If you know anything at all about coaching, you know that it’s all about asking questions, right? Well, yes, and also: that’s not the full story.
Claire Pedrick and Lucia Baldelli sat down together to write a book on how to move from ‘really good’ to ‘even better’ coach, but they quickly realised that mastery is less about what the coach does or says, and much more about how they are in the coaching conversation. It’s about noticing and responding, being the person that can facilitate the coachee’s own work, being a little less certain, being a little more human, in fact.
And that approach spills into Claire’s approach to writing, too: it’s about noticing, iterating, being curious, and being unafraid to let the ideas evolve and develop. Which is how The Human Behind the Coach came about, and why it was named Specialist Business Book of the Year at the Business Book Awards.
(Although I don’t THINK she uses scissors quite so regularly in her coaching work as she does in her writing process…)
If you care about coaching, writing or thinking – or just about being human in a world that’s increasingly inhuman – make tea, sit down, listen up.
Claire on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairepedrick/
Alison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-alison-jones/
The 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge: www.proposalchallenge.com
The Extraordinary Business Book Club on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1447064765612358/
Alison Jones: Here I am with Claire Pedrick, who is a master certified coach with the ICF, coaching supervisor and a coach mentor. Founding partner at 3D Coaching, she’s also the co author with Lucia Baldelli of The Human Behind the Coach, which won the title of Specialist Business Book of the Year at this year’s Business Book Awards.
Do you want to flash that award at us, Claire, just so we can see it?
Oh, it’s so shiny. You can, I think if you’re watching this on video, you can probably see me in the reflection on the screen. There we are.
Claire Pedrick: You can see everything on my desk.
Alison Jones: Yes.
Claire Pedrick: I’ll put that away.
Alison Jones: Yes. Put that away quick.
Well, firstly, congratulations. How cool is that?
Claire Pedrick: Well, I think the thing that really bowled me over was finding out that some of the points, as it were, were based on the quality of the writing and not just the content. So, you know, you can get a sense of how the content hits the world. And that’s a beautiful thing. But I’m also equally, you know, really blown over that they loved how it was written too.
And, you know, on the day when it’s all the glitzy and everybody’s clapping and everything and I heard the last word of what the lady said, the judge said, she said something about everybody, but I didn’t know what she’d said. And it was only when they posted the kind of, the tribute as it were on LinkedIn a few weeks later, I thought, Oh, that’s amazing what they said.
Because basically they said, this is a book for everybody.
Alison Jones: Yes. And that’s right. And that was a sort of a comment on the fact that it was named as a specialist business book, but actually it’s just for humans actually. Yes, it’s interesting that the Business Book Awards particularly are very clear about their judging criteria and it really is the whole package.
It is the design and production. It’s the content. It’s the value it gives to the reader. But it’s absolutely about the way that it’s conveyed and the quality of the writing as well.
So yes, you should take full credit for that. It is really cool.
Claire Pedrick: Oh, exciting. And, everybody loves the cover and it’s such a beautiful color.
Alison Jones: Yes, you’re going to have to hold it up a little bit more so we can actually see it though, because it is a gorgeous cover.
Actually, this is now out of date because we have a new cover with the winner sticker on, which is yes, so if you buy a copy now, that’s what you’ll get. It is brilliant.
Claire Pedrick: It’s out of date because I keep learning things and writing them inside.
Alison Jones: Yes, this is the thing with books. They, you know, they’re static in a sense, they become sort of static and it means everybody can access it and that’s wonderful. But of course you keep growing and developing, just means you’re going to have to write another book, Claire.
Oh, marvellous. Well, that’s good to know, but let’s not talk about, oh, let’s talk about that off air.
Firstly, let’s talk about the genesis of this one, because I happen to know, it didn’t quite start off this way, did it? Tell us your sort of journey on this book.
