Let's talk about the most underrated skill of coaching

Running a coaching practice is honestly just one decision after another! And most advice about decision-making assumes there’s a right answer - if you just think harder, plan better, or get clearer - you’ll land on it.

But what if the real work isn’t finding the answer…it’s expanding your capacity to hold nuance?

In this episode, I’m exploring how our work as coaches and business owners is full of nuance, but this is a rarely commented-on skill! If you want to know why you feel overwhelmed by decisions and why you might be seeking out the wrong answers, this is a fun conversation. 

We’ll look at:
 – why our familiar ways of thinking feel so compelling 
 – how different ways of making meaning create different kinds of decisions
 – and what becomes possible when you stop trying to solve problems - for yourself and clients!

***

Apply now for Ripen www.saspetherick.com/ripen 

Join The Coaching Well for Group Supervision here

FREE Private Podcast Bold not Beige: Why your coaching isn’t selling and what to do about it  here

Website: www.saspetherick.com | Instagram:  @saspetherick

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello and welcome to Courage and Spice for Coaches, where you build your self-belief and your business in under 30 minutes a week. I'm Sass Petherick, your host. I'm a coach, supervisor, and unapologetic self-belief nerd. My mission is simple. I want your coaching practice to feel like a right fucking bitch. Let's go. Well, I'm so happy to be here with you, and I want to chat about one of my favourite topics. But first, I need to send a big loving shout out to Jane, who is in Ripen, who has inspired this podcast episode. Jane and I were having a chat on Voxa last week about some decisions she's making to just tighten up her client enrolment process, and she's thinking about either using a system for this or maybe handing over to an assistant. So she'd mapped out the whole process where people find her, how they register their interest in coaching with her, what their enrolment process is like, like how they book and pay, all of it. And you know, I highly recommend doing this by the way. I think um it's super helpful. But basically, we ended up with just a series of decisions that Jane needs to make. And you know, I found myself saying with a bit of a chuckle, you know, there really is no right way to do any of this, but I think do choose because this is this is the gig, right? Running a business is just one bloody decision after another, right? And I think one of the things we don't talk about enough is the ability to trust your choices when there's no right answer. You know, what I loved about my conversation with Vicki Schilling last week is how she talked about this, like making a decision without all the information, without any guarantees, and just keep going, knowing that there will always be a trade-off. And this kind of brings me to the most underrated skill of coaching, which is being okay with nuance. Like I genuinely think this is one of the most underrated and important skills that we can develop as coaches and business owners, because this whole gig, all of this work, is full of nuance. And I think so much of online business and you know marketing in particular really tries to kind of squeeze the nuance out of everything. We go very all or nothing, very simple, and I think this carries over into how we coach, how we believe we should be running our businesses. I think it's really bloody detrimental, in my opinion. So, this is all to say being able to hold more nuance is going to serve you so well as a coach, as a business owner, as a human, just navigating the polychrises of our world right now. And because so much of what we see of other coaches is kind of mediated through social media, which hates nuance and complexity, by the way, it means we hardly ever see this in action or really get kind of into this in a deep way. So let's talk about it for the next 20 minutes or so. My hope is you're gonna get so many benefits from this episode, and I'm I'm chuffed to be chatting about it. So thank you, Jane, thank you, Ricky. First thing I wanted to get into before we talk about all the sort of practical application of this stuff is to really acknowledge that we struggle with all of us, we struggle with nuance so much, and I think that's important to say because I see being able to hold nuance as a skill that you can develop. But I think it's very easy to say, well, I'm just not someone who thinks that way, and I would just say, look, none of us are, our brains are not wired for this. Um, and there's some really interesting psychological and neuroscience research that support this. That you know, first that that our our thinking minds are wired to conserve energy, so we use these things called heuristics, which are mental shortcuts to make quick decisions, and you know, our natural way of thinking is about being fast and easy, right? Sort of rewalking those neural pathways that we've always worked walked. That is much more efficient than trying to hold a lot of complexity. And there is this this book called Thinking Fast and Slow. It's about uh Daniel Kahneman's research, and he talks about having two systems of thinking. Ironically, he simplifies everything, right? But I think this is a helpful way of looking at this. And for Kahneman, system one is about that