Jacqui Stearn | Coaching with Intent

April 12, 2021April 16, 2021

Coaching Conversation: Episode 9

This conversation with my guest, Suzanne Ford, covered her experience as a coaching client and was recorded two years ago at a picnic table in an allotment in Cirencester, Gloucestershire. Listening back to it was poignant; little did I know then that two years hence I would be longing for the simple pleasure of a conversation at a picnic table.

Suzanne has two work roles as a dietician; one is with the NHS and the second with the National Society for Phenylketonuria (NSPKU). One of Suzanne’s reflections is that,

Coaching enabled me to reflect constructively about things where I was stuck, analyzing it quite fully in a constructive way; naming the fear, saying what I was frightened of or felt threatened by something and just exploring different ways of viewing that, different perspectives and then moving forwards to exploring different ways to proceed.

Suzanne describes how the coaching has made a sustained difference to her working life and leadership, as she juggles two roles, one in the UK’s biggest employer, the other for a small, specialist charity where she is one of just three employees. It offers vital support to families of children who have inherited Phenylketonuria a rare inherited condition.

Mentioned in the podcast

NSPKU website: http://www.nspku.org

Phenylketonuria is a build up of phenylalanine in the body. Phenylalanine, is a natural substance, a building block of protein. However, excessive amounts can impact on behaviour and if untreated – through a low protein diet – may lead to brain damage. PKU is looked for in all new-born babies in the United Kingdom by measuring phenylalanine levels in the heel-prick blood test. All babies should have this test as it allows treatment to start early in life.

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April 9, 2021April 9, 2021

Poem for March

It’s birthday time and this poem from 4 years back is the one to post.

Dundee Cake

I made a cake for mum today

a Dundee cake from her

Radiation Cookery Book 1940,

it’s pages stained, parting

from the sombre, dark brown cover.

Nineteen she’d have been,

In that year the Blitz began,

as she read its recipes and guidance

for model housewives.

Did rationing affect her cooking?

Did she stand in line,

wicker basket on her arm,

a headscarf tied, Queen-like,

beneath her chin,

to purchase sugar, butter, eggs?

As they creamed into yellow softness,

not by my hand but in the mixer,

I swear Mum whispered in my ear,

“The water, is it boiled for almond blanching?”

Ah no, I had forgotten.

I was allowed that helping task,

enjoyed the roll of almond in its softened skin,

its play between thumb and index finger,

the satisfying popping out of white nut flesh;

I sometimes finger-licked the cake bowl clean.

Time alone with her was scarce,

came through sewing, she was ever patient,

knitting, when she’d work her needle magic

picking up dropped stitches, making good;

those tables turned a year or so ago.

Growing plants was another of her gifts:

sweet peas twining tall from seed,

their scent heady with summer,

and fruit, currants, red, white and black transformed

into pies and pickles, jams, wine, sometimes cassis.

Who’s going to send me birthday primrose now

garden dug, damp paper wrapped then posted?

Some held a travelling worm or two when opened.

Hand it on, that’s what I’ll do,

send primrose to her spring born grandson.

“I suppose you could,” she whispers, ever understated.

Her independence was that way, untrumpeted;

her money was her own, she always worked,

believed in education, spoke her own political opinion.

She stood by my life choices, even if she disagreed.

So many gifts she freely offered

the last to teach me patient sitting,

expect nothing, just be present sipping tea

while she talked of home, become a fluid place

straddling nine decades and more of life.

How inadequate these words,

thin slivers of love to you who gave me life.

“Don’t you bother about that, you’ve done your best,

that’s all that matters. Is the cake alright?”

“Yes mum, it looks just like one of yours.”

March 10, 2021March 15, 2021

Coaching Conversations: Episode 8

Jo Musker-Sherwood, the Founder Director of Hope for the Future, is my guest on this episode of Coaching Conversations. Jo is one of the special people that I have been fortunate to encounter through my commitment to talking with guests who are supporting people to face into the climate and ecological emergencies. Hope for the Future, the organisation that Jo left just before lockdown last year, is an organisation dedicated to supporting people to engage their MPs on these issues.

As Jo explains, rather than taking an adversarial approach, which works in certain lobbying settings, Hope for the Future views 1:1 meetings with an MP differently;

It’s about cultivating empathy, taking a coaching approach, understanding the emotional blockages of an MP. Quite a lot of that is around eco-anxiety and training people to unlock those blockages is what we did.

