Do you ever wonder whether the messiness in your mind impacts your conversations? How on earth do you have a conversation with someone who seems to think differently from you? If coaching models and techniques feel like an impenetrable jungle, this episode is for you!
Claire Pedrick sits down with Jackie Lawlor to talk about that! Jackie shares personal stories from her early life, her experiences with neurodivergence, and how these have shaped her coaching practice. We dive into the importance of embracing human messiness and diverse perspectives, and how coaching can become more accessible to everyone.
And if you’re listening live, the next Birmingham Coaches walk is open to all professional coaches and is on 14th Nov 2025 at Lickey Hills Country Park. Details here
Contact:
- Contact Jackie 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:
- Book Corner with Kelly Drewery and Nathan Whitbread
- Harnessing AI in Coaching: Insights from Dr. Lisa Turner
Keywords:
coaching, clean language, neurodivergence, personal journey, future of coaching, human messiness, diverse perspectives, accessible coaching, coaching practice, communication skills, coaching techniques, leadership, personal growth, NLP, systemic modeling, coaching accessibility, coaching insights, coaching tools, coaching and counseling, playfulness in coaching
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.
(00:12):
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn.
I'm your host, Claire Pedrick, and it's a pleasure to have you here at The Inn.
It would be lovely to find out where in the world you are.
So do send us an email to info@3dcoaching.com or put a comment in the place where youlisten to your podcasts.
And if you want to rate and review while you're there, that would be amazing.
(00:36):
So you may know that I...
In a bonkers way, decided to start some walks for coaches around the UK and well actuallyin Malvern and then people have picked up the idea and a couple of people in Birmingham
picked up the idea and I went on their inaugural walk where I met Jackie Lawlor.
(01:00):
It was divine to meet you on that walk.
Yes, it was a lovely ramble and chat.
It was amazing.
It was bluebell time, wasn't it?
And we had such a beautiful time.
And I had seen you across a pub at a rained off coaches walk and waved hello, hadn't I?
Yeah, I forgot about that one.
Yes.
(01:20):
Yes.
but we had the most extraordinary conversation and so I said to Jackie, lovely listener,you must come to the coach again so we can carry on.
So welcome Jackie.
Thank you for having me Claire.
yeah, you said it was an extraordinary conversation and I was quite flabbergasted when yousaid it was an extraordinary conversation.
(01:42):
So I'm really looking forward to expanding that conversation here.
It's funny, isn't it?
Because as we're talking, I can see where we went in my mind's eye.
And I can see where we stopped and we spoke and we, yeah, it's amazing.
Ah, wonderful.
So tell us about your journey into coaching Jackie.
(02:05):
Well, I think my journey into coaching happened long before I was a coach.
I've always been, uh from being a little girl at school, I was always the person that kindof looked out for the waifs and strays, because I felt a little bit of an outsider all
through my school career, you know, and I'd find myself drawn to the out groups andbefriend the person who didn't have any friends or was slightly odd.
(02:31):
em And then I was drawn to kind of careers that
involved helping people to create the conditions to be at their best no matter where theyfind themselves.
I started out in the civil service working with long-term unemployed people and later in ajob centre and did lots of specialist work there with groups of homeless people for
(02:52):
example and it was all about helping them to find within themselves.
What was their uniqueness?
em What could they bring to the situation?
And then I went to work in a charity, working with people with uh all kinds of healthconditions, life limiting, HIV and AIDS.
(03:16):
very much the same kind of work.
And then I went to the NHS for the later part of my career and I went into leadership.
uh And so again, but just different client groups, but the same themes and patterns wereemerging and it was all about self doubt and can I do this and comparison and I'm not good
(03:38):
enough and so that's the kind of the long, sorry.
um
Yeah.
not long.
What's beautiful is that all of us had conversations long before we became coaches.
And I love that you own that.
(04:00):
Because often people go, well, I didn't become a coach until 2025.
And you want to go, well, did you not talk to anybody before 2025?
Yeah, yeah, I call it the golden thread.
I often refer to it in my coaching sessions.
Yeah, I didn't actually say when I kind of started officially coaching.
So 2005, I did a coaching certificate with the um Newcastle University and it was more ofan informal one.
(04:26):
was a great, it was a free offer.
was quite in depth and you got your assignments reviewed and I loved doing theassignments, getting the feedback, you know, going and doing some more practice.
And then in 2012, I had the opportunity to be, you know, formally coach trained um and Ibecame accredited with the EMCC I'm an ILM seven coach now, but I can't all of it because
(04:51):
it all counts, you know, and it's been a lovely, exciting, rewarding journey.
Wow.
For those of you in other parts of the world, ILM is a British qualification.
It's about the equivalent of a master's degree, isn't it?
ILM, yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
So our conversation, walking through the bluebells, was all about...
(05:20):
having conversations with people who think differently and may have struggled to haveconversations with others before.
Yes, yes.
And I think that's what I was saying to you about why I came to, for example, cleanlanguage, because I have often struggled to understand in the way people would expect me
(05:45):
to understand them or to be understood both.
And that's caused quite a lot of em anxiety uh in my life.
has definitely led to my imposter syndrome in the past because when someone gives you, soit depends on the relationship and the context and everything, but say for example, in the
(06:08):
later part of my career when I was in a very fast paced environment with people who hadbig agendas and it was go, go, go and your instructions are thrown at you and I was
struggling to kind of grasp what the person wanted from me.
And after a few times of saying,
know, can I just check?
(06:28):
Is this what you want?
know, or can you give me an example?
Or, you know, that's like what?
After a while, you know, depending on the personality, you know, you can start to feelthat they're judging you and maybe they are judging you and maybe they're thinking you
haven't got this and then and maybe I'm thinking I haven't got this.
(06:48):
So around that time, in fact, it was a bit earlier than that.
It was in the NHS but not in the
later part.
I discovered this wonderful thing called clean language which helps you to unpick andunpack some of that stuff for yourself and with other people and that made a big
difference I think on my journey yeah and also realizing that I am neurodivergent althoughI've never had a formal diagnosis there is you know neurodivergence that is formally
(07:22):
diagnosed in in my family.
and I can spot it in the people that haven't had a diagnosis and I can absolutely spot itnow in myself.