Claire Pedrick: So we were writing another book, which was a kind of technical book about how to move from mid-level coaching to advanced coaching, really. And for anyone who’s in the tribe of the International Coach Federation, that means from PCC to MCC, but it’s about from really good to even better.
Alison Jones: Is that the technical term?
Claire Pedrick: And it was about the shifts that people needed to make to be able to do that. But actually the technical things about what people do in each of those layers is the same. It’s how they do it that’s the difference and how they do it is based on courage and all sorts.
So I’ll say to people at the beginning of a training session, I have absolutely no idea what we’re going to do today. Like now. I have absolutely no idea what we’re talking about here and I mean that and I also mean I have no plan B because I’ve prepared for the moment I’m in a training session or a coaching session for my whole life and not at all and I’ve got to the point now where that rarely wobbles. It does wobble sometimes but it rarely wobbles and that’s about all of the internal journey and that’s what the book’s about because we can fake it, but until it’s real inside us, the people that we’re in conversation with will feel it, and that will have an impact.
Alison Jones: So much to dig into there.
Firstly, it’s interesting as a podcast host, similar sort of journey from holding tightly to not a script exactly, but a set of questions, to letting go of that and knowing that the conversation will go where it goes and that’s where you need to be and you need to be listening and following that. So that was a huge learning for me.
As a trainee coach, desperately trying to remember what came next in the grow model and where we were and thinking about the good coaching questions and, there is so much technical stuff around coaching. And it’s not that it’s not important.
It’s just that it’s not enough.
Claire Pedrick: Yes, and you can feel like you’re in conversation with a bot. Because…
Alison Jones: and that’s going to become more of an issue, right?
Claire Pedrick: Yes, and, I mean, I learnt something yesterday. Where is it? It was really interesting what I learnt yesterday, which I’ve written down on a piece of paper here. It’s about noticing and responding.
So I think often what happens is, that we get into the phase where I ask a question, you give me an answer. I think of another question, you give me the answer. But actually, it’s about me really looking, which is why noticing is so important, me really looking, you thinking and doing your work, and then when you’re ready, I respond to where you are now. So that means that it’s almost answer question. The question builds on the answer rather than the answer building on the question.
And that’s not in the book! But it’s something I know now that I didn’t know when we finished writing it!
Alison Jones: I think it is in the book, although it isn’t quite stated.
Claire Pedrick: Well, it sort of is.
Alison Jones: In a smart way. Yes but let’s just bring that back a minute. So that sort of recognition of, wait a minute, the book that we set out to write isn’t the book we need to write. Just tell us again, you know, take us back into that progression of thinking.
Claire Pedrick: So, it was a bit of a how to. And, see that, that’s an insight for me, I only just realised that.
It was a bit of a how to, and the book that we realised we needed to write was actually about how we are. What’s the me that shows up in this room in order to be able to facilitate you to do some good work.
Because the technical bit of coaching is actually quite simple. I mean, it’s over complexified, I think, as you know.
But actually at its heart, it’s working out what we’re doing, doing it, and then seeing what they’re going to do next. But there’s status in classy questions. So I think I, as a coach, if I think that I need to be really good at this, I will try and add more in order to be really good at it. But actually it’s about me being a little bit more naked and not covered in fancy things in order that you get out of it what you need to get out of it.
Alison Jones: Yes, it’s almost beyond mastery, isn’t it? It’s like, I’m now at the point where the ego, my ego, it just isn’t part of this anymore. It’s entirely focused on you.
So, and I remember you coming to me and going Alison, we’ve completely changed the title of the book. It’s going to be a rather different book than the one we started on. And I was like, this sounds amazing. Yes, let’s go there.
So tell me about what surprised you about, I mean, okay, I’ve got about 18 questions, I’m going to settle on one. What was it about process of writing that changed the way you thought about it or what you noticed about the idea?
Claire Pedrick: I think it was probably the getting stuck
Alison Jones: Oh, isn’t that a great observation because you get stuck and you think, oh no, I’m stuck.
