realisedevelopment.net

Just another WordPress site

New Workshop – Improving as an Enterprise Coach

by

Early Bird Tickets are now available at just £199 (plus booking fee) to join me for a one day workshop in Leeds called Improving as an Enterprise Coach.  The workshop will be held on June 9th and will run from 09.00 to 17.00.

You can book your place here – http://enterprisecoach.eventbrite.com/

What Will We Do?

This one day workshop introduces a model of enterprise coaching that takes you from making initial contact with individuals and groups on the enterprise agenda through to enabling them to make real progress and managing a professional and ethical exit strategy.

The workshop will provide practical help with:

  • Making Initial Contact
  • Gaining Entry – Getting an Invitation to Help
  • Contracting – Setting ground rules for the helping relationship
  • Collecting Data on the Enterprising Goal
  • Generating Options and Making Decisions
  • Making and Implementing Plans
  • Managing Your Exit – Promoting Independence

It will help to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your work as an enterprise coach.

It will also provide you with a framework for managing your own professional development as an Enterprise Coach.

Who Should Attend?

The event will help anyone who has to help others with their enterprise journey.  You may be a business adviser, an enterprise coach or act as a business mentor in further or higher education.

The workshop is relevant to any level of experience – as long as you are working to help others on their enterprise journey.

Some Testimonials

“Mike Chitty is one of the UK’s leading practitioners in design, development and provision of enterprise and entrepreneur coaching and support. Over the last ten years, from before he was a groundbreaking CEO of BLU, my organisations have been the beneficiary of Mike’s work. I still regularly read and learn about his contributions and programmes which are proven, practical and above all highly rated by the clients in making the UK a better place to start and run your own enterprise. We have a long way to go in the UK before we can proud of our enterprise and entrepreneurship offer but Mike’s work will get us there faster. Everyone I have recommended him to in the past has been very pleased that I did so.” – Tony Robinson, Founder & Executive Director (CEO), SFEDI Limited

“The enterprise coaching training was excellent. The subject matter covered theory and included practical application, it was thought provoking. It challenged my perception of my coaching style which I had become comfortable with, and tested my limits in terms of acceptance.  It provided a number of tools which I was then able to use in a positive way with my clients. I would recommend the course for continuing professional development. Mike is a great communicator and has a wealth of knowledge of enterprise coaching which he imparts in an innovative and thought provoking way.” – Barbara Morton – Enterprise Gateway Director  – SEEDA

“Mike is an expert in community development & a coach/trainer/ consultant of the highest quality. He challenges individual and organisational perceptions on regeneration issues and is among those leading the way. Looking forward to working with him again immensely.” – Simon Paine – Enterprise Gateway Director – SEEDA

Getting to the Nub of Things

by

Many coaches consistently fail to get to the point where their client is really going to tell them anything worth listening too.   They rarely get to the nub of things.

The conversation is often a pretence where both parties say the things they need to say in order to satisfy their respective bureaucracies with little or no real intention of any transformation taking place.   They play the game and keep the scores.

Many ‘enterprise coaches’ are little more than glorified sales people for the enterprise fairytale and act as modern day pressgangs to fill workshops and provide a ‘continual source of referrals to the mainstream’ which is neither resourced nor trained to deal with them properly.

So much talent and potential is lost because we rush its development and plug it into systems designed to provide management with outputs rather than provide people with a real chance of transforming their lives.  We put people into systems instead of into potentially transformational relationships.

Getting to the point where we can have really powerful, transformational conversations takes time, real skill and a lot of trust.  This is the work of the enterprise coach.

So what is at the nub of things?  What are the kinds of conversations that transform lives?  In my opinion they are conversations about identity, about being someone that you can face in the mirror every morning.  About developing passi0n, commitment, resilience and perseverance

Helping that Helps…

by

I have been thinking some more about ‘helping styles that help’.  Many services that purport to ‘help’ appear to be helpful on the surface, but often leave clients more dependent on experts to help them with decision-making in the future, rather than less. We achieve a net loss in ‘enterprise’ rather than a net gain. Or we deliver the bureaucratic requirements of our service while leaving things substantially unchanged.

Every interaction offers us possibilities to help or hinder the development of clients (and ourselves). For some years now I have trained a person centred approach based on 4 styles of intervention intended to help advisers/coaches to think about how they can use every interaction to both strengthen their relationship with the client and to move the change process along:

  1. acceptant (getting them the client talk and to acknowledge feelings and emotions as well as facts)
  2. catalytic (introducing models, theories and concepts that help the client to see the wood for the trees, to recognise patterns and ‘make their own sense’ of the information they have available to them
  3. confrontational (challenging the client when words and actions seem to lack coherence – when they appear to be acting against their own self interest)
  4. prescriptive (telling clients what they should or should not do – a very common subset of this is called ‘veiled prescription’ for example ‘Have you thought about calling Business Link?’ which is really a prescription disguised as a question.