Jo and I talk about how she came to be the first director of Hope for the Future and why, as it was becoming very successful, she left to establish her own business, Climate. Emergence. She had experienced burnout and seeing parallels with her own emotional collapse experience and the potential for earth’s systems collapse, she committed to sharing with others what she had learned. She now offers ‘a place where we can process what on earth is happening to us and our planet.’

I think that one of the primary tools that we have at our disposal when we try facing an issue that we can’t control [as I did] is to engage with that challenge by finding meaning in the process… It is one of the tools that we have at our disposal to build resilience for climate change, you know, where can I find my small bit of the jigsaw puzzle. I love writing and that’s part understanding our narrative and our story of what’s happening.

Jo publishes a weekly blog and mentors people to be able to continue to live fully whilst also living with the unfolding crisis. One of her beliefs is that we have everything we need within ourselves to halt catastrophic climate change. She recommends a four ‘Gs’ self-care plan for living with the climate and ecological emergencies:

Grace – truly connect with being enough as you are through a daily stillness practice;

Grounding – through daily contact with nature;

Gratitude – keep your heart open for the ten things that you’re grateful for each day;

Growth – by journaling as the story unfolds.

Jo’s own journaling means that that there is a book, a memoir of her recovery to look out for, though not just yet.

Mentioned in this podcast

Jo’s links

Climate.Emergence:http://climateemergence.co.uk

Hope for the Future http://hftf.org.uk

Poem for February

Balancing upwards

How is it that the beauty to be felt in the miracle of balance on two wheels

Is forgotten

until the next time when ascending the hill, through the copse, beside fields,

the inching

that could tip into collapse if hard-worked legs and lungs failed, yields small joys of noticing

through slowness?

Tight-budded green spears push through the verge. A carpeting mass of them

spring upwards,

waiting to burst into full-throated trumpeting of the ‘warmer weather coming’

anthem of triumph.

At the summit blackbird’s trill rips into the breathless silence.

How is it that the beauty to be felt in the miracle of balance on two wheels

Is forgotten

until the next spring when the bleating of young lambs in the fields

beyond Bulls Cross,

the returning call of ewes, adds new sounds to the purring gears, the thrum

of spinning wheels?

Turned out across the lane, a stream of white and black fleeces

cross my path

pass through the gate to roadside pasture. Now each ascent I slow, spin it out,

check their progress,

fall in love afresh with the climb through Slad to the souring song of skylarks.

How is it that the beauty to be felt in the miracle of balance on two wheels

Is forgotten

until the next time when descending the other hill through copse, beside fields

I glimpse

the silver streak, light glancing off its liquid form, dancing way over there

beside the forest?

This point of pivot before the headlong rush of gravity’s wind blurs vision

is sweet.

Tears stream at the tainted bliss of vulnerable descent, the swerve and dodge

through town traffic.

February 2, 2021February 19, 2021

Coaching Conversations: Episode 7

… a lot of this (Neil’s Wheel) is about a conversation with the child of the future …… ‘So grandpa, when you knew these old ways weren’t working, the animals were dying, the waters were rising and things were running out. What did you do?’ And wanting to feel that for that grandchild, I did something for them.

Neil Scotton

My conversation this month is with Neil Scotton about a deceptively simple coaching tool that he has designed and is now sharing around the globe, Neil’s Wheel. It is a vivid example of Neil’s generosity of spirit in action.

The wheel is available free to the world, there’s no obstacles to accessing it – no payments, no having to do a course or read a book or anything else around it. You just go to the site, print it off or copy it out and go.

In our conversation Neil, an award-winning coach of many years’ experience, explains how he has drawn upon his international standing and depth of coaching expertise, to create and refine Neil’s Wheel with the coaching community so as to make it available to change makers and concerned citizens worldwide – as well as to professional coaches.

Excitingly it was recently taken up by a number of church ministers across the US, and, one of them wants to look at the words to see, what changes, if any, need to happen so that he can work with the disenfranchised youth in America.

In autumn 2020 Neil was awarded the Coaching at Work Editors’ Award for his contribution to climate coaching which included the creation of Neil’s Wheel. Neil is the co-founder of the One Leadership Project and many other initiatives mentioned in the podcast.

