Ep.3 Alchemy Part 1: Coaching Outcomes

Across 3 episodes in season 4, Katie talks with master coach Lori Shook about  Alchemy: The Art and Science of co-facilitation. Based on ORSC concepts the alchemy approach was designed to help pairs create magical co-deliveries, whether they be co-coaching, co-facilitating, or co-parenting! ​Magical co-facilitation, inspired participants, deep learning – these things don’t just happen. However, you can learn the tools and techniques that can help you and your partner to consistently and intentionally create successful, transformative, high-impact learning experiences together. In part 1 we discuss alchemy and coaching outcomes. Across this conversation we discuss:

• Why partners need to get aligned on outcomes
• What happens when we’re not aligned
• Designing our sessions so that everything is in service of the outcomes.

Lori Shook is a pioneer in the coaching world: she jumped into the budding field of coaching in the mid-1990s, earned the designation of Master Certified Coach by 2001 and has been training coaches for over 20 years. Lori has coached small business owners, managers, and executives around the world. She has worked with leaders in a variety of organisations including large multinationals and small to mid-sized businesses. As a pioneer in the coaching world, she was a driving force for the global expansion of coaching as she helped spread CoActive coaching across North America and helped introduce coaching to many countries throughout EMEA.


For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time

We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.

Transcript

Key 

KC – Katie Churchman 

LS - Lori Shook

[Intro 00:00 – 00:07] 

KC – Hello and welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast. We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity, to nature, to the larger whole. I’m your host, Katie Churchman, and across three episodes in season four I’m speaking with master coach Lori Shook about alchemy, the art and science of co-facilitation. Based on ORSC concepts, the alchemy approach was designed to help pairs create magical co-deliveries, whether they be co-coaching, co-facilitating or co-parenting. Magical co-facilitation inspired participants and deep learning. These things don’t just happen, however you can learn the tools and techniques that can help you and your partner to constantly and intentionally create  successful, transformative, high impact learning experiences together. Lori Shook is a pioneer in the coaching world. She jumped into the budding field of coaching in the mid-1990s, earning the designation of master certified coach by 2001 and has been training coaches for over 20 years. Lori has coached more business owners, managers and executives around the world. She has worked with leaders in a variety of organizations including large multinationals and small-to-midsize businesses. Lori was a driving force for the global expansion of coaching and helped spread co-active coaching across North America, and helped to introduce coaching to many countries throughout Enya. She contributed to the creation of quality scalable programs and training excellence for three international coach training schools including CRR Global. Lori is highly respected for her talent in coaching and training coaches. Consistent with her educational background in the sciences, she regularly integrates neuroscience into the coaching and training work she does with leaders, coaches and teams. With her practical and no-nonsense approach, she makes coaching and personal development a pragmatic yet deep process. In part one we discuss alchemy and coaching outcomes. Across this conversation we discuss why partners need to get aligned on outcomes, what happens when we’re not aligned and designing our sessions so that everything we do is in service of those outcomes. So without further ado I bring you, Lori Shook. 

KC – Lori, welcome to the Relationship Matters podcast! 

LS – Thanks Katie, it’s nice to be here, it’s nice to be with you. Feels like we’ve been scheming this up for a little while so it’s nice to be like let’s get going, let’s talk about some stuff. 

KC – I know, I’m very excited to chat about alchemy over these three episodes. And before we dive into our specific focus of today, alchemy and coaching outcomes, I wonder if you could start by talking about what alchemy means and how it relates to ORSC? 