Whereas you’re a bit more highly evolved than that.
Claire Pedrick: and also the not liking some things.
And the stuff that’s in Part Two of the book about the music and the dance, they were things that I’d been working on for a long time and they were, as the writing for that was evolving, it was becoming a little bit dissonant. And Lucia said one day, this isn’t about the skill, this is about qualities. And I think we were accidentally writing about skills. And it’s really interesting because I had somebody on a webinar that I was hosting yesterday in India. And she sent me a message this morning and she said, I’ve done so many level three trainings and have been mentored by so many coaches to try and get this thing that’s mastery.
And then I heard you say it was actually about not doing very much, but not doing very much in a really artful way.
Alison Jones: Okay, and that…
Claire Pedrick: That would have been a terrible title.
Alison Jones: A terrible title, but it actually, it should have been a subtitle maybe.
But it speaks to the challenge here, which is that this is very experiential, it’s very qualitative, as you say, it’s flipping hard to trap it between the covers of a book.
Claire Pedrick: Yes and also we’re talking about things that you can’t learn in a classroom. So the more I’ve thought about it since the book came out, the more I think that there’s almost nothing in there that you can teach in the classroom. Because almost all of it is stuff that needs to be learnt. It needs to be experienced. It needs to be felt. It needs to be…
So we run improv training to support coaches to have better presence. And the whole purpose of the improv training, we’ve run it twice in the last week, once online and once on site. And in both of them, the whole purpose of that is to just be really uncomfortable for a long time and then work out what to do with that practically.
And then to fall over and do it really badly. And then to try again.
Alison Jones: None of this happens in that asynchronous, you know, separated in time and space experience of somebody reading your book.
So how did you, because you’ve done it brilliantly, but what strategies did you use to eff the ineffable, you know, to capture the stuff that normally you would only do in the room with somebody with live feedback and conversation.
How do you get that across on a printed page.
Claire Pedrick: So I can’t speak for Lucia, but for me I have hundreds of pieces of paper.
Alison Jones: There they are, look.
Claire Pedrick: So when I notice something, when I notice a line that works, which always comes out of something live in the room, I’ll write that down.
Alison Jones: Oh, interesting.
Claire Pedrick: And then, I won’t read it, but, that’ll be my thought of the moment. And of course, once you’ve got a thought of the moment, you do get a bit directive, because you do try and use your thought of the moment again.
And then I’ll use it again. And when I use it again then, I might tweak it a bit because I realise that there’s something else. And that’s where my soundbites come from. So there’s a line in the book, which I had forgotten about but people keep quoting it which is, your overthinking creates underthinking in others.
Alison Jones: Yes.
Claire Pedrick: So, if you read a soundbite in the book, if it’s come from me, it hasn’t come from the writing process. It’s come from being written on the back of a post it note, or a piece of paper, or something here. And it’s come from me trying that out and refining it and trying it again.
So for me, the bits of the book that I wrote were almost soundbites that then got joined together by words.
Because I know that those are the principles that are really changing the way people operate.
Alison Jones: It’s a lovely example of the dance between writing and practice and the way that they, and I know that you’ve taken those thoughts from practice and embedded them in the book, but I’m guessing that things that came out in the book then went into practice.
Claire Pedrick: Absolutely. Absolutely.
And then people say your books sound like a conversation, and I, because I kind of write them, my bits, I write in the spoken word.
Alison Jones: Yes.
Claire Pedrick: Because if I wrote in the written word, it would actually sound different. But I want it to sound like I’m talking, because that’s how I, that’s how I communicate.
In everything I communicate, I always sound like I’m talking, because I can’t really do the other one.
Other people are really, you know, some people are really good at the other one, I’m not, so let me not even try.
So yes, so it’s a kind of, my bits are a sequence of joined together sound bites.
Alison Jones: You are so underselling it because it’s so beautifully written. I just want people know this.
