September 17, 2025 • 36 mins
In this episode of The Coaching Inn, host Claire Pedrick welcomes Fran Cormack who shares his journey to coaching from West Yorkshire to Australia. Fran discusses his transition from traditional project management to embracing Agile methodologies, highlighting the importance of unlearning and adapting to new ways of working. He talks about the challenges and rewards of becoming a coach and the backwards bike video: https://youtu.be/MFzDaBzBlL0?si=-eFf9QdO7tHaQsdc
Fran's story is one of resilience and curiosity, as he navigates the complexities of coaching and the ever-evolving landscape of Agile practices. You will gain valuable perspectives on the significance of continuous learning and the impact of coaching on personal and professional growth.
Don't forget to subscribe to The Coaching Inn for more inspiring stories and insights from industry leaders. #AgileJourney #CoachingLife
Contact:
- Contact Fran through Linked In linkedin.com/in/fran-cormack-icf-acc-a605624
- 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:
- Book Corner with Kelly Drewery and Nathan Whitbread
Keywords:
Agile coaching, Fran Cormack, Yorkshire, Australia, career transformation, project management, self-organization, leadership, unlearning, continuous learning, coaching insights, Agile methodologies, professional growth, coaching journey, industry leaders, personal development, Agile practices, coaching success, career journey, transformative potential
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 a reminder to subscribe or follow if you want to getevery episode and check out our sub stack inside The Coaching Inn.
Today's guest is someone I have talked to a lot on social media on LinkedIn.
(00:36):
And this is Fran Cormack from Australia.
So my biggest surprise last week was...
We've arranged this talk for ages and ages and we need to talk.
And I heard you Fran for the first time on a video on LinkedIn and you're not Australian.
I did wonder whether you knew I was a Yorkshireman or not.
(00:59):
surprise that was!
Welcome to the Coaching Inn!
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yes.
I see a lot of your guests come on the show and I saw recently you've had a series withOscar Trimbole who is another, I've connected with Oscar and a few things over here in
Australia.
And I did wonder, if Clare North's I've got a West York accent.
(01:21):
No, she doesn't.
She does now.
She does now, yeah.
Yeah, what a delight.
So tell us a little bit about your journey into coaching, and into Australia.
Yeah.
Yes.
Australia.
I moved to Australia in 2012.
So this is now what is it now?
(01:43):
2025, isn't it?
So it's 13 years ago and I moved just for a change, change of scene.
I moved to Sydney and just thought, well, I've been on a backpacking trip for a year in94.
So quite a long time ago now.
And I've been on many holidays since from the UK to Australia.
And somebody at work once said to me,
in Halifax, West Yorkshire.
(02:03):
Why don't you just go live there?
And I thought, that's quite a good idea.
So I went through a very lengthy process.
was two years end to end to get a skilled visa.
And I came as a project manager.
So a lot of my background in the UK was for the Halifax Building Society, starting thereat 17 on the counters in Brighouse, the local branch, and ended up being there for about
(02:27):
17 years, I think.
Moved to Australia in 2012, moved to Sydney and I was doing the same kind of work, projectmanagement, program management.
And the back end of my stay in Sydney, which was around, oh, holy binkler, around 2000,yeah, around 2000, um moved into something called Agile.
(02:51):
So yeah, I don't know when I talk to people who's familiar with Agile ways of working andwho isn't, but I became.
By pure chance, I was contracting for an investment bank as a program manager.
They're putting consultants.
We're going to now change our way of working and be more self-organized.
It's called Agile.
Will you be the scrum master?
Which is kind of like a team coach in that world.
(03:12):
So I fell into it and did that for a couple of years.
Ended up leaving Sydney to go traveling.
This was planned.
The idea was to go traveling around the world.
And we saved up for a couple of years, me and my wife.
And when we'd packed up their apartment, packed in jobs.
The week we left Sydney, we had two nights top over in Perth.
It was March 2020, March 2020, literally.
(03:36):
We got here, I think on Sunday night, we had an Airbnb booked and then that week all theborders closed here and where we were headed, which was Singapore, Malaysia and Southeast
Asia.
So we thought we'll stay in Perth for a few weeks, maybe a few months and we bouncedaround a few Airbnbs and COVID never went.
So he got somewhere to live.
(03:58):
And whilst I was an agile coach, the coach side of things always threw me.
So was thinking, there's not much coaching going on.
I was working with the teams.
I was doing a lot of facilitation, a lot of training and mentoring.
And then I was working with the senior leaders in the afternoon and I was thinking, butI'm not coaching anybody.
So I decided when I was here in Perth, I was going to investigate what coaching was.
(04:21):
And because it was the pandemic, the training school that I chose is based out of Sydney.
And they transferred everything to online.
So I ended up doing the level one, two and three in the years that I've been in Perth,which is organizational executive leadership type coaching, which was my entry into it.
And I suddenly realized what coaching really was.
(04:44):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow, what a journey.
So just for the benefit of listeners who don't know what Agile is, can you just give us akind of top line?
Yeah, so most of my career was in what I would call command and control.
So a lot of organizations, the way they're structured based on the industrial revolutionand all through the 1900s, kind of based on the military leader at the top big pyramid.
(05:09):
And the bosses tell the people what to do.
So command and control back at early 2000s, there's a group of gentlemen, actually, but inAmerica decided there's got to be a better way of working.
And they came up with this philosophy and they couldn't think of a
better name, they just called it Agile.
So under that philosophy, a number of frameworks emerged, one of which was called Scrum,which is actually after the game of rugby.
(05:33):
All the team huddled together and together they move up the pitch.
So the idea is, headline is, you move to more self-organising teams and the leaders inthose organisations become more like coaches, more coach-like, leader as coach, and the
teams are more self-organising.
And an Agile coach or Scrum master is the person
I would call the team coach is in there helping these teams transition to it's actuallyquite a big transition.
(05:58):
People think just tell a team now they're self-organizing, but it's a skill you have tolearn.
You've got to unlearn decades of how you've worked in the past.
So that's kind of what agile is.
And there's lots of flavors of agile.
Ah, so interesting.
And there's so much unlearning in the world, isn't there?
That's what I discovered and that's what I continue to discover.
(06:19):
My journey as a coach is for most of us, the trick is how do you unlearn?
So we learn skills.
There's a great video that I like to share with leaders.
I talk about this.
The video is on YouTube.
can't remember the name exactly, but it's a gentleman who takes a bicycle push bike and heis an engineer and he does it so that the steering wheel, when you move it one way, the
(06:43):
wheel moves the other.
vice versa.
And it takes it around the world doing experiments with people saying, you know, can youride this bike 10 meters?
And people think, obviously I can, it's really easy.
But it proves they can't because your brain is so used to turning your wheel and it'sgoing the opposite direction.
And the message in the video that he shares is it takes you a long time.
(07:05):
can eventually.
It takes you a lot of time of deliberate practice to unlearn the behaviors that you'velearned because they're so ingrained, aren't they, in our brains.
That's such an interesting image, isn't it, Fran?
