I read.
No.
that's, yeah.
So now I've got to read it again.
goodness.
And I will, because I really like the person that it is.
But if they'd said to me, can you write an endorsement?
Even if they'd not then used it, it would have just been off my desk.
(29:48):
And now it's back on my desk.
But the address thing is really annoying at the end, because your publisher will say, so Ido recommend that you send a free copy, signed copy to all your beta readers.
And then one of you is going to go, we haven't got their addresses.
And then off you go again.
So if you can do all three things in one go, there are lots, there are other places whereyou can be a bit efficient about those things, even if you're thinking this could be
(30:17):
another year or two years or 18 months or whatever, because of course, once you've giventhe baby to the publisher, it's at least nine months before it comes out.
Sometimes with some publishers, it's a year.
But yeah, the more you can multitask, eh the easier it will be in the long run.
Yeah.
And actually I remember, think I was, I don't know if I was a beta reader or I was one ofthe readers for your human behind the coach.
(30:43):
And I remember Nat, this conversation is making me remember that you were very explicitwhat lens you wanted me to have as the reader when I was reading it.
And that also really helped me as the beta reader that you weren't asking me to, you know,give new models, theories.
You just were very specific.
This is the lens.
(31:04):
And so I'm guessing,
having different people that are covering different lenses, so all added up together, weget a really big lens, will be quite important.
and telling them that they don't have to do the other lenses.
So there will be spelling mistakes and grammar errors that your beta readers will see, butthat's not their job because the copy editor will deal with that.
(31:27):
So just saying, we know that there are probably some glitches.
That's not what you're reading for.
Because what you want them to do is you want to do their equivalent of speed reading andgive you...
We want them to be at your dining table or your kitchen table as you're having thisconversation with the reader and say, oh, it's really interesting because she haven't
(31:51):
talked about this.
Yeah, yeah, that's super helpful.
That's really helpful, yeah.
And I think the other, in terms of other people that we're wondering about is who isappropriate to be our forward.
And if the target, you know, back to the target audience, if this target audience is, Andysaid, is this 24 year old leader who's just stepped up, the forward needs to be written by
(32:21):
somebody who is credible to that uh target audience.
m
or if you were going to be radical, somebody who is that target audience.
Oh goodness me I love that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love that idea.
(32:43):
Oh yes.
mean that your foreword is written by somebody nobody's heard of and I love that.
Yeah.
I do too.
One of my books has a foreword by somebody who's quite well known.
I don't think it's added anything to the book.
(33:03):
And I said to the publisher and my co-writer, either I think this is a really good idea orit's a really bad idea.
And I don't think it's had any dis-benefit, but I don't think it's had any benefit either.
I don't think people read the forward unless they do.
And if you want the reader to read the forward, you want the forward to really captivatethe reader.
(33:26):
So if I was writing that book, I would want the forward to go.
Oh, I wish I'd had this book a year ago.
Lovely.
That's lovely thinking.
is brilliant.
unless you're gonna put on the cover with forward by very important person, which isanother marketing tool, which you can do.
(33:48):
But if you're not gonna do that.
people generally go straight in for the beginning of chapter one.
Yeah, okay.
And then we
think about books that I've read or bought.
Who wrote The Forward does not influence my decision to buy and most of the time I didn'teven read it.
And presumably we could still get a few testimonials of people who are well known thatwould go somewhere in the pages, whether it's on the back cover or in the couple of pages.
(34:16):
yeah, that's a lovely idea.
Hmm.
like to mix up in the endorsements because now I know about endorsements because if youread Simplified Coaching there are two endorsements because I didn't know that you had to
have them and the day the publisher asked for them we had a really short deadline so Irang up two people and said can you write an endorsement for this book and they went yeah
(34:38):
and those are the two endorsements and it says praise page and you've got these twoendorsements then lots of white space
Then when you look at other people's books, because I never read the endorsements, they'vegot pages.
And simplifying catching looks like nobody wants to read this book.
So for me now, my formula, if you want a formula, is some people people will have heard offrom around the world.
(35:03):
So I would pick people in different continents for that reason.
