Rho Sandberg (MCC) joins Brendon Le Lievre and they talk about how child dreams influence us as adults, state changes, the importance of play and having fun with coaching, accessing whole body intelligence and the process of achieving MCC status.
Rho also discusses an approach to contracting where you as the coach can add more value without doing more work and how she plans to use coaching to tackle some of the worlds big problems.
You can contact Rho through LinkedIN or the Global Coaching Institute.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Brendon Le Lievre: Hello, and welcome to the Coach Conversations podcast, the podcast where coaches have conversations about all things coaching. I’m Brendon Le Lievre and today I’m joined by Rho Sandberg. Welcome Rho.
[00:00:14] Rho Sandberg: Hi, Brendon. How are you?
[00:00:16] Brendon Le Lievre: Well, thank you. How are you?
[00:00:19] Rho Sandberg: I’m good. I’m good. There’s an amazing storm outside my windows so I’m watching the rain fall.
[00:00:26] Brendon Le Lievre: It’s just just come over raining here as well. So enjoy that. Good for the ducks. Right. People complain about the rain. They say, oh, that drought that we were in was so enjoyable. Wasn’t it? So the rain is good. Uh, what’s been happening with you recently?
[00:00:46] Rho Sandberg: Well, I’ve moved to Canberra, so I’ve recently upended life then and made a bit of a shift, same country still, but, um, it’s been, it was fascinating watching myself go through the process of what parts of my life to bring in what parts of my life to leave.
So. Yeah, fresh new beginnings for me as the year starts.
[00:01:12] Brendon Le Lievre: What did you, how did you make that decision? What do you bring? What do you leave? What was the guiding principle there?
[00:01:20] Rho Sandberg: I actually, well, during COVID actually, I’ve been working with, um, living quite simply. I lived in the country for a lot of the time during COVID and, um, I found that I needed very little, so. I sort of got in the car, the feels cheap up here. I go in the car with my handbag, my laptop, and, um, last thing, we’ll say a lot of clothes and that was pretty well what I needed. And then this last time, when I went back, I bought back lots of books and, um, things that will support me to start doing some writing this year.
But, but largely I’ve left a lot behind. So, um, and that feels really liberating.
[00:01:59] Brendon Le Lievre: Not missing anything yet.
[00:02:02] Rho Sandberg: Well, not yet, but I’ve stopped writing lists of the little things I should pick up when I go back,
[00:02:11] Brendon Le Lievre: We moved nearly 12 months ago now, and there’s just some things we’ve been needing to do. And I’ve obviously had a bit of time recently to, to take care of those things, which has been nice.
It’s been really fulfilling actually to get those things and simple things, like move a garden shed or build a garden bed or paint a hallway. Isn’t that nice that that’s done?
[00:02:37] Rho Sandberg: Yeah. Well, I’m living in an apartment for the first time, but I’m on the 11th floor. And so I’ve developed this incredible relationship with the clouds.
Like, um, I feel eye to eye, with the clouds. I was speaking to somebody about this morning. It’s like a lot of the day-to-day now the traffic at the intersection below. It’s all, I’ve got a real sense of separation and detachment and space from it. And I’m also here in Canberra I’ve got really long distance views into the mountains and the lake, below me. So I’m relating more to the physical world and less to the minutiae of the day-to-day. It creates an interesting, um, psychological space. So I’m planning to make the most of it.
[00:03:27] Brendon Le Lievre: How is that showing up for you at the moment.
[00:03:31] Rho Sandberg: Well, not be a part of, of the time of year we’re in January too, but I’m certainly like in a much more strategic space.
And I think I’m getting ready to domore writing this year and just. You know, a feeling what’s important and what space do I want to write from, but what do I think are the really key messages for, for now?
[00:03:55] Brendon Le Lievre: And what’s the format you’ll be writing in?
[00:03:58] Rho Sandberg: Oh, I think it’ll be a book. I think it’ll be a book.
And, um, there’s always a couple of books. This is my dilemma. So I need to ground ground the first piece that I think. Um, in the first instance, I’ll be, I’m really writing about the process oriented coaching methodology, the bones of that. So we can, we can make that more accessible and it will replace the guide, um, that, and the texts that the students have.
Um, but then longer term, I really am interested in writing a piece about leadership and, um, The times we find ourselves in at the moment and what’s really striking me is, um, you know, this notion of compassion, how do we have compassion for ourselves, and compassion for people in leadership roles. So, um, there’s two pieces, there’s two pieces there.
One is more known and the other, I think, is going to take me on much more of a journey of discovery. So I’m probably more frightened of it, and that’s whyI want to do the simple one first.
[00:05:11] Brendon Le Lievre: Compassion for self and compassion for others, which is the one that you’re more frightened of?
[00:05:23] Rho Sandberg: That’s an interesting question because I meant I was frightened of the writing the bigger book that the less explored territory, but I have to remind myself to have compassion for self. You know, it’s a constant, it’s a constant dialogue. And I think I’m noticing at the moment that when I hear myself well, I’ll see myself bring compassion to self.
