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Helping – Are We More Confused Than Most?

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Much of the training and development world is confused about the difference between coaching and mentoring, and a wide range of other ‘helping’ roles.  I would contend that the world of enterprise support and entrepreneurship is more confused than most.  We label different types of helping intervention carelessly and frequently bastardise and corrupt subtle, powerful and transformational learning relationships.  We deploy mentors and coaches who are poorly trained and frequently lack the right experience to help.  It may come as a horrible truth but a middle manager from a ‘blue chip’ does not necessarily make for a great mentor – especially if  they have not been trained.

And this matters because a good understanding of the type of helping relationship that you are trying to offer is essential to making it work well, to developing your professional practice and to helping the learner to develop a support team that covers all of the right bases.  How to choose and use a team of helpers is perhaps one of the most powerful things we can teach.  If we confuse the type of helping relationships that we provide we are unlikely to make them as effective as they could be – and more importantly we are unlikely to inculcate good learning habits.

So what are the helping roles that we get confused and how can we start the job of clarifying them and improving their efficacy?

Coach – a relationship usually characterised by frequent and intense sessions designed to help the learner to raise their awareness of the current situation, generate options, take decisions and act.  Frequently coaching will involve goal setting and clarification and the development of formal action plans.  Coaches are usually expert in the process of personal development rather than the ‘content’ of what has to be learned.  Successful coaching does depend to a high degree on rapport, personal ‘chemistry’ if you like, so to be most effective it is important that learners are able to choose their preferred coach.  Coaching relationships usually run for months and occasionally years.  However good coaches teach learners to coach themselves effectively and it should be rare for a coaching relationship to extend beyond 12-18 months without the nature of the relationship evolving significantly.

Mentor – A mentor is perceived by the learner to be a senior practitioner in a field that the learner has identified as critical to their own development.  Mentors usually have ‘been there, done that and got the T-shirt’.  This means that it is highly beneficial if the learner is able to identify and recruit mentors (they may have more than one) that they respect and are hungry to learn from.  Appointing mentors to learners unless done with immense care usually results in ineffective mentoring, and means that the learner is denied the opportunity to learn about how to identify, recruit and use mentors.  Mentoring relationships are usually characterised by less frequent but longer meetings (perhaps 2-3 a year).  Mentoring relationship are usually driven by the learner, who takes responsibility for scheduling meetings and developing the agenda.  Learning to chose and use mentors effectively is a relatively advanced skill and is one that shold be explicitly taught.  Similarly it helps tremendously if mentors have had some training in what it means to be  a mentor and to establish some of the boundaries and practices of effective mentoring.  However if learners are encouraged to source their own mentors then mentor training becomes difficult.  In these circumstances it is even more helpful if learners have been effectively trained in choosing and using mentors.  Good mentoring relationship often run over a number of years, if not decades.  However they often have a high failure rate.  Learners have to be prepared to kiss a few frogs in pursuit of a powerful mentor.

Peer – Many learners gain great benefits from peer learning processes where they explore problems and solutions with fellow learners.   Peer learning is characterised by enquiry, reflection and exchange of experiences.  Because there is no ‘expert’ in the relationship peer learning promotes independence and critical thinking.  Again peer learning processes can be significantly improved if those involved are given some basic training in what makes peer learning work.  Buddy systems are a form of peer learning. More advanced forms of peer learning can involve co-counselling, co-coaching and action learning.  Effective peer learning processes, that move beyond support into transformational learning, can be difficult to establish.  However once a learner knows how to use peer learning in their own professional and personal development it becomes a powerful and transformative force in their lives.

Adviser – an adviser typically brings expertise, experience and, if you are lucky, wisdom to bring to bear on a speciifc problem or opportunity.  Learners should be careful about using advisers to help identify problems and opportunities as they are likely to find something in their area of expertise rather than in the learners area of greatest need.  Some advisers will simply solve problems.  Others will teach you how to solve the problem when it crops up again in the future.  If the task is likely to recur then working with an adviser with a strong track record of supporting learning and independence matters.  If the issue is a ‘one off’ then this is much less of an issue.  The role of an adviser is usually short term and project based.

Broker – a good broker, an honest and value adding middleman is a rare beast.  They will help a learner to reflect on their situation and the change they need to bring about and then put together an action plan, including information on sourcing other ‘helpers’ that are required.  Independent, leaner centred brokers are few and far between.  Most brokers are actually tied into the delivery of specific policy goals and objectives of their funders and so learner again should be trained in how to choose and use brokerage services.  Beware the broker who brings government subsidies!  It is tempting to do something because you can get 60% off.  If the intervention is worthwhile, and is likely to have a good return on investment then you should do it.  If ROI is marginal then you should look for other opportunities.   Relationships with brokers are usually short term and very tightly focused on problem solving or the exploitation of opportunities.