LS – Ok. Yes. I’d love to. So alchemy, you can find several dictionary definitions but one that I really like is brining two disparate elements together to create something new and unique. And of course there’s a little bit of magic in the term alchemy, we relate it to something magical, the creation of gold, something flashy and wonderful, and what we’re trying to do in this program called alchemy is bring two different individuals together, co-facilitators, whether they’re co-coaches or co-leaders or co-trainers, bring them together and create what we call a unified front, a third entity in ORSC terms. You know, a relationship that’s really solid. Because we say and believe that the relationship is what’s doing the work. Not just the two individuals, so that alchemy concept is bringing them together. And how that relates to ORSC? Well we use a lot of ORSC concepts like third entity and relationship coaching, in a way you can think of the whole alchemy course as a coaching for a pair of people who are coming together to do some work together. And how else it relates to ORSC is that, well originally, Faith and Marita, the founders of ORSC meant to have a way to train people and help coaches come together as a pair because they recommended you work as a pair when you coach a team. There’s so much going on in the team that two people together is much more robust, you know, one plus one equals three kind of thing you know, it can handle and hold so much more, all those emotions, all those things going on. And, of course, the ICF has recently come out with team competencies and encouraged co-coaching or team coaching. 

KC – So, I wonder then, because alchemy feels so magical and almost intangible and yet when I hear the phrase coaching outcomes it feels a bit more concrete and structured, so tell me how these two pieces relate? 

LS – Why do you need all that structure… ? 

KC – I know!

LS – I get it, I totally get it and I love the question. And the thing is if you wanna create something magical you need to prepare. You need to know what you’re doing, you have some work to do ahead of time, co-coaches need to know where do we wanna get to in this coaching session? Or co-trainers, if they’re doing a training session. What are things we’re really after in this program? And the things we’re after are going to help create the design as well as how do we interact? Because we’re looking at experiential activities and so in an experience, I mean it’s not scripted, it’s not pre-determined, we have to be improvisational as we go and we need some kind of structure that holds us in that improvisation if that makes sense? 

KC – Yeah, we were talking offline about how jazz musicians, they have to learn the scales first and this kind of feels like the scales, we don’t just turn up and suddenly start playing a wonderful jazz rendition, we have to know the basics. 

LS – That’s right, you have to know the basics, you have to have some, the musicians need to know we’re going to be in this key together and you know if someone switches key, we know what we’re doing, we know where we’re going and there has to be some common understanding of what we’re doing. 

KC – And so when we talk about coaching outcomes, how does this relate when we’re talking about facilitation, ready it be trainers, leaders or coaches? 

LS – Yeah, so depending on what you’re up to your outcomes might be a little bit different. So if you are trainers you might say ok, these are the learning outcomes, we want people to learn these very specific things so we’re going to design a program where they experience those things and we really wanna make sure they land, land the learning of these various concepts so people walk away having some wisdom built into them, not just an experience but they really walk away knowing some things. It’s slightly different in coaching because it’s not just training, I mean there’s education bits in team coaching, so the same applies in those education bits but there’s also that free flowing part of team coaching. You still need to have some things to hold on to like some jazz musicians, you know, are we going for unveiling conflict in this session, are we going for building positivity, are we after vision? Like what are we after? Because if we’re not together on that I might go one way and my co-coach might go another and we’re pulling the team in different directions and they might be confused, and it’ll look more magical and feel more magical if we have a mind-meld about where we’re going and then the opportunities show up. We both know ah, there’s our opportunity to get what we need and we go that direction. That’s where the magic comes from. 

KC – So, I’m wondering if this is something that people can rush over in the design process? Do you feel that there is a danger of this part being rushed over? 

LS – Absolutely, I mean I tend to rush over it myself – let’s go do the work, let’s just jump in! You know? But that’s… it’s a discipline to do this bit. To create the outcomes. Let’s just slow down, what are we after? Let’s have our specific things that we know and that we’re going for so that we’re on the same page. So yes, absolutely, people can skip them and they do often and, you know, if they know each other really well, maybe they can get away with it. But especially if it’s a newer pair, or even if it’s an older pair and they’re into old habits and want to do something new, you know, being conscious and intentional about this. 

KC – And how can we design in a way that allows for flexibility to show up? Because as we know, working with teams, they sometimes decide to do something completely different. 

