Yannick’s Nuggets (2023-2025)

The following is a compilation of all entries to my coaching blog called “Nuggets”.

Samurai Thoughts – Discipline is Freedom

“Discipline is freedom”

I’ve got a gut reaction when I hear this. Do you?

Discipline has never been my strong suit. And I despise repetition.

Yet I always connected with samurai movies and I 100% agree with the above pearl of wisdom – that discipline creates (more) freedom, because s/he who is disciplined is generally more in charge of what they do and don’t do. It allows us to stick with something that we have decided worthy, even when we might not feel like continuing in the moment and… oh, look! Shiny red ball!!

So there I was, in 2015, in my car, with a friend, driving to Southend-by-Sea, a small town on the English Eastcoast, to buy a Katana – a Japanese Samurai sword. I had bought one online in the middle of the night and got scammed, but here I was making it a day trip to pick one up from a small showroom I had found online.

Back in my room, with a sword on my wall, I wondered: “Why?” I would never use a Katana, I’m not into weapons, and it was so cheap that it would probably fall apart if I were to try and defend myself with it.

Then it dawned on me, that what I had needed the most at this time of my life was discipline, and to befriend repetition – both aspects that are core to practicing the martial arts, and which were perfectly, and beautifully, represented by this Samurai sword on my wall. A powerful reminder that, to this day, is in my sight.

I’m still working on discipline and repetition. It’s not quite how I’m wired. But I believe in its value and in finding my own way with it. And so I loved mishearing David Clutterbuck in a recent meeting of the Global Supervisors Network as he was talking about a sword – I heard “thought”. And I had never made the connection between Samurai Sword and Samurai Thought!

Now let your mind run free with that metaphor! It keeps on giving 🙂

With Love Yannick

How to exercise free will without having free will

Think back to the last 10 choices you made today.

How many of them, if any, do you feel or think you made out of free will?

And how many, if any, were a result of past patterns determining your behaviour, or external influence(r)s navigating your choices?

We’ve learned a lot from psychology about how to manipulate others.

Sales people have long taken advantage of what we’ve learned and gotten quite skilled and setting up the right conditions to steer purchasing behaviours. Social media platforms have taken this to a whole new level. And while we haven’t quite gotten to the point where we can reliably predict people’s choices, we’ve certainly gotten close. And under the right conditions, with the right people, it’s been done (see e.g. one of my favourite manipulation segments from Derren Brown).

As a little Nugget for you, this morning I listened to an excellent segment of 2 astrophysicists debating the existence of free will, which may open up a new perspective for you. It goes:

Even if, in the heat of a moment, you may not have access to free will, you can exercise your free will to lay the conditions for making a certain kind of choice when such moments arise.

For example, you’re in a conversation and someone says something to you that triggers a trauma-response. You’re now shaking and full of anxiety. Or imagine a family member pushes all the right buttons and you lose your temper and shout at them even though you didn’t want this to happen.

Can you control yourself in those moments? Is that part of the free will you have? I believe that in many scenarios we just don’t have access to the kind of choice we would have wanted to make, in hind-sight.

But I couldn’t agree more that we can consciously and freely choose to reflect on what happened, and/or anticipate future such scenarios, and work to lay the conditions for us to make different choices next time.

Martial artists train to create reflexes that work faster than conscious thought in the moment that they need them.

Someone suffering from depression may engage in therapy or choose to use medication to prepare for moments during which they might feel so low that certain choices are not available to them.

And coaches (ideally) train, reflect, discuss, work with a supervisor, in the Coaching Lab, or otherwise engage in activities that make it more likely to act in a way that they want during a session with their client.

It is the choice to prepare for eventualities that exercises free will where the heat of the moment may have previously determined your behaviour.

Thank you Charles Liu.

Oh and also, that clip is worth watching as a wonderful example of how amicably you can debate opposing positions when you’re curious and engage a scientific mindset.

With Love Yannick

Who’s your most important client?

If we’re being honest,

“Sorry, I don’t have time”

essentially means:

“Something else is more important to me.”

Yet I hear so many of my coaching clients, supervisees and fellow human beings make excuses as if their choices were fixed by something external.

And I get it. Pushing the responsibility for a choice away from us makes it less likely that the person we just said ‘no’ to will be offended or angry at us. After all, it wasn’t up to me. I had to say no.

In my ideal world, we could simply express our values and priorities, and other people would respect our choices and how we choose to navigate our life and career. Everybody would understand that we are all different and that someone else’s choice not to do what I want right now, doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t like me, that we can’t be friends, or that it’ll be impossible to continue working together.

It would be fine to say that on Fridays I prioritize spending time with my family over anything else.

But unfortunately we don’t live in that world (yet), and so I often sit with clients thinking about how they could effectively ring-fence some time in their calendar without fear of repercussions or creating any sort of backlash.

Most recently I sat with a client who’s pregnant and thinking about what narrative to create to explain that she won’t be working over the next few months. What gets me is that “I’m currently working with a very demanding client who has booked all my time over the next 12 weeks” seems to be a safer version of the truth than “I’m having a baby and choose not to do any work for the next 3 month”.

Similarly, there’s much less likely to be pushback if you were to state that every Friday you’re having an executive board meeting that you “can’t get out of” instead of disclosing that the board consists only of two members, with the other being 8 years old and related to you, and that you could get out of this engagement if you wanted to, but it’s too important to you to make that choice.

I also find that clients often struggle to respect their own boundaries. If it’s a work meeting, they’re rock solid and never late. Family and friends tend to be handled with more flexibility and even a commitment to upholding clear boundaries isn’t enough.

So who’s your most important client? I invite you to consider all the possible stakeholders in your life – including family, friends, politics, the planet, and – yes – also clients at work, who are indeed important clients.

I won’t judge who you choose. That’s up to you. But I do encourage you to choose consciously, and to honour your choices enough to align your actions with it. Otherwise you breed inauthenticity.

Once you’re clear on your priorities in any given context, it still doesn’t necessarily make it easier to say no. And again, I do get it:

“I would if I could, but I really can’t, sorry!” makes someone else feel important.

“Something or someone else is more important than you, to me” is more real but doesn’t flatter the ego quite the same, and may cause friction or doubt in the other

So we often lie; or we might frame the truth in a way that we’re not lying, but are not saying the truth either, in an effort to maintain good relationships…

which we wouldn’t have to if we genuinely not just had respect for, but would be embracing the fact that others live their lives in accordance to different sets of values.

I do, and I often find myself struggling to get angry at people for making choices I don’t agree with. Even choices that impact me badly tend to make sense from their perspective. I find myself not fighting as hard as I otherwise would have against decisions I don’t agree with. A strength overdone? Sometimes I wish I was a bit more ignorant. It would make me communicate more clearly and more powerfully, I reckon.

But then I do like having a balanced perspective, even if it makes life less comfortable, choices more complex, and requiring more courage.

Not sure who needed to hear this today. If it’s you, I’d love to hear about it!

With Love Yannick

But what do you REALLY want? Laddering as an essential coaching technique

I’ve been sitting with coaching clients for thousands of hours. All of them want something (even if some don’t quite yet know what it is, or if the thing they want is to want less).

Generally, we want to move towards something (a desire, dream, goal, behaviour, possessions, state of mins), or away from something (a pain, intrusive thoughts, unhealthy habits, bad health, challenging emotions, mental illness, lack of meaning and purpose, loneliness, being overlooked for promotion).

One of the things that makes coaching such a powerful conversation is the coach’s ability to get to the core of what a client REALLY wants. It saves a tremendous amount of time working on things that are at best a stepping stone, and at worst a distraction.

The technique to get to what someone really wants has many names and comes in many forms. I like to call it “laddering”. Because we’re getting to a higher-level goal (or you may picture it as climbing down the ladder to the depth of their desire).

Wondering what that might sound like?

Take a moment to think about something that you want.

Go on, I’ll wait…

…

…

Got something? Good. I’ll call it [______________].

Now imagine you already had []. In your mind, travel to that future, and take a look around and within – until it feels like the present moment – a reality in which you’ve achieved or acquired []

…

What’s changed now that you’ve got []? What does that give you? How is your life, your work, your experience of being you, different now to what it was before you had []? What does it lead to? What did it put in motion, if anything?

…

From here on you keep laddering, until you don’t get anywhere anymore.

If it still feels abstract, let me give you two examples that start out the same and end up being quite different desires:

1. I want [a promotion] —> [more money] —> [buying a big house and an electric car] —> [being looked up to by neighbours and colleagues] —> [earning the respect of my parents and siblings] —> [feeling good about myself because I’ve made it, not being ashamed anymore and doubting my worth] —> [self-acceptance, letting go of anxiety] —> [happiness, inner peace]
2. I want [a promotion] —> [more money] —> [buying a big house and an electric car] —> [worrying less about money, more space to raise a family, doing my part to save the environment] —> [hope, feeling of contribution] —> [happiness, inner peace]

You can see how these two examples both end in a feeling of inner peace, less anxiety, and happiness. You can also see that the values that drive both of these people are centred around family and other people, but that they have very different qualities to them, and that the latter veers more into the realm of contribution, while the former is more concerned about status and reputation.

Now as a coach I’m not judging people’s motivation to create change. What’s important is to be(come) aware of what’s driving us, so that perhaps we may skip a few steps and work straight towards the ultimate desire.

If you wanted to practice this, take the example of [losing weight/dieting], and see how many different lines of answers you can create? What do they lead to? Ho w many different categories of “ultimate desires” can you come up with? I’d love you to share this with me! If you do, I promise I’ll write you back with my answer.

With Love Yannick

Importance of permission

A short story/reminder to stay fresh, and to check into what you may have started to take for granted in your practice.

A little while ago I ran a consultation with someone working at a large organisation. As I usually do I asked her to tell me her story. What I’m really interested in is “who are you?”, your values, beliefs, worldview. When someone tells you their story, it’s rich material to give me an insight into how you approach the world, others, and yourself.

Along the way I get curious, digging deeper into certain areas, interested to hear more about this, that, or the other aspect of your life, work and experience.

Now, I clearly had fallen into a groove there and made some implicit assumptions, because rather than “inviting” her into this kind of conversation, I just started to ask questions.

She kept most of her answers quite short, responded to the questions, but didn’t tap into much richness, and it felt like hard work to open up. I figured at the time that it just needed a bit of time and building rapport for her to open up, and didn’t think much of it. But I got a feeling after we hung up that she won’t be in touch – and low and behold, she never turned up to our follow up call.

On reflection, I think she wasn’t up for telling me her story. I think she expected a different kind of coaching, and I missed the opportunity to contract around what this is going to be, and, importantly, how she feels about that.

A brief invitation at the start, a question about any previous experience with coaching or expectations she might bring into the conversation, or asking permission to apply a new process, really could have made that difference.

I had taken certain understandings for granted and it was an important reminder to review my process and readjust.

If you’re an experienced coach, what grooves might you have fallen into over the years? What did you used to do that you no longer do? How does it land? What might you not do anymore that is actually an important part of the work? What’s been jettisoned for a good reason (and what is that reason)?

Curious to hear your thoughts!

And remember: We’re always in a process of becoming.

With Love Yannick

Why your desire to help is not helping

Most coaches I meet have a genuine desire to help people.

It’s part of the reason I love spending time with coaches – in community, in supervision, at events, conferences, and as friends.

But, paradoxically, this desire to help is often in the way of receiving the best possible help.

What I see and hear in the supervision room (and also in my own experience) is that when a coach is too focused on helping their client, it’s much more likely that they’re tempted to offer advice, push progress, share their own ideas, resources, opinions, or stories. They unconsciously create pressure as their agenda to help leaks through their body language, tonality and choice of words.

If a coach is too committed to an outcome, the quality of their presence suffers.

And so, again and again, in the Coaching Lab and out in the real world, I witness the most effective coaches being committed to the process, to holding space for their clients, to sharing observations, to bracket their own agenda, and truly accompany their clients towards whatever outcomes they chose.

A coach that cares deeply about the results, but without getting stuck in actively trying to create them, who is clear about what their responsibility is and isn’t, and who is skilled at contracting around this – is a better coach.

When you notice a passionate desire in you to help a client, stay vigilant with regards to how this might affect the quality of your coaching.

An excellent topic to bring to your supervisor or supervision group.

If you’re coaching regularly and you’re not in supervision, what are you waiting for? (and that’s not a rhetorical question, I’d love to understand this better.

If you can’t afford it yet, join us in the Practice Room of the Coaching Cabinet, every 3rd Tuesday and FREE to all coaches. Link in the comments

With Love Yannick

The river doesn’t drink its own water

I wanted to turn to my neighbour. I wanted to say “Isn’t he an incredible speaker!?! Wow.”

But I neither wanted to interrupt her listening, me listening, or him speaking. Even when he paused, and he paused often and long, I didn’t want to interrupt what was happening. So I waited until it was over to marvel in his performance.

The man: Corey Keyes.

The performance: “Just” a conversation between him and one of the organisers of the European Conference on Positive Psychology (who was clearly a bit stumped that he had asked to change the format of his invited keynote to simply sitting down and having a chat – my man!

I could share heaps of inspiration here, and I do recommend his latest book – Languishing, (link in comments) but there’s one thing he said that stuck with me more than everything else. He said:

“The river doesn’t drink its own water. The tree doesn’t eat its fruits.”

When we start contributing, something shifts profoundly, and there’s ample evidence now how much we gain from bringing gain to others.

It’s really a natural drive – love, contribution, community. Our lives used to depend on it when our species came up, and evolution has hard-wired this into our being. But in today’s day and age, technology and considerable social security allows so many of us to live quite isolated lives, which is one of the key contributors to languishing and poor mental health.

Let’s take a hint from the tree and the river, and remind ourselves that we are happier and our existence much richer when we contribute.

Thank you Corey.

With Love
Yannick

Comment : Here’s the link to the book Languishing – https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/459771/languishing-by-keyes-corey/9781911709589

Do AI coaches need supervisors?

Do AI coaches need supervisors?

It’s clear to me that in the not so distant future of coaching and supervision, practitioners will be partnering with artificial intelligence to deliver a better service for their clients.

What I had never thought about until recently was whether there’s merit in supervising AI coaches, and how that would work…

And I’m not talking about oversight here, even though supervision, technically, is very close in terms of terminology. I’m talking about giving AI coach bots the opportunity to reflect on their practice, and to invite/prompt them the review their actions and decision, so that they may create better ways of being of service to their clients, aligned with appropriate coaching competencies and adhering to ethical codes of conduct, but without necessarily telling them what to do or teaching them alternative courses of action.

In this month’s Coaching Cabinet we opened that box and one article that was shared supported the case for offering AI coaches professional (human) supervision. The researchers of the paper that the article cites had found that “AI seems to do better on tasks when asked to reflect on its mistakes”.

Fascinating, don’t you think?

Don’t get me wrong, I still think AI advancements and implementation are a pretty real existential threat to humanity, but for some time now I’ve chosen to take a positive stance towards its development and focus on the potential.

I’m excited about the prospect of getting more people to think and reflect better, and AI will be able to offer this. What’s key is human oversight, and I believe what we’ve learned about how to help people operate at their best through supervision might be able to help AIs programmed to help human beings.

Though it might also be that I’m massively projecting my humanness into technology, as we often do. Though that article seems to suggest that there is at least some merit.

Thoughts?

P.S- Curious to see how AI bot would coach. We ran a coaching lab with AI Coach Bot Alpina and its creator Rebecca Rutschmann earlier this year. Interested? Check out the sign up link in the comments. …

Here’s the link to sign up.

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Being human vs.(?) Being a coach

Being human vs.(?) Being a coach

Coaching is a relational practice.

When coaches start out, they tend to “do coaching”.

As they mature, they become coaches.

They hold space, being-with their clients, rather than applying techniques and models. It’s very powerful indeed to spend time in a space like that.

The next challenge is to figure out where the line is between being a coach and just being a fellow human being. The overlap is huge! But there are distinct differences that can have a significant effect on the relationship, and hence the outcome of the coaching.

For example, your client shares that they’re being bullied in the workplace. You happen to have had similar experiences with bullying in the past, and so you find yourself empathising a LOT! Do you share this with your client?

On the one hand, it can create a very strong connection and the feeling of being truly understood (even though, phenomenologically, that’s an illusion, it’s a powerful experience for your client). And as a fellow human, you would probably want to connect in this way.

On the other hand, as a coach you know that your client’s experience is what we commit to focus on, and that your own experience isn’t really that relevant here, if at all.

I no longer believe that there’s a right or wrong in this sort of scenario, unless you’re blatantly getting lost or triggered in your own experience and subsequently finding it difficult to focus or stay non-directive.

What’s going on for yourself is actually a valid, and quite powerful way of working with clients, and there are some excellent resources on “use of self” in coaching.

If you are curious to explore this ahead, I have a list of resources you can check out. Tagged in the comments below.

Hope you’ll find these resources helpful and I’d love to know how you relate to use of self in your coaching work.

With Love Yannick

In the comment :

Check out this excellent article ( https://researchportal.coachingfederation.org/Document/Pdf/2951.pdf ), my Coaching Uncaged episode with supervision legend Robin Shohet ( https://youtu.be/LUv4U9W9gWs?si=wwYQZk6hZx5IzAQn ), or this book on use of self ( https://www.abebooks.com/9780965043014/Triple-Impact-Coaching-Use-of-self-Process-0965043010/plp ), which David Tee recommended to me yesterday while discussing his guest lectures on my Cambridge module on psychological coaching.

Just calling to say I’m no longer ill

Title: Just calling to say I’m no longer ill

When’s the last time you called your doctor’s office to tell them that the treatment worked and you’re no longer ill?

My guess is you’ve probably never done that (unless it was a very complex disease and the line of treatment was uncertain, which merits to help the doctor learn what worked and what didn’t).

Since so many coaches struggle with the uncertainty of not knowing whether their clients got what they needed from a coaching session, our supervision group loved Ally’s analogy above.

What can we learn here?

First of all, you may choose to trust that your clients take what they need from the work, and that we tend only to hear from them when things don’t work out as expected. Generally, the expectation is that the coaching is effective, so “no news” is “good news” (as my parents used to say while I was away on holiday as a teenager).

Also, if you’re in doubt, you can simply ask your clients!

Take stock, request feedback, check into your contract!

Is there anything we can do more of, less of, differently? Are you getting what you need from the coaching? How did [x] go based on what discussed during our last session? Is this a good use of our time?

And hey, maybe it’s time to explore your relationship with uncertainty, which existential(ly minded) coaches and supervisors love to do 🙂

With Love Yannick

P.S : Can you help me identify the challenges and questions you are currently facing in your coaching journey. I am thinking of putting some resources together and your input will really help me understand how I can best serve you.

Quiet Desperation

“When I first saw American Beauty, I was married. And the second time I saw it… I wasn’t.”

Every now and again, there’s a piece of art that speaks directly to those who live in quiet desperation. A feeling that something’s not quite right, or possibly quite wrong, with the way they live their life or the way they’ve been navigating their career.

You may not be able to quite put your finger on what it is that’s bugging you, or perhaps you know exactly, but you couldn’t even begin to dare think about what it would take to wrestle yourself out of the chokehold that your situation has become over the years. We can’t just blow up our lives now, can we?!

And along comes that person, that story, that book, that show, that movie, or, yes, possibly even that Instagram post – tapping right into the fantasy of breaking out of this quiet desperation and start making a fucking change!

That’s what American Beauty, did for many people, and hence the quote above, which is what Kevin Spacey heard quite a lot from people following his role as Lester.

To some, this kind of art helps them muster the courage to consider what it would take to live differently. And they may step out of what’s been broken for some time. Others consider their options and decide to try and mend what’s broken, within existing structures, and many people save their marriages or find meaning in their current job.

Whatever the outcome, to speak out loud what has been experienced in quiet desperation is a courageous act. It may feel like speaking it into existence, making it real, just by acknowledging it to someone. Not taking action at that point may feel even more defeating and depressing than continuing to ignore and suppress it. And so, many continue to suffer quietly. The devil you know may just be more comfortable, after all, despite the suffering. Because, indeed, sorting your shit out is a lot of work!

And yet, continuing life in quiet desperation (unless this is a conscious choice after considering your alternatives) is a recipe for having regrets in the future. And those are likely to breed resentment and deep unhappiness, which is going to affect everyone around us.

The term ‘existential crisis’ can be thrown around quite lightly. American Beauty is a wonderful illustration of what it might look like and feel like.

I wish all people would have someone to talk to on a regular basis, someone safe to express such deeply personal thoughts and feelings. Chances are that if we acknowledge them, we can take action before we reach the point of crisis. But the reality is that most people wait too long, and at that point, it may require some drastic measures to reconnect to a life of meaning and authenticity.

It’s never too late if you ask me!

It’ll take courage to make a change. It’ll take courage not to.

That’s just the nature of our human condition.

With Love

Yannick

Nobody needs a supervisor, but everybody should want one

In my ideal world, everybody has access to supervision.

And I’m saying “super-vision” because the term “supervisors” will, to most people, be associated with a “superior” looking over your shoulder and trying to dictate, assess, and/or control your work. And that’s really not what supervision is about in my books.

Therapy and social work were the first fields to recognize that people carry a lot of weight in their jobs. They’re exposed to a lot of emotions, suffering and stress. So, naturally, as human beings, we are affected by the environment we work in and the people we’re working with and for.