Claire Pedrick: I’ll just tell you, my English teacher told me I couldn’t write.
Alison Jones: Yes, so many people, even really astonishingly successful authors, partly did it to prove their English teacher wrong, but also because their English teacher was trying to get them to do something completely different, which is not actually the writing that we want to read most of the time.
Claire Pedrick: No but I also know, Alison, now, having written a few books, I know that it’s about iteration 7 that is the book that the public read. And I wouldn’t even show it to you till it got to Iteration 6. And Iteration 5 is ugly. So anyone who’s written with me, Lucia will tell you this, anyone who’s written anything with me will know that if you look at a chapter, the first bit is really eloquent and then underneath there are a whole load of scrappy sentences that are just randomly pasted in and may or may not make the final cut and they make no sense and they might even be in the wrong book.
Alison Jones: Statement of intent, was it? How lovely.
I always ask my guests for their best tip, Claire, as you know. So, I mean, you’ve actually given us quite a lot already. But, if somebody is starting on this journey and they are feeling unsure about whether they can even do this, what should they know?
Claire Pedrick: I think that there are, can I have more than one tip?
Alison Jones: Most, do you know what, most people do. I’ve lost control of it now. Just, yes, just go at it.
Claire Pedrick: So one tip is don’t write your fully formed book before you speak to a publisher.
Alison Jones: Yes, don’t do that.
Claire Pedrick: it’s really annoying.
Alison Jones: So many weeks of your life. Yes.
Claire Pedrick: And I think the other one is I can only say what works for me. And yesterday I was talking to someone who’s writing a book with you actually. And they got this beautiful spreadsheet with all the sections spread out. And I looked at it and they were asking me to just help them think about some stuff. It was great. We had a really good conversation.
But, that’s not how I write a book. I write a book where random thoughts start joining up. And then, I just throw it on paper, and there’s a point at which I print the whole thing out when it’s really pretty ghastly. I print the whole thing out, and I cut it up into sections, and then I work out which bit goes with which bit.
Alison Jones: You need a lot floor space for this.
Claire Pedrick: You do, and then the structure begins to come, and then I do that two or three times through the process towards the end, and so the final version actually is properly cut and pasted.
I got caught by security on the way to Italy for The Human Behind the Coach because they didn’t like my scissors. But I have to…
Alison Jones: my writing tools!
Claire Pedrick: …to have scissors and I have to have tape. Sorry.
Alison Jones: Funny.
Claire Pedrick: So that version of cut and paste, because I can’t personally, and I know it’s not the same for everybody, I can’t get a view of the book on the screen at all.
It doesn’t, I can’t get any understanding of what’s being offered. I have to be able to walk around it
Alison Jones: Yes.
Claire Pedrick: and go, I don’t like you. You can’t…
Alison Jones: You’re out.
Claire Pedrick: You can’t be in this book. I found a bit, you know, yesterday I was tidying up and I found this tiny little bit of paper that had slipped underneath something else.
And it was a bit that didn’t make it into The Human Behind the Coach. And I thought, well, that can go in the that bin.
Alison Jones: It’s such a lovely… I mean, honestly, if you can do the spreadsheet route, you will save yourself a lot of grief because it’s, you know, you can juggle ideas around at that sort of conceptual level. But if you can’t, then you just work out what works for you and you double down on that and you don’t care what anybody says because you know it’s working for you.
Claire Pedrick: But that only works with certain publishers because not every publisher would have tolerated the late stage at which we came to you and said, you know, the book that we agreed? Well, it isn’t that one.
Alison Jones: But it’s so much better.
Claire Pedrick: But you know, I’ve worked with other publishers where they’d have gone, but actually we’ve, you know, the book you agreed to write is in our sales process and you want to go, but I don’t want to write it anymore.
