Relationship Matters

Ep.10 Meet Reveal Align Act

September 01, 2021 CRR Global Season 3 Episode 10
Relationship Matters
Ep.10 Meet Reveal Align Act
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, Sandra Cain (Director of Curriculum and Senior Faculty at CRR Global) discusses the process of Meet, Reveal, Align and Act. Whether we are engaging in a one-on-one conversation with a neighbor or working with a large group, these three phases can help us when working with all types of Relationship Systems. Across the episode we discuss how to effectively meet a system, helping clients to keep moving forward during the reveal phase, the importance of align & act, and using this process as a meeting planner. 

Sandra Cain is Director of Curriculum and Senior Faculty at CRR Global. Her background includes 15 years’ experience at American Express with a variety of leadership and personal development roles. She bridges that experience with her current passion for building relationships, increasing positivity and developing communication skills in service of creating and navigating change in the workplace.


For over 18 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.

Relationship Matters Season 3 Episode 10

 

Key 

 

KC – Katie Churchman 

SC – Sarah Cain

 

[Intro 00:00 – 00:06] 

 

KC – Hello and welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast. We believe relationship matters, from humanity, to nature, to the larger whole. In this episode I’m delighted to be welcoming back Sandra Cane onto the show to discuss the process of meet, reveal, align and act. Whether we are engaging in a one-on-one conversation with a neighbor or working with a large group, these three phases – meet, reveal, align and act – can help us when working with all types of relationships systems. Across the episode we discuss how to effectively meet a system, helping clients to keep moving forward during the reveal phase and the importance of align and act. Sandra Cane is director of curriculum and senior faculty at CRR Global. Her background includes 15 years’ experience at American Express with a variety of leadership and personal development roles. She bridges that experience with her current passion for building relationships, increasing positivity and developing communication skills in service of creating and navigating change in the workplace. So, without further ado I bring you Sandra Cane. 

 

KC – Well, Sandra, it’s wonderful to have you back on the Relationships Matter podcast. So, I believe today we’re talking about meet, reveal, align and act. 

 

SC – Yes. The four phases of coaching. 

 

KC – Yeah, so I’m wondering if you could give us a brief overview of meet, reveal align and act and then perhaps we can deep dive into each of these phases. 

 

SC – Yeah. You know, meet, reveal align and act, I said four phases, it’s probably really three but four words for the three phases, it really is a great way for coaches to think about both where they are in the map with their clients, they’re in it, in the coaching, and also to think about how to plan and create a timeline or  an outline of the work that they’re about to do. It’s a model and it’s a structure at the same time. And there’s, there’s something about meet, reveal align and act that is so grounding, I think, for us as coaches and before we even had this language that Martia came up with, Marita and Ana maybe even came up with, we were kind of winging it and doing this but they pulled it out of what they were already doing and created this kind of sense of where you are on the map with your clients. And that’s true within each tool, by the way, where you are in the map with the tool. But the bigger overarching themes with how you might work with your clients. 

 

KC – So would you say it’s a sort of how too when it comes to working with a system? 

 

SC – That’s interesting. I don’t know if it’s a how too, it might be some of that Katie. I think it’s something else. It’s also a where am I? and being clear about where am I. Because I think sometimes people come into this work and they kind of wing it a little bit, and certainly there’s some winging it that happens every time because you have to work with what’s in front of you. But for example, meet is about being with them where they are. And if you don’t start with that, if you take them way over the edge and throw them into an activity, that’s not meeting, that’s something else. You’re going to get information from that but it’s usually why we start our course with something we call a mingle, it’s usually a little check in question that’s not too scary but it gives some information, it reveals a little bit about who people are and a little bit about the system and I do something similar with my clients, I mean I don’t come in and say so you guys really stink at conflict! That’s a harsh beginning, a harsh start up. I’m going to start with something simple like who do you want to be in conflict as a way to meet them where they are before I take them too far over the edge and really look at what’s needed or what’s trying to happen. 