It feels so sweet and it feels so needed. And I think that’s partly where the notion of writing the book about this has, has come from and just, how do we hold ourselves in these incredible timesyou’re living in? What about, what about you? If we think about compassion for self and compassion for others.
[00:06:18] Brendon Le Lievre: Yeah. I mean, it shows up in so many, so many different ways and you know, one that small example, you know, we’ve, I’ve got young, young children and doing a lot of work online and other people have cats dogs, pets, you know, whatever, come and visit and show a lot of compassion to them. And in fact, it, it sort of helps I think at times around, well, what is, who are they? What are they, how long have you had them? You know, how old are they, if they’re kids, et cetera. Um, and yet when my boys show up sometimes the inner monologue is not as friendly and it’s, that’s not professional and you should be managing that differently.
And there’s all this self and role when, what have you sort of gets all overlapped and, and yet, you know, they’re two of the things that I’m most, most proud of achieving in my life as well. I should want to show them off and I do want to show them off. It’s just around, you know, when and where and how, and people are always very forgiving when they do show up.
In fact, they want to say hello and talk to them
[00:07:28] Rho Sandberg: yeah, and there’s this sense that, that it’s a disruption or, or a disturbance, but in fact, they might be the very thing that’s needed. That quality of innocence, that quality of curiosity, or even the neediness of kids. Right. You know? So like what, when the kids show up, what is it that they bringing in
[00:07:53] Brendon Le Lievre: and just their curiosity as well around what is happening and who you talking to and how does it work?
I think it’s, it’s been kind of nice as well as a dad in particular, for them to be able to see a little bit more of what I do, as opposed to me going to another building and not being at home for eight hours or whatever, and then returning to the house and then not really having that ability to comprehend or like they know I go to work, but what really is work and what am I doing?
And so it’s been kind of nice to be able to introduce them to that a little bit and to be around a little bit more and see what’s happening with them or, or drop them off at school or pick them up from school or, you know, and, and do more of that Dad stuff that I’m super passionate about being able to do. It’s that’s part of, it’s actually been a little bit easier, um, through the, the virtual work cause I’m not trying to jump in a car and scoot across town to get to something and get set up. Everything is just set up or I can set it up earlier go and do the family stuff and then come back and, um, I’m good to go so have enjoyed that part of it as well.
[00:09:08] Rho Sandberg: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I’m thinking about that quality that they bring, that you’re talking about, you were saying, you know, what are you doing? How does it work? What is that? And, and, you know, if I pick that up, there’s something, you know, I said earlier, sometimes what they bring in is what we need. I think as a society, we’re in a space now where like a lot of how stuff worked in the past. Isn’t how it’s going to work moving forward. So those questions, you know, really learning from them about, well, how is that? And what’s going on and how does it work? It’s how do we pick up that more childlike mind that that’s allowed to not know.
And I think that takes compassion for self, you know, or find that within myself,
[00:10:03] Brendon Le Lievre: there you go, looking forward to the book and also the smaller pieces of writing that are coming along as well. It’s something that interestingly, um, my wife and I went away for the weekend and had some quiet time. So I, I got a note pad out and sort of thought if I, if I was to write, what would it be that I would want to cover off?
What would be the key topics? And it came from, uh, I got given Dave Grohl’s book, the Nirvana drama, foo fighters musician, and. And I read through that and it was, I found it really interesting because it was not written chronologically to begin with, which normally biographies are, you know, born here, went to school here, did this, did that? And the inside of the cover had what I’m assuming was his sort of scribble pad about what to write and what order to write in and how it was all going to link, which I thought was quite interesting.
So I was like, I wonder if I replicated that noting that. You know, he’s, he’s done different things to me, obviously. Uh, what would be the things I would cover off in it? It stems from the fact that last month was five years since I left my permanent public service position role. And it feels like that time has absolutely flown, but it was a chance to think.
What have I done over those five years? I’ve made some pretty big changes. I’ve stopped doing some things. I’ve started doing others. What was sort of my mindset? What was I thinking? What was I hoping to achieve? What have I achieved and reflect on that as well. Over those five years. And so I had now this like scribble pad of sort of thought prompters and things, and I was like, oh, that’s interesting.
What next? I don’t know, but I’ve got that far.
[00:11:53] Rho Sandberg: It’s sort of like, you would not as a coach that, you know, when the client says, if I was to write a book and you got the go.
[00:12:06] Brendon Le Lievre: So you mentioned process oriented coaching. What, what is that? If you expand on that a little bit?
[00:12:12] Rho Sandberg: Well process oriented coaching, um, it’s based in, in depth, psychology and process work grew out of Jungian psychology found founder on Arnold Mindell was a Jungian psychotherapist.