Thing is that while this may be enhanced in therapy and social work, it’s certainly true for all jobs. Perhaps more so when we actively work with people, but really, all jobs are demanding in some way or other. To varying degrees, sure, but no matter what job you’re doing, I believe you would greatly benefit from…

• having a space where you can freely reflect on your work, how it’s affecting you, and how you might do it better;
• a confidential and trusted relationship within which you can take a step back from your busy schedule so that you may recognize ethical crossroads, figure out how to navigate them, and remind yourself of the big picture as to make better decisions;
• a second pair of eyes, ears, and sensations to open up important questions and conversations with yourself that you wouldn’t otherwise have considered, or made time for;
• being able to talk to someone who’s trained to hold space, actively listen and suspend their own personal judgements, so that you can release whatever’s been building up inside of you emotionally as a result of your work.

In a nutshell, that’s the normative, formative, and restorative function of supervision as I know and love it. And I believe that every teacher, lawyer, consultant, parent, politician and accountant would see significant shifts in their mental health, productivity and wellbeing as a result.

Traditionally, supervisors are senior practitioners, with a long history in the field of their supervisee, or at least significantly further ahead. But since the world of work develops nauseatingly fast, I think it’s a lot more important these days to help someone figure out their own way of working, rather than offering advice and suggestions from a position of knowledge and experience. That’s why the lines between coaching and supervision have become increasingly blurry, and it’s an ongoing debate amongst my supervision students.

But moving away from having to have the answers, it allows the supervisor to facilitate a learning process that encourages the supervisee to take ownership and responsibility for their work, it fosters autonomy and psychological wellbeing in the workplace; and it allows trained supervisors to work well beyond the traditional boundaries of their respective field.

So if you’re reading this, and what you do on a daily basis is pretty demanding, I’d encourage you to consider looking for a supervisor. I’d be be more than happy to explore working together or to connect you to someone that I think would be a better fit. I know that many coaching supervisors will consider taking on clients from other lines of work.

After all, once you free yourself from having to offer advice and solutions, but instead you create a space to reflect and learn, a whole world of value opens up – across disciplines.

With that in mind, very few people need a supervisor, but everybody should want one.

With Love 

Yannick

How (not) to miss the elephant in the room 

“NO. WAY!” I quite loudly stated, to myself, when I first watched this video about selective attention during my undergrad in psychology back in 2005.

It’s difficult not to spoil the experiment even with a subtle headline (I’ll share my first drafts at the end of this Nugget), so my invitation is to watch this video right now before you read on, and really commit to engaging in the task.

Go on, I’ll wait…

…

…

Whether you were suprised or not at the end, try this one next…

…

…

Why is this an important warning to coaches and supervisors?

Because I see a lot of my students focus too hard on paying attention through a particular psychological lens. And with best intentions. They’ve got excited about spotting strengths, or psychodynamics, thinking traps, or limiting beliefs.

But what are you missing when you’re listening through a particular lens?

Well, possibly a big fucking gorilla doing a little dance in front of your very eyes, or the infamous elephant in the room.

This, for me, is a wonderful illustration of the difference between focus and presence.

Focus can be tremendously helpful. But it’s limiting your view by definition.

That’s why it’s important to “tune out” of focus every now and then and check whether there’s something you might be missing, something outside of “the zone”, on the periphery of awareness, that might just be the thing that’s most important to notice right now.

It’s this interplay between tuning in (focus) and tuning out (presence) that makes for masterful practice.

This is also why supervision is such an important aspect of professional coaching. Becasue we all have our blind spots, and an extra pair of fully present eyes can help you pay attention outside of the box.

As always, curious about your thoughts. If this resonated, make it swing! I’d love to hear from you.

With Love 

Yannick

PS: There’s more videos and resources here if you wanted to explore selective attention further. And my first drafts of the headline were “Did you spot the Gorilla?” and “What you are missing when you’re focusing too much”.

Who do you pretend to be? 

A lot of us wear masks, a lot of the time.

We adjust to our environment, and we work hard to “fit in”, so that we may be loved, accepted, get promoted, or avoid conflicts and tension.

And yet, masking takes a lot of energy, and we risk starting to believe that this is who we actually are.

“Who am I?”

Such a core question, answers to which will guide our choices and impact our lives and careers in profound ways.

But how could there be just one answer? Or even a short one? How could the answer to this question ever fit in a sentence?

It makes sense that we show up differently in different situations when surrounded by different people. So we can acknowledge that we have a range of different “faces”, different sides to our personality. So at which point does this become inauthentic? And at which point does it become problematic that we’re not showing our real thoughts and feelings?

I wish I could give you sharp, clever, and pointed answers to these questions. The truth is that such answers depend on – you will have guessed it by now – who you are, your values, beliefs, worldview, ethical principles, how you’ve been brought up, your cultural heritage, and what you’ve come to believe about life and living.

What I can tell you is that the answers will emerge when you start reflecting on yourself, how you are showing up in your life and your work, when you’re being courageously honest with yourself, and you are willing to look where it is uncomfortable to look. A trained professional such as a therapist or a coach will make this exploration more fruitful, but there are many things anyone can do at no cost, to gain some insights into the many facets of you are:

Journalling, meditation, reflection time, or any of the many tools out there such as e.g. the character strengths assessments by the VIA Institute, or 16 personalities (just make sure you don’t let these label you and box you in – any assessment is merely a snapshot in time, and should be used as the start of a conversation with yourself).

If you find yourself exhausted and anxious a lot, you may be masking a lot more than is healthy and sustainable. Talking to someone confidentially offers you a chance to be really seen, and loved for who you are, and helped to figure out what it would take to course-correct and drop some of the heavy burden of pretending to be someone you are not.

It’s not an easy journey, it will require work and courage, and the will to show up vulnerable, to let yourself be seen (and judged by others, inevitably). I believe it’s worth it, but it does remain a choice. Often it’s more comfortable to wear a mask, even at the expense of authenticity. And it can cause a lot of friction when we “suddenly” reveal a side of ourselves that others hadn’t known, and which now requires them to deal with some changes.

I’d love to give you an easy way out of masking. Sometimes it exists. Often it doesn’t. I believe that’s just life. It’s complex, and there are many aspects to be taken into account.

The starting point to make things better though is to acknowledge how you are showing up, and where and why you may be masking something.

Hope that helped 

With Love 

Yannick

The Diversity Awareness Ladder

When was the last time you encountered someone who was really, and I mean really different to you? Perhaps you found yourself in a situation that challenged how you perceive the world, that picked at the foundation of what you believe is right and wrong, somewhat disorientating even.

How did you feel? How did you relate to this “difference”?

Some fear the “other” becuase it can make us feel alone and left out, not fitting in.

Some appreciate difference due to its potential to help us grow, learn, or more grounded in our principles after they’ve got tested and stood firm despite the challenge.

Different perspectives help us innovate, create better products, expand our minds, develop empathy and foster tolerance. But they can also make us feel more alone, less confident, more isolated, and anxious.

A wonderful tool that we are introducing to our students at the International Centre for Coaching Supervision is David Clutterbuck’s Diversity Awareness Ladder, which outlines the conversations you might want to consider having with yourself as we as the conversations you might want to have with “the other”.

What do you think: Is step 5 on the ladder what everybody should aim for? Or might fear sometimes be an appropriate response to difference? Are we taking diversity and inclusion too far in this day and age? Or does it mean we’re missing out on all the things we could learn from each other?

With Love 

Yannick

How to live without regrets

It pains me when people regret their life choices.

I see a fair share of coaching clients who come see me at a time when they pause for a bit and finally have some space to reflect. And often it’s somewhat of an imposed pause: the kids have left the nest, a partnership dissolved, got made redundant, covid lockdown was a busy period too, for example.

It is only when we dip our head above water to take a few deep breaths that we realize that the past X number of time we’ve been on autopilot, just going with the flow, or simply swept away by the demands of life and work.

it is at that time that many people tune into that eery niggling feeling that they may have on some level noticed, but that was never strong enough to be prioritized and given some focused attention. And it is at this point that a level of regret surfaces about the way they’ve been living their live, or navigating their career. Oh the precious time that’s been wasted living out of authenticity, or misaligned to our values. On some level we’ve all been there…

My client last night realized during our session that each day he’s not making a decision is a day that he’s choosing not to take action. Up until now that was an unconscious choice. Now it is conscious. And this awareness released an energy that motivated him to take action and take concrete steps to figure out a way forward – so that he wouldn’t regret not taking action sooner.

To me, this is the way not to have regrets down the line: Pausing regularly to take a step back and reflect on who you are becoming and what your choices are in life and work.

It’s perfectly fine to choose to drift along the currents of life, not asserting energy into any specific direction. It’s also perfectly fine to decide to focus on a specific project and work towards it with all your energy. I don’t think there’s a correct way to live. I believe everybody gets to choose how to spend their time.

What I wish for people is that this is a conscious choice, that they’re aware of the consequences of their actions (or lack of action), to the best of their ability, so that they can own their choices (including the choice not to choose right now) and live without regrets later on.

After all, if you’re taking the time to think and feel things through, then you can be confident that you’ve made the best choice at the time.

It doesn’t mean everything’s going to work out for you if you’re seeing a coach or therapist regularly, or you meditate every morning. But it helps you to own your choices, and paired with a little self-compassion, I think that’s as close as we can get to living life without regrets.

So step out of life every now and then, and be kind to yourself. That’s my invitation to you today.

With Love 

Yannick

How to be perfect

I like to do things well. Do you?

I also tend to stop when it’s “good enough”. And that shit doesn’t come easy to a whole lot of people.

And I get it. I’ve spent a lot of time working on the last 5% of something that I knew would have been much better spent on moving onto the next thing. And I still kept going. Sound familiar?

To many non-perfectionists it can seem like such a valuable asset. Imagine being SO driven to deliver excellence that it seems like everything they touch just comes out fantastic! Well, what they don’t see is how much of a pain it is not to be able to stop at good enough, how nothing’s ever good enough, how your inner critic tells you that anything that isn’t perfection really is just terrible work, and that you can never deliver anything that you’re truly happy about and proud of.

But wait, anything?

A recent client of mine got me thinking about perfection and we thought about under what conditions “perfection” could actually be a thing. What we came up with was the necessity of rules – the simpler, the better. Because there is such thing as “a perfect game”, is there not?!

I thought of bowling, a game in which there’s a very well defined perfect score. I immediately thought that technique can always be improved in some way, yes, but the score remains perfect if you strike on every move. A perfect score. And yet, I’m sure a perfectionist would find something to do better…

The simpler the game, the higher the chance of reaching perfection. And the higher the chance the game will get boring. Because, let’s face it, where are you gonna go after you reach perfection? Life’s exciting because it’s an infinite game. You can’t win. The rules are at best incredibly complex, and really just made up, or loosely agreed upon in particular contexts.

Same with business, or relationships, or parenting. How do you define “winning”? What are the rules?

If you figure that out, define the rules well, and keep it all very simple… well I guess you can calm down your perfectionist tendencies, or even set yourself up for a perfect game. It also helps to consider your values, ethical principles, or whatever else you’d consider your very own “rules of life”. But if you’re taking this too far, I also think you’d be missing the point of living, and miss out on the beauty of life’s complexities. After all, life’s not something you can really “win”. At the end we’re all dead.

Bottom line is that I see perfectionists suffer, because perfection can only exist in very specific circumstances. Yes, perfectionists seem to deliver excellent work, and it can be a tremendous asset, especially for organisations. But boy, do I not want to change places. It’s not a pleasant experience of going through life and work.

So consider this next time you find yourself envious about someone else’s productivity. You never know what kind of pain fuels their motivation.

Having the privilege in my line of work to spend some time inside people’s minds really puts some things into perspective. And I believe putting things into perspective has a huge impact on happiness and wellbeing.

With Love 

Yannick

The Easiest Way To Create More Ongoing Work For Yourself As A Coach

I believe it was Julie who offered a most valuable Nugget to her coaching colleagues back in 2019. I was teaching my module on the MSc Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology, and one of Julie’s classmates was curious as to what, if anything, we should do after a coaching engagement ends.

The easiest way to create more work is through referral from people who already know you and your work well. So naturally we wondered how to make repeat-business more likely, and Julie (an experienced coach) shared the most wonderful approach, which I offer to coaches I train or work with on a regular basis:

She calls them MOT Sessions.

MOT is the UK government department responsible for checking vehicle roadworthiness. Most car owner around the world will be familiar with periodical check-in sessions to make sure everything runs smoothly. Sometimes work is needed and so they book you in for repairs. If your vehicle runs smoothly, you’re good to go, but it was worth checking (and also, well, the law).

But law or not, it’s certainly smart to check your vehicle periodically, and if there’s work to do, you’ve got a trusted mechanic at hand to jump right in.

Why wouldn’t we do the same for our clients?

Julie offers her MOT check-ins at a discount to past clients, and if there’s any work to be done, it’s easy to proceed.

The concept is known and familiar to people. Its a brilliant way to offer clients who are finishing a set of sessions to check in 12 months down the line, to see where they’re at.

You may not even want to charge for these sessions, to make it a no-brainer for your clients to say yes to any further work that needs to be done. After all, there’s always desire, opportunity, and possibility.

And a call with a trusted coach who has some context on your journey is a wonderful way to check in with yourself and see if you might want to act on it.

If you’re a coach, is there something you do to check in with past clients?

With Love 

Yannick

Are your ethical standards based on guesswork?

“Am I doing it right?” is a question that I often recognize as swimming in the subtext of what my clients bring into my coaching and especially supervision spaces. But what’s right and wrong is often a complex landscape, and not at all black and white.

I grew up with children’s tales and Hollywood stories of good and evil, neatly and obviously in distinct categories.

When I got older though I really resonated with the stories that would explore the “bad guy’s” good intentions, and highlight the “good guys” moral flaws and blind spots.

I remember vividly reading Ken Follet’s The Pillars of the Earth and finding myself empathising with the evil prince as I understood his drive and trauma. Of course he’s going to do evil things. To him they’re not even evil, they’re just what you do.

What we’re talking about when we try to figure out what’s right and wrong – is ethics.

Sounds boring to some, but once you ask some real life question and invite people to broaden their awareness around the impact of their actions – not so boring afterall, to say the least.

I was teaching ethics yesterday to a cohort of highly experienced coaches at the International Centre for Coaching Supervision, and we offer them a question that never fails to elicit an experience, and it’s a formidable “test” for checking into the ethical groundedness of any choice you’re making, whether that’s as a coach working with a client, or in any other situation, really:

Imagine, the thing you’re about to do will make the headlines in tomorrow’s news. Everybody you care about will find out what you’ve done, and why.

How do you feel? Is there a part of you that’s protesting? Why? Listen to that part? What does it have to say? How would you justify that this was indeed the right thing to do? What guided your decision making process? How easy or hard would it be to argue your case and defend your position against any criticism?

If you pass the headline test, you will have reflected more deeply on your choices than most people.

Though please try to resist any people pleasing tendencies that might turn up. The aim is not to make everybody else happy, it’s about doing the right thing, and we all know that “people” have a complicated relationship with ethical behaviour.

What other “tests” do you have to check your actions against ethical principles? Let me know by replying to this email.

With Love 

Yannick

The “magic” question to get more clients? 

I don’t believe in “Magic”.

I do believe in the artful application of skills and knowledge to create results that may seem unbelievable.

It does generally work well though to get people’s attention, especially if a headline implies that it can effortlessly solve a sticky problem. Is that why you’re here?

If it is, sorry, it’s not going to be effortless. But it does really work well. Not quite magically, but in my experience it’s a question that most coaches I work with either hadn’t considered, or find difficult to engage with.

Here’s the question: Who do you think I should talk to next?

Here’s the context: Since virtually all paying coaching clients result from conversations, the most important question you, as a coach, need to ask when seeking new clients is: “Where is my next conversation coming from?”

Of course, ideally these are conversations with qualified leads, but if you ever run out of people to talk to who fit your niche (if you have one), I’d recommend you talk to literally anyone.

Yes, ideally these are people with a great network who also know and trust you; but really, everybody knows people, and you never know where a conversation might go – especially if you actively probe for it by asking something like “Hey, now that you know what I do and love, who do you think I should talk to next?”, and “do you think you could introduce me?” A warm introduction goes a long way.

A few tips :

• Be genuinely interested: People can sense when you’re just trying to sell something. Ask thoughtful questions about their lives, goals, and challenges.
• Focus on providing value: Don’t just talk about yourself and your services. Offer insights, advice, or resources that can be helpful to the other person, even if they don’t become a client.
• Be a good listener: Pay attention to what the other person is saying, both verbally and nonverbally. This will help you understand their needs and tailor your conversation accordingly.
• Follow up: After a conversation, send a thank-you note or email, and stay in touch. You never know when the opportunity to connect them with your services might arise.
• Be patient: Building relationships takes time. Don’t expect to convert every conversation into a paying client.

And lastly remember, only a few conversations will lead to someone paying clients. The key is to have more of them.

Love,

Yannick

“Current”ly

Much of life operates in waves and currents.

Studying how water flows, the way it interacts with its surroundings, it’s fascinating to me.

I remember reading “The Swarm” by Frank Schätzing about 20 years ago and marvelling at the intricate interrelationships that make up the balance of our eco system. I remember him describing the currents of warm water that flow through our oceans. And I remember, a few months later, wading into a calm Mediterranian Sea and stopping for a moment to feel the currents of the water gently inviting me to follow.

Two thoughts came to my mind when one of my clients this week used the word “currently”. He had realised that saying “no” to something or someone isn’t necessarily an eternal “no, fuck off” (the story in his head), but that it could be a much gentler and more open “I’m currently taking a break from [________] (but am open to it at a later point)”.

1. I hadn’t made the connection between “current” and “currently”. It made so much sense all of a sudden. And I always liked playing with the currents since that day in the Mediterranean Sea. “Currently” – what a beautiful word!
   
2. Whether you’re going with the flow of a current, work against it, or cutting in and out – there are many ways to relate to currents. They can guide us and show us the right path (such as when animals are guided by the electromagnetic currents of the Earth), or they can mislead us into danger (such as a swimmer getting sucked out into the open ocean as the tide recedes from the shore).
   

It’s tempting to go with the flow. In fact I’ve met many clients who trust the pull of the universe’s currents completely. I myself have been a go-with-the-flow type person for most of my life, and it’s worked out rather well.

… until it didn’t.

How do we tell which currents to follow, and which ones to avoid? What’s a good balance between going with, and going against?

Today I invite you to sit and reflect for a moment on the following questions:

What guides your life and your work?

How attuned are you to the currents that gently (or not so gently) pull you?

And what would you like to, currently, say no or yes to?

With Love 

Yannick

To watch something grow and contribute

What’s a meaningful existence?

There are many answers to this question. One came to me as I looked out of my window just now and observed my neighbour attend to the plants on her balcony.

The story I’m telling myself is that she is quite alone. I never see anybody with her, and some people just have that kind of vibe. But she also seems so content each time I see her.

Just days earlier I had told someone how meaningful I find it to see people grow in my line of work, and to be an active participant in that journey. It occurred to me that my neighbour does the exact same thing: She plays an active role in her plants growing and flourishing.

Parenting offers meaning in the same lane. There are few things more fullfilling than to play an active part in shaping and nourishing others. Plants, animals, people, structures, systems, ideas – I don’t think it necessarily matters that much.

What I think do matters is to share it with others, to contribute to something that’s larger than yourself. I think that’s why the majority of my neighbour’s plants are on the balcony, rather than inside her flat hidden from view.

Or maybe not… I should drop her a note, tell her she’s been my inspiration for today.

What’s a meaningful existence… I feel so grateful that I get to explore this question in depth with so many different people. Some aspects seem quite common, but none I’ve come across are universal. What I do know is that finding your own answer/s makes a crucial difference to your sense of wellbeing, focus, drive, engagement, relationships, and your general lived experience as you’re navigating your human condition. So if you ever wnated to explore this, do reach out to an existential coach. Trust me, they’re gonna be super excited to help you figure this out! I certainly am.

With Love 

Yannick

Mindless TV has reached the internet

I recently got caught in a YouTube Shorts wave. If you’re not familiar, this basically YouTube doing TikTok or Instgram reels-type content: <1min videos, somewhat targeted to your interests and watch behaviours, but pretty random in terms of what it’s showing you if you just keep scrolling.

I found myself scrolling through 30mins of content, and remembering just one video. It was such a waste of time (other than me actually wanting to take my mind off somethign that I was working on), and it got me thinking about how I used to do this back in the day mindlessly scrolling through TV channels looking for something that was vagely interesting.

It seems to me that on some level humans appreciate the mindlessness, to be distracted by something random. Of course there’s the “slot machine” effect that keeps people hooked to keep flicking to the next channel or video. But sometimes we just don’t want to make any choices other than to “turn the device on” and let ourselves be distracted.

So I’m wondering about healthier alternatives…

Because all this mindless, crack-like easy distraction reminds me of what JK saw coming: Virtual Insanity.

For me, my toddler definitely works! When she’s not available, there are some music algorythms that I like (mainly putting parts of my harddrive to random so that I’m in charge of the selection). I also sometimes like to pull a random book out my shelf and flick to a random page to see what happens.

Any ideas you’d add into the mix?

The paradox of commitment 

We’ve all been there: What should I do? Whether all the options seem equally good, equally shitty, or you just don’t know how things are going to turn out. Whether you’ve got way too many options, opportunity is offering a few radically different directions, or you just can’t decide between two pathways towards the same goal… 

Every choice we make means that we’re saying ‘no’ to ALL the other options that are available to us at that moment; and you can never go back in time and make a different choice. Plus you’ll never, ever find out whether or not it was the right choice to make. 

A recent coaching client was faced with such a choice, a big one, life changing – the kind of choice, once made, it’ll be with you for the rest of your life. And, in a way, he already knew what he wanted to do. It was just really difficult to commit to it. Because if they were to make this choice, it would, by definition, limit their freedom. 

That’s the nature of commitment – it can feel heavy, because we are now responsible for the choice we’ve made, and any consequences that may follow. But what happens for most of my clients who commit and make such choices, is that they feel a whole lot lighter because whatever happens now, the choice has been made, so the gruelling contemplations just evaporate, as long as you own that choice, and run with it. 

