Exploring Butler's Coaching Collaborative

Transcript:

KAVITHA: Welcome to B Connected, a Butler Institute Podcast Series. Hi. I'm Kavitha Kailasam, and I'm with the Butler Institute for families at the University of Denver. 

CHRISTA: And I'm Christa Doty, also with the Butler Institute. 

KAVITHA: And we are here to talk today about the Butler Coaching Collaborative, which is a team of coaches that we are a part of here at Butler and something we love talking about. 

CHRISTA: This podcast could be hours because I could always talk about it. I'm thinking we should start with the definition of coaching just so people know what we're going to be talking about.

KAVITHA: Coaching is used so often in so many different contexts, but to be really clear the way we at the Butler Coaching Collaborative define coaching is as a developmental process that's centered on holistic and client-centered interactions designed to increase awareness and evoke transformation. So what we're really talking about here is engaging with individuals or groups in a very holistic way that's helping support whatever their individual or group goals are in a way that deepens awareness and helps move them forward, utilizing their own creativity and resourcefulness. What would you add to that, Christa? 

CHRISTA: Only thing I would add is there's a lot of different types of coaching. There's performance coaching, implementation coaching, coaching about something very specific that you might want to change in your life, and with our developmental coaching approach, we are coaching the whole person, so it's not just about a skill or behavior, but it is also connecting who they are as a person to outcomes. 

KAVITHA: This is a question we get a lot. What is different about coaching and therapy? 

CHRISTA: Such a good question. Yeah, we do get it a lot. We have a colleague, Brenda Lockwood, that often says, things can be therapeutic, but not need to be therapy. And so coaching often is therapeutic. There was an article on forbes.com by Tom Henschel, and we'll put it in the show notes that talks about it as a pothole. This analogy has really resonated for me is that in therapy and in coaching, we need to know about the pothole. But in therapy, you might dive into the pothole and start building the dirt up or figuring out how to get out of the pothole. In coaching, we know the pothole’s there, and we figure out how to negotiate where we want to go with that pothole. So Kavi, one thing that a lot of people also ask about coaching is how is it different than mentoring consulting? I'd love to hear your take on that. 

KAVITHA: Yeah, I think this is another way that the term coaching gets conflated and used in a lot of different contexts. The same way that we are making this distinction between performance coaching and developmental coaching, there is a difference between coaching, mentoring, and consulting. So where consulting, I may be showing up as someone with a certain area of expertise or background, and it's my perspective you want to hear. Coaching is the opposite. I do have skill set and background and experience in the coaching approach. But the expert in the room is the client. They're the person we want to hear. Our job is to facilitate their process. And then mentoring falls somewhere in between where it's still me and my experience that's centered. And so it's along that continuum between consulting and coaching. We can be really fluid among these two. We may be using pieces of coaching and pieces of mentoring and drawing upon some consulting approaches from time to time too. But they're not necessarily the same thing. It all depends on what is the outcome we're trying to achieve. How do you think about the differences? 

CHRISTA: For myself, one of the important pieces is being purposeful about when is the right time to use which. For example, if I have a worker that is new to the position and doesn't have a lot of knowledge, I might do more consulting. But then I'm going to quickly pop back into coaching and ask, “how does this work with the way you learn? What else do you need to support your learning?” But they needed that base knowledge maybe of the tasks of the position to even answer those questions. When you said fluidity, that's a great way of thinking about it. 

KAVITHA: You've been with the Butler Coaching Collaborative before it was the Butler Coaching Collaborative. You were instrumental in helping to really build the building blocks of it. Could you tell us a little bit about the history and how you connected the idea of coaching with what Butler does around system and workforce development? 