He actually studied with Murray Von France. The, the. Preeminent dream analyst in, in, um, the Jungian world. And I only was teaching over in Zurich at the Jung Institute and he kept asking, well, if our drains hold the cage, where unconscious, what about your body symptoms? And then years later went on to ask, what about social conflicts that we have.
So it’s really interested in, as Jungian psychotherapy is walk it’s much and a lot, it’s one of the things that we push to the side and don’t deal with, or, you know, in organizational settings, what are the, what are the undiscussables and how do those things like our vulnerability, like our kids coming into the, into the room, what are those things hold? That’s actually really vital to our own wholeness, but really often. Um, what looks like the problem holds within it, the seeds of the solution. So it’s looking at how we become more whole as individuals in systems and what we think of as me and what we think of as not, or not us and how we start to integrate more of, um, those things we push away or we react to, or often deeply admire in other people.
Um, so it’s, it’s always hard to describe what process oriented coaching is, but that’s part of what lies at the heart.
[00:13:59] Brendon Le Lievre: Yeah. And when we were talking about writing there earlier, I know you said, but I’m not a writer, but I just I’m working on that mindset. Right. I’d like to write a book, but I’m not a good writer. So I probably won’t. It’s
like, um,
[00:14:11] Rho Sandberg: so there it is. You’ve got that. The me and not me, you know, I’m not a good writer. Whereas the process oriented coach would hear that sentence and go let’s. Or what a model of coaching is called the EMERGE model. So what’s emerging in you. Brendon is potentially the writer.
So rather than falling for the narrative or the content, we’re interested in what that points to.
So that’s
[00:14:44] Brendon Le Lievre: been a small change within myself over a period of time. I no longer say I’m not a writer. I just think it so,
but you know, over time I will change that as well and write something
[00:15:01] Rho Sandberg: Today is the first time I’ve spoken publicly about writing this year. So for me, it was that going over an edge. What we call the edge, you know, so now I’m out there. I’ve said it in the public space. It becomes a little more real.
[00:15:17] Brendon Le Lievre: And how does this, the dreams play out?
You got an example of. How, what we dream about might be either showing up or not showing up. I really liked the undiscussables. I’m going to borrow that, but how does that dreaming, you know, what we dream about? How does that show up in the real world or manifest in the real world?
[00:15:38] Rho Sandberg: So if I first talk about dreaming for coaches, like we need to learn to think and listen, symbolically to what our clients are telling us. They’re talking to us about literal real-world problems and that’s true, but very often you don’t get your breakthrough at that level of the, the, the transactional literal real world self, we caught into cognitive and mindset, and we’re not drawing on our whole wisdom, but the minute the coach starts to get a bit more dreamlike, starts to think metaphorically, um, and supports the client to move in to that.
Then you get a lot of shifts. So, so that’s the let let’s call that the small day dream. But, um, but nighttime dreams are really amazing too and Jung spoke about your childhood dream, you know, that dream you had again, and again often it was a nightmare. And you said that that dream often holds the key to your, um, to your life and that you might, you spend your whole life resolving the elements of the childhood dream. And so I’ve worked with, um, CEOs on their childhood dreams and they they’ve got really powerful insights into, um, how they move. I remember one CEO who dreamt that there was a bridge that was collapsing behind him and he had to run to keep ahead of it. And what he actually did was he built global businesses and he was always on the move and he had this drive. He was driven, but it was actually incredibly effective.
But, um, but I was talking last night to my partner about his childhood dream. And, um, it was it’s the coolest dream in that dream there’s a child’s tricycle. It can move on sand in two ways it’s got wheels that wobble. And when it wobbles, the tricycle goes straight, but when the wheels go straight, it wobbles.
So he said this dream is freaked me out. All right. It was completely illogical. Everything was all wrong. And I said to him, well, so how does relate do you think to the way you move through life? Like tricycle moving one and he he’s an artist and he says, anytime I’ve ever had major success, it’s been when I’ve been messing around and not taking it seriously.
So he’s a, um, is an abstract expressionist and he thought for a laugh, he would do a portrait. And he submitted it to the Archibald and he was one of the finalists in the Archibald prize. And there were numerous things like that, that he can recount where, when he’s, when the wheels of wobble, when he’s played, when he hasn’t taken it so seriously, he’s gone on an incredible trajectory in terms of his career. Even though logically everything in his head tells him he needs to work differently, but also you know, as a coach, we’re interested in the integration of those two parts because there’s also an incredible level of skill and, and technicianship behind what looks even in his abstract work, like quite loose work he’s his technical mastery is amazing.
So by asking clients about their childhood dreams and looking at the different elements often, um, You know, my partner in his life, he integrates that sort of mastery and focus and, and real precision and hardening of the art, with how do you loosen up enough that we play with that? And probably what’s more secondary in his career is letting himself play.
So, um, dreams dreams really can teach us a lot about how we move forward.