 

KC – That’s so interesting, so I’m guessing this phase one, meet, would you say this is the one that gets rushed over the most? 

 

SC – I hope not! I mean, we do our best to model it. So, just to be really transparent we just started talking about these phases in our coursework very recently, so they’re in the book Creating Intelligent Teams, we just started to pull it in and we talk about it in systems integration so people will have been in our courses four times already before they hear us be transparent about that part of it. So it’s still relatively new for people coming in, I think. So I don’t know that I would say it’s necessarily missed, I think about Gottman’s work when we talk about our soft start up, it’s a little bit like that. How do you begin with your clients, how do you start an initiative? It’s also great in other contexts, probably at home too, you know that soft start up but it’s really the idea of just meeting them where they are because if we go in and want to take it too far over the edge it’s just not how people work with change. Now, admittedly, there’s maybe a few people love that, people who just want to leap and jump and go for it. But to get a whole system over an edge you really need to start by honoring what’s primary which is another way of saying meet, you know, where they are now. 

 

KC – Yeah, so I guess I was thinking in that broader context of human beings outside of the coaching world and the fact that we tend to be more human doings in the way that we operate, we go from meeting to meeting, we dive right in it seems. And I’m just wondering, in that context, do you feel like this meet just gets missed sometimes? 

 

SC – Oh that’s so fascinating to think about. I have a bias because I love to engage with people. I mean, my family and my friends joke that I’m always flirting with everybody wherever we go because I’m just, I’m fascinated with people. So, I’m a natural meter in that way, you know, I love those quick bursts of relationship you can have with a stranger or a smile or something. But you’re right, when I think about the organizational context there’s a lot of times people are back to back in meetings and it’s just right into topic, right into the let’s go agenda, and certainly there’s a place for that but there’s something that gets missed if there’s a little bit of what people might dismiss as fluff or waste of time, like on a bad day someone might really say waste of time, but it’s that relationship piece and I think especially now when we’re mostly virtual still, that’s even more important and very easy to step over. Like let’s just get down to it, let’s get to the work. And I’m holding meet – you know, M.E.E.T in a very broad context here because part of it is being in a relationship, part of is a soft start up, part of it really is just meeting people where they are. There’s lots of range in that and lots of ways to do that. 

 

KC – So what’s the value in this phase then, for someone who’s perhaps not thought about meeting a client or a colleague with these phases, what’s the value of phase one? Really meeting a system or a person where they are. 

 

SC – I think it’s about creating relationship. And think about the relationship versus tasks, there’s just huge tradeoffs. I think the work is easier, I think that the work is more enjoyable when we spend even a little bit of time upfront to meet before we get into the work. I’m kind of collapsing it into relationship versus task and it’s not quite that simple but there’s something else there. It’s really about honoring what’s in front of you before you take somebody over the edge. The truth is it just won’t work. It just won’t work as well because what’ll happen is they’ll keep zigzagging back. They’ll keep coming back to if you don’t hear me, if I feel like you don’t hear me and you don’t get it, whether it’s at work or home, I’m going to keep trying to convince you, find clever ways or not so skillful ways of conveying my point until I feel heard and it’s part of meeting. It’s part of meeting somebody where they are and finding the client where they are, meeting the system where they are. The truth is it just doesn’t work. And I think people probably do this, people who are listening to this podcast probably do this more than the average bearer but I think it’s good to draw attention there and notice our own biases towards what feels primary for me as coach may not be primary for my clients and I have to have soft knees and be willing to pivot and flex and say oh, actually, this is where they are now and work with that. 

 

KC – I’m wondering how we can more skillfully meet systems because I’m aware sometimes I make up a story going in about how they’re feeling or what’s going on and so I’m sort of going through the lens of my experience and past events as opposed to being with them as they are right there in front of me. 

