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 2 we explore the experiential learning approach. Across this conversation we discuss:
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.
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 2 we explore the experiential learning approach. Across this conversation we discuss:
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.
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 consistently and intentionally create successful, transformative, high impact learning experiences together. In part two we build on what we discussed in part one around alchemy and coaching outcomes by exploring the experiential learning approach. Across this conversation we discuss how people learn, setting the context and getting by in, the importance of debriefing and finding applications and the power of properly on-ramping and off-ramping people in and out of exercises. So without further ado I bring you, Lori Shook.
KC – Lori, welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast.
LS - Thanks Katie, I’m really excited about today’s conversation so thanks for welcoming me back.
KC – Yes, so we discussed coaching outcomes in our last episode and today we’re going to be exploring creating learning through coaching. And so I wonder if we can start by talking about why learning is so integral to the coaching experience?
LS – Yes, I love that question because I think a lot of people think that learning happens in trainings and coaching is about evolving the conversation in what we’re, you know, where the team is at the moment. But I think of learning as a process where we end up with some kind of behavior change, and we need to have some kind of input at the beginning, some kind of concept and then an experience and learn from that experience. And then we change everything or we have a new designed alliance with the team at the end of the teaching experience, and that’s what learning is! You know? A little bit of revealing the system, align, all of that is part of learning and then we act and the act is different from what it was before. So I firmly believe that coaching is an experiential learning process.
KC – And so then is the learning always in service of these coaching outcomes we spoke about last time?
LS – Absolutely, yep. In service, you know, there might be some bonus things that happen but we’re going into it to get specific outcomes and so it’s a learning process to get there.
KC – And so then would you say that the coaching outcomes are sort of the why, the why we’re doing this, the tools are sort of the what and then the learning space is the how, the how we get there?
LS – Yes. Yeah. So we know we’re going to those outcomes, that’s the why, so we’re committed to that partner, in partnership with our co-coach, co-facilitator, in partnership about that, committed to our why, but we also need to be committed to the same how. How do we get from point A to point B? How do we get those outcomes?
KC – So in the spirit of how, I wonder Lori, how do people learn? Because I’m sure there’s lots of different levels of this, layers.
LS – Yeah, and we can talk about the neuroscience of learning, we can talk about decades of research on adult learning theory and there’s all kinds of research on that. But basically, what we do is we learn a concept, there’s conceptual learning, like you read something in a book – that’s conceptual learning. For me that’s, yeah you can call that learning, but it isn’t really the full learning experience because you want to have a change in behavior at the end. So you learn a concept, that’s the beginning point, then you have some kind of experience where you chew on that concept or you play with it, sit in a coaching environment, you know, you try it out or you have an activity of some sort, you try it out, and then there has to be some sort of debrief, a reflection. What did we learn in that? What are the takeaways? How did this concept show up for us? It’s all learning, that’s all part of the learning process, and then we decide well what are we going to do with this? You know, how do we put it into action. And that whole arc is what I think of as the learning process.
KC – And so, as coaches we’re not teachers at the front of the room. We’re not teaching things, and so of this learning space, what happens when it’s not there in a coaching session? We’ve got our why but we haven’t really created this experiential learning that you’re talking to.
LS – Yeah so, the first question I want to ask is well, will you get to the why if you don’t have some kind of experience? And I guess it depends what your whys are also, I think in coaching our why, our outcomes, are often some kind of different behavior and we need to learn something different, we need to do something different to get there, to get to that outcome. And we’re not teachers but there is that education bit, you know, that was one of the things I first learned when learning team coaching, was there’s an education bit that’s different from individual coaching. Although, one could argue that you might need it in individual coaching as well, but let’s leave that one lie! You know, there is the education bit where we are offering something, here’s some data about positivity and relationships, here’s something about levels of reality, here’s something about toxic behavior, you know, we’re putting something in their space, that’s the concepts for the team to play with. So there is a little bit of teaching and educating that’s feeding where we want to go. For the sake of our outcomes, of course!
KC – Always for the sake of our outcomes, as we know now. And so, why experiential learning?