And I'm working up towards having a formal assessment probably later this year, but Ithink that I am ADHD and DCD, which used to be called dyspraxia.
(07:44):
So that was another part of, I mean, I'll just keep talking Claire, unless you tell me tostop.
because all the connections I've been making recently.
em So going way back to the person at school, I was really quite shy, very introverted,know, very good, I'd hide.
(08:06):
And when I went to work, because of all the reasons that I'm in my civil service job, andit wasn't a great fit initially, was uh a benefit office, processing benefits, I'm not
very mathsy, it was quite dull.
And...
I remember one manager seeing something that that was often a thing people would seethings in me and think, oh, Jackie saw this, you know, and then I'd let them down somehow.
(08:30):
I wasn't very good at this aspect of my work and she really tried to mentor me m and Istill wasn't very good at it because it just I just didn't get it, you know.
And so.
I kind of evolved this personality with the kind of the DCD, the dyspraxia.
It's often about being clumsy.
(08:50):
know, uh I trip over things, bump into things.
you know, I can be a bit catastrophic, particularly when I'm stressed.
And I developed a reputation for, oh, here she comes again.
You know, that's Jackie doing her thing.
And people would laugh at me and it would be a bit of a joke.
(09:11):
And at the time it felt like a way of fitting in and I'd play on it.
uh But there came a time later in that civil service career when I wanted to progress andit was blooming hard to shake that off.
In fact, I took it into my next job.
Yeah, and when I wanted to progress and I didn't want people to see me in this, know,quirky, I mean, I do embrace quirky, but I don't want people to see me as...
(09:39):
entirely this quirky person.
So was very hard to actually remake myself uh into the kind of person I wanted to be.
was in, you know, when I went into a job centre, I loved that job.
It was a really good fit for me and I was able to progress.
(09:59):
But still, this label followed me.
So it takes me back to how we can mask
how we can hide bits of ourselves as a way of getting that approval, that recognition,that love, that affection.
But actually it can really feed the imposter syndrome because I'm not very good at all ofthat, but actually people like me, I'm kind, I'm nice.
(10:27):
So I'm gonna stop talking.
To give you a chance to get a word in.
Sorry.
things that you can't do, aren't there?
I was talking to a friend yesterday and saying, how did I not know that I was, how did my,well, I mean, we didn't know about neurodivergence, did we?
But I was the child who endlessly broke bones.
(10:50):
So when I had children who endlessly broke bones, I thought that was normal and I couldnever understand and cut their heads open and all those things.
And I could never understand why that didn't seem to happen to anybody else.
But what I know now, and you know, it's like we're learning all the time, aren't we?
It's almost every day.
(11:11):
You think, yeah, that's that too.
And that makes sense.
Can I pick you up on a question?
Cause I'm really interested in finding out what difference, what difference did it make toyour conversations when you use clean language at that point, before you were a coach?
was coaching.
(11:31):
I'm just trying to think when I picked up clean language, was probably a good eight ornine years ago.
So I was in the civil service.
I was coaching, but I wasn't coaching full time.
But it was really useful to be able to to say when someone, you know, would say somethingto me, I could kind of slow the conversation down and say, can I just check?
(11:57):
You know, so so this
project this thing that's like what?
There's clean and cleanish questions and I might say they might not get that's like what?
What's that like is cleanish?
Can you give me an example?
You know what would you be thinking and hearing if it was just as you'd want it to be?
(12:17):
Which is a conversation, a question we ask a lot in coaching anyway.
You know...
what needs to happen before that happens.
So that could be a leading to the kind of who do you want me to speak to or, you know, soyou can move, you can slow things down.
You can move time backwards and forwards.
(12:39):
What needs to happen before this happens as it's happening.
That's like what, and when I've done that, then what happens?
It could be, you know, is there a relationship between this thing and that thing?
It could be,
a really useful question is generating a metaphor, perhaps not in the incidents that we'retalking about now, but that is super useful when you're talking to maybe a member of staff
(13:08):
and they've got lots going on and loads of information and it's, and you say, all of thatis like what?
Or that's like what?
And you get a metaphor, so you then can develop the metaphor.
And when you develop the metaphor, it's actually,
your system it's acting on the issue and you don't need to know about the issue.
(13:30):
So I'm probably moving away from the question you've asked me a little bit but it's stillkind of in that frame.
uh When I was in my last NHS role um and it was very fast-paced in one of those roles andI was really struggling with that.
I sought some support from a trusted colleague.
(13:52):
I mean, this is all past history now, it's a long time.
And it was all just so big for me and I didn't know what to do with how I felt.
And I just said to someone that I trusted, it's like being pulled behind a carriage andfour horses and it's go faster, go faster, do more.
And I feel I'm bobbing around and I feel as though I'm going to be thrown out and I don'tknow when it's going to stop.
(14:17):
And expressing it like that.
was absolutely how I felt in that moment.
And that person who was also a coach was able to help me break that down.
And then I was able to kind of get to the, so what would I like, so that's a cleanquestion, what would I like to happen here?
(14:38):
What would I like to happen now?
What do I like to happen next?
What needs to happen for that to happen?
I thought about some of the questions I wanted to ask.
em
the person, I asked the person who was coaching me non-clean questions like, thereanything that, you know, I've done all these things, what might I be missing?
(14:58):
What am I not seeing here?
What other options do you think are available to me?
These are all the things I've thought of and tried.
And I think, so that leads to me to, mean, clean is one of the most valuable tools in mytoolkit and also NLP, some transactional analysis.
There's this wider than clean thing called systemic modeling, which is about some of thekind of team stuff and making sure all the voices in the conversation are heard.
(15:27):
All of that plays into my toolkit.
And it's so rich and so it's so helpful in helping me to trust myself so that if, yes, I'mgoing to stop.
Thank you, Jackie.
It's so helpful enabling me to trust myself is what you said.
(15:47):
And my encouragement to you is it feels as though there's an awful lot of things insideyou.