 

SC – Yeah, of course. And, you know, we do some sort of assessment so we get a sense of where we think they are. There’s all kinds of good tools that can do that and it makes sense that you can go in given what you know from your past experience, there’s nothing wrong with that. Just be willing to adapt. A willingness to pivot as you need too. And it can be as simple as asking a few questions, right, rather than assuming you know where they are. Just as simple as how’s it going, where are you now, how you’re doing as a team, where are you at with all of the work that we’ve been doing, what’s here now? Again, kind of like those space checks or check in that we do in the courses that people are used too, just a little bit of that, naming the emotional field, asking what’s there. Those little pieces that create relationship just make a huge difference. 

 

KC – Do you have some favorite questions you use too meet a system? 

 

SC – I don’t think I do. I probably do. People who work with me probably say oh yes you do, you say this all the time. I don’t consciously have favorite ones. Other than maybe checking in with the emotional field, you know, look at our model. That’s a place I would often go. And how you language that depends on what your clients know and where they are. If they’re trained in this work you could use some shorthand jargon and if they’re not you may just ask them what’s the mood here? And it helps to think about what you know about where they’re coming from. If there was some big announcement just made, that’s going to make an impact. If you know they’ve been working 12 hour days for weeks, that’s going to have an impact. What do you know from either your assessment or from conversations you’ve had with people about where they might be? Just to be cognizant of that before you go in with any assumptions. 

 

KC – Yeah, I’m wondering as well then, is it perhaps as a coach going into these kind of situations our job to break their patterns around communication in particular? Because I know being a coach when you say how are you doing and people say oh yeah, I’m great and that’s just the go to and I guess if I went into a system and I just got that back I wouldn’t necessarily be meeting what’s really there and vice versa. 

 

SC – Yeah. Well again, it’s a chance too, depending on where you are in your process, you might be checking in on the design team alliance that they had, to give them an opportunity to say how is it now and what’s working and what do you need to do differently, that’s a really good meet tool, it’s very much about what’s happening, it’s a little big aspirational, how do they want to be, but it’s also acknowledging where they are. I think you can trust your clients will be your guide, even if you miss, even if you’re wrong, they’ll eventually let you know. I think that’s the thing, I would want people to be thinking about this and be prepared and, like I said, some of this is built in. DTA, for a lot of us that’s the first thing we do, we check in on the DTA and give people a chance to talk about where they are. You know, most people who do this work are pretty good at meet. 

 

KC – I guess probably in a lot of space this isn’t created, this meet space, so just to have a moment to be heard in itself is probably quite powerful. 

 

SC – Yep. 

 

KC – I remember in our last podcast you mentioned about space to grieve the disappointed dream, perhaps, is this where that would live in phase one, meet? 

 

SC – Maybe. It depends. It depends on how ready people are with emotion. It may be lurking in the background in the secondary for people or it may be in the primary, it depends on what’s going on for people and how willing they are to bring it forward. You might sense something is in the field and give a space for that, you know, give them the chance to talk. By the way that doesn’t always mean it has to be the large group, you might say, you might do some sort of little check in that they do with a partner, you might do high dream low dream for the work or talk about ghosts. I mean it depends what’s going on and how much your clients know. There’s a lot of pieces in ORSC to kind of ventilate, give people a chance to talk about things in different language. But I also want to catch, you said something about, did you say break the pattern or… 

 

KC – Yeah, break the pattern. Communication patterns, yes. 

 

SC – Yeah. The word that I would use is disrupt the pattern. I don’t necessarily mean to break it but I want to disrupt it a little bit. I want to disrupt it enough that they get some new awareness and then they get to chose. And that feels very different from break, right, if we’re training people to go out and break patterns and break things, that is a really different energy than reveal the system to itself. That alone is a disruption. It’s just a little bit of like oh are we that? Oh yeah we are, oh no we’re not. Right? It gives them a chance to push against it. But we don’t come in heavy, you know this, I’m exaggerating, but we don’t come in and say we’re here to shake things up and make you do it differently. We really say we’re here to reveal the system and trust the organic process that happens when we do that. That people then have choice about we want to keep doing this or we don’t. And that’s a really interesting difference to me, you know, disrupt patterns versus break or blow up or any of those more dramatic words for it. 