CHRISTA: It's so interesting to think about the trajectory. It started myself and my colleague, Brenda Lockwood, maybe eight years ago. Coaching was just starting to really become part of the social services or human services, and we both had had a background in coaching and thought it would be supportive of the workforce and supportive of systems and having people have well-being in systems and being more equitable and inclusive. Brenda had already been a certified coach, and I went on to do a formal coaching program, and it just reiterated all we thought of how it can influence and support people as a whole person. We bring our whole selves to work, and so this is a way to support that. We wanted to find a way that we could provide this service to the workforce. And so we created a Academy of Professional Coaching, which is an accredited program through the International Coaching Federation, which is a deep dive into coaching. You have a lot of practice, you look at concepts, you get mentor coaching, practice coaching. And then we also have created a Foundations of Coaching for people that just wanted to learn a little bit more about it. When we realized that the workforce was really embracing this as a way to support retention and recruitment, actually, that it is a service to our staff, we were able to bring in many other coaches that have either gone through an accredited, an International Coaching Federation accredited program, or went through our Academy of Professional Coaching. Now, I think, what do we have nine? Eight? 

KAVITHA: We have ten people in our coaching program.

CHRISTA: Ten people. It has really enriched the program because we have people that come with many different experiences and identities and ways of negotiating the world, and it has really made coaching this place to increase awareness and evoke transformation in our program. 

KAVITHA: My official entrance into coaching was when I joined Butler Institute three years ago, and pretty much from week one, I think I started officially in week two of my employment here at Butler, I joined the Academy for Professional Coaching. And so that's where I got my training as a coach and just recently became an associate certified coach through the International Coaching Federation also. So I think for me, this has been an incredible addition to what I've done professionally throughout my career, and maybe even personally, too, in the ways that I interact with people and now. It's just taking it to this next and deeper level through acquiring and practicing some of these coaching skills. You mentioned some of our different training opportunities, Christa, like the Butler Foundations of Coaching. What I really love about that particular offering is that everybody can find an entrance point into coaching. Everybody can find a way to apply coaching skills and a coaching mindset and a coaching approach into the work that they do or just their general interactions in the world, approaching people and others with curiosity, connecting to our core values, and why are we operating and behaving in the ways that we are and really just gaining some awareness for ourselves and others. I really love Foundations of Coaching for that reason. I also really love Foundations of Coaching because I think the more and more people that are exposed to these ideas and these approaches, it helps to cultivate a whole environment and a whole culture that appreciates a growth mindset that values a learning culture that supports one another in these ways. I'm a big fan of that one. My own coaching training has been through, as a result of, what we have to offer through the Butler coaching collaborative. 

CHRISTA: Yeah. You made me think of a couple of things. One was the benefit of going through a coaching program is, as you said, it's not about doing something different, it's about adding to what you already do. And I remember going through my program. I had already had a Master’s of Social Work, I was a licensed clinical social work, and it just gave me an additional way to support people that really resonated with me, how I like to do that. That's one thing you made me think about. The other thing is, you can use coaching skills and not be like a formalized credentialed coach because one of our skills in coaching is curiosity and using that with people then they feel heard. They feel that you want to know how they think that they can grow. If you're using it even in the hallway versus a formal coaching session, it can be a powerful tool that we have. I like to say coaching is my jam. What would you say resonates with you about adding this to your skill set? 

KAVITHA: I think it connects for me because it is my way of being. I think when I think about all of the essential skills that we practice in coaching, it just makes me be myself even better in a way. Interact with people in the way I want to be interacting, interacting and having some really tangible tools and resources to help me do that. Maybe I was naturally always a curious person, but through training and coaching and practice and coaching and really just being thrown into the deep end of it, because through the Academy of Professional Coaching, you just start coaching almost pretty much from day one of the training before you even know what you're doing. I think that's what resonates for me. I feel like these skills are the way I like to show up or hope to show up in the world anyway, and this connects. A lot of what I do in my work is facilitation. I think coaching lends itself really nicely, coaching skills lend themselves really nicely, to facilitating groups, even if you're not coaching groups. It lends itself nicely to supervision to that space. It lends itself nicely to interacting with your family and trying to have conversations that come from a place of recognizing each individual's values, why they may be doing what they're doing, and how that shows up in our day to day. One of the things we've talked about too is how the work environment and general society can often be so busy that we don't create intentional spaces to pause. Coaching is one way to do that. It helps us pause. It helps us ask questions we don't always ask. It helps us generate awareness we may be taking for granted or we may just be on auto pilot in so many spaces of our lives. I think that that is another way that coaching has applicability in so many different ways. 