Trainer – trainers usually teach specific skills, knowledge and processes.  Trainers are generally driven by a body of content that they wish to impart – a curriculum that they teach.  In general the process is about grafting on more knowledge and skill to an existing base of practice.  It is about gap filling.

Master – the tradition of ‘the master’ has been somewhat lost in modern times – apart from in the martial arts.  A master is a senior practitioner who takes on number of learners in a highly disciplined and structured learning environment.  Masters are usually careful about selecting learners – as they recognise that real learning requires commitment, discipline and passion.  Learning from a master is not an easy option – an any devotee of Kung Fu Panda will know.  Mastery of a skill or discipline usually involves months if not years of disciplined study.  The tradition of mastery involved learners (apprentices in this context) recognising what they really needed to learn and then sub,itting themselves to the discipline of their chosen master.  Masters were all powerful in deciding who they would teach and to be accepted as apprentice was indeed cause for celebration.

My contention is that as a profession we frequently mangle these different types of helping relationship.  We confuse our learners about them as much as we confuse ourselves and we significantly reduce the both effectiveness and the uptake of helping relationships as a result.  We tend to overemphasise the potential of the adviser and the broker (perhaps because these are most successful in terms of chasing outputs) and we significantly undermine the potential of mentoring, peer learning and coaching by failing to invest adequately in professional development and robust service design.

So let’s start to take pedagogy seriously.  Lets develop robust methods of education, and let’s find ways to put the learners in control of their own enterprise education.

Because that really will be a lesson worth learning.

Hunger for Inspiration

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Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I think this offers us some powerful, but largely ignored, clues as to how we should design our enterprise development services.  We need to offer a service that helps people to seek, find and, crucially, act on their inspiration.

Their inspiration – not our policy goals.

Their inspiration – not ‘our’ desire to get ‘them’ off benefits or back into work.

Their inspiration – not our idea of ‘opportunities’ designed to meet employer demands.

Because the reality is that MOST enterprise development services are not designed to inspire.  They are designed to teach people how to commoditise themselves.  How to ‘fit in’ with the needs of the economy.

Take a good, honest look at your services.  Are they really designed to develop the users agenda – or to channel them into ours?

Perhaps this is why we are continually engaging ‘inspirational’ speakers in the false hope that we can somehow put back into our service a missing essence.  An essence that will always be missing until we change the assumptions around which our enteprise services are built.

The cornerstone of a service based on the hunger for inspiration would be a relationship in which users can be open and honest about their hopes and aspirations.  A relationship, not a workshop, or a series of workshops or advice.  A relationship.

A relationship that recognises that development takes time.  That it will feature highs and lows, lapses and relapses.

Because it is only in a relationship, characterised by compassion, competence, respect, belief, optimism, commitment and skill that people will be open and honest about their hopes and dreams and start to get in touch with what inspires them.  It is only in such a supportive relationship that people will really dare to dream and act.  It is I believe only through a relationship that people can really find inspiration and the resources for transformation.

  • So how would we market such a service?
  • Where would we find clients?
  • How would we pay for it?
  • Who would manage it?
  • What might we expect from it in terms of outputs and value for money?

But the big question that always gets asked here is about affordability.  A genuinely personalised service.  Delivered primarily through 121 conversations – isn’t that ridiculously expensive?  Well no its not.  The numbers stack up well in comparison to competing services.

The real challenge here is changing the mindset of service suppliers and commissioners.  Helping them to recognise that our communities are not full of the feckless and ignorant who need to be fixed.

They are full of people seeking inspiration and the power to act effectively on it.

Full of people who would love to become the kind of person that they know they could be.

As soon as we start designing our services around these assumptions we might get some much more positive results.

Interested?

The End of (Enterprise) Education?

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My eldest daughter came home from school last week with something like 10kg of university prospectuses.  She spent much of the week-end browsing the frightening range of courses available. 

And it got me thinking about whether the compulsory education that she has experienced so far, all 13 years of it, have really provided her with an excellent platform for wealth and fulfillment in her adult life.  And the result of my pondering was:

  1. As a premise I believe that education is at its best when it socialises people into the obligations and freedoms of active citizenship, and immunises them against imprisonment by the gilded cages of consumerism.  So why does so much (enterprise) education appear to be about the development of the next generation of employer fodder/entrepreneurs/snake oil sellers?
  2. Is this because we are failing to teach the real meaning of ‘social enterprise’ now that it has become embedded in what Todd Hannula describes as ‘agency led mush’? 
  3. Have we ever properly taught the notion of social enterprise?  Is it really more the the pursuit of ‘enlightened self interest’ in the marketplace?
  4. To release prodigious human energies and good will we must learn how to help people find powerful narratives that give meaning and direction to their lives.  
  5. We must help them to learn about themselves at least as much as we should help them learn about the world outside of them.
  6. We must encourage them to explore what they love and who they can become in pursuit of their potential.
  7. We must educate them to properly understand their own self interest and how this fits with the self interest of others in a mutually sustainable and progressive community. 
  8. We must help them to become experts in using power in pursuit of mutual self interest.
  9. We must help them to build their power in creating the kind of future that they want to see for themselves and for the diverse communities that live on spaceship earth.