fast, simple, maybe intuitive type thinking. It's pretty instinctive and therefore it can feel almost automatic. And then in system two, the sort of slower thinking is more deliberate, more nuanced. He calls it rational thinking, but I don't think that's necessarily true. But I do think his book is quite helpful for revealing how our minds tend to be tripped up by thinking errors and confirmational bias, you know, even when we believe we're being really logical. He also gives you some gives us some quite practical techniques for like how to more intentionally sort of slow our thinking down and engage in that second layer of thinking. I think it's useful. I would also say, as a developmental coach, I'm pretty steeped in the research around just how ambiguity and complexity triggers a shitload of discomfort in most of us, right? Like developmental coaching is rooted in the psychology of our mental models, like how we make meaning, what how do we understand ourselves, other people, and the world? And so much of the research around developmental psychology suggests that it's not just what we think that shapes our decisions, but the structure of how we make meaning. Like as we look at things in different ways, we're growing qualitatively different ways of interpreting what's happening to us, how we see other people, how we understand the world. So developmental psychology suggests there's sort of three layers to our thinking. And the first layer is when we're still forming our sense of self, like our decision making tends to be more externally referenced. So we're usually seeking approval or certainty. We we want some clear rules, right? Like just tell me what to do. Now, if we allow ourselves to keep growing, we start to see, oh, that's actually a bit limited, and it means that I'm always looking for someone else to tell me what to do. And so we become more internally authored, where we're guided by our own values and principles and a sense of self-trust. And eventually we can grow into this sort of third level, which is more systemic, more fluid ways of thinking, where we're able to hold multiple perspectives, we're a bit more comfortable with paradox and complexity. None of these stages are right or wrong, right? They're all kind of intelligent responses shaped by our development, but they do lead to very different kinds of decisions. So developmentally, decision making isn't just about information, it's about the lens we're using to interpret that information. And I think that one of the things that we know from this psychology, from the neuroscience, is that most of us have a deep craving for clear, definite answers, even when they are not the most accurate one. Right? So, and I think this gives us a real clue about things like the rise in populist politics, right? As the world gets more complex, steeped in these polychrises, we crave simple answers, even if we know they aren't right. Like having an answer feels sort of safer, it feels more content to us than trying to hold a lot of ambiguity, nuance, complexity. So it I think it's helpful to see that our brains are always going to be seeking that closure. That closure is more comfortable than the both and, then I have to decide, and what if it's wrong, or my choice inconveniences other people, right? And I think that's why, for so many business owners, the idea of just tell me the strategy is so freaking appealing, and I think holding the nuance, learning how to hold more nuance to be with both and is such an underrated skill. Because when you can say to yourself, actually, I'm intentionally holding this ambiguity, I'm seeing the both and, I can see the multiplicity of options with the situation, and I kind of trust myself to figure this out. What happens is we move into a qualitatively different way of being in our work with our clients, running our businesses, and just being in the world. Like we get to dip our toes into this massively sophisticated way of thinking, which is the ability to hold more than one truth at once. Now, developmental psychology suggests that less than 40% of adults actually develop the skill in a meaningful way. And I think one of the ways that this shows up for so many thoughtful coaches is holding these two truths that we both love our coaching work with clients, like that feels like a calling, and we feel exhausted or overwhelmed by being a business owner. Like I think those two truths can coexist and they take up a lot of mental attention. And so we tend to pick one or the other. Like, we'll find ways to show up and serve for free on social media in networking groups or coaching circles, and we kind of don't prioritize the ways that we maybe could make a couple of pivots and be actively marketing and selling to create a business, right? Or we get so caught up in the business development and making money from this calling that we create a business model that doesn't reflect the ways we actually want to do this work, like having a big sexy mastermind, but you're craving the intimacy and spaciousness of one-to-one work, for example. And I think this tension between the the either-or is why we do things like you know, burn down a business or massively change our niche or just reduce our prices or even invest in more coaching training, right? Maybe even just give up. All of these responses make total sense, but it's likely that these options don't touch the real issue, which is can you