LS – Yeah, absolutely! Well, we also need to have, you know, do our systems entry work and know what is it the team needs and have some agreed upon agenda. Conceptually, some kind of agreed upon agenda with the team. And of course be prepared to go any other direction. But even so, as co-coaches, we could even have things in our back pockets like we know that the team wants to build positivity but if conflict shows up, you know, what are we after in the conflict? How are we going to deal with that? There’s some alignment around those different options, if that makes sense? 

KC – Yeah, so it’s not so rigorous that if it doesn’t go to plan you’re completely thrown.

LS – Yeah, and also you might have, like ok, let’s say the team wants to build positivity. Great, we’re going ahead, you know. We decide on this particular exercise to do that. And something else happens in the room where we see that that exercise isn’t going to quite work, whether it’s the space in the room or something else has happened. If we’re committed to our learning points we can rip up our timeline, we can rip up our plan, commit ourselves to those learning outcomes that we want, and if we follow those like, as partners we’re married to those, so we see an opportunity. Now it might be one partner that sees the opportunity and jumps on it a bit and says ok, I hear what this person it saying, how about this? And the partner will think we are together on our plan, we are together on our learning outcomes, our coaching outcomes, I know where my partner is going, I can line up immediately. It’s a new idea but because we’re on the same page we can line up immediately, which is also how the magic happens because then we’re using what’s in the room rather than having a plan ahead of time and just going point, point, point. You know? Executing that plan. We get to be improvisational with the team. 

KC – Yeah it really makes me think of in improvisation where the best improvisers have their eye on the arc of the improvisation sketch because it can’t go forever, and so it’s like holding that whole experience, and so this isn’t so much about the tools that show up, it’s more about the because of what? 

LS – Exactly. 

KC – Why are we doing that. 

LS – The because of what, why are we doing that, that’s what outcomes are about. Why are we doing this, what’s the general sense of where we wanna go, what are we committed too. Absolutely. 

KC – Because I do think, and I’ve certainly done this myself, I think it can be easy to fall back on the tools, you know, which tool am I going to use, and go there first as opposed to here. 

LS – Yes, I love, you know, lands work or I love bringing down the vision, some big tool, I love this tool, and we jump to that quite quickly. 

KC – Yeah? 

LS – Oh, it worked before with this other team or maybe there’s a general sense it might work. But what we encourage is instead of jumping into the tool, to really look, what is the arc of it so we’re designing to an arc of a day. Like what’s the feeling that we wanna have for the whole period of time, whether it’s a full day, a half day, or even two hours, what’s the feeling that we wanna have and what’s the thing that we wanna do, could do, to create part one – outcome. And really look, do we have a tool that fits that and do we need to make something up? Maybe we just follow ORSC principles and add something, there’s so many games we can play, all kinds of trainers games, you know, you can look some up. It almost doesn’t matter what that activity is as long as you’re using the ORSC principles along with it because you can see how people are interacting and you can show a mirror, so there’s many options and if you start with your principles, your outcomes first, then you’re going to get the kind of overall outcome and overall arc that you want. 

KC – I love that point, Faith often says that the better you get at ORSC the less tools you actually end up using. 

LS – Yeah. Truly agree. Yeah and that’s because you know what you’re after, and the tools are helpful, there’s nothing wrong with the tools and maybe they’re a starting point for us, but we also, even when using the tools, need to know why are we using that tool and, as partners, operating the tool, we need to be really clear this is what we’re after. Because it can go so many different directions. If we have our outcomes, we’re aligned about those, then we know the direction to take. Every moment is a choice moment. 

KC – Yeah! 

LS – You know, something happens in the room, there’s signals all over the place, which one do we follow and my partner might choose one and I choose another and we’re going in different directions, but that alignment helps us know what to choose. Alignment about outcomes. 

KC – Yeah, it just made me think how we have our preferences of tools and because we did it with another team and it was super successful we’re doing it here, but if we go there first we’re kind of missing the point, and so would you say that everything should be in service of the coaching outcomes, that should always be first? 