 

KC – Yeah. I guess we’re there to meet them in terms of both their language and also their comfort level and it’s not that our job is to keep them comfortable all the time but, as you say, we’re not there to tell them to be a completely different way from who they are and how they’re being. 

 

SC – Right. We actually want to come in and meet them where they are and we trust! This model trusts that when we do that, we meet them where they are, that there’ll be a natural shift that will want to happen and I don’t know what that’s going to be. How arrogant of me to say how that’s going to be, I don’t have a clue! I have a rough outline for what I think is needed and the tools I’m going to take them through but I really want to trust the organic emergence that will happen when I do something simple like meet them and reveal where they are. 

 

KC – And just to clarify, so we both meet a system in terms of that first engagement but you do this every single time you connect with that client or that team. 

 

SC – Yeah. I think humans naturally do this, by the way, we’re just drawing light through it in a little bit more explicit way to pay attention to how do you meet your clients, how do you begin, how do you start with them? And really, like I said, it comes down to being in a relationship, to be connected to where they are. 

 

KC – Hmm. And it makes me think this is where it really gets bespoke and personalized to whoever’s in front of you. 

 

SC – Yes. And also for the coaches, right, to know yourself and what’s your range with meeting people that we have too, clients will absolutely expand your range, whether you want them too or not, that’s the nature of this work! But know who you are and be willing to stretch yourself as well, you might have to go places you didn’t expect. 

 

KC – Yeah. So once we’ve successfully, and I don’t know what success looks like in terms of meeting… yeah what does success mean in terms of meeting a system? I’m just pausing there because is there a right or wrong? Is there a good or a bad? 

 

SC – You know. I think that, I wouldn’t say right or wrong, good or bad, I’d say there’s a sweet spot, you know, like I said before. There’s a certain mount that you need to meet before you can move on. If you spend too much time there you’re going to lose people, if you don’t spend enough time people are going to feel not heard or like there’ll be something unsettled that’ll be there. So I think it’s an experiment, you know, you kind of have to keep testing that and seeing ok, do we have them? You can tell when people are restless and they need to move, you know, that’s edge behavior, that energy of like ok, we got it. You know, every client team is different, every coach brings their own biases so, you know, be careful of your own bias and what that means and do you stay there too long, longer than you clients ready? Do you move to fast? They’ll sometimes let you know if you go to fast, they’ll kind of pull it back. But I think it’s more about being aware of, really the emotional field is such a good guide for this. To either feel into it or ask about it and look for that time where there’s just enough and it’s ready to move. 

 

KC – Thanks that was really helpful because I guess it’s sort of that space between when they’re feeling seen and heard and they’re engaged in the process and then we move to phase two, reveal. 

 

SC – Yeah. Well, so much of our ORSC tool kit is about reveal, really. If you look at your list of tools here so much is about that. So once the system has been kind of met, meeting them there, then you can take them over the edge to start to reveal who they are. So, and some of our tools are really explicit about, reveal kind of a bias towards visual, you know when we talk about reveal, so think about constellations, the different types of constellations where it’s very visual, paper especially because they draw. There’s just about any tool in our ORSC tool kit is going to reveal the system to itself or it wouldn’t be there. Yeah. So that’s really kind of the bulk of the work, I would say, goes there, and then align and act comes in on the home stretch to bring it down, but reveal kind of opens it up a bit and then the other two start to bring it down. 

 

KC – So this is where we’re acting as a mirror for the system. 

 

SC – Yeah. So we are, our tools are, there are maybe times where the coach maybe reveals the system by saying what they see but then so many of our ORSC tools are designed for this, they really do, that’s the whole point, we want to reveal the system to itself. Whether it’s deep democracy process or lands work or, like I said, constellations. Any of these team… myth change, I mean everything reveals the system to itself. 