And then your, your, your, your, um.
expressing gratitude to these labels and yet in talking to you it feels as though how youare is an integrated part of you and they don't really matter anymore.
(16:14):
I actually think those different facets of myself are an asset now because I can be withother people's discomfort.
I can see and feel what it's like for them.
I don't have to get lost in that.
There is a route out.
Yeah, I think it's a positive asset.
(16:35):
Yeah.
And I think that thing that you just picked up is I've come to that quite recently being
In fact, only today when I was talking with a fellow coach, it was just a, it wasn't acoaching session.
was just a conversation.
I was talking about being our own safety and having, you know, something that we can kindof draw on a question we can ask or an approach we can take in order that we can be that
(17:00):
for the person sat in front of us.
Yeah.
What a beautiful thing.
Thank you.
So many ways to go.
Hmm.
Can we just stay with the, what difference does being able to communicate clearly havewhen you're talking with people who process differently?
(17:25):
That was a really bad, very long question.
Please make it your own.
No, I've got it.
um Well, it's not just coaching clients, it's with my husband.
mean, absolutely every day he'll say something and I will not have a clue what he means.
So, um and often it's because he will, he's neurodivergent, although he would never admitto that label.
(17:49):
And I don't think he would own it, but I see it.
uh And so he will quite often.
say something that's in his mind as though he's being kind of, he's giving me some contextbut it's set and there'll be no context so I will have no clue.
So I'll simply say to him, know, can you just, where did that come from?
(18:12):
Can you give me some context, you know?
And then he'll say, sorry, and then he'll tell me more about what it is.
That's an example.
Or um what's an example of um with a client.
um
People will often generalise and I think the clean questions are fantastic for when peopleare generalising about something, about something they're experiencing or about something
(18:35):
about themselves.
em So I'm just thinking of someone who at the moment em had a really bad experience intheir career.
I mean, it was 1996 and they're holding onto it now and they are...
(18:56):
really limiting what they believe they can do based on this person's opinion, which camefrom fear and rigidity and it was theirs, it didn't belong to this person.
So they are believing that they, you know, they're going to mess up again, that, you know,that they haven't got permission to do the thing they want to do and they're very able.
(19:25):
So you can explore, I don't know if this is a good example, but I could explore what doespermission, know, permission for you is a clean question.
Permission for you is like what?
Now there's two things in there, permission for you, and then there is like what, and thenthat person can say, well, it's this and it's that.
(19:48):
And then we might get into that.
And again, some of these will link to some of the things you might do as a coach.
And you know, when it permission like that, whereabouts his permission, you know, solooking at giving them self permission, where is that permission?
So yeah, I don't know whether I'm not very good at talking about things that things aremuch clearer in my head than they are when they come out of my mouth.
(20:16):
So yeah.
We talked a lot about being human and being vulnerable and being normal, didn't we?
Absolutely, absolutely.
Yeah, and I love the messiness of being human.
I think we all think that we have to be this model of whatever we think, you know, successis, you know, that we have to look away and sound away and be away and organise in a
(20:50):
particular way.
And actually, that is so unique.
So one of the things, for example, going back to clean that I love is that you can modeland this is NLP as well.
Cause actually the guy that David Grove, the guy that is credited for really developingclean, he'd done some NLP.
And so it's kind of built on from that, although he extended it massively more into lotsof different areas.
(21:13):
Yes, I've made it my own, but then he did say, take this and apply it to whatever you'redoing and make it your own, you know.
I've lost my train of thought now in my excitement.
What was I just saying to you before I lost my...
Welcome to my world, Claire.
I was saying something that had a point, but I can't now remember what it was.
(21:35):
It might come back in a minute, but yeah, what was the question you asked me?
human and we were talking about, said, make it your own.
Yes, and the messiness.
so, yes, so was talking about, you know, people often come to me and they'reneurodivergent and they may or may not know with issues around time.
So we can, you know, clean and modelling time is such a useful thing about.
(21:58):
So let's look at how you experience time, you know, where, you know, where, where, and Iget them to use their hands.
If you know, place your hand where
yesterday is and they might say, it's, they might say it's over here, you can't see myhand to my right, they might say it's back here, but it could be over here, you know, and
(22:18):
where is now and where is tomorrow, where's next week, where's next month, and for somepeople tomorrow is way over there, you know, for me, you know, now is here, tomorrow is
kind of here, but anything after that is over there, so it's out of sight and kind of outof mind.
and I can easily lose track of things.
(22:41):
So then we look at when you're managing time at your best, that's like what?
What are you seeing and hearing?
um Really get a personal model for what time is like.
And again, this is one of those instances where I almost think if you could talk to manyother clean people, they'd give a better description than that.
(23:01):
But it actually, works and it really helps people to think actually.
This is really interesting.
I do experience time in this unusual way.
And the reason I kind of things go off my radar is because actually, the day aftertomorrow is like way in the distance.
(23:22):
It's really interesting Jackie because as you talk a lot of the way you're talking isabout looking at things.
that's interesting.
not talking about things.
And when you were talking about when you first started using Clean, it made me, the senseI got was that you were using it as a way of organizing your thoughts in a different way.
(23:54):
that's part of it and I think the NLP does as well.
So for example I'm often going through the NLP logical levels what level is the person atand using clean to kind of talk about the different levels.
That's really interesting I hadn't considered that before.
I think em one of the most useful things about clean is it enables me to stay in my bodybecause I can feel calm and peace knowing that em I can
(24:21):
just ask a question about what they've just said.
David Grove talked about um
I can't remember the exact words, but sort of interrogating their experience, putting somespace between their experience and your experience.
And that is very valuable to me.
I'll build in rapport with their stuff.
(24:42):
That's what he said.
So I'm building rapport with their stuff, but I'm not getting in the boat with them.
And that helps me to stay in my body and be much kind of calmer and more grounded.
So it's really interesting to hear you say that.
um Yeah, interesting.
Maybe it's a combination of all of those things.
inside you.
(25:04):
inside me.
Yeah.
So what's your dream for coaching?
Ooh, let me have a think.
You can see I'm processing now, I process somewhere up here.