Mentioned in the podcast

Neil Scotton’s links

Neil’s Wheel website http://www.neilswheel.org.

Coaching Professionals http://coachingprofessionals.com

One Leadership Project https://enablingcatalysts.com

The Little Book of Making Big Change Happen, co-authored with Dr. Alister Scott is published by Troubadour Publishing.

Links to other sources

Climate Coaching Alliance https://www.climatecoachingalliance.org/

Coaching at Work https://www.coaching-at-work.com/

Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics, published by Chelsea Green Publishing

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January 8, 2021January 8, 2021

Poem for January

First frost

Does clarity come today

with this early pristine sky?

A near stillness.

The leaves tremble beneath

the moon hanging patient

as the sun rises to beam,

melt the first frost.

Blackbird clucks alarm

in this suspended time

then falls silent.

January 8, 2021January 11, 2021

Coaching Conversations: Episode 6

What if coaching was for a life-giving planet and the health of our biosphere rather than performance and organizational success?

Alison Whybrow

I was delighted to have Alison Whybrow, one of the founders of the Climate Coaching Alliance (CCA), as my guest for the latest episode of Coaching Conversations. Explaining the genesis of CCA, Alison said,

Zoe Cohen wrote an article in LinkedIn about where were all the coaches when the earth warmed by three degrees? I caught myself thinking ‘what’s the purpose of coaching’? And maybe if the purpose of coaching was different to what it is, then we might start to see a shift. What if coaching was for a life-giving planet and for the health of our biosphere, rather than for performance and organizational success?

She went on to say,

I think the Climate Coaching Alliance was an idea waiting to be discovered. And it just so happened that Eve (Turner), Josie (McClean) and I were the three to discover it.

In just over a year since they formed the Coaching Climate Alliance in 2019, they have created a virtual network space in which coaches, mentors and supervisors from around the globe can learn from each other and share their approaches to coaching from that perspective and supporting their clients to face into the climate and ecological emergencies.

How do we really open this space with scale? That’s really where so much of the learning is. Lots of people know they need to do it. Lots of people are making changes in their personal lives, but the question of how to really hold this with grace and scale is key. There’s so much learning there and there’s so much opportunity and possibility.

Never far from our minds during the conversation, was the UK’s hosting of COP 26 taking place in Glasgow in November. Asked about the role of the CCA in support of the action needed, Alison offered the following,

Our pre-COP 26 role (as coaches), is to create the conditions for our politicians and for those representing us in those meetings to have the bravest and most heartfelt conversations they can have in service of all of our futures.

She added,

One of the things we can do is create the landing strip for what comes out of COP 26. So how do we really ready ourselves and ready our clients and be available to enable people, enable those ideas to lean into them and to land and land well?

Membership of the Climate Coaching Alliance is free. On 4^th March 2021 a 24 Hour Conversation is planned. This will be the third global event held by CCA, but this time locally hosted. The aim is to enable a broader and deeper conversations using shared case studies to take the work forward to the next level within the framework of the Eco Phase cycle that the CCA works with (see below).

This Episode of Coaching Conversation is dedicated by Alison to Josie, Eve and the joys of co-founding. All the ideas and thinking expressed have been crowdsourced from many conversations and many learning partners

Mentioned in this podcast

Alison Whybrow, coach and co-author with Alan Williams of The 31 Practices: Release the power of your organization’s values every day published byLID publishing. https://www.alisonwhybrow.com/

Climate Coaching Alliance website” https://www.climatecoachingalliance.org/

and a link to the joint statement by the international professional coaching bodies”

https://www.climatecoachingalliance.org/event/meeting-or-networking-event-professional-coaching-bodies-joint-statement-presentations-climate-crisis-how-can-coaching-help-2/Joint statement by coaching bodies

and to the CCA events page and the Eco Phase model: https://www.climatecoachingalliance.org/coming-events/

BBC What Planet Are We On podcast hosted by Liz Bonnin https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08tdhyl/episodes/downloads

Outrage and Optimism podcast hosted by Christiana Figueres https://globaloptimism.com/podcast-old/

COP 26 in Glasgow with UK Presidency: https://ukcop26.org/

Kathy Allen and Living Systems Principles from ego-led to eco-led https://kathleenallen.net/

Tessa Bailey, https://www.linkedin.com/in/tessa-bailey1/?originalSubdomain=ca

A link to Zoe Cohen’s article, ‘Where were all the coaches when the planet warmed by three degrees?’