 

KC – Yeah. And I guess reading the emotional field, as we mentioned, you might subtly do in meet but then you can really start to take it to another level in this second phase. I guess I’m wondering, this is probably the most challenging and stressful part of the process for clients and so how do we help them from getting stuck here. Stuck in this reveal space. Because it can be hard to look in the mirror, can’t it, it can be challenging! 

 

SC – Haha. Oh that kind of stuck. 

 

KC – Yeah, I’m just wondering about their energy in this space because obviously it can be uplifting sometimes but I imagine it can, other times, be laborious in terms of the work from their side and what they have to acknowledge and see. 

 

SC – I think this is where our skills come into play. The tools are great at revealing, the skills, it’s like fill in the gaps between, somehow, for me. So things like normalizing. Acknowledging the system. Fading. These are softer little things that we sprinkle in throughout any tools that we might use. There’s a way they give the system a chance to pause and hear something different because it may be, like you said, it might be stimulating to have some difficulty revealed and to see, wow, how much conflict they really do have. And to hear that can be disruptive for people which is kind of good right, like we said, we like to disrupt. We don’t want to blow up necessarily but we like to disrupt. But then to hear of course you’d feel uncomfortable. Any team would feel stressed. Anybody would feel surprised by that. A little bit of that normalizing, it gives people a hand hold when they’re in an emotional experience, whether it’s a positive emotion or whatever kind of emotional experience, I think the skills really needs a hand hold to go ok, there’s nothing wrong, I’m doing it right. Everybody needs to know I’m doing it right so normalizing is really helpful for that. But I do think they go hand in hand really nicely. 

 

KC – So, our job here as a coach in this process is to sort of disrupt and guide them through. 

 

SC – Yeah. And stick around. Again, it’s not disrupt and then take off, it’s disrupt and stay and see what happens. Because the disruption’s part of it but what happens after this work, it’s really interesting. What do they do in that place with this new information? And again, disrupt could mean something simple like maybe they did an informal constellation and they say they don’t feel the same way about a topic. And if they were sitting around a table or a zoom call having a conversation about that they wouldn’t know, necessarily, quite the same way. Because people might be nodding and smiling like you and I are right now and saying yeah, I agree, I agree, but really my body is out the window, I don’t. So that’s that disruption, that wow we don’t feel the same way, we’re not aligned and now I’m curious about what other people think or now I’m judging what other people think, like all of those are part of the disruptions and that’s where the skills that we can bring in really will help to soothe some of it. 

 

KC – Yeah, so I’m wondering because this has happened to me a few times where phase two has probably taken over so much of the session that I suddenly realize that there’s five minutes to go and I’m like oh gosh, I’m going to be finishing in reveal. And I guess what’s the sort of challenge or even the damage that comes from not getting to phrase three, align and act? 

 

SC – That’s such a classic situation, right? We can get sucked into what’s happening or it might get really turbulent and we need to stay there with them. I think when you’re doing your plan, your coaching plan, it’s good to have a few ideas just in case you need them. I usually do my timeline for myself and then I have three things which I usually put at the end of my timeline back pocket, like I have these in my back pocket in case I need them just because I don’t know where they’re going to go. So that’s just a general tip that I have and then to really make sure you get to align and act, and keep in mind some of our tools also have align built in, you know, alignment coaching for example. Myth change actually has alignment built in. So where are we now dreaming about the next chapter and there’s alignment in there. And most of our tools have some… in fact, all of our tools have some bit of and what now? What are you going to do with this new information? You know, usually we end with something like what’s new for you, what will you do, how will it inform who you are together? So make sure you have time and space for that, if nothing else just those questions. Have those available and ready. And like I said, some of the tools are really explicit in stepping people out of an experience but not all of them and that’s why we talk about the, what we would call a learning debrief which we talk about more in certification and anyone who’s gone through out course will have seen us do it many, many times but that’s what we call it, that kind of off ramp out of an experience. We need to have time to take them into something but also take them out. So your soft start up is your on ramp in, you’re learning and application and who are you now and what do you do with it – align and act, by the way – is your off ramp out of the exercise. 