LS – Well I want to go to the brain at this point because there’s different types of memory, memory’s very important in learning. There’s a cognitive learning part of the brain where we remember facts and figures and things and data which doesn’t have anything to do with how we behave, and then there’s a part of our brain that’s called episodic, where we remember things that we did, experiences that we had, and by the way feelings are all part of that episodic, experiential learning, memory, sorry experiential memory, episodic memories. And then there’s a third type of memory that is the basal ganglia if you want to know the name of it, which is about embodied learning, like when we practice, practice, practice, build these neuropathways, we have this embodied memory. We might not be able to say oh I’m doing this and that, like riding a bicycle, we know how. So what we’re trying to do is get to that we know how, get to that embodied learning. To do that we need to go through the experiential part to begin with. We can’t just learn from a book. Maybe learn some things and we can apply them but you’re doing that experiential learning on your own.
KC – Yeah, so I wonder, does that then take us to something like unconscious competence eventually?
LS – Absolutely, it is that whole thing. You start with conscious in incompetence or unconscious incompetence,
KC – Yes.
LS – You throw something in, you realize oh I don’t know how to do this, we’re playing with conscious incompetence, conscious competence, that’s where we practice, practice, practice in the conscious competence part, and we’re aiming for some kind of habit building which is the conscious incompetent and that embodied learning. But the experiential part helps us to go through those steps, and if we’re not inviting experiences we’re just relying on that concept conceptual learning, which doesn’t get us to embodied learning. Doesn’t get us to habits, new behaviors.
KC – Which is fascinating when we think about so many of our clients, and some of ourselves, I guess, our education, we’re told to sit down and read the book and take notes, and so often I have clients who come to sessions and they’ve got that mindset about how they’re going to learn, and yet there’s this whole piece that often people probably aren’t even entertaining as they come into the session.
LS – Yeah. Absolutely. I like, with individual coaches I like to encourage them to do some role play, even, in one-to-one coaching, so the client has some experience, they get some of that experiential activity. They’re not just like oh the next time I go talk to this person I should do it like this, it’s actually live for them, the coaching session. It’s a big edge for a lot of coaches, actually, but that’s part of learning, you know?
KC – Yeah, so it gets them into their different intelligences as well. It’s brilliant. And so, I wonder then, when you’re creating this learning framework, what are the sort of key steps you take in order to keep aligned with that arc, that coaching outcome arc you want to hold to.
LS – Yeah, so we have a model in alchemy called the experiential learning approach, and it starts with setting context. Setting context can be a really small bit, like hey, focus your attention here or this is what we’re learning, it could also be a really big piece of learning, education bit. But it’s setting the context, here’s where we’re going and why. And it’s giving people’s byin. Ok, I’m on track, I’m on board with that particular learning process, I’m ready to go. That’s where we start with context, and then we set up an activity, we do the activity based on outcomes, have an activity so people can play with the concepts, then the conversation about what happened there, what did I learn, how am I embracing or owning the concepts that we’re playing with, what do they mean to me? There’s a self-reflection part, and that often happens in dialogue with others, so we can find out language, and then the final bit is action or action plan, you know, in a coaching session we might not be doing the action but we’re imagining, what’s next, how am I going to apply this, how does this work in my world, in my setting, in my work setting, or oursetting if it’s a team.
KC – So I know from experience, and also from seeing other coaches, that it’s all too easy to skip the context and to jump into the exercise, and what happens when we do that?
LS – Can I answer that by sharing an experience, a story with you now?
KC – Please do.