When facing big choices, our experience is intricately shaped by our relationship with commitment, freedom and responsibility. And it never ceases to amaze me how paradoxical these relationships can feel. 

What I know is that we tend to feel most alive when we feel “both and”, when we allow ourselves to bath in the energy of the tension that’s being created when we’re open to embrace it. 

Any choices you’ve been avoiding lately? Take a moment to check in with yourself. Perhaps you can spot some paradoxical relationships… 

And I think by now it probably goes without saying that a coach with an existential lens offers a powerful lens for you to make sense of what’s at play there. 

With Love
Yannick

Pulling teeth

I hate dentists! 

Reason being that I’ve had a rather traumatizing experience when I was around 10 years old (Fuck you Dr Rose! You told me you’d “just take a look”. It may well be that you’ve accidentally slipped into my nerve, but either way, you broke something and I can still feel it each time I merely think about dentists). 

Anyway, you can imagine how I’ve felt inside when a recent supervisee described some of her coaching engagements as “like pulling teeth”. 

Upon asking my 10 year old self to kindly step out of the way and let me do my job, we got to reflect on what our role is as coaches, and what sort of style to lean into. 

My immediate thought event was: “If it feels like pulling teeth, that’s not coaching then, is it?!” After all, we’re supposed to hold space and let the client do the pulling. If they’re just lying there with their mouth open and expect us to go to work on them, something’s off in the relationship. 

Thing is that this coach really enjoyed that kind of work. It felt challenging, a bit risky, exciting, incredibly impactful, and she was able to draw on decades of experience and knowledge as a practising psychologist and extreme sports athlete. Yes, she took on more responsibility than most coaches would (want to/be willing to bear), and that sometimes weighed heavily on her and felt quite draining; but she liked it, and her clients valued it, and the organisation that contracts her again and again to work with their most challenging executives clearly thought it was worth paying for. 

As a proponent of integrative approaches to working with people (and arguably influenced by my existential lens on challenging authority and dogma) I’ve arrived at a position that there isn’t really a right or wrong way of coaching (read: working with people), only different ways of working. 

What’s important is that we develop the awareness of what we are willing and able to bring to the table, combined with the capability to choose the right set of skills, tools, or ways of being at the right time with the right client. 

And it helps to be able to communicate what you do, and how you do it, so that your clients can give you informed consent before you start pulling their teeth. You wouldn’t wanna go and traumatize anyone, would you now?!

With love (and hate 😉 )
Yannick

Sweet release

We carry a lot. 

Whether you’re a coach, therapist, a colleague at work, a parent, or simply a good friend – as soon as you’re listening empathically and offering your full presence to someone who’s currently facing something difficult…  some of it is bound to stick to you. 

You may have heard of the term “compassion fatigue”. It’s common to get weighed down when you care a lot. 

My offering for you this week is to reflect on how you release some of what found its way into your container. 

One of the 3 functions of supervision is “restorative” and offers such a release to anyone with a job that’s prone to weigh you down or bring up personal issues. Most of the time when our own shit gets triggered in a professional situation, it’s not appropriate to let it enter the room. That’s why it’s just so incredibly important to have a space to get it out of your system. 

If not professional supervision, you might already have found a way. A fellow coach recently told me about how listening to cacophonous black metal music feels deeply cathartic to him. Others write, dance, run, create art, or play video games. 

How do you process and release? 

With Love
Yannick

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!

Repeat anything 3 times in my coaching or supervision sessions, and you can be sure that I’ll appear to acknowledge it and get curious!

Something I hear a lot of coaches in training or supervision be concerned about is that they’re going to miss something important if they’re not 100% attentive to every word their clients say and every subtle movement in their body. 

While I’m a sucker for spotting patterns (bit of a strength of mine), you don’t have to be a genius detective to notice when someone mentions something several times. Usually you don’t even have to have a particularly good memory. 

If something’s important, you can be pretty sure it’ll come back, even if you miss it the first time around. 

I might not, the first two times around, feed it back to the client, get curious, or intervene, but whenever something emerges for the 3rd time (could be a word, a gesture, a flinch in their facial expression, a wobble in their voice, or a thought or feeling I’m having in response), I’ll definitely say something, at the very least to acknowledge it and check into potential significance. Usually I don’t have do anything more than note that it happened. The client will take it from there. 

In a recent supervision group we’ve had a good laugh imagining Yannick appearing out of thick smoke, Beetlejuice-style, everytime that happens!

Stay present, but also: don’t worry about it too much! That worry will distract you even more. 

With Love
Yannick

How to say “No”, and Yes, to people who can’t afford your rates (the Capacity Solution)

I want coaching to be accessible for as many people as possible. 

Ideally I’d like to see all people have access to a good coach, regardless of where they are in the company hierarchy, or how much money they have or earn. 

The problem that many coaches run into (me included) is that in order to run a sustainable business (in the midst of exploding cost of living and/or investing in growth) we must charge rates that make our services inaccessible for a significant chunk of the population. 

By definition, raising your coaching fees makes your help increasingly exclusive. And this is painful to anyone committed to making a positive difference in the world – not just a positive difference in the world of those who are already doing well. I listen to this pain frequently during Rocket Supervision sessions, and I’m no stranger to the feeling. 

There are many ways in which we might tackle this issue. Here’s my “Capacity Solution”: 

Saying no to a client who could really benefit from working with you and who you’d be excited to take on, but they can’t quite afford your rates, can be really difficult. Especially when you feel you’ve not got a “valid” reason to say no. 

I believe your capacity to be such a valid reason, because your coaching business will cease to exist if you take on more clients below your rate than you can afford to. You’ll start making a loss, burning through your savings, or you’ll need to find and take on more clients than you have time or energy for. Once that’s been happening for a little while, you#ll either burn out or go bankrupt, and you won’t be able to coach anyone anymore; or at the very least you’ll have to start taking on other work, and just do a bit of coaching on the side. 

The solution: Work out your capacity, meaning the amount of money you need to bring in to sustain your coaching practice, and work backwards to arrive at a fee structure that is workable. 

This may look like a tiered system, a certain number of VIP or standard fee clients each month, after which you’re able to drop your prices. That client you talked to who can’t afford your rates will have to simply wait until later that month to get confirmation from you as to whether they can start at a discounted rate; or they may have to wait another month (practical advice: start a waiting list rather than saying No).

Or if, like me, your capacity feels ambiguous or you just don’t want to be that organised, you can set aside a capacity of “X” (2 in my case) for clients who pay you a reduced rate (in my case that rate is “whatever you can afford as long as it feels like a stretch for you”). I work with strictly 2 clients at any point in time and they get 6 sessions at that rate, only once. 

That means I can say yes (albeit usually “not now”) to prospects who can’t currently afford the standard rates (I disqualify those who could afford it but choose to wait for a discount), and I’ve been surprised in the past at who all of a sudden is able to “find” the money to start straight away. 

I feel this is fair to everybody, and if all coaches were to “gift” a small amount of their capacity at a rate that’s affordable to anyone (while maintaining an exchange that keeps clients committed to the process and stretches them appropriately), the world would be a better place as the generative systemic impact of coaching is not to be underestimated. 

I’d love to hear your/other solutions! 

With Love

Yannick

A question of style

Who hasn’t ever wondered: 

“What should I do?”

Or perhaps more specifically:

“What’s the right thing for me to do in this particular situation?” 

My students, trainees and supervisees ask this question all the time. 

I love it when they open it up as part of an inquiry, which we then explore together. But very regularly I get asked very directly, “what (do you think) I should do?”, looking for some authority or certainty on the matter. 

And I get the desire. When someone else tells us how it’s done, we can pass on the weight of the responsibility of having to decide for ourselves. The more we know, the fewer choices we have to grapple with. After all, in the face of uncertainty, all choices leave us with a taste of existential anxiety… What if I didn’t make the right choice? 

The thing about coaching and supervision is that there’s little that’s definitively right or wrong. 

While professional bodies, competency frameworks, codes of conduct, books or experts have lots to say about “how it’s done”, the existential truth is that any such certainty is imagined. 

Sure, there’s a lot we can learn from those with more experience than us, but it doesn’t mean they’re right. And it doesn’t mean that we carry any less responsibility for what we do and don’t do. 

If observing and deconstructing dozens of live demos in the Coaching Lab has taught me one thing, it’s that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to effective coaching, that different styles work in different ways, and that it’s super context-specific when it comes to what works and what doesn’t. 

And so usually my answer to the question of “what should I do?!” is an invitation to explore the context, the range of your capabilities, and to then make a choice and try to embrace the responsibility it carries. 

What can help you lean into your authentic style as a coach, trainer, supervisor or other form of facilitator, is Heron’s (1975) model of intervention styles. It’s been adapted to coaching by Eric de Haan’s and his colleagues (there’s even a psychometric tool that offers excellent feedback and development pathways for coaches – the Coaching Behaviours Questionnaire) and offers an awareness of your natural habitat, which in turn allows you to move all over the “playing field” of possible interventions, so that you can adapt how you respond to your clients in a way that is most aligned with what they need and/or what they want.

It’s also an excellent map to use in the contracting phase with new clients, to discuss and agree with what “sort of help they’re after”, on the basis of which you can then decide to what extent you’re willing and/or able to work with them. 

Here’s the model: 

In coaching and supervision, you might place yourself anywhere on this map. You might frame a narrow and focused space and pick your clients accordingly; or you may learn to move all over this map as and when appropriate. 

In an unregulated profession, nobody can really tell you that you’re doing it wrong, if it works for your clients. Yes, the way you work may be in tension with someone else’s model of “how it’s supposed to be done”, but as long as you’re contracting clearly and you’re taking responsibility for your choices, and your clients can give you informed consent to partner with you, you’re good to do your own thing. 

So if you ask me what to do, I could tell you what I would be doing (and occasionally I do put that on the table), but I believe passionately that it’s a lot more powerful to hold space for someone to figure out their own style. 

I sometimes wish I had simpler answers, and shorter Nuggets! And it can be tempting to reduce the world to simple truths. But here we are, living in a complex world, where the truth is that you’ll never really know with any degree of certainty whether you’re doing it right… 

So stay in there! And keep doing the work. 

With Love
Yannick

What’s your poison? 

I remember sitting on a bar stool at a US airport connecting to some random dude who I had just walked into the place with. As we sat down he offered to buy me a drink. 

“What’s your poison?”, 

he asked with a particular look in his eyes. And for some reason I understood immediately that the question wasn’t about what I felt like drinking at that particular moment, but that he wanted to know what kind of person I was. 

I could have said “a beer, thanks”. And he could have just ordered it. Nice gesture. 

Instead I asked him for a beer, but told him I like single malt whiskeys, and that recently I’ve been developing a taste for Mezcals. 

Whiskey. Mezcal. What does that say about me? 

Well about as little as someone else interpreting a dream for you. But heaps if you were to get curious about the story behind the fact. 

He didn’t, and we sat there somewhat awkwardly, but if he had asked me what I liked about whiskey, the story of who I was would have begun to unfold. 

I might have told him about having married into a Mexican family, about how my dad loves a good whiskey and how we’ve got a Christmas ritual to sit down and have a glass while everybody else is at church. Or I might tell you about acquired tastes, and how people can change simply by choosing to get into something, about the choices people make to connect with others, or about my friend Claudio who once offered me taste of a $200 Bourbon – but to my surprise using a pipette dripping 3 drops directly onto my tongue instead of giving me a glass (I still remember the moment vividly to this day). 

And if he had held the silence after that, I’d probably told him how I miss Claudio and that last time I saw him he had gifted me an incredibly eclectic vinyl collection including 2 rare crates of 90s French HipHop. Exploring any of those stories further would open a door deep into my soul, my career, and my life, my philosophy, and you’d really get to know me…

I don’t quite remember why I didn’t ask him about his choice then. Must have been a bit self-absorbed at the time I guess.

Anywho, I had set out to write about something completely different when I started typing, and here I am talking about stories and narratives again. I think my conversation with David Drake, the founder of narrative coaching, is still a lot more present for me than I thought. One of the insights I took away from it is that we don’t really have to ask people directly to “tell me your story”. People tell stories all the time. In fact, they can’t help it! 

It may not sound like the classic story in the format we’re used to hearing in the movies or books, but they’re deep and meaningful stories nonetheless, IF we recognize them as such and make the effort to explore them. And sometimes they emerge as rich and colourful as they get, simply by asking something like: 

What’s your poison?
And then getting curious… 

With Love
Yannick

It’s a leap (!) year

“It’s a leap year”, my colleague pointed out to me this week. 

To most, what that means is that February’s got an extra day to balance the scores of the Gregorian calendar. 

To me it felt like the perfect metaphor for the current state of my business, and it seems to deeply resonate with anyone I share it with who’s currently diving into something that feels big, meaningful, and a little risky or bold. 

It also goes really well with the “I’m riding the wave” metaphor that kept emerging as I checked in with a dozen or so supervision groups at the start of the year. In order to catch a good wave, you’ve got to leap into it, lean forward, even when perhaps your instinct tells you that it may not be such a good idea. The thing with intuition is that it can be quite wrong when it comes to anything you’re doing for the first time, and doesn’t come natural to you (leaning forward to stay safe and in control when skiing or snowboarding down a steep hill is another such example. Every beginner naturally leans  back at first, and they have to take the leap for their instincts to adjust). 

The interesting thing was how my experience changed as soon as I connected to the Leap Year narrative. It felt like it made perfect sense. I felt relaxed all of a sudden, when earlier that day I had felt uncomfortable and anxious as to whether I’m doing the right thing. 

Even though I believe it’s a mere coincidence that the scaling of the Coaching Lab and Rocket Supervision coincides with an extra day in February… relating to the pressure and risk as a “leap” really encapsulates how it was and continuous to be my choice to not just lean into it, but to, well, leap! And highlights the forward movement and adventurous spirit that come with leaping, and which I very much value. 

And so I’d put it to you: 

What’s your experience at the moment, in your life or in your career? And how do you make sense of it? I.e. what’s the story you’re telling yourself about what’s happening in your life at the moment. Might there be a different narrative or metaphor that would offer you a more positive outlook? 

After all, we can choose how we feel to an extent that most people underestimate, simply by choosing the story we tell ourselves about what’s happening in our world – for better or for worse! 

With Love
Yannick

The Paradox of Good Rapport

Hey [first name], 

One of the biggest mistakes I see coaches (and people in general) make is that they’re being too nice. They hesitate to disagree, challenge, confront or otherwise try to avoid the other person feeling uncomfortable. 

I get it, and occasionally I fall in the same trap: We want to connect, create trust, good rapport, a safe space for them to open up to us. And so we match their energy, smile and nod, celebrate their strength and achievements, and generally create a warm, welcoming and positive atmosphere. 

But while that’s really important to some degree, especially at the very beginning, and arguably for some people more than for others… 

…if your client never feels uncomfortable, I can almost guarantee you that they’re missing out. 

I believe that growth often happens in a state of discomfort, when we’re stretching ourselves, leaving our comfort zones. It’s true when we’re going through a physical growth spurt while growing up. And it’s true when we’re growing psychologically or spiritually too. 

If you and your client have an agreement in place that the work you’re doing is meant to help them grow, learn or change, then it’ll be inevitable that some of your questions, reflections, observations or interventions will be difficult to hear. 

And if you’re working with someone quite robust and resilient, they will probably want you to challenge and stretch them as early as you can. Paradoxically, that will be the thing that creates trust and rapport with them, not making them feel cosy and safe. 

I believe that coaching conversations are brave spaces, rather than safe spaces, and I want to leave you with a poem:

AN INVITATION TO A BRAVE SPACE  

Together we will create brave space 

Because there is no such thing as a “safe space” – 

We exist in the real world 

We all carry scars and we have all caused wounds. 

In this space 

We seek to turn down the volume of the outside world. 

We amplify voices that fight to be heard elsewhere, 

We call each other to more truth and love 

We have the right to start somewhere and continue to grow. 

We have the responsibility to examine what we think we know. 

We will not be perfect. 

It will not always be what we wish it to be 

But It will be our brave space together,  

And  

We will work on it side by side.

Micky Scottbey Jones (heavily plagiarising Beth Strano – though I did like the lines that Micky added, so decided to share this version with you)

If you’d like to enter a brave space, I’m here for you!
And thank you very much if you’re holding space for others!
I appreciate you.

With Love
Yannick

Is this working?

Ever wondered if you’re doing it right? 

Well, duh, I fucking hope so! If you haven’t, I’d be seriously worried. 

Excessive self doubt is a serious toxin for relationships, and research tells us that healthy confidence really benefits clients.

Obviously there’s a spectrum. And while we could debate the value of questioning yourself, when it comes to relationships that are rooted in partnership (which definitely includes coaching relationships), what I can say with certainty is this:

The best way to figure out whether you’re doing it right is to simply ask!

For some reason we seem to forget that quite often, or we feel that it may be inappropriate. But think about it… 

If your partner wasn’t sure whether they’re being a good partner, would you mind if they checked in with you? For me it’s the opposite. I’d expect them to.

If I had a penny for each time a coach in supervision told themself that a session was useless, only to be thanked by the client later for how helpful it had been, I’d be… well, going out for a pint (that’s a good couple of hundred penny’s right there).

Practically, there’s two ways that I found very effective: 

A fairly neutral “Hey, how are we doing? Are you getting from this what you need? Anything we could do more, less of, or differently going forward?”

1) If you make this a routine question, it’ll sound like a routine question – professional. Even if you’re doubting yourself, try to bracket your assumption for the time being and just check in. You may or may not be surprised by the answer, but unless you’re asking the question clean, you may be influencing the answer. 

Now, you may have a polite client, or someone to whom it may feel like they’d be criticising you if they told you they aren’t happy with how it’s going, or you may not quite have sufficient rapport to get an honest answer, or they just don’t know how to tell you… so you may want to…

2) Be super transparent and share how you feel or what’s going on for you. This might sound something like: “Hey, I’d love to check in with you on something: I’m telling myself this story that today’s not been a great session and that I could have done a lot more for you [or whatever the story is that you’re genuinely telling yourself]. What’s your experience?”

This could be a lot more specific if you can put your finger on it, like: “Hey, I feel I’ve been interrupting you a lot today”, or “I wish I had created a lot more space for you to think today. What was it like for you?”

Or, indeed, a super blunt: “Hey, ehm… is this working for you? I get the feeling something’s not quite right…”

However you’re inviting feedback, good relationships depend on it. And the more often you take stock, check in, and re-contract, the stronger and more effective your relationship will be. 

Yannick out
With Love
[y]

You gotta have it here AND here!

“Wer’s nicht im Kopf hat, muss es in den Beinen haben”

Since I became a dad, many of my father’s sayings come back to my mind. This latest one (which loosely translates to “Those who lack brain power gotta have strong legs”) was often simplified for us kids to: 

“If you’ve not got it here [points to head], you’ve gotta have it here [points to body]!”

I usually heard this when I forgot something and had to walk back to get it, but as I was sitting in my dad’s arm chair on new year’s eve, having a profound embodied experience that may finally turn my health goals for 2024 from an idea into reality, a new realisation emerged: 

You’ve got to have it here AND here!

I’ve known this for years having accompanied countless clients through various transformations, but for some reason it sunk in differently in that moment: 

Meaningful, complex, and sustainable change occurs when we not only understand the context and desire, but when there’s a sensory experience to go with it. Without an embodied experience, the chances of staying motivated through the challenging stage of maintaining whatever change you’ve initiated, are relatively low. 

So imagine my joy as I felt a wave of energy rolling through my body, and as I was vividly hearing a choir of voices (that both were and weren’t my own voice) hurling friendly but firm affirmations at me to get my shit together and start taking proper care of my body.

I can still tune into that energy bundled deep inside the core of my chest, and in fact I turn the voices on each morning to help me get out of bed and move my body. 

I hope it stays with me until moving in the morning has become a habit and I don’t have to actively motivate myself so much anymore. 

Reflecting on this moment in one of my supervision groups today, it also became clear why the work around integrative practice is so meaningful to me… 

We gotta have it here AND here! Effective change work involves the body and the mind. And it transcends boundaries between coaching, therapy, mentoring, consulting, and teaching.

And let me add that I’m not knocking practitioners who choose to work within a specific range, framework or utilize a particular methodology, as long as there’s an understanding that it’ll be limited in its scope. While it might just be the missing piece of the puzzle for a particular client at a particular time, when it comes to complex changes, I’m convinced we need to address multiple angles. And how powerful it would be if we could go and see just one person to accompany us through such a process rather than a whole team of practitioners… 

Here’s to the future of integrative practice! And that we may never stop learning new modalities!

With Love
Yannick

End of Year Nugget

My priorities these days are still firmly focused on family. Also, the value I attach to time has risen exponentially since a toddler is making demands on my attention, so I’ll keep my end of year Nuggets as short as my little one this year and just leave you with this: 

I hate making new year’s resolutions, even though a fair bit of my work centres around making changes and sustaining the results. But hey, we’ve all got demons to fight, and since I’ve turned 40, mine has become exercise, and so it’s time to march into battle. 

Making myself do things has never quite gelled with my rebellious nature, and since I love to have diversity in my daily experience as much as possible, routines and habits have not exactly featured heavily in my life. 

What really helps in establishing new behaviours where forms of psychoanalysis may have failed so far is to understand the psychology of habits. James Clear writes an excellent blog and book, and I’ll never forget the powerful storytelling and analysis of Charles Duig’s “The Power of Habit”. 

If you, like me, don’t have the time this year to dig deep into why the fuck you don’t seem to be able to overcome your obstacles to healthier living this year, have a look at how you may stack a new habit on top of an existing one. I’ll be having a dance every morning with Leah as soon as we’re back in Berlin. 