My dream for coaching is that it doesn't, um so let's do a towards, not an away from, thatit is available to anyone and everyone that needs it.
(25:34):
And as I say that, I'm thinking about blooming AI, which I am just not loving.
And I'm quite terrified of it actually.
And I do,
know some people that use it really thoroughly.
I'm talking about human.
So back to the messiness of being human and actually having someone just pausing you andstopping you and just helping you to explore that thing that you know is true for you and
(25:58):
is it true for you and what else could be possible.
uh Yeah that coaching becomes ever more available mainstream part of how we do things.
It sits adjacent to counselling.
think there's a place for both.
And actually, there's a blurry line for me between the two, because when you're working onpersonal stuff, I so often am with people, I work with a lot of doctors and um leaders.
(26:27):
you know, work affects home and home affects works.
There's a bit of a blurry line.
And I do dance either side of that blurry line um very gently and carefully.
And AI doesn't do that.
For me, it's kind of, it's black and it's white.
Yeah, so the coaching was more available that we could coach more.
(26:49):
We could train more coaches.
Yeah, get more leaders to coach.
Have our government open to being coached and getting some feedback that's not just anecho chamber.
That's my dream.
Yeah.
Because it's about building awareness, isn't it?
(27:12):
Can we just stay with awareness for a minute?
Nathan Whitbread and Kim Witten and I are writing this book about working with people whoare neurodivergent.
And we've got a section on three things that it's useful to be aware of.
So it's not about knowledge, it's just about awareness.
(27:32):
I am really interested, Jackie, what would your three things be?
I think be aware that people who have a different perception, that perception is oftenreally valuable.
So, you know, taking time and care to embrace.
(27:53):
So one of the things that drew me to systemic modeling, for example, is questions like,who's, know, having a discussion, who's different to this?
Who's got something else?
Who's got something else against you bringing difference into the room?
I mean, that is key to me.
uh And another question is who's similar to that?
(28:14):
So that you can get a feel for what's in the room and everyone feels included.
listen to those, yeah, listen to those people that think and process differently, theyhave something valuable to offer.
And sometimes they might be tricky because they might bring an edge of...
well, something that could create discomfort.
(28:36):
Somebody who's autistic, for example, might be kind of quite hung up on a point and it'llbe because that is significant for them.
They're thinking about the safety of this or an unintended consequence or, you know,something that you might not thought of.
So that's definitely one.
Two is...
(29:02):
Yeah, I think this goes across the board really.
um Playfulness and fun.
There isn't enough of that in work.
I think, you know, many people are at their best when they are not tense and when they're,you know, and having an element of playfulness and fun and curiosity, you know, opens up
(29:26):
new dimensions, new possibilities.
We can't laugh and be tense.
It's impossible.
physically to do that.
So I don't know whether you'd say that was directly related to your book, but I do thinkthat that is really important.
What would my third one be?
em
Yeah, learn.
So, you know, that thing that I might be judging in someone, do I actually, what do I haveof that in myself?
(29:51):
And what can I learn from this person that I might want from myself?
It could be the unending energy and curiosity of the person with ADHD, or it could be thewanting to actually make sure things are, you know, as they should be, and they've got a
flow and a sequence and an order, you know, so working with people who are different toyourself and yeah.
(30:13):
I once worked with a woman that was very procedural and I thought we'd be a nightmareworking together but we were a dream team because I had ideas and in abundance and you
know and I'd kind of like we could do this and she would corral them down and slot themtogether and together we were just amazing yeah.
Do you know, as you're talking, I am so reminded of a friend who I used to work withcalled Jane.
(30:37):
And Jane used to talk about learn to look round the corner.
And that's everything that you've just said in the last few minutes is about learning tolook round the corner.
Because we can't look round corners, but somebody else's way of thinking can help us to dothat.
Absolutely, yeah.
And I think it's, you know, you didn't ask me for a fourth thing, but I think, you know,something about neurodivergence runs in families.
(31:05):
you know, recognising in children what's going on for them and kindness, compassion,curiosity, so that, you know, imposter syndrome often starts in our family settings, you
know, comparison by other people or ourselves to other people.
um So I think I'd just add that in, know, that curiosity, kindness and compassion inchildhood with our children.
(31:32):
You've just reminded me of a little girl that I met.
She was eight, think.
I met her about six months ago and I was chairing a conference session and her dad wasspeaking and he brought her with him and he said, can she sit with you?
And he said, she's going through a diagnosis for ADHD.
(31:54):
And I said, we'll be friends then.
And I looked at this child.
And I thought to myself, I just hope for a different future for you.
Yes, absolutely.
And we got on great.
(32:14):
She was drawing three pictures at the same time and every time she'd finished on onepicture, she'd put all her pencils away and zip up the pencil case, put it on the floor,
and then she'd pick it up again and open it and do a different picture and different book.
And then this happened for like an hour.
It was just beautiful.
And I knew just to sit there holding the pencil case when she gave it to me and all wouldbe well.
(32:35):
But I did look at her and
thought of all the people our age who now know something that we didn't know before at ourage and just really hoping for her that there'll be a very different future.
no, I just, that's so moving.
(32:56):
And I would hope that those of us that have kind of lived through this personally couldlook back to ourselves at that age and what would we have wanted?
How could, you know, what would have helped us?
What would have soothed us?
What would have encouraged us, supported us then?
And maybe we can now be that for the young people around us.
(33:20):
Yeah, absolutely.
Gorgeous, Claire.
what an absolute pleasure to have you coaching in and I am very much hoping that we'llhave another war.
Yes, well you've got one coming up in Worcester and we've got one that we're about toadvertise the week after, probably quite badly timed in Birmingham.
(33:41):
It'll be on, if you look up Jackie Lawlor on LinkedIn, I'll be putting that on in the nextday or two.
Yeah, a Birmingham one.
In the Lickey Hills or elsewhere?
in the Lickey Hills again, open to all uh experienced coaches, professional coaches.
It's about five miles and so bring the right footwear and we have gorgeous, richconversations um and it's very life enhancing.
(34:09):
So yes, please do look out for that.
Thank you.
how they find out about your walk in the Lickey Hills.