Because actually, as you're saying that...
Once you've learnt to ride a bike, you kind of think it's easy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(07:26):
And you don't really think it's hardwired.
Except, do you?
You just think, yeah.
ride a bike now yeah and the interesting thing Claire is on the video it's quite a shortvideo but at the end he then says now I'm going to go back to a normal bike and he can't
for the short period he can't ride a normal bike because his brain is being rewired to thethe opposite thing happens when I do this with the steering wheels so he has to relearn to
(07:55):
ride a normal bike
That's why my friend Margaret says that when you go to Europe from the UK you should hirean automatic.
Yes, that's interesting.
In Australia, you'll struggle to find a manual.
Every car, because we don't have a car here, we've always lived in cities, but we hirecars because we go spend a lot of time in wine regions here.
(08:18):
We've got very good wine in Margaret River.
All the cars are manual.
But when we come to England and hire a car and see family, it's always a manual.
So it's automatic here and manual.
So again, we're switching back between the two all the time.
Yeah.
We've just been on holiday and uh my brother hired the cars and he hired manual and Idrive an automatic now at home, although our camper van is manual.
(08:42):
But yeah.
So to go to the other side of the road and be changing gear and be changing gear with theother hand was really what you're describing about, about moving towards a coaching style,
isn't it?
Yeah, it's difficult, isn't it?
It's as simple as you move apartments.
We moved apartments recently, so we've got things in different places of the kitchen.
(09:04):
I keep going to the right hand side of the kitchen to get a spoon out of the drawer tomake a cup of tea.
And that's where the bin is.
The spoons were on the other side in this new apartment.
And we've been here three months.
I still go to the right hand side as soon as I go look for a spoon.
My brain is still taking me there.
It's fascinating.
Yeah, and you're not doing anything else.
(09:24):
No, just looking for a spoon.
Whereas at work, we're doing a hundred million other things, aren't we, when we're tryingto unlearn and do something different?
That's so interesting.
we don't have the time even to stop and think about the things, we?
No.
Can I just go out to your story?
What was the question that opened it all up for you?
(09:54):
think the question might have been, and still remains, I think, why do people do thethings they do?
Even now, human beings are fascinating and that's why I love this work.
I'm fairly new to the work, so my coach training didn't start until November 2020.
So I'm only five years into this journey, which is fascinating.
(10:17):
But why do people do the things that they do?
And it's just, yeah, it just amazes me.
We're all so unique.
There's eight billion of us.
We've all got different origin stories.
None of us are rational and we all do different things.
Why do people do that, I wonder?
(10:39):
I think that's it for me, trying to better understand human beings.
So that was about other people.
What was the question for you?
The question about Fran.
Hmm.
Well, think the question, the existential question, I think, was even before I decided Iwanted to look into coaching.
(11:01):
If I look back to maybe three, four, five years into my Australian adventure in Sydney,doing project and program management for a number of companies, I was a contractor.
So I was doing maybe one year, two years at each place of moving on.
And just thought, am I going to do this for the rest of my career?
(11:21):
So I wasn't enjoying it at that point.
Because it was in the, these hierarchical organizations, it was very much command andcontrol.
And it was very much the role I was doing as a project manager.
was very much just fill a status report in, fill a risk and issue login, fill documentsin, update steering committees on milestones.
(11:42):
And I was just thinking, wow, I've this for long time and it's not fulfilling.
What else can I do?
It must be something else I can do.
So the question probably Claire is, was.
How do I want to spend the next chapter?
was at that time maybe 45, 46, been in Australia, moved to Australia when I was 40.
(12:06):
And I just thought, I can't do this until I retire.
This has got to be something else.
And it was by chance falling into the agile world, which wasn't a purposeful move.
was a, one day I was a project manager and my line manager at the time, boss, if you will.
He was more coach like than a boss, but he said, we're moving to agile.
(12:27):
Will you be the scrum master?
I said, absolutely.
I don't know what it is.
If you keep paying me the same day rate, I'll come in tomorrow and be called a scrummaster.
So then I shadowed these, these consultants who came in, I shadowed them, the trainingcourses about around what agile was and found, wow, this is a great, great way of working.
(12:47):
I eventually went to work for the consultancy, became an agile consultant and then
going to work with clients and it was the client working with the clients where I startedthinking, I'm working with the teams in the morning.
They're really absorbing this new way of working.
seem to be enjoying it.
And then I'm talking to the leaders in the afternoon around the direction and strategy andthe vision they've got.
(13:11):
But I'm kind of, I'm a bit too one-dimensional in these conversations.
I have nothing much to offer them in terms of any coaching skills because that's why Ithought.
I want to go traveling, come back and learn to be a coach.
I didn't actually get very far on the travel, learned to be a coach.
We did in 2022.
(13:35):
We did actually get off and do a year's I went there on the world.
Then we came back to Perth.
So I'll be back in Perth.
And I've picked up some more training constellations as an example, since I've been backand just kind of broadening the range of experience that I'm having.
with experienced coaches.
(13:55):
Nice.
So if you're listening to this episode, dog walking, I do recommend that you check Franout on LinkedIn because I want to ask you, where did you learn to do such amazing flip
charts?
You've got that beautiful picture behind you.
Yeah, this is I'm piloting a new workshop.
I it last week for the first time, just an hour.
(14:17):
The power of the pause.
So having an hour out for people who don't want to get this hour out and give them somereally simple skills, tools, techniques they can use immediately to slow themselves down.
Things as coaches we're very familiar with.
A lot of people in organizations less familiar.
So that's kind of what that's for.
When I do workshops.
(14:39):
I'll rewind.
I'll answer your question.
be easier.
So just before we left, yeah, just I get very excited by all this Clare and I'm on thecoaching in 3D coaching.
I've seen people come to this podcast and yes, I'm very privileged to be here.
So yeah, yeah, exactly.
(15:02):
I was going to celebrate today because I know you're on Duolingo and today I got my 700day streak.
I know you're on 800 and something, but I think 700 is quite
I just got 700 today, so yeah, thank you.
So just before I left Sydney in 2020, I took a two day training course on a technique thatteaches you the skills for things like this behind me.
(15:30):
Now, I can't draw.
I'm not very artistic.
People don't believe that, but I can't, if you said draw a cat, draw a dog, I wouldn't beable to draw a dog or a cat.
What this technique does is it gives you the
Basic shapes gives you the visual alphabet.
And most of what I draw, apart from some of the icons, you see a pen behind me, but mostof what I draw, you'll notice are very simple shapes made up of either triangles, circles,
(16:01):
squares or clouds.
I use color and then I use a shading to make it look like it's a drop shade, but it's atechnique.
So I'm following a technique when I do it.
So it's not no artistry that I've got going on.
But what found was people really loved the posters.
And since I did that, it changed the way I facilitate.
(16:23):
I do a lot of facilitation as well, as well as coaching.
And now when I facilitate, I did one fairly recently for a client here in Perth.
It was a full day leadership workshop and I kept getting asked for the agenda.
And I was saying to them, I'm not going to do you an agenda.