Wish me luck! And if you know me, please ask me how it’s going!! That’ll really help me out 😉 

With Love
Yannick

Christmas Priorities

My dad always used to say: “Zeit hat man nicht, Zeit muss man sich nehmen”, which translates roughly as “Nobody has time, you have to make time”.

Marrying into a Mexican family as well as watching my father age and my daughter grow up so fast, had me develop a new relationship with two things:

Time and family.

And so I’ve decided that since there are plenty of Nuggets for you to catch up on, I’ll go and spend time with my loved ones now. 

Wishing you all a very special festive period! 

With Love 

Yannick 

Simple question – huge impact

What makes a question a powerful question? 

Is there such a thing as a “magic question”?

Arguably some questions are more powerful than others. And some questions can feel like they magically shift a person’s mindset, or – abracadabra – open up a new perspective. 

If you ask me, no question is magic in itself, but every question can be super powerful if offered at the right time and in the right way. 

To some extent we can learn when and how to offer the right question. Some of it will remain a matter of intuition. And sometimes the power a question holds is just super random. 

For example, one of the most powerful questions I ever asked in a coaching session was a genuine “How are you?”, to which my client broke into several minutes of tears. It had been some time since someone asked the question in a way as if they really wanted to hear the answer. I couldn’t have known that. It wasn’t even a shot in the dark. It was just being genuinely curious and holding a space in which someone can feel safe and brave enough to be real and honest. 

A more recent example of a powerful question was during a recent coaching supervision demo, during which my client reflected on a long standing coaching relationship with a leader in an organisation. Long story short: At some point I asked “Does he remind you of someone?” It was just a hunch based loosely on psychodynamic theory, which suggests that other significant relationships (especially those with our primary caregivers) can have great influence on the way we relate to others. I didn’t have any expectation as to where the question might lead or whether it would even be helpful, to which my client then shared that this client reminded him of the father he wished he had. What a powerful realisation, which offered clarity on a range of dynamics that had emerged between this coach and their client. 

Contrast this to a beautiful that I’ve picked up from my colleague and fellow podcast host Dr. Gary Crotaz, who routinely asks both his coaching clients and podcast guests: “Where in your story do we need to begin in order to understand the person you are today?”. That one’s a carefully constructed question, and it would be difficult to just move on from it. It’s a big question, and there’s a clear agenda behind it: To open up something that is quite core to a person, and to invite a story. As powerful as it is, that’s not the kind of question I’m talking about. And while such carefully constructed questions can indeed be really powerful, and it’s helpful to have a whole list in your bag for when you might need them, in my experience the best questions are often really simple. 

Which makes me wonder: What are some of your favourite questions – big or small? 

With Love
Yannick

The dilemma of “ideal clients”

I remember my wife giving me that particular look of hers.

It was the kind of glance I get when I say something that feels alien to her psychoanalytic perspective, not necessarily up for a lengthy debate, but also not really willing (or able?) to let it just stand in the room like that, unchallenged… 

I had talked about someone being an “ideal client”. 

There’s a lot I could write about this, so let me focus on why, as a marketing concept, it represents a dilemma to so many coaches (and anyone marketing anything to anyone, really), and how I’ve recently made peace with that dilemma and got unstuck.  

The dominant discourse in sales is that “it’s absolutely essential to niche as narrowly as possible and talk to a very specific kind of person/demographic in order to come up on top in a market where everybody fights for potential clients’ attention. 

I did challenge that dogma around niching in another nugget (and then another one to add some more colour through storytelling) 

…and storytelling is really what got me my lightbulb moment. 

But first, here’s the dilemma: 

When you create a specific “avatar” (a real or imagined person that represents the kind of client that you would love to work with and hence aim to talk to directly), you will, almost by definition, be excluding more people than you are talking to. 

That feels scary to coaches. Why?

Coaching is non-directive, and the coach doesn’t have to have expertise in what their clients are bringing, so really it works for a tremendously broad range of people. 

But marketing-wise, if you try to talk to everyone, you tend to get nobody’s attention. 

And so coaches despair. 

I certainly did when I first thought about the niche for existential coaching, which are people with existential concerns… i.e. people who are alive and in the world with other people – what a shit niche! That’s bloody everyone!

Much further down the line I found myself deeply inspired by the avatars that a former supervisee of mine had created. They had a face, a story, they were 41 years old and worked in a specific industry in a specific role… and yet their experience would capture the attention of a huge range of different people (with different faces, across different ages, working in a wide variety of different industries and roles. Matti was talking about an experience that many people would be able to identify with. 

And then it dawned on me that movies do the exact same thing: Very specific people, but if the writing is good, then the protagonist’s experience as well as their struggles, hopes and dreams, will resonate deeply across a broad range of demographics. 

I realised then and there that choosing a specific avatar or describing your ideal client is far from as suffocating as I had made it out to be. If you capture their experience, their pain, their desire… you can tell a story about a very specific person and it’ll resonate, and you will have gotten what you set out to open up: The attention of someone who’s life and those around them you could positively impact through your work. 

Now have a little think about the kind of story you could tell about your work that speaks to that kind of experience. My invitation is not to be afraid to give your protagonist a name, a face, or a role in a family or organisation. If you tell the story well, people will resonate! 

With Love
Yannick

Lean into your “weakness”? 

Sometimes it’s pretty frustrating to observe my mind at work. 

Today was one of those times. Still quite productive I’d say, but in some considerable tension with what the experts tell us about efficient work flow. Finding myself in conflict with “how it is supposed to be done when it’s done well” has been a source of some shame in the past, but over the years I’ve learned to lean into it. 

Let me explain. Here’s what just happened:

• I saw a message from an esteemed colleague saying he’s interested to do one of my “deep dives” for the Talking about Coaching podcast. However, in the face of all the Coaching Uncaged content I hadn’t published any of my deep dives in over a year, though I did have two episodes sitting on the shelf – what a great opportunity to finally get that content out there! It had been on my list for months. This will be quick, no need to create a ticket for my assistant, so quickly open Chrome to go on YouTube…
• Immediately getting distracted as I see that the latest episode of Coaching Uncaged had been released 8 minutes ago. Deciding to quickly create the draft of the “New content” section for the next Nugget. Might as well quickly write the blurb while I’m at it. And while I’m lining up new content, let’s do the same for the latest TaC short and the last deep dive… which I’m now remembering I was in the process of publishing actually, so… 
• Hopping over to YouTube, the episode was already uploaded last month during a failed attempt at getting that done (must have gotten distracted while waiting for the episode to upload), just quickly add the description from the template… 
• Noticing that the description template needs some updating. Some links needed changing, using that opportunity to reformulate a few other bits. Quickly checking in on the other podcast templates – can’t have outdated links in those, can we?! …
  OK, much better now. Wait, this episode also needs to go onto the audio podcast platform… 
• Opening the podcast browser, getting distracted by several emails on the podcast Gmail I hadn’t noticed, felt bad and decided to respond straight away, leaving a note on Slack for the podcast team…
• Noticing one of our team recommending a new guest and couldn’t resist the temptation to check them out. Decided to use the spur of the excitement to reach out and invite them on (episode with Andrew Rose coming soon, yay!).
  Excellent, we needed another guest! Remembering I was on a mission… 
• Hopping over to the podcast platform, but noticing that we don’t have any more time left to upload in this cycle as Chanel had already scheduled the next 4 TaC episodes. Creating a ticket to make sure this is gonna get scheduled for 10 days from now…
• Wifey comes in with a question that I have to check an email for, noticing that the lamp manufacturer responded about the faulty delivery, and since it’s time-sensitive I decided to get back to them very quickly. Noticing several other emails that were clearly priority over confirming a podcast guest for next year… 20 minutes and 4-tasks-done-later I re-focus…
• Opening LinkedIn to get back to Paul (my esteemed colleague), and immediately getting caught by a post on my feed that was just demanding to be commented on. I had wanted to share more on LinkedIn, so as my brain is firing, I’m thinking this would make for a great post, not just a comment, so quickly writing up my thoughts, getting caught up in tracking down a resource to make the post more useful… great post, but damn, I was on a mission, wasn’t I?! …
• Finally, after briefly responding to a message that had just come in now, getting back to my prospective podcast guest with the link to the YouTube playlist (including the latest episode), a link to book a time, and gratitude for letting others be part of our dialogue. 

What’s that, like 15 things done? 20? I lost count… 

Sometimes I’m amazed how many open tasks I can hold in my head (or at least come back to them eventually) without regularly dropping the ball on important things. Somehow it always works out in the end. 

I used to blame myself for not being able to work as focused as others. I always envied those who can schedule tasks into their calendar, or make a to-do list and then just tick off one after the other. Sounds simple enough. It’s not, to me! 

I’ve tried to discipline myself and force focus, maximise productivity according to advice from the experts, but with limited success. After all, I’ve been like this as long as I can remember. Probably my brain is somewhere towards the ADHD threshold, but not severe enough to consider medication (though can’t say I’ve never been tempted to experiment).

Some things help, such as eliminating the potential for distractions, or to create the conditions for flow states (e.g. I’m fully focused and never distracted during coaching sessions, supervision, teaching, some sports, or while DJing). 

My brain does what my brain does. 

Is it worth trying to rewire it? There’s ways to do at least some of that. 

But instead I’ve been leaning into it. After all, one of the things I like most about myself is the creative ways in which my brain is firing, making connections that I may not make if I were more “normal”, or more focused. I can do things that others struggle with because my brain does what it does… 

So I’m owning it, and I don’t think I’ve ever given someone an insight quite like this one into what’s happening in my mind. It should feel chaotic, but it doesn’t to me. I just work in different ways, with its benefits and pitfalls. 

In my work as a coach and supervisor I’m privileged to witness many different brains at work as clients are trying to figure stuff out in real time. What I’ve learned is that fighting your brain is an uphill battle, and trying to fit in or be more “normal” can be detrimental to our health and wellbeing. 

What tends to work much better is to lean into what you may have regarded as a weakness, see if it may just be a strength overdone, and whether perhaps there’s ways to navigate this without attempting to change who you are and how you are wired. 

A few tweaks can make a huge difference, and leaning into what you may consider a weakness can have life changing results!

With Love
Yannick

The dilemma of authenticity

“Just be yourself!”

“What a terrible piece of advice!”, I heard someone say once, and it took me a moment to grasp the enormity of the challenge that was being offered… 

I get it now: It’s simply impossible to “be yourself”, because you are not one self – You are a whole symphony of selves. Different parts of you will be showing up in different situations. 

I’m not the same person at a network event compared to when I’m playing with my daughter. I’m not exactly the same person when I’m with my mates on a night out than when I’m with my wife on a night in. Of course there are aspects of who I am that are consistently showing up across contexts, but someone who experiences me in a training room may be somewhat surprised who they’re meeting out in the pub (maybe more opinionated, less attentive, and perhaps not such a great listener – arguably depending on how immediately interesting it is what you’re telling me). 

I’ve been feeling very fortunate that my line of work not just allows me, but actively requires me to show up congruent and authentic as one of the core conditions for effective psychological work. I’ve been telling students often: “Who you are is how you coach”. And even if we activate different parts of ourselves in different situations, it’s important that who’s showing up is genuinely me.  

Now as we’re scaling the Coaching Lab I’ve run into a dilemma around authenticity:

Over the past year we’ve worked hard to expand our operations, so that we can create more visibility about the many spaces and services we offer to coaches around the world, to help coaches be better coaches (more skilled, more reflective, more impactful and purpose-driven) and, in turn, elevate the state of the world as these coaches go and work with individuals, organisations, communities, and complex systems. 

At scale, it becomes impossible to do everything yourself. And in order to market effectively in the age of social media, the output required to keep an audience’s attention is well beyond what a single person can maintain – at least if that person is still working with people rather than predominantly focusing on content creation and marketing. 

And so I’ve been witnessing parts of myself transforming into a “brand”. 

This “Brand Yannick” is now co-existing alongside “Yannick”, mostly identical as I, Yannick, am still the one writing these Nuggets, posting on social media, facilitating the Coaching Lab and Cabinet, and running all consultations… but as we’re building systems to scale, it will no longer be possible to do all of this myself. My team has been growing steadily, and I’m now working with a copywriter to help me create engaging and helpful content to serve coaches and to draw attention to what we’re doing in the Lab. 

Ambika has known me for years, and she really gets me, but she will never be me, and she will never write quite like me. So even when she does her job super well and brings all the points home that I’m trying to offer to the world, it just cannot possibly be 100% authentic. 

And so I’m finding myself struggling with proof-reading new content thinking “But I wouldn’t quite say it like that”, or “yes, true and super helpful, but that’s not 100% what I meant”. 

Thing is that if I were to try and maintain 100% authenticity, I’d have to go back to doing everything myself, and there’d just be no way to get the message out there and help more people. 

So I’m caught in the dilemma of authenticity, and currently experimenting with compromising some of it in order to achieve something that feels deeply authentic: to help as many coaches as possible be a generative force for meaningful change in the world – one person or group at the time. 

It feels weird on the one hand, and exactly like the right thing to do on the other. It’s just difficult to navigate the complexities of authenticity, whether that’s in the process of scaling a business or by balancing our many selves across the many different contexts that we find ourselves in as we navigate our lives and careers. 

As Heidegger put it (and I’m obviously paraphrasing heavily here): We can at best weave in and out of authentic states. That’s just life. 

So if at any point you’re reading any of my output, and you’re wondering who that person is that you used to know, please forgive me – and do tell me!! 

We’re working hard to make sure that “Brand Yannick” will never veer too far from who I am as a person. After all, authenticity and integrity are core values of mine – it’s just really hard to honour such values at scale without micromanaging and working ridiculous hours. 

This is a prime example btw of one of such “hidden leadership challenges” that most leaders don’t talk about openly, and why coaching in general, and existential coaching in particular, are such a valuable service. Talking about this to you has been somewhat cathartic, though I also see the risk in doing so, and I’m sure if I had a board, they may not be up for being this transparent… 

With that said, thank you for your trust and for journeying with me through my experience in these Nuggets. 

With Love
Yannick

“Probably dead”: On optimism & bracketing assumptions

We’ve all been there: You’ve got a meeting. You’re ready. It’s time. Nobody’s showing up. 

You give it a few minutes (as someone who’s married into a Mexican family I’m the first to appreciate that people’s relationship with “being on time” can… evolve), but after some time it’s clear that they’re most likely not going to show up. 

Now where does your mind go? 

“Probably something that I said last time we spoke that scared them off”
“Something more important than our meeting must have come up…”
“How disrespectful! They should really have cancelled.”
“I knew that eventually they’d realise I’m a fraud!”
Or perhaps
“Must have been something serious and unexpected. I hope they’re okay… ”

I’m an optimist – in the Seligmannian “explanatory style” meaning of the term. That means that when something negative happens (like someone standing me up), I assume the best, i.e. that it’s not about me, it’s not always like that, and that it’s specific to a particular context rather than universal. 

So my go-to, very optimistic explanation for when a client goes MIA is: 

“They’ve probably died, or had a serious accident.”

I even have a client admin folder I labelled “probably dead”, which to me is an umbrella term for “gone quiet for whatever reason, which I choose not to beat myself up about.”

I do take some time to consider whether it may have been something I said or did that could have sparked such behaviour, and of course I hold my “very optimistic” assumption very lightly in the face of not-knowing and don’t actually believe that they’re in fact dead. But it helps with the heaviness of the kind of self-doubt that plagues so many people. 

So whenever I’m being left waiting, I usually adopt that optimistic stance and drop them a message along the lines of “Hey, Are you okay? We were scheduled for […]. I hope you just forgot/overslept/etc and nothing serious happened…”

It assumes the best in people. And I like living that way. 

It also often brings the best out in people when you relate to their best selves. 

Now I’m writing this today because I did get stood up a few months ago, and I did write them such a note. I did ask myself whether they might not have been happy with the coaching but unwilling to tell me directly, but this morning I heard back from the client, who told me they had been in a serious accident, spent some time in a coma, and apologised for disappearing, and looking forward to reconnecting.

While I choked for a short and dark moment on the fact that my “optimistic” assumption had come so close to the reality, I’m so glad that I was able to bracket my assumptions at the time and hold them lightly as not to spend so much energy wondering, judging, or doubting myself, until I found out what had actually happened. 

With Love
[y]

Coaching is hard work – or is it?

One of the most profound flow experiences I’ve ever experienced was driving on the German Autobahn from Gießen to Frankfurt – at an average(!) speed of 200km/h (125mp/h). 

I was 100% present, utterly focused on the road ahead, anticipating every minor change in the environment, ready to deal with whatever might appear. Nothing but the road mattered. I was completely in the moment. 

Traffic was very light, and drivers in Germany generally stick to keeping the fast lane free. The car I had borrowed at the time was familiar to me, so overall this may sound insane to some, but was pretty calculated and reasonably safe – certainly in the mind of a 20something year old. 

I was thinking back to this most exhilarating ride during a recent supervision group. One of the coaches shared their experience of getting to a stage of the coaching where the work was “simply” to maintain the change and allow it to further unfold. The “work” became to continue to to hold space, and the coach was questioning whether they were doing enough. Early interventions had been powerful and led to important shifts and insights. But now it felt as if they were just cruising along, not really doing much anymore… 

What emerged was an insight around what I believe to be a significant challenge for many coaches: 

How can we stay as present as if we were going 235km/h, but while cruising to work, a journey we must have made a million times? How can we stay utterly present when nothing super exciting seems to be happening?

The truth is that, at any point in time, we might miss something important. A child could jump onto the road suddenly and unexpectedly. Any moment has the potential to become infinitely exciting, regardless of how calm the environment might seem. We should always, always stay fully present, but we rarely do when things feel familiar. 

To me, that’s why coaching is hard work, even when it feels like we’re cruising along effortlessly. It takes effort to pay attention. Way more effort than when the situation unequivocally demands it.

Curious about your thoughts… 

With Love
Yannick

The art of fighting without fighting

I’ve always appreciated the martial arts. 

It took a while though until I learned that at the core of those that I felt especially drawn to, it wasn’t at all about fighting.

There’s a dance, a relationship, reading the opponent, anticipating their moves, responding to what’s being thrown at you in a way that doesn’t knock you off balance. It’s about being one step ahead, well-grounded, recognizing your own imbalances, awareness of self, others, and the world. 

Mastering a martial art is about mastering discipline, balance, awareness, a special sense of vision. You need to know yourself and others well in order to succeed. 

Bruce Lee, one of the most significant names in the history of martial arts, talked about “the art of fighting without fighting” in his 1973 film Enter the Dragon. His words recently echoed back into my mind during a coaching supervision group of mine. We had talked about challenging a client, but not from a position where we confront the client head on, but where we side-step into a shoulder-to-shoulder position and look at what’s going on together. 

Even when we challenge a client, it’s not necessarily me who’s challenging, but in that moment I’m merely the person who’s voicing the challenge, then side-stepping to be able to confront the challenge together with the client. 

A challenge often feels like someone is starting a fight, and those we’re talking to may take offence, or get quite defensive, preparing for fight like they usually would. By positioning yourself next to the client and facing the challenge with them, you’re avoiding not the fight, but being fought: The art of fighting without fighting – Coaching Style. 

With Love
Yannick

Does coaching work?

It is something that experienced coaches know – intuitively and from experience: Coaching works. 

But how do we know? Perhaps the progress or change that occurred would have occurred either way? Maybe working with a mentor, a consultant, or talking to a colleague or friend would have helped just the same, or even better? There are a million and one confounding factors, and you might argue that we could never go back in time and do something different, so how could we really know that working with a coach made the difference? 

Well, that’s where science steps in with systematic methods to answer complex questions such as this. A recently published meta-analysis pulled together all available research on this topic and lays out a strong case for the effectiveness of coaching in the workplace, which I wanted to share with you today. 

I appreciate that this is focused on the workplace, but many of the same principles apply for growth and change processes in any context, so you’ll find this paper is filled with valuable references and data that build a compelling business case for coaching, and may just do its part to convince someone that there’s plenty of merit in giving it a go. 

You can read the article for free at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1204166/full 

And thanks to Jonathan Passmore for his post on the subject. His LinkedIn output is a goldmine of staying up to date with relevant research. 

Hope that helps.

With Love
Yannick

Keep it real?!

In 1997 I listened to my first ever German rap song. 

I remember it clearly. We were on a class trip to inner city Frankfurt and my mate had me listen in on this track through his headphones. I was immediately hooked!

What struck me was how real it felt, how relatable to a white kid from a suburb close to a German city. I immediately felt at home, connected to the authenticity of what these guys were telling me, and how. 

Now I’ve just spent an hour and a half talking to the beautiful community around Existential Offerings about what it means to keep it real. And it’s clear that it’s bloody hard to show up authentically, to show up as you really are, not to pretend to be someone else. 

It’s relatively easy to express yourself in art and poetry when these are created in isolation. What’s much harder is when you’re with other people, when their response influences what we do and don’t say or do. 

We talked about the challenges of figuring out who we really are, especially given that we’re always in a “process of becoming”, always fluid, someone else tomorrow than we were today… 

We talked about the tension between wanting to fit in by adjusting to social contexts vs. celebrating our differences and not caring too much about what others think. 

We talked about how showing up authentically makes us vulnerable, as now others really see us for who we are and may take advantage of this. 

We talked about how the body often gives us a heads up that we’re not keeping it real, and how tempting it is to ignore these signs in the interest of comfort and peace of mind.

We talked about how it takes courage to pay attention to such signs, and that growth usually happens in a state of discomfort. 

We talked about many other things too, and we did record the session, so you will soon be able to catch up. If you watch this space, I’ll drop you a note when it’s available. For now, I’ll leave you with these thoughts, and an invitation to pay attention to any signs of inauthenticity that you may have been conveniently ignoring. 

