Can I Have A Word?

Coaching for Success

Coaching for Success

Standard Supplier 13th December 2018
Coaching for Success

Coaching for Success

Standard Supplier

Can I Have A Word?

The advice is, ‘never start a talk (or blog) with an apology’ so now I’ll make my first mistake and apologise! I’ll apologise if this sounds a bit like a Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) training course, but I’ve been mulling over a real conversation I heard recently and afterwards I was asked for advice on how it could have gone differently.
Picture the scene at the end of a busy service:
SOUS CHEF pointing to a Chef de Partie: I know he’s only been here a month, but Stuart just isn’t working out, he never follows a simple instruction and I always have to watch over his shoulder to make sure things get done.
HEAD CHEF: Really? Have you made it clear to him you can’t be watching him all the time?
SOUS CHEF: I just can’t get through to him! In fact, the problem is he thinks I’m a push over.
HEAD CHEF: Well he might be right there!
SOUS CHEF: I know; I should have mentioned it to you straight away.
HEAD CHEF: So why didn’t you?
SOUS CHEF: I just can’t handle situations like this.
HEAD CHEF: Why not?
SOUS CHEF: I don’t know, I like him, but he annoys me
HEAD CHEF: So, if he annoys you what do you want me to do about it?
It seems to me that this could be heading in a very negative direction for either the Chef de Partie or Sous Chef or both and I wonder if it could have been turned around a little with just a slightly more thoughtful choice of language?
In fact, this short exchange is packed with language patterns that are examples of how we all unconsciously use language in ways that can restrict true understanding, sometimes leading to bad outcomes we didn’t plan.
I’ve been practicing coaching psychology for over 20 years and simply through constant practice, listening for certain words and phrases, I’ve become automatically sensitive to them. If we replay the scene but tweak each exchange just a little, notice how the Head Chef might be able to shift the conversation in a more useful direction.
Taking one step at a time, when a sentence contains the words ‘always’ or ‘never’ you can help the person to take what is a probably a more realistic perspective by replying, “Really? Can you think of a time when he did follow instruction and you didn’t have to look over his shoulder?”
Then when the SOUS CHEF says “……he thinks I’m a push over”, notice he’s implying he can read Stuart’s mind by knowing what he thinks! So, a useful response to get him to think again might be, “what has Stuart done or said that led you to believe he thinks that?”
Notice that the next sentence contains the word ’should’. Whenever I hear this, I think it sounds very backward looking - like the Sous chef is beating himself up with ‘I should have done this’ or ‘I should have done that’. (Actually, it reminds me of my school days when I heard “Duckett, you should have done better now come here!”)
A helpful response here could be to encourage the person to go easier on themselves by turning the ‘should’ into ‘could’. “So, you could have mentioned it to me straight away, but something changed your mind?”
Next comes a really common phrase, ‘I can’t’ as in “I just can’t handle situations like this”. It’s a big blocking phrase that implies ‘I can not and that’s the end of it’. There are two classic responses to this that can unlock the thinking to move forward and they are either, “So what stops you?” or “what would happen if you did?” Try them in the scene above and notice how you would react.
Finally, that last sentence from Sous Chef is heavily loaded with just one short word, ‘BUT’. That’s a stopping word as in a rifle butt, or as in a water butt, and implies that the words that follow stop or negate the ones before. “I like him, BUT he annoys me”.
All you have to do is repeat the sentence and replace the ‘BUT’ with ‘AND’ as in, “So, you like him, AND he annoys you”. How different does that sound to you?
Now, as I read your mind and hear you thinking, “I like Mike Duckett’s blogs AND he sometimes waffles on”, I’ll stop here!

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