[00:19:56] Brendon Le Lievre: And play, you have some fun with it
[00:19:58] Rho Sandberg: and play with all the responsibility that they got right now. Need to learn to play and look at things from different angles. I mean, that’s where innovation comes from.
[00:20:13] Brendon Le Lievre: Yeah. And not by being told to be innovative, just be more innovative.
[00:20:17] Rho Sandberg: And here are the 10 steps to innovation
[00:20:20] Brendon Le Lievre: and I want it, I want that innovation on my desk by Friday afternoon.
[00:20:25] Rho Sandberg: How does play show up in your life.
[00:20:29] Brendon Le Lievre: I think in again, many ways, and it’s something that. I keep returning to as well as being important I mean podcast is an example of play lets just record some conversations that I know I enjoy, you know, get to chat with some people that I admire and respect and walk away learning something and hopefully others take something from that as well. But you know, I’ve been where can I play a, how, how can I have fun? How can I enjoy what I’m doing? And, you know, I’m in a relatively you, I’ve worked hard to get there, but lucky position where I enjoy the vast majority of what it is that I get to do and, and being okay with trying something and seeing how it lands.
So one of the things I do besides coach is run workshops. And one of the things that I worked really hard on both online over the last 18 months, two years, but face-to-face as well as to bring music into the room and play quite a lot of music. And some people don’t even notice that it’s on and other people notice it straight away.
And I tend to theme the songs that I play with the activity that I’m doing or about to do. And some people clock that really quick and go, oh, that’s I really enjoy that and they sort of dancing away or singing away or, and they may not even notice that they’re doing it. And for other people, they’re just like, oh, that’s a bit noisy can you turn it down? So just need to be careful with how I do it, but I, I really enjoy trying to create that reaction within people and not have it be a okay here’s the four walls. Here’s the flip chart and the whiteboard. Um, can we go around the circle and introduce yourselves, like type activity as I, how do I use different activities and different things for it to be fun and to play, but for us to still achieve the desired outcome.
[00:22:34] Rho Sandberg: And I think that you’re getting state change. And I think what we really, really underestimate is the importance of state change. One of the. I think one of the most important things I do in executive coaching is to help leaders learn to change state.
I mean, they have to be able to move from one meeting to another and drop where they were drop, whatever mood they were in and show up for the next game. So these things that, you know, at one level we coin play or light, but it’s actually a really, really important capability . And music’s one way of doing
[00:23:17] Brendon Le Lievre: yeah. The other way that just came to mind is using symbols. So I run a like, not crash cymbals, but symbolic things. And so I run an, a, an emerging leader program, which I really, really enjoy. And one of the things in the agenda that was presented was to define leadership. And the way I could do that is to, you know, drag out all the literature and saying, this is what it is, or do a brainstorming exercise there’s many ways to do it.
But. I’ve I’ve landed on asking the participants to bring along something, anything doesn’t need to be a photo or a picture of a leader, but something that represents leadership to them. And then to talk to the group around, you know, why, what they’ve picked. I don’t really care what they pick, as long as I can explain it represents leadership to them and they bring in these amazing things, you know, family heirlooms and teapots or houseplants or toys, crossword books, really broad range of stuff. And we move through that and I have a couple of minutes each, so it takes 45 minutes or what have you. And at the end of it, we’ve covered off all the things that I would have covered off. If I’d stood there and spoken to them about leadership for probably twice the amount of time., right. And they all have these little items and that they can reflect back on and think about it. It’s just such a nice way to do it, to get them talking, to get them talking about what leadership is to make it less abstract.
And it just lands. I think it just lands really nicely. And I think in coaching, I’ve started doing that as well. Like, oh, it’s raining. What does that mean? Oh, the coffee’s too hot. What does that mean? Or the sun’s in your eyes? What does that mean? Yeah, questions that I would not have probably historically asked, but I’m now more confident in say, I’m just playing, I’m just going to ask these question and the insights are unreal
[00:25:21] Rho Sandberg: because it’s that whole body intelligence, you know, and again, like, um, I love the fact that you kids came up really in the conversation because that’s what kids do, right?
They, they learn with their whole bodies. They experience with their whole bodies. They. They tell stories, they need stories. They, they make it up. And then somehow, you know, we got into this really narrow cognitive band that just leads to burn out. If people don’t come into those bigger, more, whole parts of themselves, you know, you see people whose spirits are really broken, um, and they’re not productive and they’re not effective and they’re not happy.
Yeah. So, um, it’s more of it. I say.
So, so
we think, you think we deviating from the norm, but in fact, that stuff you’re talking about is the most normal and natural thing we can do when we come together with people.
[00:26:31] Brendon Le Lievre: You know, the stories are great. The reflections are, and I think the, because it’s not just cognitive the results, are better embedded on the, you know, they’re stronger, they’re clear on what it is they need to do. They’ve got a physical reminder of whatever it might be. And as a result, The benefits arebetter, but in the moment, it’s a bit like the trike, right?
