When working with these leaders, I often refer to the toolkit Liberating Structures for team meetings and sessions. For this, I highly recommend the book by Daniel Steinhöfer from Vahlen Verlag, the website www.liberatingstructures.de, and the Liberating Structures App LISA for both reading and practical application!

What are the Liberating Structures?

Liberating Structures is a well-equiped toolkit that enables the team’s full participation and inclusion. With it teams co-operate more, better ideas emerge unexpected and the full potential is realized, much more than with traditional meeting structures as it shifts focus from individual expertise to the collective expertise of the group.

The impact of Liberating Structures is broad—ranging from “finding the right decision” and “from decision to action” to “reviewing and reflecting on decisions,” including conflict resolution and even strategy work for start-ups. The individual methods are sophisticated yet intuitively easy to grasp. They use engaging metaphors, enlightening questions, and skillful sequences (known as strings) that can be flexibly tailored to suit different occasions.

Let’s have a practical look at the example “Home Office”

The issue of home office work is currently a concern for many companies. The following string can be effectively used with teams to address the question of who works from home, when, and why, and when it might be better for the team to come into the office.

For preparation – clarify your expectation as leader

What are my “Go’s” & “No Go’s”? It is worthwhile to communicate these upfront and clarify initial questions to establish a good basis for the string, which then includes the following three Liberating Structures:

1. User Experience Fish Bowl:

Two to three employees take a seat in the center of the Fishbowl and share their experiences of home office during the pandemic in an informal, unrestricted conversation. Everything can be expressed, whether positive or critical. The rest of the employees sit in an outer circle, listen, and at the end, ask questions or share their own observations.

2. 1-2-4-All:

Now, all employees have the opportunity to speak, using a sequence that considers both the “loud” and the “quieter” people:

• Individual Reflection: Each employee briefly reflects on their ideal office/home office situation.
• Pair Discussions: Followed by five-minute discussions in pairs.
• Group of Four Discussions: Then discussions in groups of four, again for five minutes.
• Plenary Exchange: Finally, the groups of four share their insights in the plenary session. This ensures everyone has shared their perspectives and ideas, leading to a common understanding.

3. What? So What? Now What?

This shared understanding serves in the next phase as the basis for the final step. In the What? phase, facts from the previous discussions are collected. In the second round—So What?—everyone interprets these facts. The separation of fact and interpretation is crucial for Step 3, the Now What? Here, the team discusses how to proceed with the home office policy and what further development steps are possible or necessary on the longer run.

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Positive past experiences—also known as resources—can often be “mentally transfered” to areas where the client feels “stuck. For that we explore questions like “Where in your life have you already demonstrated skills like calmness or confidence ? How are you doing it there – please give a rich description?”

Resource work helps in situations that seem hopeless

Some situations seem hopeless. Perhaps goals in the company are set too high, or there is a manager who has deaf ears. You can not simply walk away, you feel “helpless”— no matter what you do, there seems to be a price to pay. Having no control —a feeling that few people like, a feeling that drives hopeless after a while.

The Path to your inner safe space

In this situation, resillience is key. The ability to walk away internally … without being able to walk away externally. For this inner safe space, it helps to look for resources. Things like a mountain view into the valley, wide horizons on an island over the sea. This inner resources change our brainwaves, they relax and bring inner peace.

That may sound like hocus-pocus at first glance. But no, it is not. Our brain cannot distinguish whether we are merely imagining a situation or actually experiencing it. Our autonomic nervous system calms down both ways and we regain perspective and oversight. This is where imagination can be particularly helpful. Take a suit of armor that you can mentally put on with the visor closed. Or feel like a grounded, imposing mountain gorilla. A shift in the body. Detachment and a change in focus. The view widens, and with it you find your inner wisdom again. And of course, as we are all connected on an energetic level, this wise state of mind has its ripple effect on other people, too.

Finding resources means in neuroscience: getting out of the limbic system and into the prefrontal cortex. Einsteins quote says it like this: you can not solve problems at the level at which they were created.

#Coaching #Finding Resources #Imagination #Brain-Compatible Change #Stress #Helplessness #Transformation #Solution Through Detachment #Refine Self-Perception #Ability to Shift Focus #Bodywork #Inner Safe Place

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“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” — Viktor Frankl

But what does it really mean to regulate your emotions? What are some easily implementable tools to learn emotional self-regulation? And why is this skill important not only for personal well-being but also for healthy work relationships, motivation, and performance in a team and organization?

