Coaching with a Toothpick

Coaching for business is about producing immediate gain for the client.  The people I like to work with want to perform at a higher level and realise much more of their potential.  The ways to do this are many and varied and a skilled coach need never be stuck for a way forward.

In essence we could think of an equation of coaching as Performance Achieved equals Personal Potential minus Interference.  So one way of thinking about coaching is to eliminate sources of Interference - particularly those sources that come from limited attitudes, beliefs and ways of thinking.

A few years ago I was on a course with Michael Breen and he gave us an exercise to carry out at lunchtime with a partner.  It was quite a challenging exercise and when I heard the rules a thought popped into my mind, "My goodness, I hope I get a confident partner, I really want to take a back seat on this one - and anyway I'm hungry and I just don't see the point."  Anybody else ever have a little weasel voice popup and wisper in your ear at times, or is it just me?

You see we had been asked to go out onto the streets of London on a Saturday afternoon with a single wooden toothpick - one per team - and trade the toothpick up for something of greater value.  What actually came into my mind was a series of vivid pictures of rejection and humiliation. Who would possibly give me anything of value for a toothpick? 

And you know when the dust settled and I had a partner for the exercise I asked her a simple question. "How do feel about this, Mimi?" 

Her response was a colourful expression of panic and thinly disguised terror.  Our combined team spirit could be summed up as "Oh Sh.." Frankly, neither of us was in a very resourceful state in that moment.  She wanted to team up with another couple and frankly that changed my state instantly. I was not going to fail on this exercise.

We went out onto the street and Michael's instructions to us were percolating to the forefront of my mind.  Simple instructions really.  Remember only to tell the truth, have fun with the exercise (yeh right!) and trust that everything will work out.

Our first port of call was the hotel I was staying and with Mimi listenening I asked for the duty manager, told him with a smile on my face what we were doing and why and he gave us two very flash bathrobes - and allowed us to keep the toothpick.  A miracle indeed. 

We took the toothpick into a series of shops and traded and traded - coming back with a rich bounty of goods. When Mimi saw that I was having fun she wanted to try too and the whole nature of the game changed in our minds as we simply wondered how far we could take this.

We tried stopping people on the street with more mixed results.  After all, the logic of the masses tends to suggest that folk that try to stop you on Oxford Street on a busy Saturday are trying to sell something or convert you to some cult or other.  I started to look for people that I found attractive and success improved. When you think about it, its much easier to maintain a resourceful state when dealing with attraction rather than repulsion.

Since the day with Michael I have used this exercise with groups in the USA and Europe with great success.

What's the real lesson? Well you know how it is.  Often our ability to be resourceful and transform action into a result is limited severely by our attitudes and beliefs.  Sales people unconsciously reduce their results by holding onto beliefs of lack; the product is not good enough, it's too expensive, we don't have a big enough marketing budget and so on.

These silent unconscious beliefs and hundreds of others erode our resourcefulness and limit our results. We adopt a belief in limitation and assume that our perspective is based on fact and logic.

The toothpick lesson is on many levels. 

Telling the truth and only the truth allows us to be coherent. Approaching others in this state they sense that our head and heart are in sync - a silent powerful, authentic resonance.  We are attractive.

The universe is there to support us and the only limits are those we are conditioned to adopt, through, as Miguel Ruiz puts it - the domestication of humans.  We must be careful of our assumptions of lack.  They are an illusion.

We must trust that even though we start with very little - even very little time - there is power and leverage in simple trust without attachment or fear of a result.  In essence it doesn't matter where we start from, persistence and gratitude for what we have is a powerful resource.

The toothpick is  a metaphor for resourcefulness to me. The lessons gained are powerful and challenging to live up to. But that's the human game.

Michael Breen is a Consultant and Master Trainer and NLP innovator based in London.