And then, well, my decision and you know,
make what I'm saying your own and do what you like, but my decision is, and a whole loadof people that nobody's ever heard of.
who are speaking genuinely from the heart that talk about hopefully the value the bookwill give them or has given them.
(35:24):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, nice.
I uh just say we're going to have to re-listen to this podcast in about nine months timewhen we're moving into these phases.
Yeah.
I was thinking I'll take notes and I thought, no, I don't need to take notes.
can just listen to the podcast later.
Lovely.
(35:47):
Yes.
Thank you.
we go.
In fact, we might do this as a top 10 tips about writing a book.
We might have that as a document.
Well, that would be cool, wouldn't it?
Yeah, that would be very good.
I'll do that with my friend Gemini.
Well, we were talking about chat GBT earlier actually in the role of AI and the role of AIin book writing.
(36:11):
How's what's been your experience of that?
The thing I'm using it for is if I get stuck on a paragraph and it's really complicatedand I can't untangle it I'll say simplify this paragraph and Then I'll build it back into
my own from the simplification, but it can often unlock that knotty bit You know what I doknitting and I if I can't undo a knot I'll say to someone else Can you undo this knot
(36:39):
because I've looked at the knot for so long that I can't undo it.
So I use it for that
I have a stream of consciousness document where I drop in ideas that I think need to be ina book and it just becomes pages and pages of
What seemed to be like a good idea when I dropped it in, but now I don't understand.
(37:01):
So I ask AI to say, what are the 10 points that you're making in this document?
And then that at least gives me some headings that I can then go back in and say, oh,well, that one must fit with that one.
And then if I don't agree, that's fine.
And the other one, I get it to help me think about the questions, the reflective questionsto ask at the end of the chapter, because...
(37:26):
If you think about it logically, I should always have been asking other people to do thereflective questions at the end of the chapter because they're from the reader and if we
write them from ourselves, we're writing it in the same way.
We're marking our own homework.
Yeah.
(37:47):
Yeah.
Again, I don't use exactly what they say, but it just, you know, give 10 possiblereflection questions out of this chapter.
That's a, that's a useful thing.
So I use it for untangling.
I use it for.
helping me to find myself when I'm lost and I help it to have a bit of an external view ofthe kind of reflection questions.
(38:16):
I think I found we was talking about it earlier and I think I agree with you certainly onthe untangling.
I hadn't thought of the reflection questions from the side of AI.
That's a really good build.
We've also found it helpful to give a bit of a critique.
know, read this, are we being practical enough?
And also, literally yesterday, it helped with a bit of a structure, how are we going tosort of get out these tools that we want leaders to play around with with their teams?
(38:44):
uh
We could write a whole book on tools and we don't want to write a whole book.
So the AI has been very helpful for giving a sort of framework, a couple of frameworks.
And again, a bit like you, we've then played around with which one and added a bit andthat's been really helpful.
So it's kind of like this lovely reference in the background when we need it.
But I don't think we used it at all in the beginning.
(39:04):
It's sort of coming more in now.
The other thing that we're doing with the current book, which is about neurodiversity isthat we, because we're all neurodivergent, we do a lot of our co-working dialogue like
this.
And then we get AI to do a summary of what we've said.
Yes.
(39:25):
Riverside does a top 10 quotes.
Huh.
That's nice.
Yeah.
is quite fun because it just helps us.
It's like having a fourth person in the room who is able to support us to get to be ournote taker.
(39:48):
So it's all genuinely our content, but we're just, instead of using people to fill some ofthe gaps, we're using AI a bit.
I found chapter GPT to be incredibly useful.
As Anna says, didn't really use it.
Of course, really didn't, it's really only burst into the, into our consciousness reallyin the last, probably less than 12 months.
(40:13):
So it's been a bit of a journey alongside it.
But I mean, I was writing, the weekend, writing a chapter on different types of teams atthe moment.
And I did two or three pages on different sorts of teams, intact teams.
cross border teams, et cetera, et cetera.
And then I just pumped that into ChatGPT and said, what I've been missing.
And it said, oh, nice comprehensive list.
(40:34):
You might want to talk about scrums.
thought, oh, that's a point.
