Thursday, May 10, 2007
Asking for Testimonials
In building a new web site, I asked my clients -- present and former -- to give me quotes to help visitors to my site understand what happens in coaching and what it's like to be coached by me.
I coach people to make more powerful requests, to enroll others in supporting new initiatives, etc. It was interesting to notice how I felt a bit reticent about asking for testimonials.
Reticent, as in restrained, reserved, reluctant. Let's see, might that be the basic "fear of rejection" in play? So, I noticed the feeling and asked anyway. And, the responses have touched me -- some quite deeply.
I had lunch with a senior executive, with whom I worked several years back. I asked her what her lasting benefits have been from being in a leadership development program.
I took a lot of notes about improved relationships, greater self awareness, the ability to take stronger stands as a leader and as a person, and so forth.
She shared how our work together differed from the first coach she hired, as in "night and day" differences. She felt her first coach focused on really superficial things that were "techniques for manipulating people" or things she could get from any management course.
She valued the integral approach and said: "One of the biggest things I learned was greater self-awareness, especially the effect I was having on others. In the past, I could have a negative effect and be totally unaware of it."
We continued to talk and one story really captured my attention.
My client told me: "I use what I learned about leadership in parenting all the time. My daughter is involved in theater and works in stage management. She has come home in tears because the kids wouldn't listen to her. I used the aikido exercise you taught me to help her distinguish between forcing and encouraging others to work with you."
My client's daughter really got it and came back from a Shakespeare camp reporting she had had more success leading her peers by learning to "dance differently" with them.
My client confessed that before her own program, she was a dyed-in-the-wool command and control leader, as in "just tell them what to do and expect the best." She said her daughter was getting something about leadership that took her decades to understand."
How cool. I learned the aikido exercises from Richard Strozzi-Heckler, who is a 6th-degree black belt in aikido. I taught my client. And, she taught her daughter, who is having vastly different conversations than I ever had at her age.
Meanwhile, back to the testimonials. I'll use the best business ones from the many notes I have been taking, and I enjoy hearing "the rest of the story" as the saying goes.
I coach people to make more powerful requests, to enroll others in supporting new initiatives, etc. It was interesting to notice how I felt a bit reticent about asking for testimonials.
Reticent, as in restrained, reserved, reluctant. Let's see, might that be the basic "fear of rejection" in play? So, I noticed the feeling and asked anyway. And, the responses have touched me -- some quite deeply.
I had lunch with a senior executive, with whom I worked several years back. I asked her what her lasting benefits have been from being in a leadership development program.
I took a lot of notes about improved relationships, greater self awareness, the ability to take stronger stands as a leader and as a person, and so forth.
She shared how our work together differed from the first coach she hired, as in "night and day" differences. She felt her first coach focused on really superficial things that were "techniques for manipulating people" or things she could get from any management course.
She valued the integral approach and said: "One of the biggest things I learned was greater self-awareness, especially the effect I was having on others. In the past, I could have a negative effect and be totally unaware of it."
We continued to talk and one story really captured my attention.
My client told me: "I use what I learned about leadership in parenting all the time. My daughter is involved in theater and works in stage management. She has come home in tears because the kids wouldn't listen to her. I used the aikido exercise you taught me to help her distinguish between forcing and encouraging others to work with you."
My client's daughter really got it and came back from a Shakespeare camp reporting she had had more success leading her peers by learning to "dance differently" with them.
My client confessed that before her own program, she was a dyed-in-the-wool command and control leader, as in "just tell them what to do and expect the best." She said her daughter was getting something about leadership that took her decades to understand."
How cool. I learned the aikido exercises from Richard Strozzi-Heckler, who is a 6th-degree black belt in aikido. I taught my client. And, she taught her daughter, who is having vastly different conversations than I ever had at her age.
Meanwhile, back to the testimonials. I'll use the best business ones from the many notes I have been taking, and I enjoy hearing "the rest of the story" as the saying goes.
# posted by Cindy Marteney @ 4:10 PM 
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