So don't know how the day is going to go.
We worked through what the objectives wanted to be, uh what the sponsor wanted to get outof the day.
(16:44):
I was very clear on that.
said, we're going to go on a journey and we'll get to that.
said, but trust me, you won't need an agenda.
So I just created lots of slides, lots of flip charts for lots of activities.
So at the start of the day, we did a liberating structure activity to get peopleconnected.
I did a constellation activity as part of that.
(17:07):
I did a world cafe.
So it was the first time they'd experienced a world cafe, did a world cafe for them.
But everything was flip charted around the room.
And there was no PowerPoint slide.
People said, where do want to plug your laptop?
I had no PowerPoint slides.
Yeah, so I just love this.
I do this and I also do it on an iPad with an Apple pencil as well.
(17:27):
Yeah, yeah.
We don't we haven't used PowerPoint for years and it's extraordinary how people engagedifferently.
I think, eh yeah, so I have a technical question.
Do you do you do it in a notebook or on a piece of paper first?
(17:48):
Or do you do you just go onto a blank sheet and that's the final one?
Where?
Yeah, I do sometimes I used to when I was doing some for that big investment bank Imentioned, they wanted some thought me to run a workshop and I thought it's very it's a
(18:11):
very buttoned up investment bank.
It's called the Millionaire's Factory.
ah Will they go for something like this?
And I thought rather than do a full PowerPoint, I thought I'd just draw some small ones ina notepad.
Check this out on YouTube team.
We're at 18 minutes.
lovely hot air balloon.
(18:32):
Nice.
Ooh, lovely.
Yeah.
just said to them what would success look like?
a nice race of uh hurdles.
hurdles.
Yeah.
So I just did that first of all and said to them, I'm thinking of doing this for the day.
(18:53):
What do you think?
we love it.
So then given permission, I just went to the big ones there and I've got a set of fancypens and just just draw it.
So was a buying in.
You were prepping for buying in purposes rather than for I need to have drawn it oncebefore I can draw it up there.
Genius.
and in purposes because of the, you work with different clients and you understand whatkind of client they are.
(19:19):
And this, this is a very kind of very serious buttoned up client.
The CEO owns millions of dollars.
And I thought, would they go for hand drawn pictures?
And actually they did.
They loved it.
And since then, I try and avoid any PowerPoint things if I'm in room.
A lot of the stuff I do is in room, especially in Perth.
(19:41):
So, yeah, I just just love drawing them on the flip chart there behind people on theYouTube.
We'll see.
those ones.
Yeah, I was I was doing a short workshop recently where I saw transfer some of the skillsof what I do into into this flip chat from the busy, busy professionals.
And people were saying, what are those ones down there?
(20:03):
And I started unraveling them and people.
we could do with that one for the team that I am working with.
that one, because it's on.
A lot of things on agile, there's context switching, impacts of context switching, there'sall sorts of different things, but I can reuse those ones and just pull them out and stick
them up again.
So yeah, you can see them behind me there.
(20:23):
Yeah.
So I love how you're bringing all sorts of things together, Fran.
Your project management, your...
Shape drawing.
Because now you've kind of told me I can't tell you artist.
Although I think it is artistic.
(20:45):
And then the constellations.
So what impact did the constellations training have on your practice?
quite profound.
I don't even know how I found it.
People ask now, how did you get into this?
I don't know how I found it.
Somehow I got onto the fact that John Whittington was coming to Australia for the veryfirst time.
(21:08):
It was coming to Sydney and I don't know who put me onto it.
I decided I'm going to join.
It was Fundamentals One and I flew to Sydney and we had three days in the moon with Johnand did Fundamentals One.
And I just thought this is so different.
I had done nothing.
My background
Very boring, worked for a bank, did lots of traveling, but my work was quite onedimensional.
(21:29):
And I was in the room with these people who were coaches, they were psychotherapists, theywere all sorts of, so much experience.
And the three days felt profound.
I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, because I was thought, this is so differentto anything I've ever, it felt like, felt to me like bit like drama.
And I've since learned about Virginia Satieh and psychodrama and Jacob Moreno and
(21:52):
all that kind of stuff as I'm getting more into this world.
But at the time, I was like, wow, I'm just, I'm just a lad from Halifax, West Yorkshire.
Didn't grow up with this kind of stuff.
And so it was quite profound.
And I've since gone back to fundamentals level two and level three.
John came back twice more and I've done all three levels now.
(22:12):
And the practitioner program has just started.
So I'm on the practitioner now and yeah, so that's a, it's quite a long journey.
We've got,
five-day residential, not until Fed next year, but we've got bits throughout the year.
um, so it changed my practice.
did it change my practice?
It's, it's very different to ICF coaching.
(22:36):
I've also done right the way through to practitioner.
Yeah, brilliant.
Brilliant.
I'm on that journey now, practitioner.
so it changed because coaching for me was fairly new, 2020 ICF style of coaching, startwith grow model and you work through.
I did three levels with the IECL in Sydney and that was fantastic.
And this was another branch of being with somebody.
(23:00):
And it was the being with somebody that I thought, I can just slow down.
John talks about leaning out rather than leaning in.
You might offer systemic sentences rather than questions and that's all very different andI was on I was on the fundamentals too in Sydney and I was saying to in the one of the
little groups who were playing with it and I said to one of the ladies there Do you dothis with corporate clients because I can't imagine how I do this and she said yeah Just
(23:28):
start doing it, but don't explain don't talk about constellations.
Don't use the language etc So I came back that was level two so that may be a year and ahalf ago now
I just started doing it with teams.
Right.
Just stand up, just have a wander around.
Don't worry too much.
When you're ready, you'll see in the corner, I've got three flip charts in a triangle withthree words that are relevant to this team.
(23:53):
When you're ready, just stand where you feels true.
So I just started doing it.
And the response was, wow, what's kind of what's happening here?
This is really good, really powerful stuff.
And since then, I've just used every opportunity to practice with it.
was at ICF Western Australia branch recently.
I was invited to be on the panel.
(24:14):
There's me, Jane Porter and a chap, Padgett, a local chap Padgett from here.
And I was asked, what, what, will you bring?
I said, I can do a short constellation demonstration if you like.
So in a room in Perth, quite a big room, too many people.
So I slipped me in half and I did the three triangle, structural constellation.
(24:35):
And again.
The people are really engaged, buying into it, saying, this feels like a really easyaccess point to get the team to know each other better.
It's just, yeah, so now I'm like, I don't know how this is working so, I don't even knowwhat it's doing, but it's doing something and I like it.
Yeah, and you're describing, you're talking about doing something normally and doingsomething with normal words.
(25:05):
And that's so important, I think, in all of our work.
I would want to challenge you about it being different from ICF coaching because I wouldlove to talk to you in 18 months' time because I think you'll discover that they've met
each other.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe.
Yeah.
(25:26):
I mean, it's completely influenced the way I do everything.
Even though...
you probably wouldn't...
you might not notice that explicitly but you might well notice it.