How do they find out about you, Jackie?
At the moment, it is just on LinkedIn and my LinkedIn profile is not very impressivebecause I'm just trying to re-imagine it at the moment.
My website's down for the same reasons, but yes, contacts could be through my LinkedInpersonal message.
(34:32):
I'll be very happy to speak to people, yeah.
Perfect.
So I'll put that in the show notes, everyone.
Thank you, Jackie, for coming to The Coaching Inn.
very much Claire for inviting me.
It's been a delight.
And thank you everyone for listening.
We'll be back next week with another episode.
Bye bye.
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn.
I'm your host, Claire Pedrick, and it's a pleasure to have you here at The Inn.
It would be lovely to find out where in the world you are.
So do send us an email to info@3dcoaching.com or put a comment in the place where youlisten to your podcasts.
And if you want to rate and review while you're there, that would be amazing.
(00:36):
So you may know that I...
In a bonkers way, decided to start some walks for coaches around the UK and well actuallyin Malvern and then people have picked up the idea and a couple of people in Birmingham
picked up the idea and I went on their inaugural walk where I met Jackie Lawlor.
(01:00):
It was divine to meet you on that walk.
Yes, it was a lovely ramble and chat.
It was amazing.
It was bluebell time, wasn't it?
And we had such a beautiful time.
And I had seen you across a pub at a rained off coaches walk and waved hello, hadn't I?
Yeah, I forgot about that one.
Yes.
(01:20):
Yes.
but we had the most extraordinary conversation and so I said to Jackie, lovely listener,you must come to the coach again so we can carry on.
So welcome Jackie.
Thank you for having me Claire.
yeah, you said it was an extraordinary conversation and I was quite flabbergasted when yousaid it was an extraordinary conversation.
(01:42):
So I'm really looking forward to expanding that conversation here.
It's funny, isn't it?
Because as we're talking, I can see where we went in my mind's eye.
And I can see where we stopped and we spoke and we, yeah, it's amazing.
Ah, wonderful.
So tell us about your journey into coaching Jackie.
(02:05):
Well, I think my journey into coaching happened long before I was a coach.
I've always been, uh from being a little girl at school, I was always the person that kindof looked out for the waifs and strays, because I felt a little bit of an outsider all
through my school career, you know, and I'd find myself drawn to the out groups andbefriend the person who didn't have any friends or was slightly odd.
(02:31):
em And then I was drawn to kind of careers that
involved helping people to create the conditions to be at their best no matter where theyfind themselves.
I started out in the civil service working with long-term unemployed people and later in ajob centre and did lots of specialist work there with groups of homeless people for
(02:52):
example and it was all about helping them to find within themselves.
What was their uniqueness?
em What could they bring to the situation?
And then I went to work in a charity, working with people with uh all kinds of healthconditions, life limiting, HIV and AIDS.
(03:16):
very much the same kind of work.
And then I went to the NHS for the later part of my career and I went into leadership.
uh And so again, but just different client groups, but the same themes and patterns wereemerging and it was all about self doubt and can I do this and comparison and I'm not good
(03:38):
enough and so that's the kind of the long, sorry.
um
Yeah.
not long.
What's beautiful is that all of us had conversations long before we became coaches.
And I love that you own that.
(04:00):
Because often people go, well, I didn't become a coach until 2025.
And you want to go, well, did you not talk to anybody before 2025?
Yeah, yeah, I call it the golden thread.
I often refer to it in my coaching sessions.
Yeah, I didn't actually say when I kind of started officially coaching.
So 2005, I did a coaching certificate with the um Newcastle University and it was more ofan informal one.
(04:26):
was a great, it was a free offer.
was quite in depth and you got your assignments reviewed and I loved doing theassignments, getting the feedback, you know, going and doing some more practice.
And then in 2012, I had the opportunity to be, you know, formally coach trained um and Ibecame accredited with the EMCC I'm an ILM seven coach now, but I can't all of it because
(04:51):
it all counts, you know, and it's been a lovely, exciting, rewarding journey.
Wow.
For those of you in other parts of the world, ILM is a British qualification.
It's about the equivalent of a master's degree, isn't it?
ILM, yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
So our conversation, walking through the bluebells, was all about...
(05:20):
having conversations with people who think differently and may have struggled to haveconversations with others before.
Yes, yes.
And I think that's what I was saying to you about why I came to, for example, cleanlanguage, because I have often struggled to understand in the way people would expect me
(05:45):
to understand them or to be understood both.
And that's caused quite a lot of em anxiety uh in my life.
has definitely led to my imposter syndrome in the past because when someone gives you, soit depends on the relationship and the context and everything, but say for example, in the
(06:08):
later part of my career when I was in a very fast paced environment with people who hadbig agendas and it was go, go, go and your instructions are thrown at you and I was
struggling to kind of grasp what the person wanted from me.
And after a few times of saying,
know, can I just check?
(06:28):
Is this what you want?
know, or can you give me an example?
Or, you know, that's like what?
After a while, you know, depending on the personality, you know, you can start to feelthat they're judging you and maybe they are judging you and maybe they're thinking you
haven't got this and then and maybe I'm thinking I haven't got this.
(06:48):
So around that time, in fact, it was a bit earlier than that.
It was in the NHS but not in the
later part.
I discovered this wonderful thing called clean language which helps you to unpick andunpack some of that stuff for yourself and with other people and that made a big
difference I think on my journey yeah and also realizing that I am neurodivergent althoughI've never had a formal diagnosis there is you know neurodivergence that is formally
(07:22):
diagnosed in in my family.
and I can spot it in the people that haven't had a diagnosis and I can absolutely spot itnow in myself.
And I'm working up towards having a formal assessment probably later this year, but Ithink that I am ADHD and DCD, which used to be called dyspraxia.
(07:44):
So that was another part of, I mean, I'll just keep talking Claire, unless you tell me tostop.
because all the connections I've been making recently.
em So going way back to the person at school, I was really quite shy, very introverted,know, very good, I'd hide.
(08:06):
And when I went to work, because of all the reasons that I'm in my civil service job, andit wasn't a great fit initially, was uh a benefit office, processing benefits, I'm not
very mathsy, it was quite dull.