Perhaps consideration of these statements might just help us to realise ‘the end of (enterprise) education’.

Why Making It Easy to Start a Business is a Bad Idea

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Not so small fortunes are being invested to encourage people, especially those living or working in areas of deprivation, to start their own businesses or to go self employed.  This makes lots of sense to economists, especially if people were previously ‘economically inactive’ or on benefits.  The ‘tax take’ goes up and the cost to the Treasury in benefit payments goes down.  Result!

So the public sector invests in ‘making it easy’ for people to start a business.  There are dozens of free training sessions and sources of support – many promising to turn business ideas into a reality.

Let me explain why I think making it easy for people to start a business is not necessarily a good idea.  Because when a business fails it usually  leaves a trail of destruction – debt, broken relationships, damaged mental health and occasionally suicide.

I have recently met with several people each of whom is now in a very difficult situation, at least in part, as a result of engaging with ‘business support’ and starting small businesses because it was ‘made easy’.  Because they were ‘encouraged’.  Because they could access ‘soft loans’.  Because they could work with a business adviser who would help them to put together a business plan that ‘worked’.  Each of them is now in debt and in extremely difficult personal circumstances which include:

  • dealing with bailiffs,
  • fighting to hold onto houses,
  • managing depression,
  • doubting their own abilities and
  • fighting to maintain relationships under the tremendous economic pressure.

This is part of the reality that has to be addressed.  Sure there are the success stories and we hear plenty about these as they get used as case studies to encourage the next wave of start-ups.  Small business can be a great way to make a living and a life.  But the ‘dark side’ of small business is very real and needs to be faced up to.  We need to be extremely responsible and cautious in the way we promote it.  It is a double edged sword with potentially massive consequences for wellbeing – both positive and negative. It can be a wonderfully powerful tool for economic and social regeneration.  But like any powerful tool it has to be used with care.

When we ‘make it easy’ for people to start a business it is relatively straightforward to get more business start ups.  However unless we are careful we also get an increase in small business failures and this can wreak havoc.  Not only to the entrepreneurs and their families who are left to manage the consequences, but also to the wider community.  Word soon spreads that enterprise is not such a good thing.  The trend of increasing start up activity is soon reversed as the real experiences of some entrepreneurs filters through.

So perhaps we should make it hard for people to start businesses.  Not by raising artificial barriers and increasing red tape, but by training our business support professionals to be brutally honest about the small business environment.  Success in small business is not about the logic of the business plan but the passion, character and indefatigability of the entrepreneur. Although just about anyone can do it – they need to go in to it with their eyes wide open to what the journey might, and probably will, hold. Someone making an informed decision not to start a business should be celebrated with as much vigour as a new start up.  If there are any choices other than small business perhaps these should be pursued first.

We should perhaps teach enterprise professionals to persuade clients not to get into small business because it is so tough.

‘If there is another way that you can be true to yourself and pursue your dreams please take it. If the only option left to you is to start a small business then so be it. We will help.’

This kind of approach, when well implemented, results in significantly higher survival rates. These high survival rates soon teach others that it can be done – with passion, commitment, skill and hard work.  And although progress on the ‘enterprise agenda’ may initially be slow it will accelerate as the successful entrepreneurs tell their stories and provide local role models.  And on the occasion when it goes wrong the entrepreneur won’t blame the enterprise professionals for ‘encouraging’ them. They will recognise that this is down to them pursuing their dream. Not down to ‘us’ using sticks and carrots to manipulate them in pursuit of a funder’s policy goals.

So instead of investing our money in ‘making it easy’ for people to start a business, we should instead invest in helping them to build their talents and skills, and to craft their vision of the kind of person that they want to become.  We should invest in giving them the skills that they need to create their own futures and to manage their own well being.  We should invest in developing communities that better understand the role of the entrepreneur and know how and why they can support entrepreneurs in their community.

This message is seldom popular.

I have met several policy makers and bureaucrats who have told me that I over dramatise.  That this is not a ‘life or death’ matter. That I am too negative and cynical.  I just wish they would spend some time with me talking to people whose lives have been damaged by the enterprise journey.  And this is not only entrepreneurs that ‘fail’.  I meet many ‘successful’ entrepreneurs who count the cost of their business success in broken relationships with partners and families.  Who feel trapped  by their businesses and robbed of their life.

There is an industry of business support providers who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.  In continuing to provide enterprise workshops with the feelgood factor.  Who rely on a steady flow of aspiring entrepreneurs so that they can tick boxes and claim payments.  They too would rather keep the dark side of enterprise under the carpet as it is bad for business.

But until we adopt an honest and balanced perspective on the nature of enterprise and entrepreneurship we are unlikely to be effective teachers and we will continue to watch potential go to waste.