So as somebody who when you finish the practitioner you might go yeah I can see that Iwonder whether that's she's drawing on xyz but there's something isn't there about
(25:52):
becoming ourselves and making things our own in service of the people we work with but Imean it's yeah I notice some
I notice hidden things much, much quicker.
I mean, obviously there are lots of hidden things that I don't notice.
(26:17):
But yeah, those kinds of things where you think, oh yeah, there's an unfinished somethingI can hear here.
But again, I wouldn't say to people, this is constellating.
Yeah, absolutely.
it's just part of the journey for me and the joy for me, Claire, of bringing thesedifferent things in is it then exposes me to other things that I can read and learn about.
(26:42):
And.
Yeah, I mean, I love reading anyway, I love reading books m and I just into this worldnow.
You do notice so much more.
I hear you talk about noticing the moment of noticing is important.
You see that you notice when somebody's.
either noticed or not noticed.
And with this work, I do find I'm noticing a lot more.
(27:05):
And I'm conscious of people's body language, not that I'm trying to read body language,but you're more conscious of how they carry themselves.
I'm conscious of where people stand and where they move to.
It's just, I'm just more aware of these things.
And some of it I might use as, oh, that's data.
Some of it I might let go, but I'm noticing and thinking, hmm, I wonder what that's about.
(27:27):
Yeah, it just makes me so much more aware, I think, and that's what it is, so much moreaware.
I love that you talk about your deep learning so very lightly.
It's refreshing.
uh
Yeah, yeah, I just I just love learning.
know these.
There's a great book I've read called Simplifying Coaching.
(27:50):
Yeah, so thank you, Claire, for that.
That kind of opened my eyes a lot.
And whilst I'm a fairly new coach, I think in terms of duration, I'm already learning fromthe way more experienced coaches like yourself and others and learning that.
It's not about doing more.
And it's not about tools per se.
(28:13):
I know you've got a perspective on tools.
It's not about tools per se.
And it's not about courses per se.
It's just about being human.
I really, that really talks to me about I'm just reading Carl Rogers, one of Carl Rogersbooks at the moment.
It's about 60 % through and it's one towards the end of his life where he's kind ofsummarizing his coot.
(28:34):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sorry, that was...there was a clue there.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's kind of summarizing a lot of things.
But he was saying way back when, wasn't it, it's just being with people, empathy andlistening and hearing and witnessing.
And the person will change just through that.
(28:54):
And I think being in the same conversation.
So I do technical check-ins with coaches.
I love it.
So they'll send a recording of them being normal, doing what they normally do, not aspecial one, just a normal recording.
And then they listen to it and I listen to it.
m
(29:16):
Almost always what I notice is that their skill of asking questions is extraordinary,their skill of bringing out awareness in the other person, the skill of knowing when not
to speak, the skill of connection and everything.
But what I almost always notice is that they're not in the same conversation because theydidn't do the right sizing at the beginning.
(29:42):
didn't agree.
either that they didn't know what they were doing or that they have agreed what they'redoing.
It's really, really interesting.
Yeah, so yeah, I've got a reignited passion for right sizing.
Yeah, right.
So I believe so from reading the draft chapter that you sent across.
(30:06):
Yeah, right.
And that's very true.
And when I was going through my ICF ACC renewal fairly recently, you had to do the 10hours of mentoring.
And that was really my growth edge.
Played back to me by the mentor coaches was in the contracting at the start.
Not every time was I having, were we having me and the thinker the same conversation.
(30:30):
because I had a tendency to hear, think, well, I were hearing them, yes, this, and I heardthat.
And then I might say, so then, Claire, what I hear is you're feeling stuck here.
And I kind of led you down that path rather than saying to you, you've said quite a bitthere, Claire, where would you like to start?
exactly.
I think I think that in simplifying coaching, I talked about the right sizing being likethe jog before the run.
(30:58):
Hmm.
Get your legs warmed up.
yeah, and I don't think it is, because that's very linear.
And actually what I'm working on now in our comms guy, Jack, is going to build me this outof a 3D printer.
I'm very excited.
3D printers, I still don't know how they work and I do Google it, I just don't understandthem.
(31:18):
this, he thinks, he thinks that he can make my crazy thought into a real thing that I canhold.
I mean, I just, it feels like surreal, futuristic.
Anyway, he says he can do it.
But there's something about the spiral.
So there's something in the right sizing about, about we, we circle.
(31:39):
And as we circle, we get closer to the heart of the thing.
And
It's been a really interesting journey because I ran some ideas past a supervision groupthat I run and one of them said, yeah, really interesting ideas.
What I've done is I've drawn it into a picture and she'd drawn it into a triangle with abig top and a pointy bottom.
(32:04):
And I looked at it and I thought, it's not that.
But I only knew it wasn't that because she'd done it.
So she'd moved it from a line, effectively, to a triangle and the triangle wasn't
Yes, enough.
So it's really, really fascinating.
Yeah, that brings to mind, it's on a webinar last week on team coaching with Sebastian Foxfrom the UK.
(32:26):
There's a lot of research on team coaching.
He was talking through his most recent paper about emergence.
And this was in the lens of team coaching, but for me, it's the same as one-to-onecoaching.
In that, you've got the explicit and the implicit.
And his model is like the double elix.
You start with the explicit and you start talking and then the implicit starts emergingout.
(32:47):
And then you go back around again with what's now explicit, start talking some more, somemore in things that are hidden and implicit start coming out again.
And it kind of has his as a double helix as things emerge in the conversation.
I am really fascinated because when I was at university in Reading, the stairs in thechemistry building where I had my lectures, I didn't do chemistry, but that's where I had
(33:13):
my lectures, were a double helix.
So when we went to lectures, we were in the double helix.
And the thing that was most interesting about the inside it was that you couldn't see thepeople coming down when you were going up.
Yeah, that's the explicit and the implicit.
So that's, yeah, I'm not very good at theoretical theories, but as you were describingthat, I got myself inside the stairs.
(33:44):
I'll probably have a dream.
I'll have a dream tonight that I didn't finish my exam, but anyway, never mind.
We can tolerate that.
as well.
I've started trying to write my dreams down because I think dreams are fascinating.
Trying to and I get snippets and certain themes come through.
Sometimes I just can't text on the phone.
I just can't somehow text and that's a recurring one.
(34:07):
I wonder whether there's a message in there.
I'm not.
Yeah, dreams are fascinating.
I think everything's fascinating.
We talked about dreams in a supervision group the other day, actually.
Yeah, really interesting.
I could talk to you all day, all night, if you're in Australia.
just, I just have all these, all these things that I just want to try and explore.
(34:30):
Yeah, with different, different coaches and different techniques.
did, I did a two day introduction to existential coaching as well with Yannick Jacob,who's now in Berlin and just the different types of conversations that you have and
different books that you then get to read about instantly.
How might this fit into my coaching practice?
(34:53):
But you talked about meaning and purpose right at the beginning of the conversation,didn't you, in a very, what I now know to be a Fran way.
What's the fun with?
Well, it was just very straightforward, but you were talking about meaning and purposewhen you were saying why to people.