CHRISTA: When we think about coaching the whole person, we're also talking about the being and doing. We often use a visual of a tree and the above surface is behaviors and decisions, so things people can see. Then in the ground, the roots are there, which are your world views, your attitudes, your values, your beliefs, your biases. I love that you were talking about a framework to think about it that way. We do bring our whole selves to wherever we are. Do you have any examples of how this developmental coaching plays out from any of your sessions? 

KAVITHA: Probably. I have to think of one. What comes to mind for you? 

CHRISTA: Well, I'm thinking about a session I just had with somebody. They were perturbed with a colleague. They were wondering like how to deal with this. Eventually, at the end, we did have some plans of how that they would do that. And the beginning of our conversation was why is this person perturbing you or upsetting you? And it came out that they had a value of timeliness and those kinds of things, which is a great value, of course, but this other person is much more Loosey Goosey. I don't know if that's the right word. It wasn't that that person didn't value the product. They have to go and explore this. But we had this conversation of what is really driving this frustration for you, and I think it helped them really realize that, ok, this is more than just this one incident. The hope is then they can bring that with them for other situations that that happens. 

KAVITHA: Yes. The hope with developmental coaching is that it's sustainable. We're not just tackling or addressing a single issue at a time. By getting below the surface, we're really trying to generate awareness that's going to impact a variety of things and ways that that dynamic might show up. And what's interesting about the example you gave, too, Christa is that that kind of interaction and dynamic probably happens in a lot of workplaces for a lot of people often, and so it's really valuable. 

CHRISTA: Yeah. I actually had a coaching session for myself one time. I was having a difficult time with a colleague, and the coach said to me, “what is the person there to teach you?” It was such a great question because it made me think about what am I avoiding with this person? What skill did I need? It was about advocating for myself. 

KAVITHA: We believe and the Butler Coaching Collaborative is based on a belief that coaching can contribute towards larger systems change and can be a way to advance diversity, equity, and inclusiveness. But I think that's tricky to understand. It’s challenging to really be intentional around it because coaching is this one on one, often one on one interaction, it can also be group based. But what are your thoughts about how this one on one interaction can affect larger systems? 

CHRISTA: Well, I think that one thing is, and this isn't answering your question specifically, but the first thing that popped into my mind is as a coach, we need to be aware that it isn't just the one on one interaction or session, that as a coach, we have to be aware that people come in living in a context. Because if we don't do that, then we could gaslight people or we could contribute to harm. That's the one thing that's popping into my head. 

KAVITHA: Now, when you were talking earlier too about the skills of coaching, we think about being curious. We think about withholding judgment. We think about believing in the whole person. When we were talking about this earlier, too, part of what I was thinking about was that also allows us to create spaces of belonging, spaces of inclusiveness, and if we're generating that across an entire organization, I think that can help. It's not the thing by itself, but it can help advance some of these efforts around diversity and inclusiveness and belonging. 

CHRISTA: Yeah. 

KAVITHA: I think the mere fact, like we mentioned earlier, too, that coaching creates a space for us to pause and be reflective is also really important because it's so easy whether individually or organizationally, as a group, and whatever level it is, to just be on autopilot, to just perpetuate the status quo. I think this is again, another tool to try to prevent that, to try to be intentional, recognize what our actions are, why we are doing what we're doing, and where there are spaces to do things differently than we may be currently doing them. 

CHRISTA: Another thing that that's making me think about is leadership, executive leadership coaching or leadership coaching in general, that's one thing that we also do at Butler is contract with an agency or a leader, and we have six to twelve sessions with them to support them in their leadership development. And what I have heard so many times after those is that they needed that place for pause and reflection, as you were saying, Kavi, because they have so many demands on their time and they don't give themselves that piece, and yet we know to be a good leader, you need to have that ability to pause and reflect on your actions, how your decisions are going to affect people. And so coaching can be that place for leaders around not just their own individual leadership development, but also how that influences and affects the mission of their agency. 