The wheels are wobbling that we’re actually, we’re making progress. I like that analogy as opposed to all let’s just, you know, follow every step of the model directly. You know, let’s, let’s not draw that extra stuff in because it’s a bit too much fun or it might be a bit fluffy or whatever the reasoning might be and you end up making, making less progress.
And you know, that, that had shown up for me, two examples that I can share. There was a coaching session that I had just before I joined level one of your coach training, where the counterpart was talking about making a decision in their workplace relating to someone else that they were working with.
And, um, I found the edge without knowing what the edge was about the, you know, I, I want to be this and I’m not this, and I didn’t really know what to do with it. So we stayed fairly cognitive and they came to a decision and they said, yep, that’s definitely what I’m going to do. And then two weeks later we met again and then.
I didn’t do that at all. I did something else completely different, and I was a little disappointed about that fact, cause I thought I’d gotten them to a really good point and then did the training, different counterpart virtual coaching session, first session. And they were talking about our, you know, here’s my career trajectory as to where it’s going.
I’m going to be a. Insert reasonably high level rank in their organization here in the next five years, I need to make the right move now to get there. And even though I’d sort of been, you know, been warned around, getting people to jump straight into that state change stuff super early, cause it can go quite deep. I’m like, no, I think this is the right thing to do. So I’m going to ask and I said to the counterpart. Would you be able to move around? Can I ask you to stand up? And they said, oh, you want me to stand up and I said only if you’re comfortable to do it. I think it will add value to stay in some way that feels right for you in the direction that you’re going.
And because it was virtual, they said to me, oh, but Brendon, I’m still wearing my pajama pants. And I sort of just. I don’t mind. That’s fine. Right. You know, it just is what it is. Welcome to working from home. If you’re not comfortable moving, don’t move. But I think there would be value. They played along, which was great.
They stood up, they took two steps from where they were sitting. And in about five minutes they went, actually, I don’t want any of that over there at all. I want to go this way. I don’t want to be on that fast track to promotion. I don’t want to be in that position. I don’t even know why I was thinking that that’s what I should be thinking about or doing.
And so the conversation was flipped really quickly and subsequent conversations have been very, very different as a result, as opposed to this sort of cognitive, I’ve got to move through this. I’ve got to achieve that. I’ve got to get through that interview. I’ve got to get good results here. And so. Yeah, it was interesting to see how quickly that, that decision flipped after all that work in the first example, to get to a point and nothing happened versus can you stand up and take two steps?
What are you noticing from there? I don’t want any of that out of the fast track version of it.
[00:30:27] Rho Sandberg: You saved the guy five years. We do this more in level three. All right. But when you said to me, when you were recounting that story, and you said, you said I’m in my pajama pants. I noticed that part of me internally went, the guy’s doing a session on a fast track to executive promotion and he’s wearing his pajama pants, something doesn’t add up. So like, even if we track these signals, even before you’d still go through, you know, in and do what you did. But even before that, there’s this sort of, that, that the coach experiences that like some part of this story doesn’t go with that.
What’s not congruent here. And then he does the exercise and you, um, And you discover what it is, but I love that, you know, that is the play of coaching for me. So this stuff is so cool. The whole coaching conversations. So laden with cues, from the emerging process about what it really wants. We’ve had similar things. I’ve had people would work with, even people who’ve come into the program and throughout the program. And know their trajectory is retirement might take two or three years to get there. And then in being coached through the program, more and more of it talking about their retirement they come in as know people with, you know, big professional identities and then this, these, these shift happens.
So, um, yeah, the signals that don’t go along with that ordinary everyday identity, or, and I think this catches a lot of coaches. It doesn’t go along with the stated goal. And how do you give yourself freedom at that moment to renegotiate and say, well, let me just check at the beginning. We contracted around this that, um, I’m seeing shift and the client might be on an edge to renegotiate, but you’ve still seen some pretty solid signals.
Yeah. that sounded like it was a lot of fun.
[00:32:32] Brendon Le Lievre: Oh, it was great fun, you know, and yeah, great fun, really effective, good client like counterpart outcome why wouldn’t you coach that way Brendon and, and as opposed to it all being cognitive. And what’s the next question. And as I’ve coached early on in my coaching career, there’s no doubt about it. And there was value in it. People got outcomes from that, but I think it’s just, it sped things up. Like you say, saved that, that guy five years in that he can invest that somewhere else now.
[00:33:08] Rho Sandberg: Yeah. And that that’s really good for your coaching business. Like, like, you know, executives are really busy people and if they can get a major breakthrough result, like it’s not always like that.
Different people move at different paces, but your ability to see those signals work in those different ways, it’s really rapid result. And that wins you a lot of respect in the, um, in the marketplace out there, I reckon.
[00:33:38] Brendon Le Lievre: And, uh, in your MCC status, I’m intrigued about that. Congratulations. Uh, I think that’s, uh, an unreal thing.