Yeah.
uh
ah So, well, thank you so much for coming to The Coaching Inn.
(35:16):
Where does time go?
Unbelievable.
I know, a delight to have you here.
I'll put your LinkedIn profile in the show notes.
And are you happy for people to contact you?
Yes, absolutely.
LinkedIn is where I hang out.
I love making new connections and learning from other people.
So the more people I can learn from, the better.
(35:37):
So Fran Cormack from West Yorkshire in Perth, Australia.
Thank you for coming to The Coaching Inn.
Thank you, thank you, been a pleasure.
And thank you everyone for listening.
Bye bye.
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn.
I'm your host, Claire Pedrick, and a reminder to subscribe or follow if you want to getevery episode and check out our sub stack inside The Coaching Inn.
Today's guest is someone I have talked to a lot on social media on LinkedIn.
(00:36):
And this is Fran Cormack from Australia.
So my biggest surprise last week was...
We've arranged this talk for ages and ages and we need to talk.
And I heard you Fran for the first time on a video on LinkedIn and you're not Australian.
I did wonder whether you knew I was a Yorkshireman or not.
(00:59):
surprise that was!
Welcome to the Coaching Inn!
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yes.
I see a lot of your guests come on the show and I saw recently you've had a series withOscar Trimbole who is another, I've connected with Oscar and a few things over here in
Australia.
And I did wonder, if Clare North's I've got a West York accent.
(01:21):
No, she doesn't.
She does now.
She does now, yeah.
Yeah, what a delight.
So tell us a little bit about your journey into coaching, and into Australia.
Yeah.
Yes.
Australia.
I moved to Australia in 2012.
So this is now what is it now?
(01:43):
2025, isn't it?
So it's 13 years ago and I moved just for a change, change of scene.
I moved to Sydney and just thought, well, I've been on a backpacking trip for a year in94.
So quite a long time ago now.
And I've been on many holidays since from the UK to Australia.
And somebody at work once said to me,
in Halifax, West Yorkshire.
(02:03):
Why don't you just go live there?
And I thought, that's quite a good idea.
So I went through a very lengthy process.
was two years end to end to get a skilled visa.
And I came as a project manager.
So a lot of my background in the UK was for the Halifax Building Society, starting thereat 17 on the counters in Brighouse, the local branch, and ended up being there for about
(02:27):
17 years, I think.
Moved to Australia in 2012, moved to Sydney and I was doing the same kind of work, projectmanagement, program management.
And the back end of my stay in Sydney, which was around, oh, holy binkler, around 2000,yeah, around 2000, um moved into something called Agile.
(02:51):
So yeah, I don't know when I talk to people who's familiar with Agile ways of working andwho isn't, but I became.
By pure chance, I was contracting for an investment bank as a program manager.
They're putting consultants.
We're going to now change our way of working and be more self-organized.
It's called Agile.
Will you be the scrum master?
Which is kind of like a team coach in that world.
(03:12):
So I fell into it and did that for a couple of years.
Ended up leaving Sydney to go traveling.
This was planned.
The idea was to go traveling around the world.
And we saved up for a couple of years, me and my wife.
And when we'd packed up their apartment, packed in jobs.
The week we left Sydney, we had two nights top over in Perth.
It was March 2020, March 2020, literally.
(03:36):
We got here, I think on Sunday night, we had an Airbnb booked and then that week all theborders closed here and where we were headed, which was Singapore, Malaysia and Southeast
Asia.
So we thought we'll stay in Perth for a few weeks, maybe a few months and we bouncedaround a few Airbnbs and COVID never went.
So he got somewhere to live.
(03:58):
And whilst I was an agile coach, the coach side of things always threw me.
So was thinking, there's not much coaching going on.
I was working with the teams.
I was doing a lot of facilitation, a lot of training and mentoring.
And then I was working with the senior leaders in the afternoon and I was thinking, butI'm not coaching anybody.
So I decided when I was here in Perth, I was going to investigate what coaching was.
(04:21):
And because it was the pandemic, the training school that I chose is based out of Sydney.
And they transferred everything to online.
So I ended up doing the level one, two and three in the years that I've been in Perth,which is organizational executive leadership type coaching, which was my entry into it.
And I suddenly realized what coaching really was.
(04:44):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow, what a journey.
So just for the benefit of listeners who don't know what Agile is, can you just give us akind of top line?
Yeah, so most of my career was in what I would call command and control.
So a lot of organizations, the way they're structured based on the industrial revolutionand all through the 1900s, kind of based on the military leader at the top big pyramid.
(05:09):
And the bosses tell the people what to do.
So command and control back at early 2000s, there's a group of gentlemen, actually, but inAmerica decided there's got to be a better way of working.
And they came up with this philosophy and they couldn't think of a
better name, they just called it Agile.
So under that philosophy, a number of frameworks emerged, one of which was called Scrum,which is actually after the game of rugby.
(05:33):
All the team huddled together and together they move up the pitch.
So the idea is, headline is, you move to more self-organising teams and the leaders inthose organisations become more like coaches, more coach-like, leader as coach, and the
teams are more self-organising.
And an Agile coach or Scrum master is the person
I would call the team coach is in there helping these teams transition to it's actuallyquite a big transition.
(05:58):
People think just tell a team now they're self-organizing, but it's a skill you have tolearn.
You've got to unlearn decades of how you've worked in the past.
So that's kind of what agile is.
And there's lots of flavors of agile.
Ah, so interesting.
And there's so much unlearning in the world, isn't there?
That's what I discovered and that's what I continue to discover.
(06:19):
My journey as a coach is for most of us, the trick is how do you unlearn?
So we learn skills.
There's a great video that I like to share with leaders.
I talk about this.
The video is on YouTube.
can't remember the name exactly, but it's a gentleman who takes a bicycle push bike and heis an engineer and he does it so that the steering wheel, when you move it one way, the
(06:43):
wheel moves the other.
vice versa.
And it takes it around the world doing experiments with people saying, you know, can youride this bike 10 meters?
And people think, obviously I can, it's really easy.
But it proves they can't because your brain is so used to turning your wheel and it'sgoing the opposite direction.
And the message in the video that he shares is it takes you a long time.
(07:05):
can eventually.
It takes you a lot of time of deliberate practice to unlearn the behaviors that you'velearned because they're so ingrained, aren't they, in our brains.
That's such an interesting image, isn't it, Fran?
Because actually, as you're saying that...
Once you've learnt to ride a bike, you kind of think it's easy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(07:26):
And you don't really think it's hardwired.
Except, do you?
You just think, yeah.
ride a bike now yeah and the interesting thing Claire is on the video it's quite a shortvideo but at the end he then says now I'm going to go back to a normal bike and he can't
for the short period he can't ride a normal bike because his brain is being rewired to thethe opposite thing happens when I do this with the steering wheels so he has to relearn to
(07:55):
ride a normal bike
That's why my friend Margaret says that when you go to Europe from the UK you should hirean automatic.
Yes, that's interesting.
In Australia, you'll struggle to find a manual.