 

KC – So phase three is, and of course they’re all crucial, but it’s really where we activate what’s been said, the theory, to make it happen and live in our lives, would you say? 

 

SC – Yeah, well take it in to everyday reality, right, because often we take them into a dreaming experience in our experiences, which again sounds pretty when we say dreaming, you know in ORSC it’s high dreams, it’s low dreams, it’s all emotional stuff, stuff we make up about each other, about the team, about the leader. But we really take them into that disrupted, a little bit disrupted place of what I would call dreaming and we just want to make sure we exit out into some bit of consensus reality. So it’s good to have a few quick ways to do that if time runs short and it’s good to be thoughtful, when you have the time, to really, how do we really want to do this and what’s next for them? Or at least have them commit to some sort of accountability that they’ll take outside of you. There’s a lot of ways to do that. But if you leave them without any action then it’s floaty and it’s actually not holding the competencies we wanna hold in this so really do need to include… now we’re talking about act, you know, align and act is really the last piece and alignment is not agreement. So we’re not saying everyone has to agree on exactly what it is but some sort of alignment, some sense of we’re in this together and we may not all agree but we believe in something bigger even if we disagree on some of the details, right, so that sense of alignment about what’s next and what we will do, and that they go nicely together obviously. 

 

KC – And I guess, from that, what do you when alignment isn’t possible? 

 

SC – Urm, you mean after I freak out? After I sweat like crazy? When alignment isn’t possible it depends on where I am in the process. Where I am on the map. I mean I say this a lot in certification, you have to know where you are on the map. If alignment isn’t happening and it’s right before lunch – no problem! Right before a break, mid-day, I don’t expect it. It doesn’t have to be then. I would wanna do a little bit of safe porting, so as you head to this break take care of yourselves, please don’t interact with anybody, give yourself a full break, a little bit of something like that to create safety for people. That’s very different than if it happens in the last five minutes where we’re going to wrap up. So, again, soft knees, be willing to pivot and adapt to what’s in front of you. I do think alignment, there’s almost always a way. You just have to keep looking higher. How do you take it up a level or up a level? What do you all agree on? What do you align on? Where are you aligned are great questions. So it’s ok to honor where they’re not. I really, I might say wow it sounds like there’s a lot of different opinions about this and if you can kind of go soft focus on the detail and look one level higher, what do you agree on? That can be very helpful. It’s like oh yeah, we all agree here, we all want to do good work, we all want to make a bunch of money, whatever it is for them. But there’s usually some place beyond the consensus reality details that people can align on and that can be comforting. It doesn’t make it go away, you know, there’s still disruption at the other level but knowing oh yeah, that’s right, it helps people to see each other as people again rather than problems or obstacles which is what alignment coaching does. 

 

KC – Yeah and I guess it connects them to something, as you say, bigger than them, at a deeper level so they can then move forward and get unstuck from wherever they are. 

 

SC – Even just that little pivot, you know, it doesn’t have to be oh yeah, we’re all great and let’s have a big group hug, that’s not what we’re going through with alignment. We really just want that little pivot to what do we have in common. And it might be purpose, it might be logistics, it might be we all like the same TV show, who knows. They may have some little inside joke that brings them back to that place. It’s those little pivot points around aligning. We can’t usually agree on the details but we can find something we can align around. 

 

KC – Yeah, that’s a great point. I was working with a couple the other day and they aligned around the fact that they’re both dealing with a lot of pain. And it was like from each side and I just realized that that’s a way of aligning, even if it’s not a positive happy go lucky outcome. So I have to be aware of my biases that I bring in in terms of what alignment means, what it can look like here. 