Alison Jones: Well, it’s one of the reasons that we have this separation, you know, the book needs to be delivered at the point at which we’re about to sell it into the trade, just because that can happen, you know, the draft gives us time to change the color, change the title, change the message before the reps have to go and sort of commit to it.
Because once you’ve done that, you really, it’s not good for anybody. It’s not good for the sales of the book. The publisher loses trust with the booksellers and the reps and yes, if you’re going to make changes, make changes as early as possible.
Claire Pedrick: It’s like, so we bought a new house. This is the house I’m living in now as a new house. I’m like, I didn’t know how you worked in a new house, but they said if you want to change the kitchen, you’ve got to do it before we put the roof on.
Alison Jones: Wow, there you go.
Claire Pedrick: So it’s the same thing, isn’t it?
Alison Jones: Yes, there’s a sort of critical path and you just need to be aware of that and work with the publisher. But I think also, it’s the tail wagging the dog is the phrase, isn’t it? If the publisher’s saying, well, I’m sorry, this is the book that we committed to and it’s in the, you know, the whole point of writing is to move your thinking forward.
And if you’re presenting them with a better book and, you know, your book is… well, I mean, I don’t have to say it myself, it’s superb because there it is, award winning.
Why would you say, no, I don’t want that book. I want the original one that you don’t want to write anymore.
I don’t get that, but there we are. It is what it is. Brilliant.
Claire Pedrick: It’s tricky. But there’s a tension, isn’t there, between flexibility and definiteness.
Alison Jones: There is, and that I think sometimes is the whole art of publishing, actually, and probably life. Yes, Yes.
Are you done with your tips? I’m not sure how many more there were to come?
Claire Pedrick: Oh, I could have more, but that’ll do for now.
Alison Jones: That’ll do for now. Okay, we’ll pause it there, because I would like to get into your recommendations. Recommend us a book, please, Claire.
Claire Pedrick: Recommend a book. Well, it’s usually the book that I’m reading at the moment.
Alison Jones: It’s a recency bias.
Claire Pedrick: I’m a very recency biased, so the book I recommend is Belonging Without Othering.
Alison Jones: Ooh, who’s that by?
Claire Pedrick: By John Powell and Stephen Menendian.
Alison Jones: I have not heard of that.
Claire Pedrick: and, it builds because of course I’m now obsessed with anything about humanness. I’ve just started it, and it’s about human connection and it’s about what do we need to do in human connection to not make somebody else less than we are.
Alison Jones: How fascinating. And I think that, I mean, it’s always been important. This stuff has always been important. And as we accommodate a world where so much of our interaction is going to be with machines rather than with humans, understanding what the value that humans bring and, and how we can maximize.
So, meaning that we can delegate an awful lot to IT, frankly, you know, AI can deal with an awful lot of the grunt work and that’s marvelous.
And how do we really maximize what we’re doing as humans.
Love that. Thank you. Beautiful cover as well.
Claire Pedrick: I know and it’s hard back. Sorry.
Alison Jones: Love a good hardback. Yes. Cloth bound. Lovely. Yes. Jacketed hardback.
If people want to find out more about the work that you do, Claire, and the book, and all the stuff, where should they go?
Claire Pedrick: LinkedIn is the best place to find me. And Claire Pedrick is my name.
Alison Jones: Nice and straightforward, she said bitterly as a Jones. Fantastic.
Claire Pedrick: Sorry.
Alison Jones: No, I mean it’s not your fault. I will put your LinkedIn link on the transcript and everything will be on the notes at extraordinarybusinessbooks.com.
But congratulations again, Claire. I’m so delighted that you won and it was so richly deserved.
Claire Pedrick: Oh, well, and thank you because you were just fab.
Alison Jones: The roar in the room. We had, what, two and a half tables of Practical Inspiration authors. And yes, was terrific. Never forget that moment. Woo! Hairs on the back of the neck.
But thank you for your time today as well. It’s been such fun talking to you.
Claire Pedrick: Well, thank you. And thank you for listening everyone.