LS – Absolutely. And spend some time, spend some time developing those, what are our coaching outcomes? It’s partly what’s agreed upon with the team, but it’s also the more nuanced things that we know as team coaches all along the way, to create that arc, you know? What are those? Build your plan around that. 

KC – And when you say build your plan around that, what does that look like in reality for these co-coaches say? 

LS – Yeah, so it dictates everything. So it’s the plan like what tools are we going to use, how might we do the transition, what are we going to do and when’s the break? Even how does the break serve our learning outcomes. 

KC – Oh wow, I didn’t ever think, wow, that’s an interesting way of looking at it! Wow. 

LS – Because you, because even over a lunchtime say you can have people do something that’s consistent but fun, consistent with your arc, you know? And well, we’re at this point and we expect there to be some positivity, well build on that positivity over lunch, here’s a question you can work with over lunch, we encourage you. Have some fun with it. And then they come back in a slightly different place, you’re keeping that in mind. Everything in service of those outcomes. Even the energy you bring to the room, what’s the energy? The metaskills you need to bring in need to serve those outcomes. If you know that you are planning to open up some conflict, you don’t wanna show up dancing to some B-Bop music. You want to be creating, you know, you need to do everything you can to create safety so that you can go in this really risky, for some people, direction. So your energy, your metaskills need to be aligned with the outcomes as well. 

KC – That’s so fascinating and it makes me think of some of the really experienced coaches I’ve had the pleasure of working with, they seem really aware of the atmosphere in the room, like if there’s a window and if there’s light and would you talk to that as being in service of the coaching outcomes as well? 

LS – Absolutely. Because sometimes you don’t get a room that is… you don’t get the room that you want! And so you need to pay attention if, you know, there isn’t a room or, I’m sorry, there isn’t a window or there’s a basement room, or it’s a super-hot day, what do we need to do to make sure that people are going to have the experience that we want them to have, and so we might need to adjust our plan a little bit. Or there’s a world event that happens, you know, stuff happens in the world. We can’t just step over that. It might have affected somebody very deeply in the room so you need to include that and be ready for people’s reactions. 

KC – It’s so fascinating because I think, often I think of the DTA and the design team alliance as the container moment but all of this is happening before that and it’s very much creating the container within which you’re holding this team or this group. 

LS – Yes. How do you greet them? All your communications to them ahead of time. What kind of email or other kind of communication is going out? Interviews, if people are doing interviews, or even a survey that you might send out ahead of time before really meeting them. What’s the tone of that? How do you… and of course once you have survey results back you may, that’s when you really create your plan, so it isn’t always possible to have your outcomes known in the system’s entry, but as you build your relationship with the team you’re keeping your outcomes in mind. 

KC – And so how does that show up then in, say, my dynamic with a co-coach. If we really designed now around these coaching outcomes, everything in service of these coaching outcomes, how can I show up in a way then that is in service of that too in my co-coach dynamic. 

LS – We need to walk our talk for one thing. So if we know that we’re wanting to focus in for the moment on positivity and psychological safety we need to make sure it is psychologically safe. Right? And it needs to be psychologically safe between us. If there is any kind of negativity floating around in our relationship, like maybe we had a disagreement and we took it personally before we showed up and we’re still holding on to some of that, man that’s contagious! You know. We’re not going to be able to land our learning and really make that, unless of course we reveal it and work on it ourselves which, you know, that’s something you could do, probably not recommended because then it’s all about us but you know, it is a way to show here’s how we’re working with our positivity and psychological safety for the sake of everyone. But we need to do that behind the scenes, at least, you know, and maybe in the room. But if we’re saying psychological safety for the sake of people speaking up then we need to invite the speaking up and we might need to speak up ourselves, you know. And that can feel risky but if we’ve got the safety in our relationship and I’m, maybe I’m, you know, co-coach and I notice something happen in the team that’s a little bit edgy, if somebody keeps talking over somebody else, man does it take a lot of psychological safety to point that out. Yeah, so I notice whenever people on this side of the room are talking I notice others on this side of the room start speaking in louder voices, woah, that’s a big deal, right? So that’s modelling what we’re trying to do and we have got to have a robust relationship because if I go that way, my co-coach has got to make sure that there is absolute safety in the room because I’ve just taken the risk. So, we’re working together to create that. If my co-coach also comes with, you know, I say that about oh I notice this, and then something, then builds on that, that actually can create a little too much, right? So we go in slightly different directions in order to make the point but also keep the room safe. 