 

SC – Yeah. It’s a great example and we all have biases around what we think alignment is and what it should look like and it might vary by client even. People bring out parts of us, when we’re in front of different clients we want different things for them or assume different things for them. Even aligning on something like we both are in a lot of pain, they probably had not had that conversation without you there to hold the mirror up. Even if you offered it, it sounds like you’re both in a lot of pain, for them to hear that, suddenly they see each other as people and not as an obstacle or a problem. That’s really the key. Again, we’re focusing on the alignment tool a lot in this piece of the conversation but a lot of tools deal with having them get a sense of alignment, not just the alignment coaching tool.

 

KC – Yeah. I’m seeing this process as a potential coaching session planning tool as well as a meeting planning tool because I can see it almost being like so I’m going to meet them for five minutes and do a weather check in, what’s the weather like in your land right now, and then have ten minutes at the end of the coaching session to really check out and have some ongoing forward moving action. Yeah, I’ve never thought about it like that but when you go through all the phases it seems you get to all the levels of reality as well, essence dreaming and consensus reality. 

 

SC – Yeah, it’s great. Each of our individual tools takes us through MRAA, any tool we have take us through meet, reveal, align and act, but in the broader sense that’s a coaching plan, it really is. It’s a micro and a macro and I think it’s helpful for people to think about that because we don’t talk a ton about how to create a coaching plan in our training. A lot of people who come to this work have already worked with teams a lot but this is a great kind of outline to think through. What will I do to meet with them, to meet them, how will I reveal who they are and then how do we create some alignment and move forward as the big big arc for the work that you have and then also in the small interactions that you have with people. 

 

KC – Yeah. I can see it showing up in the small interactions too, whilst I said meetings and coaching conversations, you can see this in a casual chat with a friend, you know, meet them where they are. Be with them in their pain or the happiness. So often we dance over that because we’re focused on our own stuff. 

 

SC – Right, right. Well meet is the way out of your own stuff. 

 

KC – We need that on a t-shirt. 

 

SC – Unless you need to meet yourself, sometimes we do need to do that. But it really is, meet by… I keep picturing meat when we say meet, not meat. The verb of meet, it’s an active verb and it’s out of self. 

 

KC – Yeah, I had the image of a spotlight because so often people say, when I’m running presentations skills, workshops, they say oh, I don’t like standing on the stage and if you move the spotlight form you to the audience it suddenly becomes a different experience and that sounds like what meet is all about, moving the spotlight away from you. 

 

SC – Yes. Well, and it reminds me of when you’re meeting with a potential client who wants to bring you in, the same holds true there, how do you meet them, how do you engage with them and reveal what’s going on, what they think is happening for their team or their organization and then come to a little bit of alignment together about what you see can be possible, that’s a little bit of a different alignment if it’s between you and a potential client, and then what are the next actions out of this, you know, when you follow up or how that might work. It’s a really adaptable model when you think about it. It works great in this work but I think about it even in our own lives, in our personal lives. If you have to have a difficult conversation with a partner or a work colleague, do you just jump in and say you’re horrible, this is awful and not working, or do you say that soft start up, again, is part of meet sometimes. We have a conversation. I want to check in about how your working relationship’s going or our partnership or something. Just that little bit… any one of these, if you pull it out, it’s a very different model but they really do all need to be together. 

 

KC – Yeah, I was just thinking about so many of my clients are saying they’re having so many meetings and half of them just aren’t productive or useful and I don’t know how many, if any, of these phases are really covered in a lot of meetings and imagine how productive they could be if they did go through phase one, two three like this. 

 

SC – Yeah, that’s interesting to think about isn’t it. And I wonder which phases tend to get ignored the most. What’s your hunch from what you know? 

 

KC – Probably meet and reveal in different ways in terms of really meeting what’s there and being with, perhaps, the pain and the challenge. I think we quite often dance over those moments. 