These four styles are then used in conjunction with what I call the enterprise coaching cycle. This starts with initial contact/gaining entry (winning the permission of the client to help; crossing the threshold at which the client ‘invites’ us to work with them on exploring options and plans). It then goes through contracting, data collection and option generation phases (all led by the client with the coach in the role of facilitator in nearly all occasions), option selection, planning, implementation and then either exiting or re-contracting for a further cycle of support.

In practice many of the people I train recognise that their ability to help is limited by the extent to which they can effectively ‘gain entry’. They are often not trusted as being ‘on the side of the client’. Gaining entry is a challenge because as it cannot be done on the basis of expertise and power (the usual starting point?) but on the basis of trustworthiness and intent.  Without gaining entry we can go through the motions of a helping relationship and tick most of the right boxes but nothing substantially shifts.

When working with coaches and advisers I have had to do quite a lot of work to decrease the amount of prescription that goes on and to increase the amount of acceptant work. This is usually resisted until advisers experience the style helping them with one of their own real life challenges. Even then they will habitually revert back to advising each other – even when they know from personal experience that ‘prescription’ is often almost useless as a helping style! There is a challenge of learning new techniques and skills, but the main challenge is unlearning old habits!

There is also often a resistance in case what the client really wants to work on reflects neither the coaches’ expertise nor the remit of their project.

I have also done quite a lot of work with advisers and coaches on ‘self directed learning’ which draws heavily on reflective practice techniques and helps them to build personalised learning support mechanisms. One of the unintended consequences of the standards based approach to professional development has been emphasis on the collection and collation of evidence that criteria are met rather than genuine reflection and the creative development of professional practice.

Another challenge has been to get advisers/coaches to be genuinely client centred, rather than centred on either the solutions that they have up their sleeves (workshops that have been commissioned and need filling, managed workspaces that need the same, existing services provided by ‘partners’) or the outcomes that draw down their funding (steering people towards business start ups, VAT registrations or training places – because they count as ‘success’ in the terms of the funder).

Working on the front-line of service delivery leads to challenges further up the supply chain. This includes helping service managers/designers to balance the tensions between client centredness and outcomes that funders demand. In my experience this balance is nearly ALWAYS struck on the side of the funder rather than the client which often dilutes the potential of the service as we cannot gain entry if we are more concerned in gaining outcomes for the funder than helping the client on their agenda. There is also the challenge of helping funders to recognise that they are much more likely to achieve their outcomes if they fund person centred support rather than policy centred ‘advice and guidance’. Work is required in all these areas if we are to make a real shift in the system and its efficacy.

I am not sure if this stream of consciousness will add anything to the analysis of the challenges in developing enterprise coaching as an impactful and cost-effective practice, but I hope it shows that I have perhaps some of the pieces of the puzzle that may help to shift things a little at both theoretical and practical levels, both at the front-line of service delivery and the design and management of services.

If any of this may be relevant to your work then please do give me a shout.

Jumping on the Enterprise Coaching Bandwagon

by

Interesting to see how much effort is starting to go into selling qualifications and training to the enterprise coaching market.

SFEDI Enterprise are launching their Endorsed Award in Enterprise Coaching and ILM are pitching their coaching qualifications (other suppliers are available).

I am  not sure that now is the right time to be pursuing qualifications.  Of course it makes sense for the employers to have qualified staff, and it makes sense for coaches to have qualifications, but does it really serve the customer?  Will it support the reflective practice and development which our nascent profession demands?

Do we not risk converging too quickly on tried and tested methodologies?  On embedding lowest common denominator practices?  Do we not put the focus too early on ‘proving our competence’ rather than reflecting on and developing our practice?

Let’s avoid the bittersweet seduction of qualifications and instead pursue the development and recognition of methodologies that work in our communities, with our customers in our contexts.  Let’s avoid the one size fits all mentality and lets encourage innovation and creativity in pursuit of our full potential.

Enterprise for All – Some Reflections

by

Enterprise for All was a one day conference organised on behalf of emda by Unleashing Enterprise with a mixture of key note presentations and workshop sessions.

A few things really struck me about it.  From the key note speakers and a tour of the exhibition hall it was clear just how much of a grip business and economic development interests have on the enterprise agenda.   Enterprise really IS all about business.  Business start ups, business growth and business education.

Except of course enterprise has relevance in many, perhaps all, spheres of life.  It relates to parenting, cello playing, footballing and planning.  To mathematics, politics and dance.  An enterprising approach helps with business, yes, but it helps with so much more as well.  Because an enterprising person is someone who has a theory about the direction ‘in which progress lies’, and has the confidence, strategies and skills that they need to pursue it.  By conflating enterprise with business we do it a disservice.  We alienate many who should be our natural allies, and we repel some who we should attract.