It’s a goal that I track towards in my coaching log. But you know, there’s a few years between where I am now and reaching that two and a half thousand hours of coaching. Um, mark, what, what does it mean for you to hold that status? How has it helped? Like what have you learned as a coach across those two and a half plus thousand hours?
[00:34:10] Rho Sandberg: Yeah, well, it’s, it’s probably getting up now to three and a half or 4,000, but I want to talk about the process of actually becoming an MCC because it’s not this mysterious thing when nobody knows what it means to become an MCC. And, you know, for many people, you know, they’d present seven or eight times and I was just lucky. And I actually put this down to the date train with Arnie. Like I fluked it in the first time, but I had some great supervision. So, um, I had some really good supervision that helped me, um, learn lessons about partnering and see where my method gave me unconscious rank and how I needed to come back in and partner.
But what I learned in being an MCC was the importance of presence. And so those that shift to coaching as an MCC became almost a shift to bliss of just being so with the client in the moment, so empty and with them, that there was nothing else, because at some point somebody must have told me that it they caught a whiff of your method. You weren’t an MCC. So it’s a little bit like, you know, I’d spent all of these years, you know, cultivating mastery in other disciplines, you know, being able to track micro signals like that, catching the pajamas and catching a weather and, you know, remembering that phrase.
Exactly. And then in the MCC, you just let it go. You know, if you see the buddha up by the road, kill him. To just be with another human being. Um, and that’s, that’s delightful.
[00:36:08] Brendon Le Lievre: And how has your coaching changed as a result of that realization?
[00:36:15] Rho Sandberg: It’s a real, I’m more relaxed actually. We’ve mentioned my play, right? I, I, it doesn’t matter. Or when you know that all you have to do is be with somebody. And, uh, you know, you, you mentioned before when you’re talking about bringing music in that some people will like it and some people won’t, and as long as you follow the feedback in the system, you’re fine.
Like part of the, the feedback is I don’t like that. And who knows, perhaps it was that person’s learning that day to say, could you please turn that down, you know, to speak to the person in power in the room. So when we start to also take that systemic perspective, you know, it’s like we, we hold lists to our individual identity and I’m more willing to be a conduit for whatever needs to happen.
We’ve got lists personally going. Um, and then there are other times when the person says, well, I don’t know if I can stand up. I’ve got my pajamas on. And we’ve got a feeling that that’s a moment to hold that and say, Yeah, it’s still like to invite you to stand up, if you want, I’ll stand up with you. Or we might say that some people like music, because if other signals have said to us that that part of this person’s growth might lie in loosening up a little bit.
So, um, but, but following feedback is now moved from MCC to presencing that, but following feedback also is part of that thing in the model. And sensing really deeply within yourself. What’s needed.
[00:38:05] Brendon Le Lievre: Nice to get, to see people that have got that level of. I’m going to use the experience word though. I know that I might get into trouble for talking about experienced coaches. As Liz pulled me up in her conversation I had with her. If you haven’t heard that go back and listen to it. I think it’s a good point.
And, and, you know, it stemmed from actually when I was doing the training with you, we were in a breakout room and you joined us and he said, oh, Brendon, you already experienced. Thank you Rho. And then you, you left the room. And I said to the two people, I was in the breakout room. So you’ve just heard Rho say that I’m a reasonably experienced coach or I’m kind of an experienced coach.
And I caught myself in the moment I went, no, she didn’t say that. I just added that I am an experienced coach. You know, drawing that experience from other areas as well. And I like it when that gets brought to people’s attention that you’re just starting to apply coaching skill, but you’ve got a lot of experience in other ways.
[00:39:10] Rho Sandberg: So let’s, let’s not move on. Let’s hold for a minute. I’m going to hold you in that experience space. What, what is it that you value most at this point about your experience?
[00:39:31] Brendon Le Lievre: Nice big pause. That means it’s a good question. Um, what is it that I value most? I think I’m getting better at picking up those little cues and been working on that. So I value the ability to cut through using some of those things when I’m working with counterparts and help them get the result that they’re after.
And as a result, I’m more present and have a greater presence in those coaching conversations. Um, the other one is, is the being more relaxed, you know, early days I used to be like, I’ve got to get this right. I’ve got to ask the right question and I don’t want to get it wrong. And I don’t want to, you know, damage what their goal is. And I want to be clean so that I don’t pollute the conversation. And so I was very, very regimented and through working with other coaches and partnering with them and doing some, you know, um, you know, I coach you, you coach me type experience with them, uh, working with a really good supervisor. I’ve started to undo some of that and go, now I can be a bit more playful here.
I can relax a little bit more because it’s a conversation. It’s not a script right there probably isn’t a right question better than others potentially. And I think that’s what I see. When I see MCC coaches, coaches, they’re just really efficient in getting to those better questions. They have great presence, they notice little things and they contract a whole lot like that.
I keep coming back to that contracting piece. When I see MCC credentialed coaches, coach. But in my experience to answer your question, those are the things that I take away that I can be a little more playful. I don’t have to be regimented and that if I see something I’ve seen it for a reason, I should call it out.