Recognizing Emotional Self-Regulation

Emotional self-regulation is the ability to consciously perceive, understand, and influence your emotions. This skill enables us to stay calm in difficult situations, make clear decisions, and positively shape our relationships with others. Specifically, it helps us to:

• Calm ourselves in conflicts and challenging situations
• Relax and reflect on our own patterns and interactions with others
• Set and maintain focus instead of getting lost in external distractions
• Perceive, categorize, and, if necessary, postpone our impulses and needs, enduring the frustration that comes with it
• Pursue long-term goals by consciously setting aside short-term objectives
• Choose words carefully when interacting with others

An Example from Leadership Practice

Imagine this situation: You are a leader in a Friday afternoon team meeting after a stressful week. Your pulse is still a bit high; you’ve been in execution mode all week. Now the atmosphere is relaxed, and everyone is glad the week is over. You join in the joking and reveal your human side. Then, an employee makes an innovative suggestion. Initially, the proposal doesn’t sit well with you. You notice an impulsive urge to say, “Stop, we can’t do it that way!” because you fear that this idea will disrupt the whole process. You could express this out loud, take control of the leadership, and frustrate your highly motivated employee. Instead, you consciously notice this urge within yourself. You take a deep breath, focus on the window, and briefly look at the spring trees and blue sky outside. This shift in focus brings more relaxation and space within you. With this calm clarity, you recall your leadership principles and respond kindly: “That’s a very innovative suggestion. What ideas do you have on how we could make it a ‘both/and’ situation—being innovative while remaining process-oriented?”

The Importance of Emotional Self-Regulation

Well-being: Studies show that good emotional self-regulation is associated with better physical and mental health. People who can regulate their emotions often have a lower risk of stress-related illnesses.

Relationships: In interpersonal relationships, emotional self-regulation is crucial. It allows us to respond empathetically to others, resolve conflicts constructively, build trust, and enhance motivation. Healthy working relationships are fundamental, as studies repeatedly emphasize their importance: 75% relationship level – 25% factual level.

Performance: Whether at work or in private life, emotional self-regulation helps us think clearly and act effectively under pressure. We can concentrate better, solve problems more holistically, and achieve goals more easily and co-creatively in teams.

(Self-)Coaching Tools to Enhance Emotional Self-Regulation

What are some easily applicable methods to help with emotional self-regulation?

• Mindfulness (self-)coaching techniques like conscious breathing and slowing down behavior to observe your own thinking and actions.
• Conscious orientation in space: If you feel a burdensome emotion or are in a stressful situation, focus your attention on concrete external impressions (without delving deeper into the emotion). These can be visual, auditory, or tactile stimuli that you consciously perceive and name internally. For example, “I see the desk in front of me, I hear the fan buzzing, I feel the chair under me and its backrest.” Notice how your body calms down. After a few days of practice, you’ll notice that your brain naturally makes these small but significant shifts in orientation.
• An emotions journal: Reflect over time on specific situations that didn’t go well: What emotions did I feel in this specific situation? What underlying assumptions are behind these emotions? What habitual behavior did I exhibit? What are the unfavorable interactions with others?

#Leadership #EmotionalSelfRegulation #SelfCoachingTechniques #Emotions #Patterns #Interactions #Team #Motivation #Trust #Performance #CoCreativity

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So, what are the two most common issues when leaders begin to practice development conversations?

Well, some “push their own agenda too much” and are not truly present with their hearts for the other person. Clearly, this causes the inner door of the employee to remain closed, and in the worst case, it leads to “pseudo-compliance” due to the weak connection. Conversely, as a leader, one can also slide to the other side of this scale—being too empathetic and losing track of one’s perspective and that of the company. It’s important to understand the interactions maintained by this too-soft pattern: employees often become demanding and take little responsibility for their own issues and solutions.

Finding the internal balance between being too soft and too hard and being able to “pendulate” between the employee’s and leader’s fields requires practice with self-awareness. As a coach and trainer, I pragmatically support this with an effective structure for feedback and development conversations. However, in this article, I will focus particularly on the inner attitude shift for deep listening, deep questioning, and deep thinking—the so-called 3 Ds—rather than delving into the nuances of conversation structure.

Feel free to contact me if you want to learn more about effective models like the “WWW model” for feedback conversations or the “Room Model” developed by my colleague Dr. Sabine Freund from the Munich Coaching School for our training series “Coaching Competence for Leaders.”

The 3 Ds – Deep Listening, Deep Questioning & Deep Thinking – What are these inner skills that can greatly assist you as a leader in feedback and development conversations?

Deep Listening – The ability to truly listen is central to development conversations. This means not just hearing the words and cognitively categorizing the facts into new and known, but also gaining a deeper understanding through empathy for the emotions and backgrounds that lead to unfavorable behavior. Deep listening creates a connection between the leader and the employee; this connection is noticeable when the conversation becomes calmer, pauses are acceptable, and there is a harmonious flow between the conversation partners. A back-and-forth exchange turns into a genuine dialogue.

Deep Questioning – This technique, combined with deep listening, goes beyond simple, often closed questions. It’s about asking questions that prompt the employee to think, thereby expanding and deepening their thinking framework and perspective: “What do you think led to this situation?” or “How do you feel about it?” or “How would you specifically recognize that you find it easy to do xy?” “How do you solve it in other situations where it works?” These questions often arise from the logic of the conversation and open the doors to the employee’s inner thought world. They lead to the “famous” enlightening AHAs, allowing both conversation partners to understand each other better.