I don't really think that's scrums.
So said, tell me about scrums.
So it talked me about scrums.
And then it then wrote a short paragraph on scrums that it included in.
So again, it's my work, but it's informed by ChatGPT.
So I find it incredibly useful.
And you'd have only got that if one of your beta readers knew about scrums.
(41:00):
Yeah, there we go.
And if scrums are outside of the kind of tribes that you know people in, you might neverhave got that.
Yeah.
And we also, and I both love the work of Nancy Klein and Time to Think.
And one of the one of our other learnings has been we've had thinking sessions with eachother, thinking pairs, where we're holding the space for the other person to just think in
(41:27):
waves.
And then another wave comes and another wave comes without interruption.
And we've recorded that conversation.
And then we've said to chat GBT afterwards, what have been the themes that have come out?
And then it just means we can be like super present with each other because we're nottrying to figure out what the other one's saying that we need to capture.
Lovely.
Well thank you for coming to the Coaching Inn and showing the inside of your book writingprocess.
(41:53):
Well, thank you for inviting us.
And also thank you for getting us in on this, because for the listeners, shared herjourney right at the beginning, which gave us the impetus to get going and to find a
publisher.
so that really, Claire, you've played an instrumental role in getting us off the ground.
And so it's super special to be back with you a year and a half later, uh halfway throughhopefully the book.
(42:19):
Yeah, who knows, maybe we'll inspire somebody along the way.
I hope you will.
think there's a real need for practical stuff that's written in a way that peopleunderstand.
And when you're thinking about an international audience, so we have listeners in 128countries and people from around the world who, where English may not be their first or
(42:42):
second or even third language have said to me, we like your book because we understand it.
Because it's written.
in spoken English.
And that's the gift that you're bringing to the world.
Thank you.
Yes.
Thank you.
feels like big shoes to fill now.
(43:04):
I feel I'm gonna have to go back into part one, back through it again.
It's been put to bed, remember.
It's been to bed.
Not allowed to.
uh
thought of a beta reader for you in India.
That'd
would be wonderful.
Yeah, it never occurred to me to seek beta readers anywhere but the UK.
(43:25):
But I mean, that's just such an obvious and brilliant idea.
And living in Germany, I know what it's like to not understand all the time and also todeal with Germans who are then trying to speak English.
But I hadn't really kind of made the connection with the book.
So thank you for that challenge, Claire.
It's great.
Yeah.
your readers do not want to be reading with Google Translate on the side.
(43:49):
And even when there are words that they don't understand, they want to get the gist.
So when I read things in Spanish, my Spanish is improving, it's not great.
If I know that this thing I'm reading is about food,
then I can fill the gaps in for the words that I don't understand because it doesn'tactually, the words I don't understand probably don't matter.
(44:13):
um But that's because I'm reading stuff that's straight written in a fairlystraightforward way.
I wouldn't read a university, book in a university library because that I wouldn'tunderstand.
Yeah.
It's how we learn to speak, isn't it, as children?
Yeah.
And I think we certainly want this to be inclusive.
And maybe that's something we need to even say, Andy, is one of our, some of ourintentions upfront, which we haven't actually named.
(44:42):
So that will also help you with your beta readers.
So if people want to talk to you or indeed be a beta reader in another part of the world,how do they?
Yeah.
stories of new leaders who've stepped up.
What's worked, what hasn't worked.
We'd love to hear from you.
(45:03):
Hmm?
very much so
So how do they contact you?
Well, why don't we put our email addresses on, give you the email addresses in the shownotes.
OK .
we'd love to for anybody.
There you are listeners.
There's your challenge.
Contact Anna and Andy if you've got something to offer or a question that you want them toaddress in the book.
(45:27):
And thank you so much for coming to The Coaching Inn.
It's a real pleasure being with you.
Thank you.
Thanks for inviting us.
yeah you need to have written it before I'm dead and gone so we can have you back foranother episode
We'd love to.
We'd take the challenge on.
Yeah, next year, next year.
(45:48):
Thank you Anna, thank you Andy and thank you all for listening.
We'll be back next week.
Bye bye.
Bye.
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