Every car, because we don't have a car here, we've always lived in cities, but we hirecars because we go spend a lot of time in wine regions here.
(08:18):
We've got very good wine in Margaret River.
All the cars are manual.
But when we come to England and hire a car and see family, it's always a manual.
So it's automatic here and manual.
So again, we're switching back between the two all the time.
Yeah.
We've just been on holiday and uh my brother hired the cars and he hired manual and Idrive an automatic now at home, although our camper van is manual.
(08:42):
But yeah.
So to go to the other side of the road and be changing gear and be changing gear with theother hand was really what you're describing about, about moving towards a coaching style,
isn't it?
Yeah, it's difficult, isn't it?
It's as simple as you move apartments.
We moved apartments recently, so we've got things in different places of the kitchen.
(09:04):
I keep going to the right hand side of the kitchen to get a spoon out of the drawer tomake a cup of tea.
And that's where the bin is.
The spoons were on the other side in this new apartment.
And we've been here three months.
I still go to the right hand side as soon as I go look for a spoon.
My brain is still taking me there.
It's fascinating.
Yeah, and you're not doing anything else.
(09:24):
No, just looking for a spoon.
Whereas at work, we're doing a hundred million other things, aren't we, when we're tryingto unlearn and do something different?
That's so interesting.
we don't have the time even to stop and think about the things, we?
No.
Can I just go out to your story?
What was the question that opened it all up for you?
(09:54):
think the question might have been, and still remains, I think, why do people do thethings they do?
Even now, human beings are fascinating and that's why I love this work.
I'm fairly new to the work, so my coach training didn't start until November 2020.
So I'm only five years into this journey, which is fascinating.
(10:17):
But why do people do the things that they do?
And it's just, yeah, it just amazes me.
We're all so unique.
There's eight billion of us.
We've all got different origin stories.
None of us are rational and we all do different things.
Why do people do that, I wonder?
(10:39):
I think that's it for me, trying to better understand human beings.
So that was about other people.
What was the question for you?
The question about Fran.
Hmm.
Well, think the question, the existential question, I think, was even before I decided Iwanted to look into coaching.
(11:01):
If I look back to maybe three, four, five years into my Australian adventure in Sydney,doing project and program management for a number of companies, I was a contractor.
So I was doing maybe one year, two years at each place of moving on.
And just thought, am I going to do this for the rest of my career?
(11:21):
So I wasn't enjoying it at that point.
Because it was in the, these hierarchical organizations, it was very much command andcontrol.
And it was very much the role I was doing as a project manager.
was very much just fill a status report in, fill a risk and issue login, fill documentsin, update steering committees on milestones.
(11:42):
And I was just thinking, wow, I've this for long time and it's not fulfilling.
What else can I do?
It must be something else I can do.
So the question probably Claire is, was.
How do I want to spend the next chapter?
was at that time maybe 45, 46, been in Australia, moved to Australia when I was 40.
(12:06):
And I just thought, I can't do this until I retire.
This has got to be something else.
And it was by chance falling into the agile world, which wasn't a purposeful move.
was a, one day I was a project manager and my line manager at the time, boss, if you will.
He was more coach like than a boss, but he said, we're moving to agile.
(12:27):
Will you be the scrum master?
I said, absolutely.
I don't know what it is.
If you keep paying me the same day rate, I'll come in tomorrow and be called a scrummaster.
So then I shadowed these, these consultants who came in, I shadowed them, the trainingcourses about around what agile was and found, wow, this is a great, great way of working.
(12:47):
I eventually went to work for the consultancy, became an agile consultant and then
going to work with clients and it was the client working with the clients where I startedthinking, I'm working with the teams in the morning.
They're really absorbing this new way of working.
seem to be enjoying it.
And then I'm talking to the leaders in the afternoon around the direction and strategy andthe vision they've got.
(13:11):
But I'm kind of, I'm a bit too one-dimensional in these conversations.
I have nothing much to offer them in terms of any coaching skills because that's why Ithought.
I want to go traveling, come back and learn to be a coach.
I didn't actually get very far on the travel, learned to be a coach.
We did in 2022.
(13:35):
We did actually get off and do a year's I went there on the world.
Then we came back to Perth.
So I'll be back in Perth.
And I've picked up some more training constellations as an example, since I've been backand just kind of broadening the range of experience that I'm having.
with experienced coaches.
(13:55):
Nice.
So if you're listening to this episode, dog walking, I do recommend that you check Franout on LinkedIn because I want to ask you, where did you learn to do such amazing flip
charts?
You've got that beautiful picture behind you.
Yeah, this is I'm piloting a new workshop.
I it last week for the first time, just an hour.
(14:17):
The power of the pause.
So having an hour out for people who don't want to get this hour out and give them somereally simple skills, tools, techniques they can use immediately to slow themselves down.
Things as coaches we're very familiar with.
A lot of people in organizations less familiar.
So that's kind of what that's for.
When I do workshops.
(14:39):
I'll rewind.
I'll answer your question.
be easier.
So just before we left, yeah, just I get very excited by all this Clare and I'm on thecoaching in 3D coaching.
I've seen people come to this podcast and yes, I'm very privileged to be here.
So yeah, yeah, exactly.
(15:02):
I was going to celebrate today because I know you're on Duolingo and today I got my 700day streak.
I know you're on 800 and something, but I think 700 is quite
I just got 700 today, so yeah, thank you.
So just before I left Sydney in 2020, I took a two day training course on a technique thatteaches you the skills for things like this behind me.
(15:30):
Now, I can't draw.
I'm not very artistic.
People don't believe that, but I can't, if you said draw a cat, draw a dog, I wouldn't beable to draw a dog or a cat.
What this technique does is it gives you the
Basic shapes gives you the visual alphabet.
And most of what I draw, apart from some of the icons, you see a pen behind me, but mostof what I draw, you'll notice are very simple shapes made up of either triangles, circles,
(16:01):
squares or clouds.
I use color and then I use a shading to make it look like it's a drop shade, but it's atechnique.
So I'm following a technique when I do it.
So it's not no artistry that I've got going on.
But what found was people really loved the posters.
And since I did that, it changed the way I facilitate.
(16:23):
I do a lot of facilitation as well, as well as coaching.
And now when I facilitate, I did one fairly recently for a client here in Perth.
It was a full day leadership workshop and I kept getting asked for the agenda.
And I was saying to them, I'm not going to do you an agenda.
So don't know how the day is going to go.
We worked through what the objectives wanted to be, uh what the sponsor wanted to get outof the day.
(16:44):
I was very clear on that.
said, we're going to go on a journey and we'll get to that.
said, but trust me, you won't need an agenda.
So I just created lots of slides, lots of flip charts for lots of activities.
So at the start of the day, we did a liberating structure activity to get peopleconnected.
I did a constellation activity as part of that.
(17:07):
I did a world cafe.
So it was the first time they'd experienced a world cafe, did a world cafe for them.
But everything was flip charted around the room.
And there was no PowerPoint slide.
People said, where do want to plug your laptop?