With Love
Yannick

The pursuit of meaning

What’s your “Why”?
Who does your work, and your life, serve?
What’s your mission?
Why are you here?
What is your calling? 

The list could go on for some time, and if I had a penny for every purpose-related question that my coaching clients ask themselves, I’d be… well, it’s a lot of pennies, okay?!

What struck me some time ago, and has been rekindled this week during a few conversations with new clients, is that the pursuit of meaning is already a meaningful pursuit. 

What I’m trying to say is that your existence is meaningful (even if you don’t know how quite yet) simply because you’ve decided that searching for purpose is a meaningful activity. 

So there you got it. A simple choice can make all the difference. And you don’t even have to have it all figured out yet. It potentially won’t even matter whether you ever do figure it all out. Because, yes indeed, there’s meaning in the pursuit – if you allow it to be there. 

And yes, I appreciate that it can be easier said than done. But what I know is that to many people are expecting themselves to know it now, or they keep waiting until some day they may “find” something, as if it would someday just be handed to them. When in fact a meaningful experience is available to all people right now, immediately, if you allow yourself to find meaning in the pursuit. 

My esteemed colleague Michael Steger developed a simple assessment tool a few years back, which you could use to get a sense for the extent that meaning feels present for you vs. the extent you’re searching for it. 

I hope this helps in some way, and who knows, maybe something clicked, and your life is now forever changed 😉 

With Love
Yannick

Don’t take it personal

“And so the wrath of all his defence mechanisms started to unload on me …”

Most coaches remember moments such as this. 

You’ve offered a challenge, not even a harsh one, or one where you’d expect to hit a nerve… 

In the example that triggered this Nugget, the client had a deadline to meet and got really stressed about it. The coach merely inquired what would happen if the deadline wasn’t met, or if she decided to postpone it or (god forbid!!!) skip this one.

There was simply NO WAY she would allow herself to even consider this as a choice that was on the table. And not just that, but the reaction to the question was extremely strong and ultimately ended the session early, leaving the coach quite shocked at the reaction. 

It’s easy to take this sort of situation personally, to question whether we’ve done something wrong to upset them, to get defensive and justify the question, to work extra hard to fix it, or just generally feel bad that we were the cause of our client’s upset. 

There’s a clause in my coaching contract that addresses this sort of situation nicely. It reads: 

“The journey may at times be challenging and your coach may at times be the voice of such challenge.”

This sort of agreement allows me to move myself out of the way, and instead of being the target of their anger or defensiveness, I can position myself shoulder-to-shoulder with the client and take a good look at what’s happening here. 

What are they fighting? It’s not me, Yannick, or even the coach as such. Chances are it’s what I’m representing right now, which in this example is a challenge that really, like REALLY hit a sore spot. 

I’m on your side. Shall we have a look at what you’re battling here? I’m with you. Even though, for a moment there, I was the target of your anger. Really you were scared of taking a good look at what I got curious about. Some part of you recognized that that curiosity would take you out of your comfort zone, perhaps even make you feel quite vulnerable, and stepped in to protect you. 

Not what I’d say to a client, but that’s the gist. 

I’m not going to make them go there, but if I “take it personal”, and I don’t get my ego out of the way here, we’re missing a learning opportunity, and for my client to get to make a conscious choice about whether or not to look at what’s on the table now. 

When was the last time you were on the receiving end of a flood of emotions, and you’ve realised (then or later, or now) that it wasn’t really about you, but that that person had something else going on in their life? How did you react? 

I certainly don’t always keep my cool in real life, but in the coaching room it feels a hell of a lot easier. 

With Love
Yannick

The Colbert Questionnaire

It’s been an intense week teaching our very first cohort of coaching MSt students at Cambridge. Certainly inspiring to have such an experienced and diverse group of coaches coming together at such an institution. But I gotta say, my brain is fried! 

So instead of one of the many, MANY Nuggets I could distil from this time, here’s what I made earlier: 

Since the US writers strike began in early May, I’ve been on a daily/late show detox, but I have a secret fantasy to one day be invited to a conversation with Stephen Colbert (or Trevor Noah). Until that happens, here’s me leaning into that fantasy and answering the infamous Colbert Questionnaire, so that I may finally “be known” 😉 

It goes: 

What is the best sandwich?

Burger, well stacked, tomatoes, onions, cucumber, lettuce, topped with fondue cheese and Reggae Reggae Sauce, with a hint of chipotle mayo, in a proper bun!

What’s a thing you own you should really throw out?

7 broken snowboards 

What’s the scariest animal?

Boar, at night, in the forest.

Apples or Oranges?

Oranges, freshly squeezed.

Have you ever asked someone for their autograph?

Maurizio Gaudino (Football player at Eintracht Frankfurt)

What do you think happens when we die? 

Part of me wants to repeat the greatest answer ever given to this question (thank you, Keanu Reeves) and say: “the people who love us will be very sad”. 

But I think, in terms of consciousness, I reckon it just goes black. Then our bodies decay and hopefully nourish something, as we reintegrate with the ecosystem. Maybe there’ll be something rather than nothing, but I highly doubt we’ll live happily ever after in some sort of paradise reunited with our loved ones. I think it’ll be over, and we’d better make the most of the time we’ve got in this body. 

Favourite action movie?

From Dusk Till Dawn

Window or aisle?

Window! 

Favourite smell?

Fresh spray can art

Least favourite smell?

That Scandinavian fish in a tin that you should only ever open underwater.

Most used app on your phone?

YouTube

Cats or dogs?

100% Cats!

You only get to listen to one song for the rest of your life. What is it?

That’s an impossible choice, but perhaps…  

There’s a 24 hour dj set by Mr Scrubbs. If that doesn’t count then:

Dj Swift No5 Classics mixtape. And if that doesn’t count… 

Maybe “Don’t worry be happy” by Bobby McFerrin

What number am I thinking of?

Statistically, 7.

Describe the rest of your life in 5 words!

The whole spectrum of experiences!

To niche or not to (Part 2)

Last week I offered a short Nugget to challenge and expand some commonly held beliefs about what it takes to establish a successful coaching business.

One of those beliefs is that it is absolutely crucial to narrow your marketing efforts to a very well defined demographic and/or a clearly framed problem. It’s not that this is wrong. But there are other ways. 

To follow up and illustrate this, I wanted to share two stories of successful coaches I’ve worked with, located at either end of the niching debate:

Firstly, meet Jaasper.

Jaasper figured out his niche. But rather than a specific demographic (gender, age, location, job title,e tc.), he identified a common problem: many people are unhappy at work. And he started speaking directly to that experience. 

Through experimentation he figured out what he needed to say in order to get someone’s attention who’s currently unhappy at work. He figured out what those people google, and where they spend their time, and he placed his marketing messages where they’d be likely to see them. Those messages were designed to specifically address what someone who is unhappy at work would want to move towards and away from. 

Since Jaasper’s the one who’s speaking first, he needs to know exactly who he’s speaking to, what language to use, how to first turn their heads, and what to say next so that they would be interested in learning more about how he might help them. 

Jaasper now has an ads machine he can turn on when he’s got space for new consultations, and for the price of a few hour’s worth of coaching, he’s creating 10-15 prospects, of which usually about half would sign up for coaching. Well worth it! 

Now, meet Szigit. 

Szigit has lunches and digital coffees, about 3-5 each week. She’s not niching at all, and there’s no niche-based system in who she’s meeting. Szigit loves to connect, socialise and meet new people. One day she just went through her LinkedIn connection list and picked the first 50 people she thought she would love to reconnect with. 

Szigit didn’t set out to sign up coaching clients. She just asked them to connect, and she held whatever might come out of these conversations lightly. But she would always show up curious as to what’s going on for this person, and naturally explored what they were telling her.  And naturally, a bunch of doors would open into possible coaching conversations. 

Naturally, also, the other person would ask her about what she’s going on in her life and work at the moment and, naturally, she would tell them that she’s super passionate about helping people figure out important questions and make difficult decisions. Often, Szigit would be more specific and reference (the kind of) situations that that person had just told her about. But often she really didn’t have to to make this sound relevant to them. She’d tell some stories about how fulfilling it is to see clients figure things out and make big changes in their lives and careers, and she had become a decent storyteller over the past year or so. 

At the end of each of those conversations Szigit would ask her vis-a-vis two questions: 

1. Hey, now that you know what I’m passionate about, do you know anybody who you think could benefit from the kind of work I’m doing? (not that rarely they’d say: “yes, me!” and she’d invite them into a coaching consultation that following week)
2. Who do you think I should talk to next?

And so, one conversation would lead to the next, and to another one, and a few conversations down the line there’d be a coaching engagement waiting for her. No niche required (since she listened first and then presented coaching in the context of what she’s heard). 

I hope that helped to illustrate the spectrum of the niching debate. It is by no means complete, so I’d love to hear other facets that you’ve come across, challenges, experiences, stories,etc. 

But for now, I’ll call it a day, and see you next week. 

With Love
Yannick

To niche or not to niche…

It seems like everybody and their mum is telling entrepreneurs that niching is the most important thing they can do for their business. It certainly is one of the most frequent business questions I hear from coaches. 

Two things I wanted to share today: 

1) Niching indeed is crucial, but only if you’re the one who’s speaking first. 

If you regard coaching as a space that you hold, where you offer questions, curiosity, observations, a commitment to travelling alongside your client, in partnership, rather than advising or guiding clients… then it’s really really versatile as a skill set, you won’t need expert or niche knowledge, and you can help out a lot of people across a broad range of niches. 

So when you listen first, you can then position your coaching skills in relation to what they want to create (or move away from), and you won’t have to think about niching. 

However, if you’re the one speaking first (via an ad, a social media post, an article, a book, a pitch, a website, or approaching someone at an event… then it’s super important that you’ve got a clear sense of who you’re speaking to; and yes: the narrower the niche, the more likely it is that you’ve got that person’s attention. 

2) Niching is more than a defined demographic (think: Female C-suite level leaders in the insurance industry who are in their early 50s, like cats, and live in Singapore). 

You can niche based on 

• the problem you’re solving or desire you help clients fulfil (e.g. stress reduction), 
• your approach is a niche (existential coaching, positive psychology coaching) or a specific technique you’re utilising (EMDR, PERMA-powered coaching), and 
• who you are as a person is a niche too – people from any demographic who connect with your worldview, values, beliefs or character, often want to work with you based on that connection, and may draw on a variety of skill sets you may have to offer. This is a relationship-based practice and allows you to “just be you” in your marketing efforts, on the basis of which you ideal clients (which often are a version of ourselves) connect with you. 

Whether niching is crucial to your business’s success is therefore dependent on your approach to marketing (as in: how are you building a bridge between your skill set and people that this could help), as well as what you understand a “niche” to be. 

Hope this helps! As always: curious about your thoughts…

With Love
Yannick

Control vs. Letting go

What’s your relationship with uncertainty? 

Do you find yourself trying to control outcomes? 

Perhaps you work hard to make something happen exactly the way you want it to be, or you have a hard time letting things take their course. Maybe you suffer when it’s not up to you how things turn out… 

In a recent post my friend and colleague Itai Ivtzan opened up about his journey towards learning to let things go. And just this morning a prospective client talked about how she’s always working super hard to plan and strategize in an effort to make things happen. 

I recognize this desire to control as a strength. 

I recognize that both of these beautiful people are high achievers. 

I also recognize that it’s only an asset to a certain degree, after which it really impacts wellbeing and peace of mind. How many high achievers do you know who are miserable?

We recorded an episode of Talking about Coaching once questioning whether there is such a thing as a “healthy obsession”, and I think this plays into a desire to control things. 

Me, I’m on the other side of that spectrum. I sometimes wish I was more controlling, more obsessed, more involved in making things happen exactly as I envision them. I think it would be helpful to build what I’m building, to stay on top of the numbers, to monitor progress closely, and to stick with a particular course of action until we’re over the finish line. 

I’m letting things go very easily. I think perhaps too easily. 

It helps me to be very relaxed, and to go through life with a sense of calm non-attachment. And I’m grateful for that. I’d rather be there than on the opposite end of that spectrum. But I do think that some balance here would probably be conducive to making shit happen. There’s a special energy in it. 

For me this was a reminder that any strength can be overdone and affect you negatively, and that there may be a strength hidden in your most toxic behaviours patterns. 

It’s all about finding that sweet spot. 

Do you recognize any of this in yourself? 

The path of least resistance

“In order to succeed I need to be more [________], and less [____________].”

Sound familiar?

In some form or other, I hear this statement often. Just today I’ve heard it twice already from clients. I gotta be more organised, less “ADHD”, more social, less ethical, more bold, less direct – you name it!

The problem is that it’s quite a process to change your ways, and some transitions may take years of work, or they may never conclude.

So it seems to me that there are two general pathways here: 1) to develop or become the person that has the attributes to succeed (however you define success, that is), or 2) to choose a path to success that is aligned with who you already are. 

The latter you might refer to as “the path of least resistance”, because you don’t have to change who you are. It’s definitely worth thinking about, and in the midst of a plethora of advice on how to master [___________], it can be incredibly liberating to consider that there may be a way that is more aligned with what you’re bringing to the table. 

For example, there are a million different ways to build a business. Arguably, some are more effective than others. But generally, the most effective way to build a business is to do it in a way that feels right, in a way where you don’t have to force yourself to do things each and every day. Because, let’s face it, you can only force yourself to do things for so long before you burn out. 

Part of me always admired people who find somebody’s blueprint, and then follow it to the letter, regardless of whether that’s aligned with what they believe in. “If it works, it works”. I couldn’t do that for long, and it’s rare that it works (for long), in my experience.

It’s much more effective to do something that might be less effective, but do it authentically, with passion, owning the process, and bringing your whole self to it.

“What would it be like to lean into your strengths, your values, into the person you are, and the skills that you are naturally bringing to the table?” 

Might there be another path? One that you can own, that feels more authentic? 

What part of the story you’re telling yourself might be part of the resistance? Is that something you can challenge, drop or re-author?

Questions worth thinking about! 

And hey, nobody’s saying that it’s a path of “no resistance”. It can only be smooth sailing once you’ve finished setting the sail, or building the boat, or recruiting the team. In reality there’s usually some part of the journey that you won’t be looking forward to, and not everything can be outsourced to someone who’d love that part of the work (especially as a solopreneur, at the start of a business, or in a small team). And I do believe that some of these things we just have to push through, and that the act of pushing through obstacles can be an incredibly rewarding and meaningful experience – certainly the stuff of stories worth telling. 

But it’s always worth inquiring whether we can circumvent part of the resistance, to make for a more enjoyable and ultimately better-performing journey!

Curious to hear what you think about this…

With Love
Yannick

Stretch, snap, rest! Plus insights from IPPA

How much can you stretch yourself before something snaps? 

When we stretch a muscle, it strengthens it. 

When we overstretch slightly, we build muscle effectively.
When we go beyond our capacity to stretch or stretch too far for too long, it breaks and we’re out of business for a while. 

Why am I telling you this? 

Because on Thursday evening three weeks ago I could have stretched a little more. I was teaching on a Masters in London for a week ahead of flying out to Vancouver for a conference and some holiday shortly after, and I really did not want to miss sending out my weekly Nugget. I hadn’t missed a week since I committed to weekly emails back in October. 

And it’s not that I didn’t have a choice. I chose meeting up with a good friend that evening. I did think that it’d be fine and I could pull it off, and I could have . But in that moment, as I got home and I thought about sitting down to write, it hit me with clarity: 

No more. You need some rest! 

And as much inspiration I had taken from being and presenting at the World Congress of Positive Psychology the week after, I found myself prioritising being with people and taking care of myself, rather than sitting down and connecting with you. 

Sorry-not-sorry. I care about all of you, but I needed to take care of myself. Because I was already overstretched, and I needed to cut myself some slack. 

So here I am, to make up for a few weeks of silence, with a few short Nuggets. 

I hope you’ll find value in them. And please take care of yourself in stretching times!

With Love
Yannick

Please say something while I’m thinking

I felt a little smug after I managed to formulate such an elaborate question, skillfully weaving in references to a pattern we had discovered earlier, and inviting attention to a possible parallel process that seemed to have emerged… 

But my client didn’t even seem to have listened to a word I had said. Instead she continued on her train of thought from before. 

Part of me was furious, felt disrespected, not been given my place as a coach. 

I quickly let go of what was going on for me as I realised she was very much onto something. She was doing the work, and my question (as valuable as it may have been objectively) would have been a distraction. 

Several minutes later she had arrived at a valuable insight that carried itself throughout the rest of our work. So valuable indeed that I was glad she didn’t listen to me. 

On reflection, this sort of thing happens all the time. Sometimes we just need someone else to talk while we continue to think. And in some ways it can feel a lot safer for people to do their thinking while someone else is talking, as compared to having that someone look at us expectantly. 

I’m reminded of what’s going on for me when I’m working on a shared online document and I can see that someone is watching my every keyboard stroke and mouse movement. It feels uncomfortable. I’d rather have them be engaged in something else while I’m doing my work. Not everybody likes to be met with full presence while they do their thinking

That’s why I believe a lot of clients get more out of coaching sessions when they’re on the phone or with the camera off. Psychoanalyst often sit behind their patients, instead of facing them, for similar reasons. 

So my invitation to you is not to get offended when your client ignores your input, to get your ego in check, and to stay non-attached to whatever it is you’re bringing. Sometimes people do their best thinking while someone else is talking. 

The 4th dimension of presence

What does it mean to be “fully present”?

I believe it’s much more than giving what or whoever is in front of you your full attention. 

Firstly, when you are “in relation”, you are an important part of that relationship, and so I think it’s important that you are present with what’s going on for you, as well. That means paying attention to your own thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, body language, etc. They are a part of the space, and hence part of this relationship (if you wanted to learn a bit more about what that means and how to use it in psychological work, I can recommend my conversation with Robin Shohet on the Animas podcast. 

Another dimension of presence is to pay attention to all the nested systems within which the relationship takes place, such as families, organisations, politics, culture, the eco-system, etc. Being present and paying attention to systemic influences on the relationship means you’re being more present with what’s in front of you than trying to view it in isolation. 

In physics, the “4th dimension” is time. And on that level we’re being present to not just the present (pun intended), but also pay attention to the past and future. In coaching this translates to the coach having the client’s initial presenting issue and their history (past) as well as their goals, dreams and aspirations (future) present as they’re listening. 

And yes, I appreciate it can feel counterintuitive that full presence means to pay attention to something other than the person in front of you, here in the present moment. But keep in mind that all these factors are always showing up, right here in the present moment. 

The past is showing up now. The future is showing up now. The influence of various systems is showing up now. What’s going on inside of you is showing up in the space. They all influence the space, the person, and the relationship, and so they are worth paying attention to, and be present with. 

No small feat, but a skill that can be acquired. And the more you practise tuning in in this way, the more it’ll become a way of being. 

If you’re reading this, take a moment to look up!

Whatever it is you see (person, woman, man, camera, TV), I invite you to spend the next minute or so to be fully present with that. 

Is there a 5th dimension, I wonder… ? 

Sniper Alley, and other existential hits!

That corridor between 50 and 60 years of age… Apparently a number of doctors refer to it as “Sniper Alley”. 

“If you make it to 60, you’re winning!” is how one of my supervisees put it today after one of her (otherwise fit, healthy and sporty) friends died very suddenly from a heart attack. 

In the face of ever increasing life expectancies, it’s easy to turn our attention away from the uncomfortable reality that many people do die very unexpectedly, and that’s especially true for ages 50-60. 

I’m turning 40 this year, so time is something that’s pretty present for me these days. And endings are intricately linked with an awareness of time. Pair that with the general uncertainty of everything, and it can leave you in a pretty eerie place. 

Sniper Alley… Fucks sake. What a hardcore metaphor. And I so get it. 

It hit me. It’s uncomfortable. And I also appreciate the awareness. 

It made me live more fully today. 

So if you’re feeling a bit uncomfortable right now… Sorry-not-sorry. I hope you can turn it into something meaningful, and perhaps embrace what you have right now with a different quality.

And talking about other existential “hits”…

A few days ago I had sent word to the coaching street that after a 2-year hiatus I’d be running my popular “Introduction to Existential Coaching” again (get it?! Popular, hit, Sniper… I’m a dad now. Puns are my life now!). 

And guess what: It’s still popular. So I’ll be running it again. And given the demand it looks like I’ll run it over a weekend as well as an additional 5x 3hours version. 

If you wanted in on this and would like your availability to be considered, hop over to this poll and let me know your preferences. I’ll decide on a date early next week. 

If you wanted to learn more, there’s a link to a past event page on with more information at the top of the poll. 

If you’re reading this too late but are keen, just fill it in anyways. I’ll make sure to reach out when it’s running again, or you can use the same poll to express interest in our online programme, which has finally been edited and will launch some time later this year. 

What makes you(r AI) happy?

What makes people happy?

It’s a question I have explored at depth.

Firstly because it seemed like an important question for pretty much everyone I’ve ever met, and most people do things to ultimately create a bit more of it. 

Secondly because I studied Applied Positive Psychology at Masters level (here’s a talk I gave that racked up more than 12.000 views now in which I introduce the most prominent scientific theories on what contributes to psychological wellbeing). 

And thirdly, after having spent thousands of hours in coaching conversations, I’ve confirmed for myself that, in some form or other, all my clients have been chasing some form of being happy or happier, sometimes openly, and often underneath the surface of the “presenting issue”.