hold more nuance? Because all of these actions will give you a breather, right? They're gonna feel like an exhale because whatever you choose to do when you focus on the one answer, it lulls us into this false sense of safety and control, right? Like, oh, I know the problem, I'll go fix it. Instead of the more complex work of, well, actually, this problem is nuanced, and there are pieces that I really love, and there are pieces that are exhausting me, and I might have to move this around, and it's gonna feel uncomfortable to sort of solve for this. Like, that's probably truer than let me go fix the problem, but it does create more discomfort, and so I just want to say, like, being with nuance isn't as easy as it might appear, right? It's not just as simple as being like, hold more nuance, expand your thinking, and business improves, right? I think we actually have to treat this as a skill, as something that we can improve on and grow into and trust that we can learn how to be more adaptive and how we respond to complicated questions and problems. And so for me, this really is about being more of a steward of how we think. And I think the massive irony here is that as coaches, this is one of the primary jobs that we do all the time with our clients, right? So if a client comes to you with a very urgent problem they want solving, right? My friendship is exhausting me, I'm just gonna end it. Can you help me to figure out what to say to end it? Right? They they just want to solve this exhaustion of this friendship. Now, to me as a coach, I think one of the things that's absolutely required of me to really give value and hold my clients in their growth rather than be seduced by a seemingly urgent goal is to sit in the nuance of this challenge with the client. So, my first question would be say more, right? Like, tell me more about the situation. Because when we open that conversation up to allow in more nuance, more complexity, we're not going to be as easily seduced by the client's urgent need for relief from this discomfort, right? Like they just want the answer, they want to figure this out, end the discomfort, and end the feelings that are coming up. I think when we can sit with that and hold it, we are doing something really sophisticated. And and my sense is that so many of us take this for granted. Like when we meet a client, we often assume that the client already knows this, and so we kind of do that first stage thinking together, the fast, intuitive, get to the answer thinking, and then the client gets to feel like, oh my god, great, now I've got action to take, and we can get to feel like, yay, they got a result. But I think this is often a missed opportunity because one of the things that coaching conversations do is open up a more spacious inquiry. I can't even tell you if less than 40% of us can hold these multiple truths at once, I can guarantee alongside the kind of emotion of an urgent challenge, your client has not done that. And so if we slow down and look at the multiple truths that are coexisting for this client at this time, instead of being, you know, pretty keen to get to the answer, any answer, something is going to open up that will take your conversation to a different level. So, you know, one of the what I believe is a really helpful belief that I try to hold with clients is that the problem has intelligence. So whatever challenge the client is bringing to this session has intelligence. Like, and we don't have to fix anything when we know that it has its own intelligence. We are more interested in understanding what's here so that we can address that the right problem, like we solve the right problem. I think honestly, if all you ever do is this, in my opinion, you are offering a different level of coaching skill. Because look, we've all thought, I certainly have, if this client would just do what I say, right? Or equally I've been on the other side, like if someone would just tell me what to do. And again, of course that's more comfortable, of course our brains like that better, and I don't think it is ever really that simple. Arguably, I'm not sure that this is ever really coaching, right? Like, it's more about like what do I an invitation, what do I need to look at here? What can I do to challenge my way of seeing this? What can I do to allow a little more space to let in some nuance here? So when we're in that place of urgent sort of first order thinking, as Kahneman would call it, we're not zooming out and seeing the big picture and then coming to a conclusion, right? And saying, Oh, okay, this would actually support my growth. What we're doing is zooming way in and picking whatever feels like the most definitive answer now, even if it's not helpful or even accurate, just because we want that relief. And so great coaching looks like being able to hold that, to hold that nuance and present clients with some options, slow it all down, and I think what this also allows us to do, and something I think about all the time, is my clients as a whole person, right? So my clients are self-employed coaches, thoughtful coaches, but I'm not just thinking about you as a coach, you as a business owner. Um, I'm thinking about the the nuance of you as a whole human outside of your business. I'm thinking about your season of life, your capacity, your vision for what you want to create, things like that. And you know, this is where a real kind of