LS – And I think you might have a story to share too, but there’s this, one of my favorite stories. There was a leadership program that I’m aware of, I wasn’t part of this but I kept hearing about it and there was like a week-long program and it was for engineers. The first thing that the program was designed to, all these engineers come into the room and they’re split into groups and they’re asked to build a bridge. So they’re working in groups of six, something like that, and there’s, you know, build a bridge, there’s construction materials, that kind of thing. And they, of course, get a little competitive because there’s four different groups, and you know, who’s is the best bridge, the fastest, whatever, so really focused, with their engineering minds, they’re really focused on building the best bridge ever. And with the construction materials that they have, you know, being clever. And they finish and then the facilitators are, by design, the facilitators ask so how did you do with team work? And the engineers might look around and go I don’t know, we got our bridge done, we have the best bridge so we must have done team work – they didn’t know how to answer the question because their focus was not on team work, their focus was on the bridge, they’re engineers, by nature they’re going to the building of it, and that’s not wrong of them. Their attention just wasn’t pointed and that’s what happens when you don’t set context, you don’t tell them, hey, what we’re working on here is team building. Put a little bit of your attention on how you work with your team members in building that fantastic bridge that you’ve built. Maybe there’s a few places to look like how are we communicating, how are we collaborating, how are we building on each other’s ideas? How are we, you know, energetic with one another? If nothing is said about that it’s very unlikely that people won’t remember because their attention is not there.
KC – Mm. Makes me think where attention goes, energy flows, and if you’ve not told them where to put your attention it’ll be probably quite broad.
LS – Or whatever happens to capture their attention in the moment, I mean there’s so many things that can capture our attention.
KC – It reminds me of that psychology experiment where the people in the white shirts are throwing the ball and you’ve got to count those people, and then in doing so you completely miss that the gorilla’s crossing the screen.
LS – Yes. I love that video. You know, of course, how many passes do the people in white shirts make? There’s also people in black shirts, you know, and I’m focused on the white shirts. Then the black shirts and the guy in the black gorilla costume, you know, of course we miss it, we’re focused on the white shirts. And if nobody told us to focus on the white or black, who knows what we’d be paying attention to. Our brain naturally goes to pay attention to what we’re interested in.
KC – Yeah, so the engineers are interested in that so that’s their default, so if we’ve not pointed them anywhere, they’re probably going to go back to what they know best and then you’re probably not going to see behavioral change.
LS – Exactly, yeah. Because they miss the opportunity to notice all those things, and then we’re trying to play catch up, we’ve kind of wasted a bunch of that activity time just working on bridges, which isn’t really part of that outcome.
KC – And so then I guess that kind of goes against, I know some people like to do the big reveal at the end of exercises, and so tell me about how you feel about the big reveal?
LS – The big reveal, here we are, outcomes, we snuck you into it and you magically found out in the experience and voila – that can happen, but it’s much more rich when you see learning, that’s part of magic, magicians, is they’re seeding or pointing your attention so you’ll follow, you don’t even know that’s happening. So, in context setting, you’re seeding learning, you’re pointing attention, and maybe you just mention a word or maybe people haven’t even consciously caught on to that, just know that at some level that’s where we’re going, but it’s presence, it’s captured their attention. When you tell people one time it doesn’t make learning happen. And so that thing about oh, it’s the big reveal, we’re only going to tell them at the end because if we tell them up front we’ll ruin it – it’s just not true! You tell them once at the beginning, it hasn’t ruined your surprise, it’s just hooked their attention, focused them, that they can have a better experience. We need to hear things several times, to play with it several times, so the big reveal, it’s a bit of a myth.
KC – Yeah, I guess it would be a bigger lightbulb moment if you’ve been seeding it throughout the exercise and they get that own aha moment as opposed to you having to tell them what they should have seen.
LS – Yeah. Exactly. If you have to tell them what they should have seen it’s still just theoretical.
KC – Yeah.
LS – The whole idea of experiential learning is to move from the theoretical to the experiential. And if they miss the experience you want them to have then it’s kind of a waste of time. It’s so frustrating to get to the end and say ‘but what should have happened is…!’ and, I mean it happens sometimes because they miss the context or I miss giving the context, ah what a waste of time because what should have happened is… and that’s just not great learning.
KC – And you end up with tons of questions. I’ve noticed that when I skip the context or in certain training situations I’ve been asked to focus on the big reveal and you end up with more backlog at the end because they’ve not really made sense of what they were doing throughout.
LS – Yes. Exactly. And it could have happened because they missed the context or because the activity went awry in some way, or maybe there wasn’t a conversation and the chance for them to make the connection between the concepts and the activity in their own world and yeah, a lot of questions.