KAVITHA: I wanted to ask you if you have a metaphor for who you are as a coach. 

CHRISTA: I love that question. The metaphor that comes up for me of my coaching is of a wine aerator. That's where you have this device that you hold over a glass of wine and you pour red wine into it, and it goes and it goes (gurgling), and you hear all that, and then it goes into the glass and the point of it is to pull out the essence, the notes, the nuances of the wine that you would have maybe done through being in a decanter and letting it sit out. I feel like as a coach, I'm that piece where the wine is the person. I'm helping them with all that (gurgling), the noise and all that stuff. And then they're coming out with more awareness of their beauty, their nuances, and their boldness. 

KAVITHA: My metaphor, what I sort intern my coaching sessions into thinking about is that I am a hiking partner. I am on this journey, I'm walking this path, but I'm not carrying the map. I'm not choosing the direction. The client is doing that, and they're carrying the backpack. I'm really just along for the ride. They are the ones really navigating and figuring out where we're going. I have the benefit of getting to run around and see what's coming up the corner and maybe asking this question or they're focused on the map, so I can look backwards of where we came. I have a different vantage point and ability to point things out and ask some questions. But it's really that I'm doing the hard work and making the decisions and also the fun work, not just hard work. That is how I visualize myself as a coach. 

CHRISTA: I love that. So tell us a little bit about how people react to our trainings at Butler Coaching collaborative. 

CHRISTA: It's always so fascinating to me because this isn't just our trainings. There's some research and literature that coaching programs support the person going through the program of creating awareness and evoking transformation. I'm always surprised about how people really resonate with this skill of coaching. As we've already mentioned in this podcast, people are probably doing it. There's some natural elements to them. But putting some sort of structure around it, putting awareness, giving them time to practice and reflect from as little as the Foundations of Coaching to the deep, in-depth practice in the Academy of Professional Coaching. You always hear people not only feel that they've professionally moved forward, but personally moved forward because the coaching training also naturally has you look in on yourself as well. You've trained the Foundations of Coaching, anything that you've noticed with participants? 

KAVITHA: One thing that sticks out for me is that people bring a lot of themselves to these trainings. We do real-play demos. We have in every session, we do a ten minute mini-coaching demonstration where participants themselves come with a real topic. It's not forced or simulated. It's a real conversation. It really does create the space where people bring themselves to the training. We get no matter what background people have, what professional role they're in, everybody has something to contribute. Everybody is asking questions. Everybody's able to connect it to their own circumstances and interests and application. That sticks out to me, especially about the Foundations of Coaching. Then related to the Academy of Professional Coaching, having been through it, it's this intensive period of time, and you feel really connected to the people that you spend that time with. Again, because you're doing these practice coaching sessions, you're jumping right in and coaching each other on various topics throughout the course of the three modules, and you learn a lot about one another. You're very vulnerable with one another in a learning environment, and you're kind of all in it together. It creates this camaraderie, I think in learning and practicing and growing. 

CHRISTA: So Kavi, why should organizations invest in coaching? 

KAVITHA: I think organizations should invest in coaching if they care about the people that work with them and for them because I think coaching is incredibly supportive of not just each individual, but the culture within your organization that supports these individuals. Why do you think Christa, that organizations should invest in coaching? 

CHRISTA: I also think it's important that people invest in coaching because it's about the people we serve as well. When our workforce has had the time to reflect, then they're going to also be more present for the people that we serve. The other piece is organizations in many ways, serve their workforce, and so I think it's important to invest in them as well. 

KAVITHA: I love that. Christa, as always, it was fun to talk coaching with you and dream about not only what it is, but what it can be. 

CHRISTA: Yes. I always like to hear your wisdom and your thoughts and talk coaching. 

KAVITHA: Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next podcast in our series.