This “happiness” may come in many different forms, and a few years back I compiled a little graphic pulling in all the elements from major theories (inner circle), as well as what we know from research (outer circle) about what contributes to happiness in some way for most people, which you may find interesting:

But I had never thought about what might make an Artificial Intelligence happy. To be honest, I had never even considered the question, for somewhat obvious reasons… 

Until I came across this interaction between a journalist and the AI that operates within Bing’s search engine. Amongst some other super fascinating output, this AI offered the following framework for what happiness meant to it:

We could spin this conversation in many different directions from here, but in the interest of brevity, let me leave you with this: 

If you’ve never sat down and considered what happiness means to you, and what contributes to it, then please let yourself be encouraged to make some time for it. In my experience, most of our choices are in some way or another linked to that understanding. And the more conscious your understanding of it is, the more you can make conscious decisions in your life and career. And your experience of being human will feel a lot more aligned. 

Obviously I will add that working with a (positive psychology informed) coach is one of the best ways for such an exploration. Take from that what you will 😉 

Happy pondering!
[y]

What’s that?!

“Uuuh, what’s that?!? … I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something just happened…”

It was during a recent supervision group. Something in her voice had changed. Very subtly, not more than a little tremor, but I got a sense that there was something behind the words she spoke. 

And indeed, a door opened, and the “I’ve only got a little thing that probably won’t take much time to discuss” suddenly got big and significant, and allowed her to work through some stuff. 

On some level she knew it was there, but wasn’t sure whether it’s okay to talk about it in a supervision space. 

Suffice to say that it was more than okay, as it connected a lot of dots to what she had been bringing in the past. It allowed for some catharsis as she held beautifully by the group. After all, supervision has a restorative function.  

It also goes to show that what’s going on outside of the coaching room almost always in some way finds its way in. Sometimes subtly, sometimes with bells on!

I believe the same is true for all kinds of work, but definitely extra significant when we work in relationship with others. Whether that’s teams, or 1:1 – it’s just so important to pay attention to how the outside affects the inside. And it may be that people need an invitation to connect the dots, in a safe, non-judgemental space.  

“Being able to play back thoughts and feelings at the periphery of awareness”, is how Hawkins & Smith (2006) described Level 4 of their 4-level listening model. And it’s a skill you can learn. 

No need to name “it” correctly even, but really important to acknowledge any shifts you are noticing. Especially when you get an intuitive sense that there’s something significant there. If they don’t want to open that door, that’s okay. Usually they brush it off or ignore it, if that’s the case. If it’s important, it’ll come back. The invitation to open up is the important part. And it can simply start by getting curious about something that just happened right in front of you.

“I see you”, is what you’re saying, essentially – even if you may not know exactly what you’re looking at. 

The Unlock Moment

“Where do we need to start in your story to understand who you are today?” 

What an excellent entry point into a rich conversation!

While, in some way or other, I explore this with most of my clients, I really loved the wording of this question, as offered by Dr. Gary Crotaz, who I connected with this morning, and who kindly invited me onto his podcast “The Unlock Moment” (hence the title of this Nugget). 

It may not be an exact moment (though it often is, and often that moment exists vividly in people’s memories, Gary tells me), perhaps it happened gradually… but to explore a time that significantly shaped your values, your identity, your mission, your story, or your sense of identity – what an incredibly rich inquiry!! And it makes for excellent storytelling too as you can imagine.

A thought that emerged while I was listening to Gary is that, first of all, too many people never take the time to reflect on their life to figure out how they’ve become the person they are today (for better or worse). 

Secondly, those who are clear on who they are often cling on tightly to that concept of self, even after they’ve evolved, changed, or moved on from being that person. 

And I get it: Once you’ve invested that much time and effort into figuring yourself out, you probably don’t want to let go of it so easily. And so it’s tempting to (usually unconsciously) ignore subtle (and even not so subtle) shifts in values, beliefs and worldviews – as to hold on to the clarity of self that you’ve worked so hard to achieve…

And then there you may be, 20 years later, in crisis, because “all of a sudden” you got old, you became a different person, or you don’t recognize yourself anymore. 

Warning signs are a creeping sense of inauthenticity, something not feeling quite right, or an emerging sense of alienation with the people around you or the spaces you spend time in. 

As human beings we’re always in a process of becoming, whether you’re paying attention to it or not.

One more reason to check in with yourself regularly and take stock of who you are becoming, before it’s time to dig deep into your past and figure out where things went wrong (which is usually some form of therapy). We can catch these shifts as they are happening, and when we do, we put ourselves into a position where we can actively participate in who we are becoming. 

Coaching, and existential coaching specifically, is an excellent space to do just that. Other pathways also help, such as journaling, regular reflection time, conversations with the right kind of friends, therapy, many forms of art, and whatever you can think of to regularly turn your attention inwards, take a step back, and recognize yourself in the context of time and your environment. 

That said, I’d love to hear some of your “unlock moments”.

With Love
Yannick

(And sorry-not-sorry for nicking the terminology here, Gary. If anyone’s resonating, I definitely recommend you check Gary’s podcast, especially the episode with Marshall Goldsmith – arguably the GOAT of executive coaching/executive coach-branding)

“Being with” and/or “doing with”

I’ve just come off a podcast interview with the highly influential Prof. Jonathan Passmore. 

Too much in that conversation to summarise in a nugget, but one thing that stuck out for me, which ties in with my passion for existential coaching and my recent musings on AI developments: 

When coaches start out, their focus tends to be on getting things done, with and for clients. Even as coaches develop and mature, they’re often eager to gather effective tools and interventions to accelerate their clients’ development or expand their awareness. Passmore himself, with a number of his colleagues, published a whole book with coaching tools (which I was honoured to be invited to contribute a chapter towards). 

Tools help us when we’re in “doing with” mode. And there’s no doubt that they can really do the trick for clients. “Being with” is harder to fathom and quantify, hence more difficult to research, and more challenging to teach. 

Being with someone is not just “being there”, at the same time in the same space. It’s offering your full presence, holding space, meeting the other with empathy, positive regard and congruence. It means not to judge, push, pull, advice, rescue, analyse or interpret. It’s simply being with the other person as they are navigating their world. The only thing you do when you’re with someone in this way, is to resist the urge to do something – to interrupt, save, guide, intervene, or ask a “powerful question”. 

The existential coaching space has “being with” as its foundation, and (combined with a believe and mindset that the client has access to their own solutions) often that’s all it takes for someone to progress or figure things out. 

The “doing with” part can be an excellent combination. And the interplay between being with and doing with makes for a powerful catalyst. 

My hypothesis is that AI will cover a lot of the “doing with” going forward, probably more effectively than most human coaches. Jonathan sees in it the potential to truly democratize coaching, to make it available to all people with access to the internet, at near zero cost.

But I reckon that more and more people will be craving the experience of “being with”, with a coach who’s trained to hold space for them in the way described above. I can’t really see AI catching up with that, and I think it’ll have huge implications for all helping-by-talking industries.

I’m tempted to leave you with a question. Instead I’d love to hear what question(s) you’re left with!?

Slow down AI now? 

This might well be the end of us… was my initial reaction to the emergence of the recent AI development avalanche. 

Then I entered a consciously positive space and explored how partnering with an AI could be incredibly helpful, not just for coaches and their clients. 

And then, yesterday, I found myself immersed in two presentations by people I respect, and it opened a few thoughts up that brought back that initial concern. I’m not quite sure what to do with this as it seems impossible to keep up with the nauseatingly fast speed of changes in this landscape; but given recent, increasingly loud calls to slow down the releases of new AI tech into the public sphere, combined with human beings generally being quite shit at slowing down once they smell an exciting opportunity, I’m now concerned again. 

Funny really, as I’m usually the big picture thinker, and much of the excitement at the moment lies in the detail and short-term effects that AI opens up. It took a historian to remind me what’s at stake!

Yuval Harari, in this excellent presentation, points out that humans operate fundamentally through language, and that science fiction likely had it wrong when it assumed that machines would need to threaten us physically in order for humanity to be at risk. In reality, we’re not far from a world in which a significant amount of content we consume will be produced by non-humans. And since culture curates our reality, and content makes up our culture, we’re at risk of changing our perception of reality in profound ways. 

Yuval also warns that democracy is based on the premise that it enables a conversation across the population to decide how to govern. When this conversation gets hijacked by AI, and optimised for particular outcomes, it’ll be impossible to stop or slow down AI developments through democratic means. 

Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, the creators of the documentary “The Social Dilemma” dug into the AI landscape in this presentation and similarly warn us that right now is the time to try and intervene. If we had the chance to add more oversight to Facebook’s or TikTok’s addiction-inducing and election-tipping algorithms at a time when it was still in development, wouldn’t we want to do that?!

They also asked the question whether you’d get on an aeroplane to board a flight if 50% of aeroplane engineers told you that there’s a 10% or higher chance that you will die if you got on board. These are the numbers from a survey on AI safety (albeit some debate on the exact numbers).

Founder and CEO of Open AI, Sam Altman, along with a few other experts, just testified in front of the US Congress, kicking off a series of hearings designed to set rules for AI development. I didn’t get to listen to this in full, and frankly, I don’t have time sth through the 3 hours, so what it comes down to for me, as well as so many people I reckon, is to have trust in our governments and regulating institutions. Now I’m happy to be back in Germany, where my level of trust in government is reasonably high. I can’t say the same for the US or UK, which is pretty worrying. 

And that’s when I arrived home, gave my daughter a big long hug, and wished her the best of luck! 

It can be scary and exciting to sit with the possibilities that AI holds, and it’s hard to even try to imagine how the world might change, even over the next 12 months… 

And that’s where I’ll leave it today. With lots of uncertainty and little clarity. I can feel the urge to put a comforting spin on this, and emphasise the positives. But I also think it’s important to pay attention to the whole spectrum of what’s at hand here, so I invite you to sit in some uncertainty together. 

With Love
Yannick

Next level virtual coaching with Metahumans?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg invested billions into developing his vision of the “metaverse”. I’ve heard many people chuckle that this will likely be an “Elon Musk buying Twitter”-type sunken investment. 

And I get them. Looking at the kinda ridiculous graphics, where metaverse users had only very recently been given legs (yes, legs!), it’s hard to see how this could catch on as a viable alternative to meeting face-to-face. 

Until I saw this! Metahumans captured from the real thing with unbelievable levels of realism and detail. 

And then I made the connection to watching a short Behind the Scenes documentary on how Avatar 2 was shot, and how emotions and facial expressions were incredibly accurately and engagingly transmitted onto (pun intended) an avatar in a virtual world.

With the tech presented in the above video you can similarly capture facial expressions and subtle muscle movement, but on a phone!! And with a little more computing power (which isn’t far off) we’ll be able to do this in real time in the not-too-distant future. 

Gone are the laughs about silly looking manikins, devoid of human emotion, a toy in a painfully obvious virtual world. Hello foto-realistic, real-time and micro-muscle-simulating representations of yourself in an environment that can be anything you want or need it to be. 

I remember wearing an Oculus Rift headset for the first time a few years back, playing ping pong with a cat. I was in a tiny room, but the simulation gave the very real illusion of spaciousness. And I remember getting physically dizzy when standing on a cliff about to wingsuit into a canyon. My body and mind revolted against taking a step into an imagined abyss. It gave me real sensations. 

I imagine, just a few years into the future, being able to wear a very much beefed-up version of such a headset that will accurately capture even the most subtle facial expressions, making genuine human connection not just possible, but getting incredibly close to the real thing… 

I imagine how powerful role-play exercises will become. I imagine the opportunity to take clients into an embodied experience in a virtual environment that will elicit very real emotions and tonnes of material to feedback on and learn from. 

Of course it’s not the real thing, but close enough to do some excellent work. 

The future is very exciting!

Would you partner with such technology? 

“God is dead” and the antidote to psychological constipation

Existential Thinker Friedrich Nietzsche famously proclaimed in the late 19th century that “God is dead”, to point to the fact that the Church and religion had lost significant power and influence as a result of the enlightenment age. The rise of science and reason offered alternative ways to explain the world, and this had a profound effect on human experience. 

When I was working for the School of Life pre-pandemic, I remember Alain de Botton point out in one of the class materials that our relationship with meaning and purpose took a turn during this time. While watching a recent WiseCrack episode it dawned on me that during that time many people had also lost their way to get things off their chest, and it paved the way for helping-by-talking practices such as therapy. 

I’m probably preaching to the choir when I emphasise just how important it is to have an outlet for your thoughts and feelings. Add in non-judgement, empathy and positive regard, and you’ve got yourself a powerful cocktail of psychological wellbeing. 

Most friends, parents, managers and, yes, also many therapists and coaches, don’t just hold space to air what’s on your mind. With usually best intentions they try to actively help, when sometimes (often?) we just need to be listened to, and emphasised with, without judgement, just being with us. 

Now sometimes we need an intervention, we want to accelerate, we want someone’s input, we want guidance, someone else’s perspective, a helping hand. A God can’t give that to us, a person-centred therapist won’t, many coaches can’t help but to do that. 

And I’m not knocking it. It might just be exactly what we want and need right now. But I think it depends on where we’re at. 

What I am certain of is that a regular space to air our “stuff” and let it all out is just incredibly helpful. Think of it as basic maintenance of your mind, decluttering, pulling out the weeds in your garden while they’re still small, or going to the toilet to avoid constipation. 

Letting it out regularly helps us stay healthy and well. And there are many ways we can do that. 

Therapy isn’t just for people with issues. It’s a space to air what’s on our mind. 

Journaling is many people’s choice of doing just that. Your journal won’t judge you. 

Art, poetry, dance, any form of expression is a form of that too. 

And yes, you guessed it, coaching can be such a space too – if your coach is the kind of coach who understand that this may be what you need today, and lets it happen instead of intervening. 

I’m gonna leave it here, and invite you to reflect on the spaces that you have in your life where you can release your shit (pun intended).  

In case you missed it – Coaching Lab Content Galore

This week was quite a week for me. The next evolution of the Lab deserved to get some attention, and so we worked hard to get a good amount of eye balls on it.

As it is with social medias, there’s no way you’ve caught all the posts, so I figured I’d send you a list with some of the content highlights we put out there this week. You can browse the whole array on my Facebook page or LinkedIn feed. 

Happy digging: 

I never liked asking for help…

Asking for help and blowing my own trumpet.

Not my forte. I can do it. I probably do it reasonably well. But I don’t like doing it.

In fact, for a long time I’ve not engaged in either, at all, in any way. I know how important it is and how it can be done in a way that sits right. But it still feels like a struggle.

See, I was raised with strong values around independence and humility. And so I’ve been avoiding asking people for… well  anything. Even when offered I likely wouldn’t take your help. I can (and should) do it on my own, I would think to myself! 

And while I’m passionate about lots of things and don’t hesitate to talk about them (as you will have gathered by now), promoting something I’ve built or made is not my strong suit. 

Not a great foundation for a campaign! To be honest, the mere word “campaign” sends a strange feeling down my spine.

But at the same time I know what we’ve built over the past few years (The Coaching Lab) is really valued and that more people deserve to know about it…

So here I am, jumping over my shadow and

1. asking for your help and 
2. blowing some considerable trumpet as part of a week-long…. Ehm… “Week of letting people know that the Coaching Lab is an exciting and valuable space to be in”

No need to go on about 2). As a Nugget reader I reckon you will have heard plenty by now. 

Here’s how you could help if you’ve felt so inclined: 

1. Tell someone about the Coaching Lab 

Ideally next week, which is our public launch week: 24th-28th April 2023. 

Whether that’s on social media, in a WhatsApp group or some other forum, personally in a conversation or email, your newsletter, or shouting it from your balcony…

Any word of mouth will help! New coaches, experienced coaches, people who are curious about coaching and would appreciate a chance to check out the range of approaches, I think the Lab has many arms and can serve a lot of people. 

If you don’t know what to say or you’ve got little time on your hands, I’ve prepared a document with little snippets of what the Lab is about and why people find it valuable, as well as a few images, discounts for your friends, prize draws and giveaways.

2. Share, like, or comment on any of the content we’re putting out next week

We’ll be posting several times a day on LinkedIn, Facebook, and/or YouTube over the next week. And engaging with content tells the algorithm that it’s worth sharing to more people, and then it’ll get more visibility, so that more people get the opportunity to benefit from what we’re doing in the Lab. 

3. Make an introduction

I’m more than open to introductions to educators, schools, training providers, companies, or any other groups or institutions that might be keen to run Coaching Labs privately for their own communities. The concept works and I’ve facilitated successful Labs for the Association for Coaching and at an in-person coaching conference in Malta. 

If you’re still reading this, it means you’re considering to help, so thanks again, in the name of everybody who will benefit from this. 

With Love
Yannick

You can lead a horse… wait, where’s the water? 

“You can lead a horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink”, as they say since the year 1175.

But in order to lead one to the water, you have to know where the water is! And as a coach I often don’t. 

And even if I think I do, I work hard to keep that piece of knowing out of my awareness. I do this in order to be able to help my client learn. 

“Knowing is the opposite of learning”, as another saying goes. 

So I really think it’s our job as coaches to help someone figure out where “their water” is, even if we can see a lake literally just there right in front of them. 

I might get curious as to what they see when they look around. And if they can’t see what I see, I might get even more curious as to what’s happening there (for both of us). Is that particular water not relevant to them? Does it not qualify as water? Is it the wrong kind of water? Might they have water-deficient vision of some sort? Perhaps they never thought to stop and look around? They didn’t realise they were thirsty. Or it may be my particular perspective that allows me to see something they can’t. Have they possibly not got a concept for what water is… 

Whatever the reason, if I were to just tell them about the water that I see, I take away a LOT of valuable learning. And chances are it’s a distraction to where they need to be. 

And it’s also SO much more likely that someone chooses to drink from the water that they chose themselves. Rather than the one recommended to them. 

All that said, if you meet someone who’s severely dehydrated and at risk of serious harm, do point that shit out! Working with a coach, or wearing your coaching hat, is not necessarily the best approach depending on what the situation is. That’s why coaching is even more valuable when life’s going okay, compared to when there’s a crisis. 

Now did that make you thirsty? 😉

The power of incremental learning

Can you do a backflip? 

Have you ever tried? 

Too risky? Might get hurt? Not gonna try? Yeah I get it. 

It took me ages to find the courage to try, and then a good amount of pain to land it. I didn’t have a trampoline, or lots of powder days with soft snow, or buddies that already know how to do it, or the internet to teach me. 

I wish I had had a coach like this one back in the day, or free access to coaches like him sharing their wisdom and techniques. Add in training facilities that offer a relatively safe space to practise, and parents that actively encourage you to go for it (arguably easier when it’s safe and supervised – I get it, Mum. Love you!), and I marvel at the possibilities of what my level of snowboarding might have grown into.

But breaking complex and risky movements down into manageable chunks goes far beyond sports. Think about something you’re scared to do… 

Now try to break this down into a sequence of events. Perhaps you can identify a number of different skills involved, or people you’d need to talk to, or tasks that need to be done. 

This isn’t very existential, but something that I utilise when a coaching client really wants to master something but it feels too big or too scary to tackle. Yes, we can explore the fear and perhaps remove or manage it. But often the fear is not a limiting belief, but very real indeed, and important too. I found that going a systematic behavioural route can be the most straight-forward way towards a solution. And the limiting belief might just be that whatever it is you’re thinking about cannot be broken down into manageable chunks.  

So what’s your backflip? 

The end of life as we know it

Existentialists have a reputation to love talking about death. 

And in a way that’s true, in that “endings” matter greatly. Our relationship with time, temporality, endings and, yes, death, are intricately linked to almost everything we do and how we experience being human.

Death offers a layer of meaning to life that couldn’t exist if we were to live forever. Similarly, any uncertainty you might have about whether your job or relationship is still going to be there for you in a year’s time is an invitation to make the most of it right now.

And zooming out a little bit, I’m literally grateful each morning that we’ve got warm water flowing out of the tap and I don’t have to ration my showers (yet?). 

The planet is in grave danger, or rather: human existence as we know it on this planet is in grave danger. Most people are aware of this fact. A tiny fraction of those are up in arms about it. Many (consciously or unconsciously) prefer not to let this enter their sphere of awareness. After all, it’s uncomfortable to think about endings. So, many prefer not to. 

And yet, endings are an inevitable part of living, and death is a certainty. 

My first ever TED talk I watched was Stephen Petranek’s “10 ways the world could end very suddenly”, and I remember the awareness this instilled in me. For weeks I was living a richer human experience, more mindful of the here-and-now, and despite the struggles I was facing at the time, I felt an acute sense that everything was more or less okay. Existing includes anxiety and suffering, but I was still there, and that meant something. 

This, I realised, is also why I love post-apocalyptic stories, like zombie movies. It’s not just the falling away of most rules, bringing out the existential freedom in people, and the most interesting character developments that ensue. It’s the reminder that, in some way, the world (even if it’s “just” your world as you know it) could end very suddenly. 

Arguably that’s most likely not going to be Zombies, though I did just watch and loved The Last of Us, the most realistic “Zombie” scenario I’ve seen to date, where a cordyceps mushroom evolves to be able to spread to human hosts. This is based on a very real fungus that can control insects’ behaviour and can e.g. wipe out a whole ant colony within a matter of days. If you have not seen this video filmed by David Attenborough’s Planet Earth team, it’s mind-blowing! And it gave me significant chills… and that feeling again, yes, somewhat anxious and concerned, but mainly of gratitude, and an energy to enjoy what is, right now, as much as I can. Things might go haywire at any moment. 

Years of coaching with an existential lens taught me that this relationship with endings makes a huge difference to how we experience life. Some get caught in anxiety and stress when faced with that awareness. Some so-much-so that they suppress and ignore it. Others embrace endings as a natural characteristic of being human, and find meaning and energy in it. 

That said though, while our relationship with endings makes a tremendous difference to our wellbeing and human experience, it doesn’t mean that we should just accept that the world is going to end. 