KC – Yeah, and so it’s sort of going slow at the beginning in order to create a more effective arc for your coaching session throughout?
LS – Yes.
KC – With something like the design team alliance, what would be a simple way of setting context for that? Say you’re working with a team.
LS – Yeah, that’s a great question. So our activity is going to be the design team alliance, we have our outcomes, perhaps our outcomes for the whole day are about safety and positivity, those are often my go-to’s. So, you might say in the beginning, we’re creating an alliance here because we wanna create some, a foundation of safety and positivity. So what is going to help you create that safety and positivity? We actually say that rather than how do you wanna be together which is very, I mean it’s appropriate and it’s useful but it’s a very big question. How do you want to be together so we create safety and positivity is a much easier question to answer for one thing, and it also gets you that kind of design alliance that you need for the activities that you’re going to do.
KC – Ah that’s brilliant. So you’ve pointed them towards the coaching outcome, but then also what to focus on throughout the exercise too? That’s really interesting.
LS – Mmhmm. This gets multilayered because you do a DTA, a design team alliance, that can also be a context setting piece for what’s next. You know, so you do a little context setting, we’re going to do a design team alliance, great, you do that, there may be a learning conversation about that, or not, but it might be the context setting piece for another activity. So we’ve set some agreements, now we’re going to put them into action, see how we work when we do this game or this other activity.
KC – And then would you say, and in this game I want you to focus on how you’re communicating when it gets challenging together?
LS – Yeah. So you have a design alliance here on the wall, this is what we’re practicing in this game, how this works. What’s hard about it, what’s easy about it. It’s a chance to reinforce it, to put it in action.
KC – I love that.
LS – Yeah. So it’s not just a game we’re playing.
KC – That’s such a great way of really practicing what we preach around the design team alliance in that moment. So, as you say, it’s context as well for something else. That’s a really great way of starting to get them to live from that alliance.
LS – Yeah, instead of just hanging out on the wall and hoping that it comes to life, it’s a context setter for the day.
KC – Yeah. And so then I guess if we have clear coaching outcomes with our co-coach or our co-lead, and then we get clear on the context that connects to that, the exercise itself doesn’t really matter then, as long as it’s connected to those pieces, would you say?
LS – Yeah, that’s my absolute 100% belief. It matters in the sense that it needs to connect, like you just said, but there’s no perfect thing, it doesn’t have to be a tool that we’ve learned. It can be a simple game because the, sometimes we learn a tool that’s a bit complex or it’s got many steps and we focus on all those steps and we get lost on the steps rather than the activity that’s going to bring our outcomes to life or our learning points to life. I love to use games. Here we have a designed alliance, we’re going to be practicing this in this game we’re going to play. You know, how are you doing and playing with one another in this game? Are you bringing that to life or did you get competitive and start talking over people?
KC – And so then I guess you can bring in any of the team building games that sometimes, we sort of separate ourselves from team building because we hold coaching to be different, and yet you can bring in any of those tools if you frame them in this way and they become a coaching activity.
LS – They become a coaching activity, you’re using all of your ORSC skills still, reading the emotional field and you know, revealing the system, all those kind of things, that’s for me what makes it an ORSC product, you know, an ORSC approach, and you use the alchemy format to help you bring it all to life, to make it a bit magical and get you and your co-facilitator, your co-coach, on the same page.
KC – And so then when we’re done whatever activity we decided to do, how do we bring them out of that experience?
LS – So there’s many things can happen, I mean if it happens to be a deep emotional experience we need to really look at how was that, how was that experience? Generally that’s the first step in any case, how was that experience for you. And if you want to be really specific about your outcomes you point their attention to how was your experience about positivity, if that’s one of your outcomes, or how was your experience, how safe did you feel in that experience? You’re pointing their attention again. You can go experience, what did you experience, what did you learn from that and how will you apply it? Those are the three steps of the debrief, based on the alchemy approach. People need to talk about what they experienced first before they can access what they learned. And they need to access that like sort of put a frame around what they learned before they can say how they’re going to apply it in their life.