And sometimes the person will say no, I don’t know how that links to our conversation at all. It’s okay. We just go to the next thing. And sometimes then they come back to the next session and they go, oh, you mentioned that the coffee was too hot. And I said, oh, there was nothing to that. But I’ve been thinking about that actually.
Okay. What have you been thinking about that?
[00:41:46] Rho Sandberg: Yeah. Yeah. That’s very cool. That’s very cool. I’m thinking about what you said about contracting. And I think that part of that, and I see it with students, you know, like teaching gives you a great perspective on the journey. You don’t work too hard. So somethings part of when you recontract is you’re getting mixed messages, you’re getting double signals.
So rather than sitting there trying to work out yourself, what, what way to go on this? So what’s going to be most helpful. You just give the work back. So, um, so the ability to give the work back and to not assume that it belongs with you. Is because you have that confidence, um, it’s a chicken and egg thing, but also the more you give the work back, the easier it gets and the, and the less caught up you are in your own head.
Um, yeah, because part of what we think about is is that the whole system. All right. So how is what I’m experiencing in the moment as a coach, part of the clients system.
And, um, is it really my, um, let’s say you notice yourself being really critical, is it, is it that you’re doing badly? Or is it that there’s something within the client’s system that you’re unconsciously or intuitively picking up on where there’s an inner critic that’s getting in the way here, but, but they’re pretty good at not showing it.
So, you know, a rule of thumb that, that I find really helpful is to assume firstly, that anything I’m experiencing when I’m in that session, belongs to the client, but I hold that lightly and also do my own work on myself at the same time. But my first assumption isn’t that it’s about me. And that really starts to free you up and is another way of accessing all those cues you’ve been talking about.
[00:44:01] Brendon Le Lievre: And you mentioned the Global Coaching Institute and creating other coaches or unlocking that coaching skill within others. What’s it been like to establish that and create your own coaching training school?
[00:44:19] Rho Sandberg: It’s been amazing. I really love it. In fact, I seen myself being pulled more and more away from my own consulting too.
I guess it’s something about stage of life now and that, you know, I can have more impact by producing more coaches who particularly coaches. Who had the process, our perspective, better able to work at that system level. And also able to tackle some of the big social issues, like, like race, the way we use power, um, some of the longer term, you know, the environmental issues.
Um, so it’s been, it’s been phenomenal and I just love the sense of community and also the fact that it’s a Global Coaching Institute, you and I are both based in Australia, but, um, prior to COVID, I was flying all around the world. And, and what I love about offering the virtual programs now is that we’ve got coaches here in Australia working with, um, young women who were working with ISIS survivors in Iraq, working with race educators in the UK, working with, you know, heads and multinational corporations.
So you get this incredibly diverse, um, mix of what’s going on and, and, and that’s, that’s just so juicy. And for me personally, travel studying other seas doing a lot of postgraduate work over there really helped my work in Australia because I could see global patterns before they, they hit here. And I had a bit of a heads up and I’m seeing that that’s, what’s also happening for our local students, that they’re getting that, that bigger global angle on what’s going on.
So, that ability to really work on another big issues, um, that are facing the world at the moment. And, and that fabulous. And it’s challenging, like at the moment, you know, um, I’m doing a lot of learning about what it means to create really inclusive spaces and to build awareness, um, in a college. When some people just come in to get their coaching skills, right.
And suddenly we, we we’ve got people wanting to really talk about race, importantly, talk about race because the experience in the room in a, in a diverse, um, cohort, it’s real, it’s in the room and in the moment. So, um, it’s been incredibly rewarding and it keeps growing me constantly, which I love.
[00:47:07] Brendon Le Lievre: Yeah, that worldwide perspective was definitely something that I took away just from level one as well. People from, uh, from memory, uh, Australia, obviously, but Russia, Spain, a couple other places through Europe. Uh, and, uh, maybe, maybe America, in our, I can’t remember in our cohort, but yes. Yeah, it’s all similar, but different things to talk about or focus on.
And it’s like, oh, that’s interesting. And, and even in the, um, the difference in assumptions and bias and what have you that we’d bring into our coaching then, or sort of have to check in with people, you know, as someone who grew up in Russia or who speaks English as a second language or. You know, we’d throw some colloquialism Australian thing in and they’d be like what are you talking about? what is that I tend to understand is all right, let me ask that.
Or the cleaner or explain that a bit better or because it impacts, it shows.
[00:48:14] Rho Sandberg: Yeah. And Brendon, I’m not sure of your scope your scope of your coaching practice, but as you start to build a global identity, I’m curious as to what difference that sort of makes what you’ve noticed.
[00:48:30] Brendon Le Lievre: I think being more comfortable with asking.