Stephen Petranek offered solutions to some of the most pressing dangers in the world in the year 2002. The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk does excellent work to “study and mitigate risks that could lead to human extinction and civilisation collapse”. This fascinating podcast episode with Toby Ord and Sam Harris offers more insights into very real risks and what we could do about them. 

But for most people, it’s not the big, humanity-threatening issues that concern them the most. Often the endings in question are not even that significant in the long run. But either way, taking a good look at your relationship with death and endings creates a form of “existential resilience”, and helps us experience a richer human experience. 

Yannick out. With Love.

Good luck to us all 🙂 

Extraordinary expectations – extraordinary results?

I’m still drawing from my recent Coaching Lab session with Siawash. 

One question he asked me at the very start of the session was: 

        “What would make this session extraordinary for you?”

I had already come in with pretty high expectations based on him charging extraordinary fees, and this question really invited me to dream even bigger about what could change based on this encounter. 

Based on my experience, it really made me think about how to set, manage or expand clients’ expectations when they come to coaching. 

On one hand, I appreciate that it can be super helpful to invite people to think bigger, to create an experience of a future where huge shifts will have happened for them and they live their best lives, and just for a moment to drop all of their stories about what might hold them back, to create a powerful vision of their future. The sparkle in someone’s eyes based on such a line of inquiry can move mountains, shift the entire focus of the conversation, and also make someone enthusiastically part with whatever you charge them for coaching. 

On the other hand, a question like that can also set unrealistic expectations (especially if you’re asking about this session, rather than from the coaching relationship as a whole). When the results don’t end up being particularly extra-ordinary, the breakthrough doesn’t occur, and the client is more or less in the same space after the session (keep in mind that most of the time, the big shifts happen in between sessions, and they take time), setting high expectations without managing them can end up in frustration and even blaming oneself or the coach for not fulfilling the potential that’s inherent in such a session. It’s a risky question to ask in that way. 

So the key here seems to be to introduce or follow that sort of question up, by putting it into the context of the coaching agreement. Something like: 

“Now that we’ve got a powerful vision to work towards, and arrived at a best-case example for our time together (and beyond), how can we use this to inspire you? How lightly or tightly do you want to hold on to this vision? What’s our time frame for letting this transformation take place? What do you bring to the table that’ll help you? What’s in the way? How sedimented are these obstacles? Where might we start to take one small step towards this?” And so on…

In my business coaching session, it wasn’t followed, because we only had the one session, and working on complex issues takes time, and so I’ve left somewhat disappointed. 

Well, good thing that I know coaching, and I knew the coach well, and I’ve not paid for this session, so it’s easy for me to walk away having taken lots of learning about coaching. 

In a real life setting, asking such a powerful question (without considering the potential impact from multiple angles) may backfire, and add a lot of pressure to both the coach and client. I hear the stories from coaches regularly in supervision, and experiencing it myself was a powerful reminder about why reflecting on whatever powerful tool you’re being encouraged to use by coaches out there is an important part of our practice. 

Yes, it is great to set a big dream and an extraordinary vision, but we also need to be careful with this. It can, on occasion, do more harm than good. 

With Love
Yannick

Break through? 

Coaches often talk about “breakthroughs”. 

I remember watching the Tony Robbins docuadvertmentary on Netflix a few years back, amazed and somewhat concerned about how everyone in it was talking about breakthroughs, as if that’s the expectation as part of these events. 

How disappointing when you’re committing yourself to a process looking for a breakthrough, and then nothing happens…

The term “transformation” seems to have similar connotations as per some of my recent Coaching Uncaged conversations (e.g. Simon Western or Tatiana Bachkirova). It can set the expectations unrealistically high and add a tonne of pressure. 

I know all this, but nonetheless, last week I had my hopes up for such a breakthrough, looking for a sudden and dramatic shift in my relationship to consistency and strategic action. 

I was the client in my own Coaching Lab, and my coach for the evening, Siawash, charges his clients upwards of £100.000 for a 1:1 business coaching journey, so I figured I’d put myself in that space and really go for it. 

I won’t get into the specifics (if you’re curious, the recording of the session is available to Coaching Lab members), but what it got me thinking about is the word “breakthrough”. 

It feels pretty aggressive to me now that I think about it. And I don’t think I want to break through my clients’ paradigms. In many cases that’s quite dangerous actually, and most of the time there’ll be loads of resistance if anyone were to try. 

After all, such paradigms exist to protect ourselves, and if attacked (by e.g. an attempted breakthrough), defences usually tighten, regardless of who does the breaking.

Instead of breaking things, I think it’s much more helpful, and effective, to offer an invitation and let the person or part decide what they want to do with that. An invitation to look at something from a different perspective, to try on a new suit, or to get to know some part of yourself that makes you feel really uncomfortable – it can be hard to un-see, or un-experience what follows. 

And most importantly, it’s empowering and taps into one of the most important aspects of psychological wellbeing: Autonomy (Ryan & Deci, 2000; Ryff & Keyes, 1995). 

I didn’t get my breakthrough last week, but I was invited to consider who I would be with and without certain narratives around business and leadership. Food for thought, and valuable ground for reflection. 

But to be honest, if Siawash had attempted a “breakthrough”, I think I would have told him, one way or another, and with all due respect, to fuck off! 🙂 

Curious as to what you think about this… 

With Love
Yannick

How to partner with an AI as a coach

Artificial intelligence will be an inevitable part of our work and life. Following up from my recent Nugget on ChatGPT​, I wanted to share a few promising ways in which coaches may partner with an AI.

Will AI replace coaches? I don’t think so. 

That said, a recent quote from the Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, Erik Brynjolfsson, really hit home: 

“I like the word affected, not replaced. It’s not ‘AI replacing lawyers’. It’s ‘lawyers working with AI’ replacing ‘lawyers who don’t work with AI’”

I don’t think that the same quite applies to coaches, since the practice is a lot more relationship-based. 

Though I do think that formulaic, structured and linear coaching methodologies will definitely be offered at scale, and possibly without the oversight of a human coach, due to the cost benefits. 

So in the future I’m sure you’ll be able to tap into powerful habit coaching, health and weight loss coaching, book-writing coaching, accountability coaching, even happiness coaching (utilizing a broad range of effective interventions), and I believe that’s a good thing as it will be hugely beneficial for people who couldn’t previously afford to be coached.

But my kind of coaching (existential, person-centred, phenomenological, complex psychological)… AI can help, but will never be able to replace a human relationship. 

So how can it help? 

Based on a few recent conversations with colleagues (one of which public), I’ve started the following list of potential partnership opportunities. They are a mix of admin help, business support and direct work with clients:

• A virtual AI assistant can help you (in a much more engaging way than automated messages) book meetings, send invoices, follow up payments, upload and categorise session notes, flag disengaged clients, and execute various protocols to upload content or on- and offboard clients into programmes. 
• AI could write up a summary of your coaching session and extract the main insights and action points, then send this to the client along with the transcript or recording, and check in periodically as an accountability buddy. 
• AI can write content based on podcast transcripts or videos. It can also create video snippets from long-form content. 
• AI can scan the latest publications in scientific journals or books and offer your a summary of findings based on your specific interests. It could read it to you while you’re having breakfast each morning. 
• Since AIs now pass business school exams they could analyse the state of your business and offer advice and guidance, draft your tax returns, or even give you decent legal advice. 
• Instead of referring clients to a psychometric or assessment, your AI associate could run your client through a process or questionnaire, offer a feedback session on the results, and then send you a summary of that session (including a transcript for quality insurance). 
• When a client commits to reading a book, AI may accompany them alongside the learning journey, offering reflection prompts, practical exercises, a space to think, and further resources or reading when clients express interest to learn more about particular topics. 
• AI may be a powerful reflection tool for coaches. E.g. recordings of coaching sessions may be fed to an AI to highlight significant moments, uncover blind spots (through e.g. picking up on facial expressions, physiology, body language, or tonality). AI can also analyse session transcripts spot patterns in clients’ use of language or logical flaws. 
• Ultimately, in the perhaps-not-too-distant future, I could imagine that an AI could emulate a coach pretty well if we fed it a few decades of digital data, session transcripts, social media output, hours of YouTube content and training videos, email communications, psychometric test results, etc.. Using deep fake technology it could even generate video (this is were it gets a bit scary and I would always want to be really transparent about the difference between me and my AI associate). 

The most exciting, and also concerning, possibility is that a client coming to coaching may choose to open up (after the consultation, but before the work commences) and, in addition to telling the coach their story and who they are, open their digital doors to an AI, who would then write up a summary of the client’s personality profile, strengths and derailers, values, beliefs, political ideology, spiritual orientation, family history, medical profile, mental health flags, career path, etc. 

It won’t replace the coach, and we’ll have to work damn hard to bracket all the resulting assumptions as to be able to really meet this person, but having access to all this data might be something that both coaches and clients welcome. 

Loads of ethical concerns here obviously, but the possibilities are arguably very exciting. 

I wonder what you might add to this list? Or whether you’re already utilising AI in some (of these) ways…

With Love
Yannick

Should/can coaches stay neutral?

Have you ever heard the voice of your inner activist? The part that tells you that “we really need to fucking do something about this!”?

In the face of the climate crisis and many other important issues that emerge during conversations, I often find ourselves triggered and part of me would love to be a more active force for positive change. 

It can be frustrating to hold space for someone who’s not aware of wider systemic issues, who seems to be ignorant, or worse, indifferent to the ills of their family, community, society, humankind. 

During coach training, we’re taught to be neutral, not to take a stance, not to share opinions, but to accompany the client wherever they want to go. 

But in the face of wrongdoing, injustice, danger, risk of harm even… how can we stay silent? How do we stay neutral?

Isn’t it important that I’m taking a stance when there’s risk of harm?! Of course! That’s clearly an exception. But where’s the line? And how might I know when I’m merely pushing my own agenda. After all, what constitutes harm may lie in the eye of the beholder, and is often dependent on personal values and beliefs. 

It’s a tricky question at which point to intervene, but fact is that, as soon as we do intervene (may that be a question, a comment, a challenge, even a friendly smile and nodding), we’re influencing the client, however subtly. 

Our mere being there with them and the way we hold space is influencing them. It’s impossible to stay truly neutral. 

But there’s different levels. 

In my books, you’re not coaching anymore when you start consciously influencing your client. 

I mean I get it, I really do! And sometimes a good piece of advice from someone who’s been there and done that is exactly what we need. But as an existential coach, it’s really important to me to really tune into my client’s worldview, and as long as it’s coherent and without any obvious inner conflicts, or in the way of what they’re trying to create… 

Then it really doesn’t matter much what I think, what my political ideology is, or my spiritual framework, my values and my beliefs. I’m there to help this person to walk their own path. 

And yes, it can be hard to celebrate someone when you disagree with them. 

And also yes, sometimes voicing such disagreement, but doing so in a respectful way and in an effort to make sure that what they’ve arrived at isn’t going to fall down easily when challenged, that’s really going to help that person. But don’t be cross when they arrive at different conclusions with the same data, and end up thinking differently to you. That’s just life. 

And that’s where activists have a very different stance: they push their agenda, for a (perceived) good cause. They fight, and get loud, and challenge, and disrupt. And yes, some of what may also be what coaches do sometimes. But a coach is not an activist. Though a coach may have a similarly strong urge sometimes (and find themselves in a tempting position) to influence positive change. I’m just saying be careful and think about what role you’ve agreed to take on for your client. Do they want an activist, or a coach, or perhaps a bit of both?

So next time you feel strongly about an issue your client raises, pay close attention to how you ask questions, what your body is doing, how your emotions influence tonality, perhaps you’ll notice an urge to offer advice or share your experience. One way or another, it’s likely you’re unconsciously influencing the client, that you’re subtly leading them towards where you think will be a good place for them to be. 

I see coaches do this with the best intentions, but it stands in contrast to empowering people to come to their own conclusions, to choose their own course of action, to live authentic lives. 

I talk about questions and challenges around coach neutrality quite a lot in supervision, in training rooms, and in podcasts. I could go on. It’s an important debate with many stances. 

My inspiration to write about it today came from a very inspiring conversation I’ve just recorded with the highly esteemed Prof. Tatiana Bachkirova for Animas Centre for Coaching’s Coaching Uncaged podcast, and she’s recommended an excellent paper which I wanted to share with you: https://intranet.weatherhead.case.edu/document-upload/docs/2060.pdf

Abstract:

Neutrality in coaching, as an often-mentioned yet under-theorized norm of practice, is illustrative of how a lack of conceptualization leaves professionals with eclectic and contradictory tools and techniques. Therefore, the current study examines coaches’ attempts to practice neutrality, with diverse implications for their conceptions of professional practice. Through a qualitative study of 57 executive coaches using a critical incident technique, we identify situations of conceptual and practical complexity. The ongoing practice of enacting neutrality gave rise to diverse tensions, to which coaches responded by formulating individualization and socialization strategies that had different consequences in terms of forms of awareness. Considering neutrality in terms of situated, engaged, and processual practice, we use these findings to theorize its enactment within the interest-laden world of organizations. Our study contributes to the theory and practice of coaching while also furthering understanding of the dynamic nature of seeking neutrality in professional contexts.

__

I’d love to hear your thoughts, stance, comments, or any experience you have with tricky situations around neutrality!

With Love
Yannick

Everything we’ve been taught was a lie? 

In 1969, a healthy 39-year-old man pretended to hear voices and got himself admitted to a closed psychiatric ward in a US hospital. Subsequently he acts normal but struggles to get released due to his diagnosis of schizophrenia.

The man was researcher and academic David Rosenhan. He reported half a dozen other such cases in his ground-breaking study ‘On being sane in insane places’ which changed the face of psychiatry and, to this day, is cited hundreds of times each year, and is part of the curriculum of pretty much every psychology degree. It even inspired the famous movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with Jack Nicholson.

Now, the thing is: he made up all the participants of the study and completely misrepresented the circumstances of his own admission!

The following is from a recently published article from History of Psychiatry,and as far as abstracts of scientific journals go, this one’s as engaging as it gets!

• “The publication of David Rosenhan’s ‘On being sane in insane places’ in Science in 1973 played a crucial role in persuading the American Psychiatric Association to revise its diagnostic manual. The third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) in its turn launched a revolution in American psychiatry whose reverberations continue to this day. Rosenhan’s paper continues to be cited hundreds of times a year, and its alleged findings are seen as crucial evidence of psychiatry’s failings. Yet based on the findings of an investigative journalist, Susannah Cahalan, and on records she shared with the author, we now know that this research is a spectacularly successful case of scientific fraud.” (full article –full story)

Same goes for another hugely ground-breaking study: the famous Stanford Prison Experiment by Philip Zimbardo, in which participants were supposedly randomly assigned as guards or prisoners in a study with little instructions, and the whole thing had to be stopped due to the ensuing violence only a short time into the experiment, and suggested human nature to be rather dark. 

But as it turned out, the guards had received precise instructions by Zombardo on how to behave and the whole thing has been thoroughly debunked now.

My colleague, friend and former student Nick Brown, “self-appointed data police cadet” with an excellent blog, recently also pointed to “multiple studies debunking the classic interpretation of the bystander effect, following the revelation that plenty of people saw Kitty Genovese being attacked, but the cops couldn’t be bothered to turn up.”

There’s plenty more examples, and it can really undermine the trust in truth and knowledge, which is especially challenging in a world full of deep fakes, misinformation, and increasingly polarising worldviews. So let me say this:

I’m a fan of science. I believe that it’s the best method we have to create knowledge.

And there’s plenty more solid science out there than fraudsters.

But two pointers here:

First: Science is pursued by human beings, and hence not free from human error, unconscious bias, or blatant fraud for personal gain. We got to stay critical. And that can be difficult when it comes to complex datasets. But that doesn’t mean that everything we’ve been taught was a lie. We just need to re-evaluate somethings, and the scientific process may take longer than we’d liek it to (in the above case, it took 50 years).

And secondy: When you’re talking to someone who’s sitting in front of you (e.g. a coaching client), they might just be the outlier to whatever theory or knowledge you’re tempted to apply.

Psychology is not, and cannot be, an exact science. A 95% confidence interval that the results of your study are not due to statistical error, are good enough in social sciences, and it’s an accepted statistical method to eliminate the outlier from your data set (since, fair play, they usually mean someone’s misunderstood the questionnaire scoring). But then again this outlier just might be very different to all the other people studied…

And so I don’t think we can, with any certainty disregard someone else’s experience. It’s always worth being curious, and bracketing what we think we know about the world, just for a little while, so we can really listento people. We sure need more of that in this day and age.

With Love

Yannick

PS: The earth is not fucking flat!

ChatGPT – threat or ally?

Advances in Artificial Intelligence are going to cause the next major paradigm shift. A bit like the Internet changed everything, but on a much larger impact scale, and much faster!

You may or may not have heard about ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that’s been made open to the public to talk to. It very quickly drew in my attention and it’s clear to me that this is a major development.

Google called in a Code Red, and even got the original founders involved to consult on a strategy as it threatens their entire business model.

Imagine, instead of googling something and then having to spend time sifting through the results, you could just ask some follow-up questions, filter results intelligently by just saying what you want, even have the AI draft you an application letter or book you an appointment for something…

Perhaps you ask it to cut down the word count of your essay by 30%, write a pumpkin-themed love poem for your cat Milkshake, or (and this is real) pass your business school exams, or give you decent legal advice?

I’ve talked to a prospective client the other day who said that ChatGPT played a major part in helping him not feel lonely, because he has someone intelligent to talk to about philosophy and science, something that the people he knew just had no interest in at all.

What struck me most, as a coach, is how this AI helped this man learn and develop himself, by being in conversation, and offering both knowledge and literature to feed into his curiosity. This guy seemed to have a relationship with this AI. And he is really grateful for having ChatGPT in his life. The future is now!

Of course it’s gonna take some time until AI is going to be able to help us learn like a coach does, and currently it’s actually experiencing some concerning behaviour, but I reckon in much less time than you might think, chat-based AIs will do a better job than inexperienced coaches do. Starting with well-defined, goal-oriented coaching engagements (this is already the case in some studies), in the not-too-distant future I’m sure it’ll be hard to tell whether you’re chatting with a person or with an AI.

And even when you know its an AI… imagine someone were to have access to millions of coaching conversations, able to analyse, in a nano second, what question might be the most helpful for someone like you in your situation…

I mean, they can’t love you, but they can add tremendous value to your life and career. And they will have read every piece of philosophy, every book, and every research study ever written!

It’s easy to feel threatened by that kind of technology, but think about how technology like the Internet, or Zoom, or even just automated booking systems have levelled up your work…

And now imagine what you could do if you were to utilize the added value that AI had to offer, or even partner with an AI when coaching a client (or any other job, really)…

This is fascinating stuff, and it’s gonna change your world. So I’d encourage you to

 1) take these developments very seriously even if its functionality may seem basic right now,

 2) start thinking about how AI may benefit your job, rather than how it might threaten it, and

 3) talk to your colleagues about this. We grow through conversations, and we generate many of the best ideas in collaboration.

And lastly, maybe you can help me with something:

Who do you think is at the forefront of AI & Coaching developments? I’d love to invite them onto the podcast! We’ve got Jonathan Passmore booked already but there are too many things I want to ask him about already so I’m looking for someone who thinks about nothing else at the moment, ideally.

What you see…

If you’ve met me online this past week, you probably saw something like this:

But if you had happened to walk through that door in the background, you’d have seen this: 

Preparing for an international move, whilst keeping on with work and sessions… Not what you’d expect, right?

Of course I’m somewhat hesitant sharing the 2nd image with you since my Zoom frame, as most people’s Zoom frames, is well-curated, and for a good reason: We want to present our best selves and assure others that we’ve “got our ducks in a row”, and that there’s a certain order to our lives. 

And while I think that’s of some importance in order to create trust (and we probably all tend to clean up a little ahead of guests arriving into our space), the truth is that behind the (Zoom) curtains, most of us will always have messy elements in our lives. 

Now rest assured that I don’t feel like a messy person. On the contrary: after a few challenging weeks (see my last Nuggets [LINK] we’re actually in a really good place with the move now: we have finished packing all non-essentials (hence running out of space to store boxes), and we’re excited for our new chapter. Yet another cycle of what something looks like (messy) vs. what is actually true (well organised). 

Next time you see something, anything, consider that you might see something very different if you were to… enter through the back door! 

It’s (a)live! – Coaching Lab 2.0 (Plus Coaching Uncaged Season Finale)

It’s live! We’ve done it!

6 months of hard work. A bumpy ride at times. Way too much detail stuff for a big picture thinker like me. But it’s here now: 

The Coaching Lab has a home: 

www.GoCoachingLab.com

I gotta be honest, when this whole thing started, I didn’t exactly have a clear vision of what I wanted The Lab to become (other than eventually filling a theatre venue in London during one of our in-person events… in 2020!).

That’s changed. And I’m more than excited about what I can now see in its future. 

What sparked the Lab was turning the most popular parts of coach training into a series of events dedicated to what coaches seem to love most:

   – Getting inspired by watching experienced coaches do their thing;
  – Taking new tools, techniques and ways of being for a spin in a safe environment;
  – Connecting with fellow coaches who care deeply about the practice; and
  – Gaining heaps of confidence in your own practice by realising that the coaches we look up to are usually just people like you and me.

One thing that became really clear when we started thinking about how we could achieve this at scale, is that a membership system is the way forward in order to make this a viable undertaking, and that building a community of coaches who learn together, challenge and inspire each other, and generally have an excellent time on a regular basis, is what makes the Lab something much bigger than what I initially had in mind.