KC – And why is that so essential for a coaching experience to be a success?
LS – Yeah, well you know, we have this four-stage process that’s been brought to life recently of meet, reveal, align and act.
KC – Yeah.
LS – So there’s that. Act is the fourth, is the fourth step which often gets overlooked just because we focus so much on meet, reveal and align. Because that’s really where the bulk of ORSC is working. But act is also important because if you want behavior change there’s got to be some outcome, there’s got to be some doing so that we can behave differently together. We’ve got to imagine what kind of actions we’re going to take next. And it’s easy to forget because you know, it’s a little boring or, you know, it’s like of course they know what to do with it, we trust them, they’re adults, they know how to apply this. But if they haven’t spent time thinking about it or imagining how they’re going to act given everything they’ve learned, then maybe nothing will happen. So it’s really important to end that whole arc with what’s the action. What’s the outcome?
KC – Is that really where you hand the baton over to them now, they’re taking this into their lives.
LS – Yes, and you give them space within a coaching setting to do that rather than just leaving it and saying you guys will figure that out on your own. This is an important part, you’re providing a message that’s saying this is important, figuring out your action steps for what’s next. This is important, let’s figure out how it’s going to be together. As a team, using everything that happened, using the design alliance from the start and all the learning outcomes, and what was revealed and the realizations, all that stuff, so rich, you know, bring it together, put it into action steps.
KC – I want to underline what you said there around space, whenever I’m demoing, particularly the alignment tool and the fundamentals, I often get the feedback when people say what they saw in the demo about the space that I offered them, and I think for newer coaches it’s scary to create that space, to let the clients lead, and yet if we don’t allow for that do we ever really allow for them to create their own actions?
LS – That’s right, we need to hand the baton over, we need to create space for that, we need to understand that the human thinking and the human process takes time, and we can hold the space, we can be so valuable in holding that space for the whole learning process. But it’s gotta be there, the space for it. Silence is ok!
KC – That’s still a little edge for me, I’m getting better at it with my edge crossing, I think for many of us silence says something and yet it doesn’t have to be negative, it can be such a powerful place for reflection.
LS – Yeah. Reflection and meaning making and drawing conclusions and thinking through. Yeah, all that.
KC – So to clarify, so there’s the experiential learning approach and that takes you from the on-ramp, so the context setting into the exercise, and then the off-ramp which is the debrief, and in the debrief there’s the ELA, what was your experience, what was your learning and how are you going to apply that.
LS – That ELA shows up, we call it the experiential learning approach, ELA, but it’s also ELA in that debrief.
KC – Ok. And so I wonder, Lori, do you feel that the on-ramp and the off-ramp from exercises are as important as the exercises themselves?
LS – I do, because if that exercise is not contained, randomness can happen. And maybe there’s some brilliance that happens there, but maybe not, you know, it might just be a waste of time. So that container, the on-ramps and off-ramps, and I love that language that you use, are so important. I mean, getting everybody on the same page, here’s where we’re going, here’s why we’re doing these things. Here are the things you might experience in that, pay attention for those, look for that. And without it it, you know, it’s just not held. And if we don’t have the off-ramp of what are we going to do with this, it’s also not held.
KC - It reminds me in some ways of the coaching outcomes, it creates that structure from within which then the magic can happen. We need this framework, otherwise the alchemy, the magic between you and your co-coach can’t really emerge because there might be chaos or confusion or just a lack of intentionality about where we’re going.
LS – That’s right, the co-coaches need to be aligned on the outcomes and they also need to be aligned on the process they’re gonna take to get there. So that’s another thing to rely on, let’s make sure we set context, let’s make sure that people know what they’re doing and why and let’s make sure we’re having a debrief, let’s make sure we get to action steps. And if they’re together on that then things might also take a left turn in the middle and they’ll be ok, and that’s part of the magic. To is that we can pivot in the middle, this activity isn’t working, we know what our outcomes are, we know how learning happens, so we can shift and still get to what we want and it looks like magic because people have done that work ahead of time, we’ve talked about that preparation and the discipline, right? Part of that discipline and preparation is knowing how do we go through this process together?