KC – So you hold that reign within your relationship and that’s why it’s so handy, I guess, to have two of you.

LS – That’s right. I know when I’m co-facilitating my range can be much broader because I can take a little, few more risks, and my co-coach will be there to hold it. 

KC – So interesting. I didn’t think about how the outcomes live within our relationship, say in this example, or any co-coach dynamic, actually how do those outcomes live in our relationship. That has to be first. 

LS – Yeah, because we’re models of relationship and people can learn a lot just by the way we interact, they may not even be conscious about it. One of our earliest ways as human beings to learn is so mimic. Babies, toddlers don’t learn to walk because they’re instructed, they learn because they’re mimicking. We mimic the adults around us. And so what we’re demonstrating in a room around relationship is something that the team can learn from, even if it’s just a subconscious mimicking.  

KC – And it’s here that the magic now shows up, or maybe starts to show up. 

LS – Yeah, that’s definitely part of the magic because we’re, you know, emotions are contagious, if we start talking about our, you know, human beings and physiology, emotions are contagious and if we’re showing up with contrary emotions in our relationship who will feel that? And so part of the magic, as you said, is to emit, you know, the kind of emotions that we wanna have in the room. 

KC – This is so interesting because I guess, like a lot of people, I get sort of stuck on the coaching plan and I realize the coaching outcomes is quite different and actually this is before all of that, and yet I didn’t realize quite how many levels it goes too, the depth in which you can take this to and perhaps should take this to, particularly with how it lives within your co-coach dynamic, it’s sort of quite powerful then when you take it there because anything can happen, you can hold anything in that container. 

LS – Yes. 

KC – Wow, that’s amazing. Do you have any examples of when you completely threw out the script and you were still able to hold in service of these outcomes? 

LS – So, I was working with a partner a few months ago, coaching a team, and we were a little surprised by something that happened in the room, we thought ok we’re going to do this one exercise, I think it was a metaskills wheel in fact, and we were a little bit surprised about the direction it took and some of the things that happened because it revealed something to the whole room which was a shock. Like something was going on in the team and not everybody knew about that. 

KC – Ok. 

LS – And we didn’t know not everybody knew about that, but we knew we wanted to follow this, there was a little conflict in part of the team, and we knew we wanted to open up a conversation about it but we weren’t expecting a shock factor. So we knew we wanted to open that but we also knew that we wanted to have safety and so we put in an extra exercise there where we could have conversations about what people needed to say, what needs to be revealed, how are we doing, how we need to continue, it was almost like a little rework of a DTA at that moment. And I think we also revealed like who knew something was happening and what’s the impact. All in service of getting to where we wanted to go, but it felt like a step back in a way but we knew it was in service. 

KC – I think that’s such a great example of dancing in the moment. I think we often throw that, I throw that out on this podcast a lot, I say dancing in a moment, but in order to dance there has to be that structure and I think that’s something that I keep coming back to in this conversation. 

LS – Yeah. The structure of outcomes. What are we after? Because we will have to rip up our plan at some point, but if we’re committed to our outcomes then we can see where we’re going, does that make sense? 

KC – Yeah, would you say, I was just thinking about the three levels of reality – consensus reality, dreaming and essence, and do you feel like the coaching outcomes are a bit more consensus reality and yet they allow us to take our clients and our relationship into the other spaces? 