 

SC – Yep, I agree. I think meet is, especially if they’re having back to back meetings, and I know I have clients who…. It’s so busy and it’s so Zoomy right now, you know, it’s this weird paradox where people are just craving relationship, like real relationship, and that spontaneous relationship, just those quick moments that we don’t have now, and yet when somebody takes the time to create a relationship on a virtual meeting sometimes people get antsy, get frustrated, they’re like let’s just get too it, I just want to be done. You know, I want to keep going, I’m so busy, I’m so busy. So, I think every system has to find their way and it, the person who’s willing to do something different will be the radical one, to say hey, let’s check in, let’s spend five minutes to see how people really are. And maybe construct that in a way, so it’s not just I’m going to talk for a minute about how awful my life is, or again, like we do check ins in all of our courses, help kind of ventilate a little bit and help give people chance to get present. So, there’s a lot of ways you can do that but if we don’t spend any time creating relationship before we get into tasks, the tasks just burn us out and we actually don’t bring our best to the tasks. Task before relationship really is just task. I think that’s the truth. I don’t think it really happens, I think if you start with task you probably stay task most of the time and maybe at the end you say oh, by the way how are you? And it’s like oh, too little too late. Now I just wanna go do the thing. So, you know, there’s different ways to do it and everyone has their own approach but I do think about the relationship between task and a relationship a lot and how it fits nicely into this model. 

 

KC  - Yeah, and how powerful it feels just to be seen in this minute or two by a colleague or a boss. It really doesn’t take that long, as you say, the other day I got everyone, I gave them 10 seconds to grab something, an item nearby, that had helped them during the last 18 months to adapt… 

 

SC – Oh that’s great. 

 

KC - … program was all about navigating change and you got these lovely little snippets of people’s lives and there was wisdom there that was useful for everyone on the call. And so I didn’t have to work as hard, and they’ve all met each other in their lands, from their lands, and shared something personal and we spent three full minutes there, that was it. 

 

SC – Wow, that’s a great example and I wanna catch what you said of they all met each other. Right. So it’s not necessarily you and the client meeting but it’s them meeting each other too. And it’s certainly we need to meet them because that’s part of our role, but for them to have time, for you to facilitate the time for them to have a silly catch up or whatever it is, you know a little bit personal, it makes a huge difference in how people see each other, especially now. This is a really interesting time where we’re navigating the virtual going into in person and how do we continue to adapt to that. It’ll be very fascinating to see where we are a year from now. 

 

KC – Yeah. This was such a useful conversation, Sandra, I’m excited to actually use this as a model for planning my coaching sessions because I’ve never thought about structuring it in that way so thank you for all your wisdom and advice! 

 

SC – You got it. And I would say if people want more information definitely read the book Creating Intelligent Teams and I’m pulling out some concepts from there but there’s a lot more detail and more background in there that would be really useful. 

 

KC – Well thank you so much Sandra, we’ll have to have you back on again, there were so many side tracks I wanted to go down so thank you. 

 

[Outro beings 36:13] 

 

SC – We can do that. Alright, thanks. 

 

KC – Take care. 

 

SC – See ya.

 

KC – Thanks to Sandra for walking us through the phases of meet, reveal, align and act. My key takeaways are as follows. Meet, reveal, align and act can act as a map for coaches so that you know where you are in any given process. It’s an overarching framework for working with clients so that you know where you are during any exercise or engagement. Phase one, meet, is about being with your clients where they are. If you don’t start with that, if you start by taking them way over the edge and into an exercise, that’s not meeting them where they are and meeting can be as simple as a quick check in conversation or a mingle. Put simply, meeting is honoring what’s primary for that client or system. Where are they now? Phase two, reveal. So much of our work as coaches and our ORSC toolkit is about revealing, mirroring back to the client what is going on in their relationship or system right now. This is the bulk of the work that reveals the system to itself. Phase three, align and act. This is where we guide our clients to look at what’s now. What are we going to do with this new information that has emerged? This is in many ways an off ramp, out of the reveal phase. Who are you now and what do you do with this new information? To find out more about Sandra’s work do check out CRRGlobal.com. For over 18 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.

 

[Outro 38:13 – end]