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/where-were-all-coaches-when-planet-warmed-3-degrees-zoe-cohen/

Liz Hall, editor of Coaching at Work https://www.coaching-at-work.com/

A Coaching at Work editors Award 2020 was given to the Climate Coaching Alliance

Professor Peter Hawkins, https://www.linkedin.com/in/professorpeterhawkins/?originalSubdomain=uk

Polly Higgins, who sadly died in April 2019, campaigned for an International Law of Ecocide.https://www.stopecocide.earth/Earth Protectors take her work forward.

A link to Neil Scotton’s Neil’s Wheel https://neilswheel.org/

Otto Scharmer, to access Otto Scharmer’s presentation register for free with the Coaches Rising Coaching Summit https://www.coachesrising.com/summit/ and then: https://courses.coachesrising.com/session/the-future-of-leadership/

Val Panui, https://www.linkedin.com/in/val-panui-9b73575/?originalSubdomain=nz

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December 7, 2020December 15, 2020

Poem for December

Tilia cordata

First notice this:

I spiraled

into your heart,

then dropped

to your feet.

Now pick me up.

Bag me in a 50:50 mix

sharp sand to compost.

Place me in deep dormancy

first warm, no less than 68⁰

for sixteen weeks, then chill me

for sixteen more at 39⁰.

Be patient those eight months;

love takes time to root

in the substrate of life.

Do not forget me waiting

in your fridge,

harnessing my potential

to send down a radical,

push up a shoot, with two

fresh-from-seed

cotyledenous leaves.

Smile at me.

I will you.

I might have germinated

in the bag – or might not

– either way plant me

in a carefully chosen pot.

Wait for me

to stretch high,

become your oh so sweet

Linden love

and allow me to pluck

the cords of your heart.

December 3, 2020December 15, 2020

Coaching Conversations: Episode 5

This episode’s conversation is with nature-based coach, James Farrell. As well as being the director at The Natural Coaching Company and founder at The Human Nature Partnership, James works in environment and climate change related fields and has done so for almost 30 years.

I’ve been on a search for the last few years, for that sweet spot between people, planet and human potential…. I’m a surfer and my pre-coaching prep five minutes before the session is to imagine I’m out there, sitting on the ocean. That brings the environment into it (the coaching session).

In our conversation about nature-based coaching we explore how rooting coaching practice in the natural world – literally and metaphorically – benefits coachees and nature. James cites a wealth of research to back up his commitment to his work.

This generation and the next are the ones to turn the corner to more just and sustainable planet, so that’s what nature-based coaching is about for me. I’m driven by the idea that to pull this off we need people who can be operating at their very best so that we’ve got a chance of make the biggest possible impact. That’s where coaching comes in – and coaching in all its forms is wonderful when it is done well.

Episode 6 of Coaching Conversations with Alison Whybrow (January 2021) explains more about the Climate Coaching Alliance mentioned in this episode.

James is offering a free ‘Coaching with nature’ guide to his subscribers. Get in touch via the Natural Coaching Company website or email hi. The details are below, along with information about the scientific research that he draws upon and mentioned during our conversation.

Mentioned in the podcast

The Natural Coaching Company https://naturalcoachingcompany.com/

where you can find James’ Climate Coaching Alliance webinar as a blog

Climate Coaching Alliance https://www.climatecoachingalliance.org/

Climate Change Coaches https://www.climatechangecoaches.com

Michael Cohen, Project Nature Connect https://projectnatureconnect.org and 54 natural web strings https://www.ecopsych.com/insight53senses.html

Earth based institute https://earthbasedinstitute.org

Finding Nature Project (for Miles Richardson and Alison Pritchard et al). https://findingnature.org.uk

Gold Standard https://www.goldstandard.org/take-action/offset-your-emissions

International Coaching Federation https://coachfederation.org/blog/icf-cosigns-global-statement-regarding-climate-change

Zoltán Kövecses (2010), Metaphor – a practical introduction, published by Oxford University Press.

Joanna Macy & Christ Johnstone, Active Hope https://www.activehope.info/index.html