Then, there needs to be a shift back to one’s perspective—because this “jump” back into the leader’s own field is important for constructive critical feedback, which can now be given and received much more easily on the foundation of a good connection. This can be practiced through conscious self-awareness management. The focus here is: “How can I easily regain good distance from the employee and focus on myself?” Many find it helpful to take a deep breath and briefly look out the window, besides relying on the conversation structure that serves as a mental guide. Part of this structure is the already mentioned WWW model for constructive feedback:

• What is my perception of your behavior in a specific situation (this is about observable behavior in a specific situation without personal judgment)?
• What is the specific impact in this situation on you, me, others, the customer? On the factual level, on the emotional level?
• What is my wish for the future?

Here is a simple example that illustrates the WWW formula: “In the last team meeting, I noticed how you rolled your eyes at Mr. X’s contribution but otherwise remained silent (observable perception without judgment). This led to Mr. X becoming unsure in his presentation and other team members being more reserved in their opinions. Everyone’s opinions/ideas are very important to have a respectful, open debate in the team and to make a balanced decision (impact). Therefore, I wish you to express your opinion clearly and respectfully, using ‘I’ statements, for example (wish). Can you relate to that?”

The WWW formula works best after a leader has empowered employees with deep listening and powerful questioning to understand what the internal hurdle is for unhelpful behavior.

3. Deep Thinking or how I leave the responsibility for solution development to the employee – At the end of the conversation, it’s about opening up the solution space: “What do you need from yourself for this? What from others? What from me?” Here, many leaders initially struggle to breathe deeply and hold the space for the employee’s deep thinking. It’s a pity because the answers and solution ideas that emerge here are often brilliantly simple and effective. A good focus is the question: How do I, as a leader, learn to relax, breathe, wait, and trust that something reasonable and helpful will come up?

My Conclusion – The inner attitude shift for the so-called 3 Ds brings feedback and development conversations into a natural flow; implementation and sustainable change become not only possible but even easy through the stable contact and trust field. Of course, these attitude shifts also transform the trust and learning culture of a company as a whole. Can deep listening, deep questioning, and deep thinking be learned? Yes, absolutely! And do most leaders need to practice all three? Also, a clear yes! Your motivational boost – as a leader, you naturally develop further through these three new qualities. Additionally, your employees provide much more constructive feedback in this safe, trusting development culture. And this is precisely one of the most common practical questions at the upper management level: How do I actually get open feedback from my employees?

#FeedbackConversations #DevelopmentConversations #ConstructiveCriticalFeedback #DeepThinking #DeepListening #DeepQuestioning #TrustCulture #Empowerment #SocialSkills #Training #GroupCoaching #IndividualCoaching #LearningCulture

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This quote stems from a manger shared during the initial training of our program “Coaching Competence for Managers”. She said it after having an deep “aha” moment during a role play. But why then are coaching skills for managers still so controversial? After all, managers already have so much on their plates! When are they supposed to cover on a coaching role, too?

My colleagues Claudia Amend and Sabine Freund from the Munich Coaching School, and I view the developmental role of the coaching leader as follows:

• Psychological knowledge & models: Helping understand human ambivalence toward change.
• Holding the space: Being present, combining appreciative listening with powerful questioning techniques.
• Self-awareness: Understanding one’s own resources and obstacles to better empathize with employees, colleagues, and superiors.
• Delivering feedback: Structuring and conveying critical feedback effectively for development.

Leadership is, first of all self-leadership

For conducting conversations with this growth mindset, you have to balance the managerial role with its inherent judgments, interpretations and a mind that is used to giving solutions more over than asking powerful questions. This balance for switching hats needs of course self-leadership. But self-leadership is the fundament to every leadership role, anyway.

So, how do you learn to shift between these hats, especially under tight schedules and fast pace? These are the most common questions at the start of the program. Here are some answers: Practice helps leaning into a mindful focus. Slowing down just a bit. Engaging more with your body and breath. Learning to calm down with purpose. Becoming precise in your perception and communication. These simple methods create a new, conscious form of leading with more mindful efficiency. In a nutshell: you do less and you achieve more! With coaching skills, you learn competencies you need in a fast and disruptive company’s culture anyway.

Our program is available for leaders, project managers, agile coaches, consultants, and HR business partners. On top, you can get certified with this program as an ICF Coach. We offer this training in German and English, in Munich and online.

For further information, please visit www.talkingtime.de and www.munichcoachingschool.de.

#CoachingSkillsForLeaders #AgileCoaches #HRBusinessPartners #Consultants #ProjectManagers #EmployeeDevelopment #TalentDevelopment #Motivation #ResourceManagement #Mindfulness #AppreciativeListening #ChangeModels #SelfLeadership #ICFCertification #InternationalCoachingFederation

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