And...
I remember one manager seeing something that that was often a thing people would seethings in me and think, oh, Jackie saw this, you know, and then I'd let them down somehow.
(08:30):
I wasn't very good at this aspect of my work and she really tried to mentor me m and Istill wasn't very good at it because it just I just didn't get it, you know.
And so.
I kind of evolved this personality with the kind of the DCD, the dyspraxia.
It's often about being clumsy.
(08:50):
know, uh I trip over things, bump into things.
you know, I can be a bit catastrophic, particularly when I'm stressed.
And I developed a reputation for, oh, here she comes again.
You know, that's Jackie doing her thing.
And people would laugh at me and it would be a bit of a joke.
(09:11):
And at the time it felt like a way of fitting in and I'd play on it.
uh But there came a time later in that civil service career when I wanted to progress andit was blooming hard to shake that off.
In fact, I took it into my next job.
Yeah, and when I wanted to progress and I didn't want people to see me in this, know,quirky, I mean, I do embrace quirky, but I don't want people to see me as...
(09:39):
entirely this quirky person.
So was very hard to actually remake myself uh into the kind of person I wanted to be.
was in, you know, when I went into a job centre, I loved that job.
It was a really good fit for me and I was able to progress.
(09:59):
But still, this label followed me.
So it takes me back to how we can mask
how we can hide bits of ourselves as a way of getting that approval, that recognition,that love, that affection.
But actually it can really feed the imposter syndrome because I'm not very good at all ofthat, but actually people like me, I'm kind, I'm nice.
(10:27):
So I'm gonna stop talking.
To give you a chance to get a word in.
Sorry.
things that you can't do, aren't there?
I was talking to a friend yesterday and saying, how did I not know that I was, how did my,well, I mean, we didn't know about neurodivergence, did we?
But I was the child who endlessly broke bones.
(10:50):
So when I had children who endlessly broke bones, I thought that was normal and I couldnever understand and cut their heads open and all those things.
And I could never understand why that didn't seem to happen to anybody else.
But what I know now, and you know, it's like we're learning all the time, aren't we?
It's almost every day.
(11:11):
You think, yeah, that's that too.
And that makes sense.
Can I pick you up on a question?
Cause I'm really interested in finding out what difference, what difference did it make toyour conversations when you use clean language at that point, before you were a coach?
was coaching.
(11:31):
I'm just trying to think when I picked up clean language, was probably a good eight ornine years ago.
So I was in the civil service.
I was coaching, but I wasn't coaching full time.
But it was really useful to be able to to say when someone, you know, would say somethingto me, I could kind of slow the conversation down and say, can I just check?
(11:57):
You know, so so this
project this thing that's like what?
There's clean and cleanish questions and I might say they might not get that's like what?
What's that like is cleanish?
Can you give me an example?
You know what would you be thinking and hearing if it was just as you'd want it to be?
(12:17):
Which is a conversation, a question we ask a lot in coaching anyway.
You know...
what needs to happen before that happens.
So that could be a leading to the kind of who do you want me to speak to or, you know, soyou can move, you can slow things down.
You can move time backwards and forwards.
(12:39):
What needs to happen before this happens as it's happening.
That's like what, and when I've done that, then what happens?
It could be, you know, is there a relationship between this thing and that thing?
It could be,
a really useful question is generating a metaphor, perhaps not in the incidents that we'retalking about now, but that is super useful when you're talking to maybe a member of staff
(13:08):
and they've got lots going on and loads of information and it's, and you say, all of thatis like what?
Or that's like what?
And you get a metaphor, so you then can develop the metaphor.
And when you develop the metaphor, it's actually,
your system it's acting on the issue and you don't need to know about the issue.
(13:30):
So I'm probably moving away from the question you've asked me a little bit but it's stillkind of in that frame.
uh When I was in my last NHS role um and it was very fast-paced in one of those roles andI was really struggling with that.
I sought some support from a trusted colleague.
(13:52):
I mean, this is all past history now, it's a long time.
And it was all just so big for me and I didn't know what to do with how I felt.
And I just said to someone that I trusted, it's like being pulled behind a carriage andfour horses and it's go faster, go faster, do more.
And I feel I'm bobbing around and I feel as though I'm going to be thrown out and I don'tknow when it's going to stop.
(14:17):
And expressing it like that.
was absolutely how I felt in that moment.
And that person who was also a coach was able to help me break that down.
And then I was able to kind of get to the, so what would I like, so that's a cleanquestion, what would I like to happen here?
(14:38):
What would I like to happen now?
What do I like to happen next?
What needs to happen for that to happen?
I thought about some of the questions I wanted to ask.
em
the person, I asked the person who was coaching me non-clean questions like, thereanything that, you know, I've done all these things, what might I be missing?
(14:58):
What am I not seeing here?
What other options do you think are available to me?
These are all the things I've thought of and tried.
And I think, so that leads to me to, mean, clean is one of the most valuable tools in mytoolkit and also NLP, some transactional analysis.
There's this wider than clean thing called systemic modeling, which is about some of thekind of team stuff and making sure all the voices in the conversation are heard.
(15:27):
All of that plays into my toolkit.
And it's so rich and so it's so helpful in helping me to trust myself so that if, yes, I'mgoing to stop.
Thank you, Jackie.
It's so helpful enabling me to trust myself is what you said.
(15:47):
And my encouragement to you is it feels as though there's an awful lot of things insideyou.
And then your, your, your, your, um.
expressing gratitude to these labels and yet in talking to you it feels as though how youare is an integrated part of you and they don't really matter anymore.
(16:14):
I actually think those different facets of myself are an asset now because I can be withother people's discomfort.
I can see and feel what it's like for them.
I don't have to get lost in that.
There is a route out.
Yeah, I think it's a positive asset.
(16:35):
Yeah.
And I think that thing that you just picked up is I've come to that quite recently being
In fact, only today when I was talking with a fellow coach, it was just a, it wasn't acoaching session.
was just a conversation.