LS – Oh that’s interesting, I would agree with that. And I also think that there like essence and dreaming where the plan is consensus reality, maybe it exists at all three levels? You know, our outcomes have an essence to them, they have a dreaming of what we’re after. They also have a consensus reality of how we’re going to bring that to life and we may need to come back to our dreaming and re-dream up a different plan, a different activity, in order to stick to that dream of the outcome. 

KC – Oh I think that’s great that they have to, I guess, span all three and hold all three. Then I think as someone who maybe has a preference for the dreaming and the essence, I think I’m really starting to fall back in love with the consensus reality and also the need for structure, I think it’s essential for all the other stuff, the dancing, the magic. 

LS – Yeah, so this is coming full circle to where we started is we’ve gotta do that work ahead of time, if we want it to be free flowing in the moment during our coaching then we’ve gotta do this preparation work which feels very consensus reality. And for those of us who like to free flow it can be, it can take a lot of discipline! Because ah no, we’ll just show up, we’ll be ok, you know… maybe! Maybe that’s true. But you’ll be so much more successful and it’ll feel so much more magical for the team when that work is done ahead of time. And you’ll be much safer and confident in your relationship if you do the work ahead of time. 

KC – And we very much walked our talk today, we planned our coaching outcomes or our podcast outcomes, we could say, and yet we didn’t entirely know what was going to show up in our conversation but they gave us that arc of the conversation and the podcast! 

LS – Yeah they did. And I’ve had it written down, I’ve only glanced at it a couple times and gone yeah, I think we got that, I think we got that! But we did it in a way, I felt, we did it in a way that felt natural, like a conversation. 

KC – We lived in our relationship as opposed to in our individual world documents, I think that’s the interesting thing. 

LS – There we go. Yeah. We were both after the same things. You asked me a question that, yeah, that leads us to one of our outcomes. 

KC – I love this so much Lori. I can’t wait for part two where we explore the alchemy further and look at the experiential learning model. 

LS – I’m looking forward to that too. Thanks so much Katie. 

KC – Thank you, take care! Speak to you very soon. 

LS – You too, ok. 

KC – Bye. 

LS – Bye! 

[Music outro begins 25:25] 

KC – Thanks to Lori Shook for her insights into alchemy and coaching outcomes. Here are my key takeaways. In alchemy when we use the term co-facilitation we mean trainers, leaders and team coaches. So outcomes might be specific learning points for a training session or might be more general principles for a team coaching session. Leaders in an organization might have other outcomes that are vision or business related. Alignment helps us to know how to interact with what shows up. Every moment we have a decision to make, there are so many options available to us. Clarifying outcomes helps us to know what path to take. A lack of alignment when co-delivering creates messiness, competition and confusion. So everything in the co-delivery should be in service of those outcomes. This includes our co-facilitator relationship, our energy, the tools we chose, the comments we make, the education we provide, what we chose to interact with, we can’t follow every signal available. In part two of these three episodes on alchemy, Lori and I will be exploring the experiential learning approach. Alchemy, the art and science of co-facilitation is an ICF accredited course available in a virtual or in-person format, depending on your location. Whether delivered in-person or virtual, experiential learning and active participation are at the core of the alchemy course. During the course you work primarily with a designated partner. You can sign up with somebody you’re already working with to deepen that relationship, or you can sign up solo where you’ll be assigned a partner and you’ll learn the joys of developing a powerful relationship from the very beginning. For more information about the alchemy approach and for information about upcoming courses please visit CRRGlobal.com/course/alchemy. Thank you for listening to the Relationship Matters podcast. If you enjoyed this episode please share it with your colleagues and friends so that we can continue to spread these ideas across the globe, and if you haven’t already, do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. And for more information on the ORSC courses please visit CRRGlobal.com. For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time. We believe Relationship Matters from humanity to nature to the larger whole. 

[Music outro 28:36 – end]