This post relates to 15-minute FOTO, our Creative Commons-licensed and Clean Language-inspired coaching game that’s not just for coaches – everyone gets a turn! Consistently, it’s a highlight of our workshops: it’s fun, insightful, and surprisingly practical. Above all, it’s the tool by which we generate outcomes – outcomes being the currency in which we deal.
For several weeks the 15-minute FOTO dropbox (which you can subscribe to for free) has included a beta version of the cue card (below) which adds the text “aka the And When X… game“. The facilitator’s deck has a slide with that as its title too. It’s a low effort / high impact tweak, a helpful reminder to the facilitator to introduce very briefly a little of the theory and practice of Clean Language. After exhausting my old stock of cards (I get them printed by the hundred) I had the opportunity to test the new one last week and the beta tag is removed at last!
The Clean Language questions have been carefully curated and refined over the years to minimise the coach’s natural tendency to pollute a conversation with their unasked-for assumptions and solutions. Keeping the conversation ‘clean’ maximises the chances that the client will achieve an insight of their own.
An important part of the discipline is to stay with the client’s language. One question you won’t hear in a clean conversation is this (the X and Y here are placeholders for the client’s and coach’s words respectively):
What you said X, did you mean Y?
Put words into the client’s mouth like this and there’s a high risk that whatever the client was currently holding or constructing in their head (their model, a precious and perhaps fragile thing) will be destroyed. Potentially, a huge opportunity wasted! So, if as the coach you find yourself a bit lost (ie you’re unsure what X is or how to deal with it), turn instead to the “pre-question”:
And when X…
Three things have been achieved already:
- You’re stopped yourself from paraphrasing (or at least delayed it)
- You’ve bought yourself some time while you choose what question to ask next
- You’ve focussed attention on something interesting
And you have plenty of choice here. If it’s important that you (in the coach role) understand what X is, then ask a clarifying question, probably one of the middle three on the card. If it’s not – and let’s not forget here that the conversation isn’t about you – you could decide to move the conversation along instead and see what happens.
There’s another use for this technique, and that’s to go back to an earlier part of the conversation. Perhaps the conversation is uncovering a virtuous circle of outcomes (not uncommon, but congratulations!) and after a certain amount of repetition you’re ready now to jump off that roundabout. It’s easy:
And when X…
Is there anything else about X?
This is for some past X, allowing the conversation to take a different branch. You’re right, the “And when X…” isn’t strictly necessary. Yes, it’s a bit redundant. But it helps! Somehow, that big leap back seems more manageable.
Related
- 15-minute FOTO (agendashift.com/resources/15-minute-foto)
- The language of outcomes (January 2020, series of 5 posts)
- My favourite Clean Language question (January 2019)
Workshops upcoming in 2020 – Gurugram, Malmö, Oslo (*2), London, Tel Aviv, and online
For a 20% saving, use discount code LONDON2020 for the London workshop and NORDIC2020 for Oslo and Malmö.
See also our workshops and events pages – Switzerland and Australia to be added soon.
- 2-3 March, Gurugram, India
2-day Advanced Agendashift: Coaching & leading continuous transformation - 11-12 March, Malmö, Sweden – Julia Wester & myself:
Advanced Agendashift: Coaching and Leading Continuous Transformation - 30-31 March, Oslo, Norway – Kjell Tore Guttormsen, Halldor Kvale-Skattebo, & myself:
Wholehearted: Bringing OKR to life with Agendashift - 22-23 April, London, UK – Karl Scotland, Steven Mackenzie, & myself:
Wholehearted: Bringing OKR to life with Agendashift - 3 June, Tel Aviv, Israel (in conjunction with Agile Israel 2020):
1-day Core Agendashift: Facilitating outcome-oriented change - 8-9 June, Oslo, Norway:
2-day Advanced Agendashift: Coaching & leading continuous transformation - 17-18-June, online – two 2-hour sessions on consecutive days:
Agendashift online: Learning the language of outcomes
From the exciting intersection of Lean-Agile, Strategy, and Organisation Development, Agendashift™: The wholehearted engagement model
Links: Home | About | Our mission: Wholehearted | Become an Agendashift partner | Assessments | Books | Resources | Events | Contact | Mike | Subscribe
Blog: Monthly roundups | Classic posts
Community: Slack | LinkedIn group | Twitter
Agendashift 