I was talking about being our own safety and having, you know, something that we can kindof draw on a question we can ask or an approach we can take in order that we can be that
(17:00):
for the person sat in front of us.
Yeah.
What a beautiful thing.
Thank you.
So many ways to go.
Hmm.
Can we just stay with the, what difference does being able to communicate clearly havewhen you're talking with people who process differently?
(17:25):
That was a really bad, very long question.
Please make it your own.
No, I've got it.
um Well, it's not just coaching clients, it's with my husband.
mean, absolutely every day he'll say something and I will not have a clue what he means.
So, um and often it's because he will, he's neurodivergent, although he would never admitto that label.
(17:49):
And I don't think he would own it, but I see it.
uh And so he will quite often.
say something that's in his mind as though he's being kind of, he's giving me some contextbut it's set and there'll be no context so I will have no clue.
So I'll simply say to him, know, can you just, where did that come from?
(18:12):
Can you give me some context, you know?
And then he'll say, sorry, and then he'll tell me more about what it is.
That's an example.
Or um what's an example of um with a client.
um
People will often generalise and I think the clean questions are fantastic for when peopleare generalising about something, about something they're experiencing or about something
(18:35):
about themselves.
em So I'm just thinking of someone who at the moment em had a really bad experience intheir career.
I mean, it was 1996 and they're holding onto it now and they are...
(18:56):
really limiting what they believe they can do based on this person's opinion, which camefrom fear and rigidity and it was theirs, it didn't belong to this person.
So they are believing that they, you know, they're going to mess up again, that, you know,that they haven't got permission to do the thing they want to do and they're very able.
(19:25):
So you can explore, I don't know if this is a good example, but I could explore what doespermission, know, permission for you is a clean question.
Permission for you is like what?
Now there's two things in there, permission for you, and then there is like what, and thenthat person can say, well, it's this and it's that.
(19:48):
And then we might get into that.
And again, some of these will link to some of the things you might do as a coach.
And you know, when it permission like that, whereabouts his permission, you know, solooking at giving them self permission, where is that permission?
So yeah, I don't know whether I'm not very good at talking about things that things aremuch clearer in my head than they are when they come out of my mouth.
(20:16):
So yeah.
We talked a lot about being human and being vulnerable and being normal, didn't we?
Absolutely, absolutely.
Yeah, and I love the messiness of being human.
I think we all think that we have to be this model of whatever we think, you know, successis, you know, that we have to look away and sound away and be away and organise in a
(20:50):
particular way.
And actually, that is so unique.
So one of the things, for example, going back to clean that I love is that you can modeland this is NLP as well.
Cause actually the guy that David Grove, the guy that is credited for really developingclean, he'd done some NLP.
And so it's kind of built on from that, although he extended it massively more into lotsof different areas.
(21:13):
Yes, I've made it my own, but then he did say, take this and apply it to whatever you'redoing and make it your own, you know.
I've lost my train of thought now in my excitement.
What was I just saying to you before I lost my...
Welcome to my world, Claire.
I was saying something that had a point, but I can't now remember what it was.
(21:35):
It might come back in a minute, but yeah, what was the question you asked me?
human and we were talking about, said, make it your own.
Yes, and the messiness.
so, yes, so was talking about, you know, people often come to me and they'reneurodivergent and they may or may not know with issues around time.
So we can, you know, clean and modelling time is such a useful thing about.
(21:58):
So let's look at how you experience time, you know, where, you know, where, where, and Iget them to use their hands.
If you know, place your hand where
yesterday is and they might say, it's, they might say it's over here, you can't see myhand to my right, they might say it's back here, but it could be over here, you know, and
(22:18):
where is now and where is tomorrow, where's next week, where's next month, and for somepeople tomorrow is way over there, you know, for me, you know, now is here, tomorrow is
kind of here, but anything after that is over there, so it's out of sight and kind of outof mind.
and I can easily lose track of things.
(22:41):
So then we look at when you're managing time at your best, that's like what?
What are you seeing and hearing?
um Really get a personal model for what time is like.
And again, this is one of those instances where I almost think if you could talk to manyother clean people, they'd give a better description than that.
(23:01):
But it actually, works and it really helps people to think actually.
This is really interesting.
I do experience time in this unusual way.
And the reason I kind of things go off my radar is because actually, the day aftertomorrow is like way in the distance.
(23:22):
It's really interesting Jackie because as you talk a lot of the way you're talking isabout looking at things.
that's interesting.
not talking about things.
And when you were talking about when you first started using Clean, it made me, the senseI got was that you were using it as a way of organizing your thoughts in a different way.
(23:54):
that's part of it and I think the NLP does as well.
So for example I'm often going through the NLP logical levels what level is the person atand using clean to kind of talk about the different levels.
That's really interesting I hadn't considered that before.
I think em one of the most useful things about clean is it enables me to stay in my bodybecause I can feel calm and peace knowing that em I can
(24:21):
just ask a question about what they've just said.
David Grove talked about um
I can't remember the exact words, but sort of interrogating their experience, putting somespace between their experience and your experience.
And that is very valuable to me.
I'll build in rapport with their stuff.
(24:42):
That's what he said.
So I'm building rapport with their stuff, but I'm not getting in the boat with them.
And that helps me to stay in my body and be much kind of calmer and more grounded.
So it's really interesting to hear you say that.
um Yeah, interesting.
Maybe it's a combination of all of those things.
inside you.
(25:04):
inside me.
Yeah.
So what's your dream for coaching?
Ooh, let me have a think.
You can see I'm processing now, I process somewhere up here.
My dream for coaching is that it doesn't, um so let's do a towards, not an away from, thatit is available to anyone and everyone that needs it.
(25:34):
And as I say that, I'm thinking about blooming AI, which I am just not loving.
And I'm quite terrified of it actually.
And I do,
know some people that use it really thoroughly.
I'm talking about human.
So back to the messiness of being human and actually having someone just pausing you andstopping you and just helping you to explore that thing that you know is true for you and
(25:58):
is it true for you and what else could be possible.
uh Yeah that coaching becomes ever more available mainstream part of how we do things.
It sits adjacent to counselling.
think there's a place for both.
