• Core principles: Trust the client, partnership, possibility, accept/blend/create, and presence
• Emotional intelligence
• Articulating core values
• Core skills: listening, questioning, reflecting, and supporting

As I described before, the teaching method used by The Forton Group is to use the coaching methodology itself, and an extensive amount of demonstration and practice.  I find this to result in a much deeper learning and internalization.

And in addition, I received hours worth of personalized coaching while we practiced these new skills during the class.

So that was the last three days.  Monday and Tuesday, I had the opportunity to re-take the Foundations class.  It was a remarkable experience, as I reviewed, practiced, and learned even more depth in this whole coaching methodology.  It was even more valuable than I had hoped.

My focus this week was to move forward with my fledgling company, in the areas of clarifying my marketing strategy and partnerships.  I made a lot of progress and developed some key connections, so I’ll now be getting that organized and communicated.  It’s an exciting time.

So now I’m blessed with a couple of days free in London.  Last Sunday I attended a beautiful Mass at St Etheldra’s Church, and I’ve been told by several people that Brompton Oratory may be a great choice this weekend.  To be investigated!

But now to bed, I’m whipped after an intense week.

Read more on my Partnering in Possibilities blog »

Why is it so difficult?

I think it’s because I know I’ll have to live with this name for a long time.  In a way, I’m getting “married” to the name and don’t want to make the wrong choice.  And there’s a number of relatively vague criteria for this, a mixture of logical and emotional, thinking and feeling, even with legal ramifications thrown in.  That’s not unlike many big choices that we’re faced with, on the job or In Real Life.

In the end, the way I moved to a decision was:

• I set a deadline for myself.  An arbitrary choice, really, but I decided that yesterday was the day to finally get it done.
• I gathered all my data together, in my head and on paper.  That way I could feel like I had all the requirements and possibilities in hand.
• I created some space.  My wife and I had a wonderful trip to the mountains yesterday and we had a nice relaxed chat about this.  I had no other meetings scheduled, no other distractions.
• I balanced my head and my heart.  After all, this needs to be a name that meets all the logical requirements, but also one that I can feel good growing into.  That’s very much an emotional choice.

My final decision?  Possibilities Partnership LLC.  No, it’s not stunningly clever, but I didn’t want that.  This name is built on the fundamental philosophy of working in partnership with my customers to build their best future based on the possibilities which exist.  I’ll be moving my coaching style away from focusing on fixing problems, toward creating and designing.  It helped that I had captured some of these ideas in my business planning, but the name also helps me to make them more concrete.

And yes, being a technoid, I immediately went out and grabbed the www.PossibilitiesPartnership.com website URL.  That in fact was a primary criteria for the name – so many other two-word combinations are already taken by legitimate companies and less savory URL parkers.

How do you get yourself through tough decisions?

One of the most powerful approaches that I use is to distance myself from the group’s goals and the organization’s goals.  For instance, change “I am responsible for ensuring this project gets delivered on time” to a slightly more distant “As a team, we all need to deliver the project on time.”

This shift in emphasis allows the manager and employee to then work on the problem, side by side, rather than in opposition:

• Is that the real goal that we want to achieve?
• Within that context, what’s the reality of the current situation?
• What resources are available to us?
• What options do we have?
• What do we want to try, and how will we know if we’re successful or not?

You see that this conversation was entirely about us working together as a pair, or even as a larger team, to quickly figure out the best action to take.  When we both take ownership for this next step, then we’re equally invested in having it succeed – even if all the actual work is done by only one of the two people.

It’s quite possible that the employee will come to you with an agenda which actually conflicts with your own.  Perhaps the employee is getting burned out, yet you don’t see a way to reduce the workload to accommodate that.

In that case, what happens is that together you need to search for common ground.  You don’t actually have a goal to give employees an unreasonable workload, so you’re not actually in direct conflict.  The solution lies in looking outside the current constraints to a broader world of possibility.  In this case, perhaps a different way of addressing productivity might be the best step forward, a way which will allow both you and the employee to meet your independent goals.  To start the discussion, though, you need to respect and understand the employee’s goal, not combat it with arguments and excuses.