Big thanks to Martin at this point, who not only took a lead on building the website with our developer Kim (now that deserves a line break. I know they make you happy, buddy 😉 )…

But who also very much encouraged me to think and plan on a much larger scale, which meant to invest in building a few systems behind the scenes that would allow the Lab to scale. And the first major milestone is now ready for you to cast your eyes on: 

A dedicated website featuring a members’ area, where you have access to our 30+ recorded coaching demos, information about the next event, and soon (fingers crossed) an opportunity to connect with other members outside of the online events. 

I’m more than excited about getting to this point. We’ll be launching this baby properly in the coming weeks, but for now I wanted to let you, the inner circle, know that this is happening; and also to explain why the ticket prices have increased (as you may or may not have noticed), which really didn’t sit right with me to do quietly without any explanation.

So if you’re a coach and the above resonated with you, you’re welcome to join the Lab as a member at this early stage. As an early adopter bonus I’m giving the first 20 of my Nugget readers the opportunity to come on board at the old price (30% off). All you’d need to do is to hop over to www.gocoachinglab.com, choose the plan that works for you, and use the discount code “NUGGETS” at check out. 

It’d be lovely to have you on board this venture! And we’re always keen on feedback on what you like or what you think we could improve. 

With Love
Yannick

The attention span pandemic

I’ve been thinking about how to start this Nugget. What might I say, that would capture your attention enough to read the next sentence?

It didn’t used to be like that. I used to just write, and then publish what I’ve written. Get some thoughts out there, and see what happens. Until Martin really urged me to put more line breaks (like, a LOT more line breaks) and to really make every sentence count.

At first I fought hard against accepting that this is true. Surely readers would give you a bit of slack to build up an argument. Surely they’d stay with you for a paragraph that’s more than 5 lines long. Surely you wouldn’t simply disappear to chase the next shiny thing if one of these sentences isn’t doing it for you… 

Well, while this may be true for you, it sure doesn’t seem to be for a fast-growing number of people.

A client of mine is currently figuring out how TikTok works because his band blew up on there, and they can no longer ignore it. And it’s clear to me that this platform isn’t just built for people with short attention spans: TikTok intentionally makes it worse. It’s like a slot machine, feeding you 60-second content, and if what you see isn’t capturing you after a few seconds, you’re out! NEXT!!

I’m not immune to this. The YouTube Shorts concept is the same and keeps me hooked in more often than I feel comfortable to admit. 

It opened up a question for me: 

I can’t quite decide whether I’m feeding into a concerning trend, or whether I’m doing people a favour by writing these Nuggets in a much more bite-sized style (pun intended, and yes, ironic, I know!). 

I really like long-form content. I do! Many of my podcasts are over 2 hours long. But for 2023 I’m working to draw out all those 1-minute content Nuggets, and drip feed them into YouTube Shorts. Does that make me part of the problem? Or is this a smart thing to engage people these days, in an effort to help them be better coaches, better people, and better leaders? Maybe even encourage them to sit down and be part of a “proper conversation”, mindfully…

Similarly, my consultations are up to 2 hours long and I block 2 hours for most sessions. Might much shorter sessions serve the next generation more? Who offers 15min coaching calls? 

Curious what you think about this… 

Who’s really profiting? 

At the end of the year, every year so far, I spent all the money that I had earned through coaching. 

My clients, however, often reap the benefits for years, decades even, the rest of their life perhaps. 

The value that a powerful coaching relationship offers is enormous. And when I think about what we’re asking in exchange, it often stands no comparison, almost regardless of how high the fee is, or how high it feels at the time of pitching it. 

I’ve carried this insight with me for some time. And it really helped me to move beyond charging relatively low fees by the hour. But last week, sharing these insights with a coach in Rocket Supervision had a huge impact, so I decided to share them with you here. 

As I’m adding the new content below, I’m also reminded of an episode of Talking about Coaching in which we asked the question: Is any coach worth $5000 per session? 
(also, goddamn do we look much younger pre-pandemic!)

Anyway, not sure who needed to hear this right now, but I concluded that our clients always draw the longer end of the stick, even if we were to put our prices up considerably. 

With a strong value of fairness instilled in me by my mother, it pains me to see coaches struggle with charging a fair rate for the often immense value they add to their clients’ lives and careers. 

So if you’re a coach and you’re concerned about being perceived as expensive, my invitation to you is: 

Give this Nugget a moment of reflection, maybe do the maths on how much you’ve invested in becoming a coach so far, give some deep thought to the kind of value that your clients walk away with after a successful coaching relationship, and perhaps have a look at this blog post I wrote ages ago. 

I know that critically reflecting on these considerations has helped a lot of coaches own the value they so clearly provide, and I hope it can help you, or perhaps a colleague of yours, too. 

With Love
Yannick

Tales from the Coaching Room

There’s something riveting about being a fly on the wall in a room where big things are happening. 

It’s enticing to be able to witness two people having a life-changing conversation, without the responsibility of having any skin in the game

I believe this is why gossip magazines are so popular, and Prince Harry’s book sells so well. 

It’s also why I created the Coaching Lab. 

And the reason I like Irvin Yalom’s books so much. 

It’s why I started collating coaching demos on YouTube in our Facebook group. 

And it’s also why I like the new Lessons From Clients blog so much, which one of my supervisees, Coaching Psychologist Matti Groot, recently started.

It features engaging – and beautifully written – storytelling from a highly experienced, and quite existentially-minded coach & therapist, as he’s working with his clients, and reflecting on his work. It’s well worth checking out! 

That’s it from me this week. 

If you’ve got any resources in the spirit of the above, do drop me a line! 

With Love
Yannick

To interrupt or not to interrupt

“The promise that changes everything”. 

That’s how legendary coach Nancy Kline framed her commitment not to interrupt her clients. Holding space for people’s thinking to take place without anyone interfering, sits at the heart of her Time To Think approach, and has revolutionised many a coach’s practice and results. 

In a recent episode of Animas’s Coaching Uncaged podcast I had a chance to talk to Linda Aspey, one of Nancy’s Global Faculty members, about why it is so important not to interrupt, and I got to challenge her on why I think there are times when interrupting can actually be a crucial part of the process. 

I loved what Linda responded, though some doubts kept niggling. 

And so it was refreshing to hear a different perspective, during my episode with Master Mentor-Coach Clare Norman, who distinguished between “live and dead silences”. 

Because yes, when you speak during a silence (which most would assume is fair game to speak and not considered to be interrupting someone) that can also be very disruptive, because it interrupts someone’s thinking (assuming that they are indeed still thinking productively, which they aren’t during a dead silence, so it’s okay, important even, to say or offer something). 

Clare also encourages coaches to interrupt their clients when they say something along the lines of  “let me give you some context” – usually in an effort to help the coach understand something that the client/thinking partner already has clear in their mind. Given that coaching, according to Clare, aims to help clients create new thinking, this is not time-well-spent. The same applies for everything that a client shares that doesn’t seem to be advancing their thinking. In such a case it might be important to interrupt, so that the conversation can be as useful as possible for the client, instead of helping the coach to understand something that the client already knows. 

Consider questions such as: “Is this a good use of our time?”, or “This sounds like something you already know, is it?”, or perhaps “Before you share this with me, I’d like to just briefly remind you that what’s most important here is that you understand the context, and if it’s clear to you then you really don’t need to fill me in. What might be a better use of our time instead?”

What do you think? Should we make a promise never to interrupt in order to create an effective thinking environment… or is it important we disrupt our clients’ ways at least every now and then, so as to help them accelerate their progress and break out of old patterns? 

[y]

Unlived Lives

What makes your heart break? 

Martin asked me this question last month, when we sat down in Granada for a weekend to connect, and to talk strategy for 2023. 

It was a surprisingly difficult question to engage with for me. For once, I’ve always despised the I-have-a-solution-for-your-pain approach to marketing, and this felt like it was going in that direction. And then I’ve always been driven by what excites me and what I’m passionate about, not what causes me pain. 

But I was up for an experiment, and I trust Martin enough to take a leap sometimes and follow into uncharted territory, and what I found was…. 

The sorrow of the unlived life. 

The regret that many coaching clients have expressed to me, about not having had the courage way back when, to make this or that decision, which would have altered their life and likely avoided the situation they now find themselves stuck in, or suffering from. 

I thought about a scene in the TV show The Crown, where Queen Elisabeth II, with what felt like a heavy heart and melancholic undertone, talks about her passion for horses and how she would have loved to have worked with them if she hadn’t been thrown into her leadership position. 

I thought back to reading Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and how it took 6 coincidences for the protagonist’s life to be unimaginably altered. 

It struck me that the difference between these three examples is about having an awareness of finding oneself at a branch point, where a choice presents itself for us to alter our life. We can’t know for sure where it’s going, but what coaching offers – and existential coaching in particular – is to create more of this kind of awareness, combined with an encouragement to dig a little deeper and to actively and courageously choose – to take the wheel and alter our lives. 

And yes, it does pain me to hear stories of coaches who give up on being coaches and practising coaching because they couldn’t make it work. 

It pains me to listen to the regrets of not having taken a chance, back when the opportunity arose, whether that’s out of a lack of awareness, lack of courage, or otherwise. I do very much feel the sorrow of the unlived life. 

And while, yes, there are indeed infinite unlived lives, and only one that is lived, for each of us…

What I want for people is to choose with awareness, to own their choices, and to be able to bear the inevitable not-knowing of how all of these other lives might have turned out. 

So in this spirit I invite you to have a think about the opportunities that this year, this month, this day offer. What life-altering choices are on the cards for you? What might you, in 20 years, regret not-doing this year?

New year – new me?

This one’s floating around each Christmas/New Year’s period:

New Year – New Me!

Whenever the new year starts for you – 1st Jan, Chinese New year on the 22nd Jan, September after the Summer slump, your birthday – we often take such a marker in time as an opportunity to make a change. 

But what does “New me” mean? 

A small change can make a huge difference to who you are. A big sudden change can feel inauthentic, and revert back to normal in no time…

In my experience, most change happens gradually, bit by bit, until there’s a tipping point which can feel like a sudden change, but it is still built on a foundation. 

If you’ve got a change in mind you’d like to make this year, have a think about what foundations are in place (or have to be put in place) for you to reach that tipping point this January. Otherwise, chances are it’s gonna be short-lived.

And if you’d like an accountability kick, feel free to share with me what changes you’d like to make in 2023, and I’m gonna be checking in on you in February. 

Happy new Western calendar year everybody 🙂

Time to ponder some powerful questions?

There was a time when the holiday period was a peaceful one, quiet and full of space to ponder. 

I used to reflect on the year that had passed and the year ahead, what I had learned and what I wanted to do differently going forward…

Times have changed for me and life is more demanding these days. And as quiet time is becoming an increasingly scarce resource, it makes me appreciate poignant questions and journal prompts on another level. 

Several such invitations were recently offered as part of my conversation with rockstar coach Jerry Colonna for Animas’s Coaching Ungaged podcast. They go:

• How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want in my life/work?
• What am I not saying that needs to be said?
• What am I saying that’s not being heard?
• What’s being said that I’m not hearing?

I wish you ample time to ponder this holiday season. 

With Love

Yannick 

“Be of service” they said… 

I’ve been thinking about what it means to serve.. 

Having just spent a week abroad within a cultural context where “coaching” is seen as a “tell me what to do” kind of thing, rather than entering a partnership aimed at facilitating someone’s thinking and learning… 

I was reminded that most people expect their coach to deliver a service when they “hire” them. I put hire in quotation marks here, because most coaches I like will tell you that they’re not “for hire”. Instead they “partner” with their clients. 

Even the word “client” has been challenged during a recent episode of Coaching Uncaged when Peter Hawkins told me that the word implies that the coach serves the client, but in a “service provider” kind of way. This sets a particular expectation, in that the coach would provide the value by delivering their work. 

This creates a kind of dynamic in the coaching relationship that really isn’t conducive to effective coaching, which works best when coach and coachee meet each other at eye level, where neither coach nor the coaching partner has the answer, but both are committed to the journey of creating (or discovering) one. 

In another, not-yet-published episode (watch this space), Master Mentor-Coach & author Clare Norman got into quite the rant about this, which really made me feel rather grateful that I haven’t spent my best days working in and for organisations, which are the prime source for creating the “service narrative”, according to Clare’s latest book. 

It did make me wonder about how Steve Chandler (of The Prosperous Coach fame) and his many passionate disciples drive home the point that we have to adopt a “service mentality” if we want to build a successful coaching practice. And the way I made sense of this today is that different people have quite different ideas about what it means to be of service. 

For me, a thinking partnership, at eye level, where I don’t need to bring the answers, but instead hold space and offer my professional companionship on a journey of discovery –  present and patient – that’s of invaluable service. 

Have a think about the extent to which you (whether you’re a coach or provide any other kind of service in this world) and your “service receiver” are clear on what the dynamics are in your relationship, and what you both expect from each other within this relationship. 

As long as you both agree on the terms, it’ll be a fruitful endeavour in my experience. 

Yet, so often we don’t talk about the terms of our interaction… 

A lesson in patience 

When I was growing up, my dad was one of the most impatient people I knew. Given how much patience it requires to be an effective coach, rebelling against his ways played a considerable part in me connecting so passionately with coaching (no offence, dad!). And when I say“coaching” I mean facilitating a learning journey, which consists to a considerable extent of holding space, laced with sharing observations and generally being curious. 

A crucial part of coaching effectively in this way, is dropping the idea that we know anything, and the idea that we would add value by sharing what we know, or offering suggestions or guidance. 

This is often the hardest aspect to learn for coaches-in-training. And this past week I was reminded of the best possible way to train your patience: 

Children – especially young children! 

I appreciate there’s different parenting philosophies and that kids do need boundaries and to be told what to do on many occasions. But to see my nephew learn to figure out how to piece together a new LEGO spaceship, or to watch Leah grapple with where to best stick her breadstick (fantastic, little one, so we’ve learned that your eyes are not ideal, where else might you try…) it dawned on me with a never-before clarity:

Whether or not I make it a habit to interfere with their process is gonna make a huge difference to their future attitude towards learning, problem solving, and ownership over what they’re creating.

And boy does it require patience, to hold space instead of interfering!

I am my father’s son, after all, and so I had to work hard to learn to hold space for people who are learning something new – especially difficult when I think I know how to do it. After all, I’ve built my fair share of spaceships (the Lego kind, that is) and I’ve mastered the art of sticking breadsticks into my mouth many moons ago. 

And so I remind myself that letting them figure things out in their own time and in their own way, and to let them own the results, may just be the best service I can offer… 

…along with perhaps a few pointed comments, questions, observations, or sharing what I’m curious about (IF that is welcome!). After all, I am a coach. 

Of course this is MUCH easier with clients than it is for, let’s say, family. I think the more you love someone, the more there’s an urge to interfere with their learning, to try and guide them or share what you know – with best intentions of course, but it often isn’t as helpful as you might think, especially when it comes to the more complex questions in life and work.

I honestly believe that patience trumps advice, on most occasions, with the notable exception of when time is of the essence and the house is on fire. Do tell me where the nearest exit is! But if we can afford it, please give me space to learn so I can own what I know. 

How, if at all, have you learned to be patient, I wonder?

Drop me a line, I’d love to hear what lessons life has taught you… 

[y]

Reflections on the future of learning in the age of technology

Leah is 9 months old now.

As she’s growing up with three languages, she’s expected to start speaking later than usual. And when I found out that there’s an app that translates baby noises into text, it somehow got me thinking about the kind of skills we aren’t learning anymore, because technology does the job for us.

Of course we’re not quite there yet, but my mind pictured a version of Amazon’s Alexa that registers that the baby is hungry or tired, before Mum does – and for a moment I considered the scenario that over time we as humans might lose skills like that. Much like I no longer drive anywhere without a satnav, simply because I don’t have to – and I’ve noticed how my general sense of orientation has suffered when in the past I’d always find my way back to places I had been to once. 

Checking for a fever? – A thing of the past.

Knowing how much salt to add to a dish? – Google will tell you. 

Remembering when to order new crucial food or medicine? – Already initiated by your smart fridge/medicine cabinet.

And of course these are merely the beginning…

I’m sure very soon checking your baby for a fever will be a thing of the past, because they’ll be monitored at all times. 

But I feel the “your baby wants a cuddle” push notification goes a bit too far… or does it? 

Reminds me of an article I wrote a while ago, after reading the Oxford University study that predicted that nearly 50% of jobs are at risk of being replaced by artificial intelligence (with a notable update on the data here). And now, as a dad, I continue ponder: 

How will all of this affect parenting? 

Nelly often refers to parenting as “the single most important job we can choose to take on in the world”, but my concerns extend far beyond parenting, to any job people do, so let me ask you: 

How will technology affect your role in life and/or business?

What skill set(s) might you need to protect (or indeed need to re-learn) in order to future-proof your life, your well-being, your existence?

And how do you think might technology help, or hinder that process?

[y]

On biting your tongue – and being authentic

I had to seriously bite my tongue when the moving truck finally arrived: 5 days late, with all my plants probably dead; significant extra cost; terrible planning; mostly non-existent communication; lots of blatant lies and definitely outrageous customer service… 

“Be political!”, my wife urged me, as I prepared to meet the movers downstairs.

“I’m being fake”, I thought, and the part of me that highly values authenticity protested loudly. 

So I searched within for some empathy. Which I found, then argued away, next I re-connected to it, and finally I offered the guys coffee and breakfast. 

It felt genuine at that moment. There was going to be a time to share some “honest feedback”, but this wasn’t that time. The logical, not-particularly-empathetic part in me agreed that that was the right strategy. 

I even came to really like two of the three men. After all, most likely none of this was their fault. In fact, they probably suffered much more than me – they were the ones who had to carry 257 items onto the 4th floor in central Berlin, with no lift thanks to the utterly incompetent organisation of their employers. 

If I had given way to the emotional outburst that had been lurking underneath a relatively calm surface, I reckon things would have escalated and nothing good would have come out of it. 

I did get to say my piece at the end of the day (a 16-hour day, mind you), and while I would have preferred the timing to be better, it turned out that the owner of the company was one of the guys sweating in the staircase(a victim of his own shitty planning, a fact which I gotta admit I rather enjoyed), so it had to be there and then. Though I believe that it was really important to speak our minds – for me as well as for him, as they had grievances of their own.

I guess the moral of the story is that holding back what you’re feeling in the moment doesn’t necessarily mean you’re putting on a fake face. It was important – necessary, even – to park my grievances, genuinely connect with the human being,  e  and to create a space where emotions can be aired, as well as to listen to the other side’s story. 

That’s also why I love coaching conversations: Since I’m not reliant on my clients’ service and tend to avoid significant “dual relationships”, I don’t have to bite my tongue. When I feel strongly during a coaching conversation, and this feeling has emerged as a result of our relationship or interaction, it’s actually important that I give voice to it as it’s usually very relevant to the work..

Anyway: Now – 3 days of intense unpacking later – we’re in a reasonably good place. Most of the plants are alive, I’m loving my new consulting room, and I’m looking forward to continuing to share my thoughts with you from one of the most inspiring places I know in the world.

Welcome to Berlin, me! 🙂 

If Sisyphus was a butterfly… 

Some of my coaching sessions make my blood boil. 

What gets me is the injustice and absurdity of the system within which they operate. 

I’m just out of a session, and this coachee tells me that – literally – people are dying because of how the system is set up. And those who are in charge of maintaining the system seem unwilling to do their job, so those with heart and passion and a genuine drive to do good in the world, find their hands tied. 

And it’s not that they don’t try to influence [or: improve] the situation.

They voice concerns, they go on the record, they shout and scream, they rebel, they conform…

They try everything they’ve got – but at the end of the day it just feels like Sisyphus, pushing his boulder up, again and again, with no change whatsoever when it comes to the issues that matter. All that’s achieved are cosmetics. 

And careful to not get too vocal, or make the powers that be too uncomfortable: those who aren’t experts at playing the political game are easily made into a scapegoat, and singled out as ultimately carrying the responsibility. 

The questions that arise regularly for these clients are the following: 

Am I really just like Sisyphus, and none of my efforts really matter? Will I fare best to make my peace with the impossibility of creating real change if there’s no buy-in of key people who have made it very clear that they’re not interested in change? Is it time to stop banging my head against the wall? Resign, conform, just “do my job” and live my life? 

Or might I be the proverbial butterfly of butterfly-effect fame, and me flapping my wings may ultimately cause the storm that brings about change, the wind of change that will save those lives… even if it’s long after I’m gone at the other end of the world…? 

Do I choose to believe in hope and that to keep fighting is essentially worth it? How much am I willing to sacrifice in the face of not being able to know which one’s the truth?

A dilemma? Perhaps an easy choice for you?

Is your Sisyphus flapping his wings? 

[y]

Mind the assumptions

I’ll miss East London for its street art. This one caught my attention this weekend: 

What do you think this person is experiencing?

My wife and I certainly had quite different assumptions. 

I’d love to ask the artist what he had in mind, but the point here is that if we were to all tell a story, I reckon all our stories would be quite different, and always coloured by our own projections. 

It is this “colouring in”, and interpreting what someone says through our own lense, that happens all the time when we listen to our clients in the coaching room, and it’s also what’s happening when we listen to family, friends and co-workers: 

We make assumptions based on our own frame of reference. 

A good coach “brackets” their assumptions and starts asking questions – and a good friend would too, I’d say. 

Because all too often, our interpretations of what’s going on don’t help, at all. While listening and helping someone to make sense of their experience does help, and a lot. 

Of course there are times when we definitely benefit from making some quick assumptions in order to be able to act quickly. The wisdom lies in deciding when to bracket our assumptions and when to act on them. 

So next time you notice you’re creating a narrative in your head, ask yourself: “How much of myself is in this story? And might there be a different way to interpret what’s going on here?” Then get curious! 🙂 

I’ll leave you with that. And I salute art – and this artist* in particular – for making us think.

[y]