KC – And so if you do have to abort a tool in the middle of it, do you still complete the experiential learning approach or would you go to something else at that point.
LS – For me it’s still, we’re in some kind of experience, so we’re in a tool, it’s not working, you could even do a debrief about that, you could if that’s going to get your learning outcomes. We stop this tool in the middle, what are you learning about your learning outcomes? What are you learning about positivity or whatever it is? What are you learning about that? Let’s shift, ok, that was the learning here and now let’s shift to a different tool and complete that because it’s still the same outcomes. So you’ve set context, you start an activity, oops no, that’s not working, maybe you just shift without the debrief. You shift something else, let’s try something else, make it look natural, let’s you know - like those musicians. You know, we’re just changing key here.
KC – Yeah.
LS – Yeah? And let’s try it this way because what we’re really after is an experience of x,y, z, whatever the outcomes are – let’s try it like this. And then a debrief, absolutely.
KC – That’s fantastic.
LS – There’s always learning available. There’s always learning available and if you’re committed to your outcomes there’s probably some way you can map what’s happening to the outcomes and help people make connections.
KC – And so then I guess it takes away the fear of failing or getting it wrong as a coach because everything can be applicable within that frame work?
LS – Yeah. You hold the frame work and you don’t have to get the tool exactly right, you just keep holding the framework and your learning outcomes just keep bringing them home. Keep asking about them. Keep creating possibilities for people to experience them.
KC – That’s brilliant. So I guess a so-called failure, that is an opportunity then for us to start to really, to use whatever is in the room as an opportunity to maybe move towards our coaching outcomes, everything there is an opportunity.
LS – Yeah. So you used the word star wall which we haven’t used before which is something we introduce in alchemy, which is about walking your talk. So star walking might be, maybe we’re being flexible so that we can model flexibility, or we’re being in relationship so we can model relationship. That’s what star walking in, just to define it since you, yeah, brought up the term. So it may be an opportunity to demonstrate that in the moment. Go, you know, what we just did in this is, you know, we were very agile and adaptive in that moment and we move from exercise A to exercise B and notice how we did that, that’s an example for you of something that you could also do.
KC – And so when you have the coaching outcomes and the experiential learning approach with you and your co-coach, do you feel this creates a lot of confidence then as you go into a session?
LS – Absolutely because there’s always this feeling, or there should be, maybe, there’s always this feeling of we don’t know what’s going to happen. You know, and if you don’t have any framework to go in there with, it can be really uncertain which can also create other things but if you have specific outcomes to hang on to them they create confidence, no matter what happens, we’re going for these outcomes. It can be very comforting and create a lot of certainty. We don’t know exactly how we’re going to get there, but we’re going to get there.
KC – Yeah. The scales. Know our scales and then we can dance, we can change, we can flex, we can star walk.
LS – Yeah! And that’s what creates magical events. It’s that creating in the moment.
KC – I love this conversation Lori, I’m so excited to continue on in our third episode together, where we’ll be talking about being conscious and intentional together.
LS – That’s great, it’s another dimension of what we do as alchemists is creating conscious and intentional space, I look forward to that too.
KC – Likewise.
LS – Thanks Katie!
KC – Take care, speak soon.
[Music outro begins 29:41]
KC – A huge thanks to Lori Shook for that fascinating deep dive into alchemy and the experiential learning approach. Here are my key takeaways. Experiential learning is very different from book learning. To create a new behavior you need to experience that concept in action and then put that concept into action. An essential element of the experiential learning approach is to set context. Setting context points people’s attention, it has them focus on what you want them to focus on, rather than getting distracted by the many other things that may be going on through the process. It seeds learning by introducing the concepts we will be working with an engaging people’s and it gets people’s buy-in, they’re now on board and ready to go with the proposed learning plan. Debriefs and applications are where the learning happens. Debriefs help people to create ownership of concepts and application of learning in a coaching setting is about action - what will we as a team do with what we have discovered in this session? In part three of these three episodes on alchemy we’ll be exploring being conscious and intentional with our impact together. 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.
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