I had no PowerPoint slides.
Yeah, so I just love this.
I do this and I also do it on an iPad with an Apple pencil as well.
(17:27):
Yeah, yeah.
We don't we haven't used PowerPoint for years and it's extraordinary how people engagedifferently.
I think, eh yeah, so I have a technical question.
Do you do you do it in a notebook or on a piece of paper first?
(17:48):
Or do you do you just go onto a blank sheet and that's the final one?
Where?
Yeah, I do sometimes I used to when I was doing some for that big investment bank Imentioned, they wanted some thought me to run a workshop and I thought it's very it's a
(18:11):
very buttoned up investment bank.
It's called the Millionaire's Factory.
ah Will they go for something like this?
And I thought rather than do a full PowerPoint, I thought I'd just draw some small ones ina notepad.
Check this out on YouTube team.
We're at 18 minutes.
lovely hot air balloon.
(18:32):
Nice.
Ooh, lovely.
Yeah.
just said to them what would success look like?
a nice race of uh hurdles.
hurdles.
Yeah.
So I just did that first of all and said to them, I'm thinking of doing this for the day.
(18:53):
What do you think?
we love it.
So then given permission, I just went to the big ones there and I've got a set of fancypens and just just draw it.
So was a buying in.
You were prepping for buying in purposes rather than for I need to have drawn it oncebefore I can draw it up there.
Genius.
and in purposes because of the, you work with different clients and you understand whatkind of client they are.
(19:19):
And this, this is a very kind of very serious buttoned up client.
The CEO owns millions of dollars.
And I thought, would they go for hand drawn pictures?
And actually they did.
They loved it.
And since then, I try and avoid any PowerPoint things if I'm in room.
A lot of the stuff I do is in room, especially in Perth.
(19:41):
So, yeah, I just just love drawing them on the flip chart there behind people on theYouTube.
We'll see.
those ones.
Yeah, I was I was doing a short workshop recently where I saw transfer some of the skillsof what I do into into this flip chat from the busy, busy professionals.
And people were saying, what are those ones down there?
(20:03):
And I started unraveling them and people.
we could do with that one for the team that I am working with.
that one, because it's on.
A lot of things on agile, there's context switching, impacts of context switching, there'sall sorts of different things, but I can reuse those ones and just pull them out and stick
them up again.
So yeah, you can see them behind me there.
(20:23):
Yeah.
So I love how you're bringing all sorts of things together, Fran.
Your project management, your...
Shape drawing.
Because now you've kind of told me I can't tell you artist.
Although I think it is artistic.
(20:45):
And then the constellations.
So what impact did the constellations training have on your practice?
quite profound.
I don't even know how I found it.
People ask now, how did you get into this?
I don't know how I found it.
Somehow I got onto the fact that John Whittington was coming to Australia for the veryfirst time.
(21:08):
It was coming to Sydney and I don't know who put me onto it.
I decided I'm going to join.
It was Fundamentals One and I flew to Sydney and we had three days in the moon with Johnand did Fundamentals One.
And I just thought this is so different.
I had done nothing.
My background
Very boring, worked for a bank, did lots of traveling, but my work was quite onedimensional.
(21:29):
And I was in the room with these people who were coaches, they were psychotherapists, theywere all sorts of, so much experience.
And the three days felt profound.
I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, because I was thought, this is so differentto anything I've ever, it felt like, felt to me like bit like drama.
And I've since learned about Virginia Satieh and psychodrama and Jacob Moreno and
(21:52):
all that kind of stuff as I'm getting more into this world.
But at the time, I was like, wow, I'm just, I'm just a lad from Halifax, West Yorkshire.
Didn't grow up with this kind of stuff.
And so it was quite profound.
And I've since gone back to fundamentals level two and level three.
John came back twice more and I've done all three levels now.
(22:12):
And the practitioner program has just started.
So I'm on the practitioner now and yeah, so that's a, it's quite a long journey.
We've got,
five-day residential, not until Fed next year, but we've got bits throughout the year.
um, so it changed my practice.
did it change my practice?
It's, it's very different to ICF coaching.
(22:36):
I've also done right the way through to practitioner.
Yeah, brilliant.
Brilliant.
I'm on that journey now, practitioner.
so it changed because coaching for me was fairly new, 2020 ICF style of coaching, startwith grow model and you work through.
I did three levels with the IECL in Sydney and that was fantastic.
And this was another branch of being with somebody.
(23:00):
And it was the being with somebody that I thought, I can just slow down.
John talks about leaning out rather than leaning in.
You might offer systemic sentences rather than questions and that's all very different andI was on I was on the fundamentals too in Sydney and I was saying to in the one of the
little groups who were playing with it and I said to one of the ladies there Do you dothis with corporate clients because I can't imagine how I do this and she said yeah Just
(23:28):
start doing it, but don't explain don't talk about constellations.
Don't use the language etc So I came back that was level two so that may be a year and ahalf ago now
I just started doing it with teams.
Right.
Just stand up, just have a wander around.
Don't worry too much.
When you're ready, you'll see in the corner, I've got three flip charts in a triangle withthree words that are relevant to this team.
(23:53):
When you're ready, just stand where you feels true.
So I just started doing it.
And the response was, wow, what's kind of what's happening here?
This is really good, really powerful stuff.
And since then, I've just used every opportunity to practice with it.
was at ICF Western Australia branch recently.
I was invited to be on the panel.
(24:14):
There's me, Jane Porter and a chap, Padgett, a local chap Padgett from here.
And I was asked, what, what, will you bring?
I said, I can do a short constellation demonstration if you like.
So in a room in Perth, quite a big room, too many people.
So I slipped me in half and I did the three triangle, structural constellation.
(24:35):
And again.
The people are really engaged, buying into it, saying, this feels like a really easyaccess point to get the team to know each other better.
It's just, yeah, so now I'm like, I don't know how this is working so, I don't even knowwhat it's doing, but it's doing something and I like it.
Yeah, and you're describing, you're talking about doing something normally and doingsomething with normal words.
(25:05):
And that's so important, I think, in all of our work.
I would want to challenge you about it being different from ICF coaching because I wouldlove to talk to you in 18 months' time because I think you'll discover that they've met
each other.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe.
Yeah.
(25:26):
I mean, it's completely influenced the way I do everything.
Even though...
you probably wouldn't...
you might not notice that explicitly but you might well notice it.
So as somebody who when you finish the practitioner you might go yeah I can see that Iwonder whether that's she's drawing on xyz but there's something isn't there about
(25:52):
becoming ourselves and making things our own in service of the people we work with but Imean it's yeah I notice some
I notice hidden things much, much quicker.
I mean, obviously there are lots of hidden things that I don't notice.
(26:17):
But yeah, those kinds of things where you think, oh yeah, there's an unfinished somethingI can hear here.
But again, I wouldn't say to people, this is constellating.
Yeah, absolutely.
it's just part of the journey for me and the joy for me, Claire, of bringing thesedifferent things in is it then exposes me to other things that I can read and learn about.
(26:42):
And.