Right. And it’s almost that contracting piece, but, um, what’s important for you to get to establish trust or, or what would the norms be for you or, um, how are you seeing that from your perspective based on who you are and the demographics you occupy, because. You know, we can only occupy the demographics that we occupy, right. But that doesn’t give us an out. It doesn’t give us an excuse to not explore and not to see things differently and gain that awareness of how people’s experience is different. Um, and I think conversely, not to, to judge our own experience or to judge others based on the demographics that they occupy because of they don’t lock you into a predetermined outcome or upbringing or childhood dream or coaching approach or anything. Um, they just form one part of, of who we are. So,
[00:49:43] Rho Sandberg: yeah, it’s an awareness piece. And, um, because I think the trap like, like you and I are both white coaches right. In the primarily white profession, you know, there there’s still, we still haven’t got great diversity within the profession.
And, um, I didn’t mean Arnie Mindell used to say that rank and, and, you know, if you think about, um, the way that, that white people and people of color have related on the history or people, people with racialized identities, all right. Um,
It’s just white people have had a lot of advantage and Arnie Mindell says rank makes you blind. So it’s only when I have to deal with some of the complexity where I’m more challenged of working globally, that then I start to become more aware of the dynamics of rank in my own country, because in my own country, I can still have this really eurocentric view and, and other people were sort of on the margins and that’s the way rank dynamics working in society. But, um, I find it keeps me on my toes more because I’m challenged. And because I find myself in situations where, um, I don’t know how to do this well. And I think as a world, we’re facing a lot of things around diversity and inclusion where we actually don’t know how to do it well.
And, and that’s a really humbling scene,
[00:51:21] Brendon Le Lievre: but good place to explore and learn so much as a result, did some coaching with people. Uh, live in one of the Pacific islands and two hour coaching session was the expectation and real, I thought to myself, two hours, that’s long. How am I going to, how am I going to fill that?
And then it was like, it’s not up to me to fill that. Like, they’ve obviously chosen that structure for a reason. So let’s just go in and ask let’s, let’s see what needs to happen. And there was a lot of. Sharing and relationship building and trust that needed to happen. You know, a lot of connecting as humans and then the coaching could sort of play out, but, and that was what was shared with me.
So I can go with that that’s but it was interesting that two hours, that’s a long time and it went really quickly and there was great insights and things that happened throughout that two hour conversation. Um, I think if you said to senior leaders in Australia, they’d go two hours. I don’t have two hours to give you, like, or what am I going to get out of that two hours?
It’s just the difference around those, those two things.
[00:52:42] Rho Sandberg: Sure. It’s so different and so good that we get woken up to the fact that our habits, you know, the things that we’ve fallen into aren’t necessarily going to work for everyone. I’m doing a lot of work at the moment in Aboriginal leadership programs.
And I completely love it. And one of my hopes and dreams is he actually can build a greater community of Aboriginal coaches because I think there’s, there’s a huge demand for it out there then. Um, I D I just love yarning. That, that different quality of like, you know, again, drop your method and just sit here and be with me and yarn and, and see what comes out of it.
[00:53:28] Brendon Le Lievre: Wonderful. Well, before we finish up today, Rho I thought we might try something different in the spirit of play. And so I’ve got, I think, seven questions here that we’d like to throw at you. Hopefully they’re shortish answers that come back, we’ll see how we going. And we’ll see where this lands. Um, as I said in the spirit of play.
So the first question I have is what fulfills you?
[00:53:56] Rho Sandberg: What fulfills me.
Meditation.
[00:54:01] Brendon Le Lievre: And what frustrates you,
[00:54:06] Rho Sandberg: uh, how, how slow we are to learn from our experience.
[00:54:13] Brendon Le Lievre: And if you could recommend one book that everyone should read, what would that book be?
[00:54:18] Rho Sandberg: Julie Diamonds. A User’s guide to power
[00:54:22] Brendon Le Lievre: What do you most admire in your counterparts?.
[00:54:28] Rho Sandberg: Uh, the capacity to keep showing up is spirit.
[00:54:34] Brendon Le Lievre: Yeah. What’s your favorite coaching question?
[00:54:38] Rho Sandberg: What else?
[00:54:40] Brendon Le Lievre: If you weren’t a coach, what would you be?
[00:54:44] Rho Sandberg: A writer
[00:54:46] Brendon Le Lievre: If you could tell your younger self, anything, what would you say to yourself?
[00:54:55] Rho Sandberg: What’s meant to be will happen. You can’t not be you.
I watched my 22 year old daughter fretting about something a couple of years ago, and I just burst out laughing. And I said to her sweetheart at this age, I can tell you it’s impossible. You’ve got no hope of not being you in life.
It just takes different paths.
[00:55:20] Brendon Le Lievre: That’s brilliant. Well, thank you for your time today, Rho uh, and for answering those, those questions with me and, uh, really appreciate it. Lots of great insights, and I’m looking forward to sharing our conversation with others.
[00:55:34] Rho Sandberg: Nice to hang out. Thanks Brendon.