ability to hold that nuance comes in. So, just to give you a working example, um, I was in session with a coach last week who is preparing to launch a group program later this year, something she's been dreaming of for years, and we're just figuring out that launch strategy and one that's going to work for her in this season of life, where she's also working part-time, and she has a couple of big life events coming up, and that includes three weeks within that launch period where she'll be out, and so all or nothing thinking, like approaching this without taking into account all that nuance would be like, well, cancel everything else and focus solely on this, or just do it next year, right? But we spent a whole session letting all kinds of nuance be part of the strategy, and we've looked at how she likes to market and what would give her the best bang for her kind of capacity buck right now that she feels excited about. Like, what can we do now? What do we not want to do? So there is no proven one approach to a launch, right? It's all about how we do this with everything else for this particular person in the season of life in a way that she's excited about. Now, you could just flip this script the other way, like someone else might be like, Oh, I've got this going on in my life, and this and this, and equally we might decide, okay, look, this is not your first radio. You do have an approach that you've used before for launching your program. What if we just tweak that? You might actually see a way through with less time, less reinvention, all of that. So, I think all of this is to say there is no one right way, and when you can flex to the client, oh, everything's Starts to breathe, right? And sometimes our clients will feel overwhelmed by the complexity of decisions, of course, like balancing your goals with your beliefs and your capacity and your current life circumstances. Like, oh, that is complex. And I think it can feel frustrating because the client might be like, oh god, that's so much to think about. I just want to know what I'm supposed to do. And I am like, oh, I so understand that. But I want you to also see that if you're not attending to that complexity, it doesn't go away. Like just because we're not considering your capacity or life season when you're planning a launch, it doesn't mean that that capacit capacity or life season is changing, right? It's still there. It just means we didn't consider it. So what we've done is just make your life harder, you know. So all to say, I have good news and bad news, and it's the same news, which is there are no right ways to any of this being a self-employed coach gig, right? For every business owner who swears by planning and batching content, you'll find dozens more who love to wing it and just download the messages as they come, right? For everyone who loves to launch, there's an evergreen program. And this can feel like you're just drowning in a sea of too much information, and it makes us paralyzed often. We feel just overwhelmed, and so we freeze. But we can also decide to see this as utterly liberating, like your path to success has no signposts. Your coaching business gets to be built around what feels safe in your body, what fulfills your soul, what lights up your heart, and the combination of strategy and self-belief that makes it sustainable and successful. And so I think the best way to do this is to be more intentional, to allow for all of that nuance. And this will require some deeper level thinking, asking yourself better questions. Two I have for you now. What is the coaching practice that you would love to lead? Like, go into all the nuance and detail of that. And the second question, why don't you have it yet? Like both of these questions are gonna reveal a lot about the way you are thinking, and this is why I think having some support to help you do this stewarding of your thinking can be so freeing because it helps you get to like the best answer instead of just the simplest, easiest, or most familiar one. If you let it running your business, running your coaching business will take you to a deeper level of thinking, and you will feel like a different person when you do that. Like I think when you can lead your business knowing you have choices and agency, and you know it's possible to get the results you want, then everything starts to feel like it's humming. Like you actually feel like your business is supporting you as deeply as you support your clients. So, look, nuance is the queen of this. I truly believe it's a game changer. I think it's one of the most underrated skills of any coach, and it's one of those things that's kind of hard to put into a six-second reel or talk about in a pretty general way. So, massive yes to longer form content like podcasts that allow us to dive into more complexity, more nuance, always. I hope this has helped you to kind of see where you might be able to play with nuance. Thank you always for listening. I hope you have a wonderful week. Personally, I can't stand ads and podcasts. A couple of ways you can really support courage and spice for coaches is to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And if you have a moment, leave a five-star review and a note about why you enjoy listening in. This genuinely helps more thoughtful coaches find the podcast, and it means so much to me too. Thanks so much for listening in. I'll see you next time.