Business is a great vehicle for teaching enterprise – but so too is sport, art, history and drama.  In Bolivia, enterprise education has been conducted largely through the power of classical music.

I was deeply surprised when another  speaker said that ‘Business is Easy’.  This has not been my experience.  Business is hard.  And small business is really hard.   There have been times when it has been so difficult that I have though it must be me doing it wrong.  And I talk with some of my closest confidantes about my fears and they tell me ‘No – it’s not you, it IS hard’.  One mistake and your reputation is shot.  It can take over your life and ruin your relationships with friends and family.  It can leave you depressed and in debt.  It can also be the most wonderful platform for personal development and a fulfilled life.  It really is a double-edged sword!

I have never met an entrepreneur, until yesterday, who has told me that business is easy.  This is the ‘Enterprise Fairytale’.  I would agree that it is relatively easy to theorise about business.  To develop ideas, to refine them and to think about business plans. To get advice from business experts and to act on it, or not.  All this is quite easy.  On paper, it certainly isn’t differential calculus. But in practice it is something else.  It is easy to imagine yourself juggling, or being an astronaut or a pop star.  Actually doing it is another thing.  It is NEVER easy!   Good enterprise education needs to help learners to recognise the ‘double edged’ nature of the sword and recognise that a career in business will  not be a glorious extension of a 2 day facilitated workshop held in the comfort of the  college hall.  It just won’t be.  Good enterprise education nurtures the resilience, character, determination and commitment that is required to succeed in business or any other challenge that life throws our way.  It teaches the importance of craft and skill, of persistence and commitment.  And knowing when might be the right time to give up.

And the strange thing is that in my experience, the more honest we are about the challenges of entrepreneurship, the emotional, analytical, physical and financial challenges involved the more likely we are to get good, enduring entrepreneurs.  The more we help people to recognise how hard it is to leave the comfort zones and try something different the more likely they are risk it.

I was very struck when another keynote speaker told us about a primary school class that wanted to sell him a presentation.  An 8-year-old offered to sell  him the copyright!  Now I am all for educating young people about the importance of intellectual property, but at 8?  Is this really what enterprise education should be for such young children?  A Primary Business Curriculum?

Now this is a contested area.  No-one holds the truth on this.  In enterprise education we have little consensus on curriculum, assessment or methodology.  But I know that if my 8-year-old had come home from school telling me that they had been learning about copyright I would be seriously questioning the schools priorities for primary education.  I have witnessed primary classes being taught the difference between tangible and intangible brands. And I was once approached in a  Leeds hotel by a girl of 6 or 7 wearing a badge that said ‘Sales Executive’.  She knew exactly what margin she would make if she could sell me the beetroot plant that she was brandishing.  Are we really introducing appropriate content at the right time into the classroom?  Do we deserve the respect of our colleagues as educators when we teach this in the primary school?  I am not so sure.

Throughout the day I was approached by a number of people who made very similar comments.  ‘Mike, I agree with you wholeheartedly, but we only get paid for outcomes related to business.  I know it isn’t right, but if that is what the funders are paying for that is what we have to provide. It is what the system demands’.   I love the irony of this.  ‘We teach enterprise by following instructions’.  But I think it points to a wider challenge for the policy makers and the funders.  Does this ‘head on’ approach to entrepreneurship really work?

The title of the conference was also telling – Unleashing Enterprise.  Much of the socialisation of young people is all about putting the leash on them.  We value compliance, academic achievement, team playing and conforming.   Those that dare to see things differently, to do things differently, to paddle their own canoe, tend to be bought back into line, or expelled.   And it is not only enterprise that we struggle to unleash.  Creativity, leadership, innovation, potential…all of these have been subject to the leash fetish.

I have not done much on the enterprise conference circuit.  I have worked in community centres, village halls and at kitchen tables helping individuals and communities to develop their own approach to a more enterprising future.    It was a new experience for me. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone – and as always happened I learned a lot!

We may not be Mother Glasgow but perhaps we too are clipping wings?
In the second city of the Empire
Mother Glasgow watches all her weans
Trying hard to feed her little starlings
Unconsciously she clips their little wings
…
Among the flightless birds and sightless starlings
Father Glasgow knows his starlings well
He wont make his own way up to heaven
By waltzing all his charges in to hell
Perhaps it is time for a more inclusive, person centred and responsive approach to enterprise.  Where development is not so tightly wedded to GDP but instead to a freedom to develop our capabilities.  To develop our abilities to live the kinds of lives that we want to lead.
Or perhaps we should just keep on ‘living the vida loca’ and hoping  that we can make it last.