Yeah, I mean, I love reading anyway, I love reading books m and I just into this worldnow.
You do notice so much more.
I hear you talk about noticing the moment of noticing is important.
You see that you notice when somebody's.
either noticed or not noticed.
And with this work, I do find I'm noticing a lot more.
(27:05):
And I'm conscious of people's body language, not that I'm trying to read body language,but you're more conscious of how they carry themselves.
I'm conscious of where people stand and where they move to.
It's just, I'm just more aware of these things.
And some of it I might use as, oh, that's data.
Some of it I might let go, but I'm noticing and thinking, hmm, I wonder what that's about.
(27:27):
Yeah, it just makes me so much more aware, I think, and that's what it is, so much moreaware.
I love that you talk about your deep learning so very lightly.
It's refreshing.
uh
Yeah, yeah, I just I just love learning.
know these.
There's a great book I've read called Simplifying Coaching.
(27:50):
Yeah, so thank you, Claire, for that.
That kind of opened my eyes a lot.
And whilst I'm a fairly new coach, I think in terms of duration, I'm already learning fromthe way more experienced coaches like yourself and others and learning that.
It's not about doing more.
And it's not about tools per se.
(28:13):
I know you've got a perspective on tools.
It's not about tools per se.
And it's not about courses per se.
It's just about being human.
I really, that really talks to me about I'm just reading Carl Rogers, one of Carl Rogersbooks at the moment.
It's about 60 % through and it's one towards the end of his life where he's kind ofsummarizing his coot.
(28:34):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sorry, that was...there was a clue there.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's kind of summarizing a lot of things.
But he was saying way back when, wasn't it, it's just being with people, empathy andlistening and hearing and witnessing.
And the person will change just through that.
(28:54):
And I think being in the same conversation.
So I do technical check-ins with coaches.
I love it.
So they'll send a recording of them being normal, doing what they normally do, not aspecial one, just a normal recording.
And then they listen to it and I listen to it.
m
(29:16):
Almost always what I notice is that their skill of asking questions is extraordinary,their skill of bringing out awareness in the other person, the skill of knowing when not
to speak, the skill of connection and everything.
But what I almost always notice is that they're not in the same conversation because theydidn't do the right sizing at the beginning.
(29:42):
didn't agree.
either that they didn't know what they were doing or that they have agreed what they'redoing.
It's really, really interesting.
Yeah, so yeah, I've got a reignited passion for right sizing.
Yeah, right.
So I believe so from reading the draft chapter that you sent across.
(30:06):
Yeah, right.
And that's very true.
And when I was going through my ICF ACC renewal fairly recently, you had to do the 10hours of mentoring.
And that was really my growth edge.
Played back to me by the mentor coaches was in the contracting at the start.
Not every time was I having, were we having me and the thinker the same conversation.
(30:30):
because I had a tendency to hear, think, well, I were hearing them, yes, this, and I heardthat.
And then I might say, so then, Claire, what I hear is you're feeling stuck here.
And I kind of led you down that path rather than saying to you, you've said quite a bitthere, Claire, where would you like to start?
exactly.
I think I think that in simplifying coaching, I talked about the right sizing being likethe jog before the run.
(30:58):
Hmm.
Get your legs warmed up.
yeah, and I don't think it is, because that's very linear.
And actually what I'm working on now in our comms guy, Jack, is going to build me this outof a 3D printer.
I'm very excited.
3D printers, I still don't know how they work and I do Google it, I just don't understandthem.
(31:18):
this, he thinks, he thinks that he can make my crazy thought into a real thing that I canhold.
I mean, I just, it feels like surreal, futuristic.
Anyway, he says he can do it.
But there's something about the spiral.
So there's something in the right sizing about, about we, we circle.
(31:39):
And as we circle, we get closer to the heart of the thing.
And
It's been a really interesting journey because I ran some ideas past a supervision groupthat I run and one of them said, yeah, really interesting ideas.
What I've done is I've drawn it into a picture and she'd drawn it into a triangle with abig top and a pointy bottom.
(32:04):
And I looked at it and I thought, it's not that.
But I only knew it wasn't that because she'd done it.
So she'd moved it from a line, effectively, to a triangle and the triangle wasn't
Yes, enough.
So it's really, really fascinating.
Yeah, that brings to mind, it's on a webinar last week on team coaching with Sebastian Foxfrom the UK.
(32:26):
There's a lot of research on team coaching.
He was talking through his most recent paper about emergence.
And this was in the lens of team coaching, but for me, it's the same as one-to-onecoaching.
In that, you've got the explicit and the implicit.
And his model is like the double elix.
You start with the explicit and you start talking and then the implicit starts emergingout.
(32:47):
And then you go back around again with what's now explicit, start talking some more, somemore in things that are hidden and implicit start coming out again.
And it kind of has his as a double helix as things emerge in the conversation.
I am really fascinated because when I was at university in Reading, the stairs in thechemistry building where I had my lectures, I didn't do chemistry, but that's where I had
(33:13):
my lectures, were a double helix.
So when we went to lectures, we were in the double helix.
And the thing that was most interesting about the inside it was that you couldn't see thepeople coming down when you were going up.
Yeah, that's the explicit and the implicit.
So that's, yeah, I'm not very good at theoretical theories, but as you were describingthat, I got myself inside the stairs.
(33:44):
I'll probably have a dream.
I'll have a dream tonight that I didn't finish my exam, but anyway, never mind.
We can tolerate that.
as well.
I've started trying to write my dreams down because I think dreams are fascinating.
Trying to and I get snippets and certain themes come through.
Sometimes I just can't text on the phone.
I just can't somehow text and that's a recurring one.
(34:07):
I wonder whether there's a message in there.
I'm not.
Yeah, dreams are fascinating.
I think everything's fascinating.
We talked about dreams in a supervision group the other day, actually.
Yeah, really interesting.
I could talk to you all day, all night, if you're in Australia.
just, I just have all these, all these things that I just want to try and explore.
(34:30):
Yeah, with different, different coaches and different techniques.
did, I did a two day introduction to existential coaching as well with Yannick Jacob,who's now in Berlin and just the different types of conversations that you have and
different books that you then get to read about instantly.
How might this fit into my coaching practice?
(34:53):
But you talked about meaning and purpose right at the beginning of the conversation,didn't you, in a very, what I now know to be a Fran way.
What's the fun with?
Well, it was just very straightforward, but you were talking about meaning and purposewhen you were saying why to people.
Yeah.
uh
ah So, well, thank you so much for coming to The Coaching Inn.
(35:16):
Where does time go?
Unbelievable.
I know, a delight to have you here.
I'll put your LinkedIn profile in the show notes.
And are you happy for people to contact you?
Yes, absolutely.
LinkedIn is where I hang out.
I love making new connections and learning from other people.
So the more people I can learn from, the better.
(35:37):
So Fran Cormack from West Yorkshire in Perth, Australia.
Thank you for coming to The Coaching Inn.
Thank you, thank you, been a pleasure.
And thank you everyone for listening.
Bye bye.
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