And actually, there's a blurry line for me between the two, because when you're working onpersonal stuff, I so often am with people, I work with a lot of doctors and um leaders.
(26:27):
you know, work affects home and home affects works.
There's a bit of a blurry line.
And I do dance either side of that blurry line um very gently and carefully.
And AI doesn't do that.
For me, it's kind of, it's black and it's white.
Yeah, so the coaching was more available that we could coach more.
(26:49):
We could train more coaches.
Yeah, get more leaders to coach.
Have our government open to being coached and getting some feedback that's not just anecho chamber.
That's my dream.
Yeah.
Because it's about building awareness, isn't it?
(27:12):
Can we just stay with awareness for a minute?
Nathan Whitbread and Kim Witten and I are writing this book about working with people whoare neurodivergent.
And we've got a section on three things that it's useful to be aware of.
So it's not about knowledge, it's just about awareness.
(27:32):
I am really interested, Jackie, what would your three things be?
I think be aware that people who have a different perception, that perception is oftenreally valuable.
So, you know, taking time and care to embrace.
(27:53):
So one of the things that drew me to systemic modeling, for example, is questions like,who's, know, having a discussion, who's different to this?
Who's got something else?
Who's got something else against you bringing difference into the room?
I mean, that is key to me.
uh And another question is who's similar to that?
(28:14):
So that you can get a feel for what's in the room and everyone feels included.
listen to those, yeah, listen to those people that think and process differently, theyhave something valuable to offer.
And sometimes they might be tricky because they might bring an edge of...
well, something that could create discomfort.
(28:36):
Somebody who's autistic, for example, might be kind of quite hung up on a point and it'llbe because that is significant for them.
They're thinking about the safety of this or an unintended consequence or, you know,something that you might not thought of.
So that's definitely one.
Two is...
(29:02):
Yeah, I think this goes across the board really.
um Playfulness and fun.
There isn't enough of that in work.
I think, you know, many people are at their best when they are not tense and when they're,you know, and having an element of playfulness and fun and curiosity, you know, opens up
(29:26):
new dimensions, new possibilities.
We can't laugh and be tense.
It's impossible.
physically to do that.
So I don't know whether you'd say that was directly related to your book, but I do thinkthat that is really important.
What would my third one be?
em
Yeah, learn.
So, you know, that thing that I might be judging in someone, do I actually, what do I haveof that in myself?
(29:51):
And what can I learn from this person that I might want from myself?
It could be the unending energy and curiosity of the person with ADHD, or it could be thewanting to actually make sure things are, you know, as they should be, and they've got a
flow and a sequence and an order, you know, so working with people who are different toyourself and yeah.
(30:13):
I once worked with a woman that was very procedural and I thought we'd be a nightmareworking together but we were a dream team because I had ideas and in abundance and you
know and I'd kind of like we could do this and she would corral them down and slot themtogether and together we were just amazing yeah.
Do you know, as you're talking, I am so reminded of a friend who I used to work withcalled Jane.
(30:37):
And Jane used to talk about learn to look round the corner.
And that's everything that you've just said in the last few minutes is about learning tolook round the corner.
Because we can't look round corners, but somebody else's way of thinking can help us to dothat.
Absolutely, yeah.
And I think it's, you know, you didn't ask me for a fourth thing, but I think, you know,something about neurodivergence runs in families.
(31:05):
you know, recognising in children what's going on for them and kindness, compassion,curiosity, so that, you know, imposter syndrome often starts in our family settings, you
know, comparison by other people or ourselves to other people.
um So I think I'd just add that in, know, that curiosity, kindness and compassion inchildhood with our children.
(31:32):
You've just reminded me of a little girl that I met.
She was eight, think.
I met her about six months ago and I was chairing a conference session and her dad wasspeaking and he brought her with him and he said, can she sit with you?
And he said, she's going through a diagnosis for ADHD.
(31:54):
And I said, we'll be friends then.
And I looked at this child.
And I thought to myself, I just hope for a different future for you.
Yes, absolutely.
And we got on great.
(32:14):
She was drawing three pictures at the same time and every time she'd finished on onepicture, she'd put all her pencils away and zip up the pencil case, put it on the floor,
and then she'd pick it up again and open it and do a different picture and different book.
And then this happened for like an hour.
It was just beautiful.
And I knew just to sit there holding the pencil case when she gave it to me and all wouldbe well.
(32:35):
But I did look at her and
thought of all the people our age who now know something that we didn't know before at ourage and just really hoping for her that there'll be a very different future.
no, I just, that's so moving.
(32:56):
And I would hope that those of us that have kind of lived through this personally couldlook back to ourselves at that age and what would we have wanted?
How could, you know, what would have helped us?
What would have soothed us?
What would have encouraged us, supported us then?
And maybe we can now be that for the young people around us.
(33:20):
Yeah, absolutely.
Gorgeous, Claire.
what an absolute pleasure to have you coaching in and I am very much hoping that we'llhave another war.
Yes, well you've got one coming up in Worcester and we've got one that we're about toadvertise the week after, probably quite badly timed in Birmingham.
(33:41):
It'll be on, if you look up Jackie Lawlor on LinkedIn, I'll be putting that on in the nextday or two.
Yeah, a Birmingham one.
In the Lickey Hills or elsewhere?
in the Lickey Hills again, open to all uh experienced coaches, professional coaches.
It's about five miles and so bring the right footwear and we have gorgeous, richconversations um and it's very life enhancing.
(34:09):
So yes, please do look out for that.
Thank you.
how they find out about your walk in the Lickey Hills.
How do they find out about you, Jackie?
At the moment, it is just on LinkedIn and my LinkedIn profile is not very impressivebecause I'm just trying to re-imagine it at the moment.
My website's down for the same reasons, but yes, contacts could be through my LinkedInpersonal message.
(34:32):
I'll be very happy to speak to people, yeah.
Perfect.
So I'll put that in the show notes, everyone.
Thank you, Jackie, for coming to The Coaching Inn.
very much Claire for inviting me.
It's been a delight.
And thank you everyone for listening.
We'll be back next week with another episode.
Bye bye.
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