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00:00:02 

[Will Rixon] 

Pablo Molina Baez, are you there?

[Pablo Molina Byers] 

I am indeed. I believe I am. I can see live on the top of my screen. I see you.

[Will Rixon] 

I'm just gonna pin you. There we go. Gotcha.

[Pablo Molina Byers] 

Excellent.

[Will Rixon] 

How are you, Pablo? How you feeling?

[Pablo Molina Byers] 

I'm feeling very well, though a little bit out of breath just from listening to Taylor. I think 15 minutes is go, go, go. So everybody, yeah, yeah, uh, have your coffee ready, basically, especially for this one.

[Will Rixon] 

Yeah, this is going to be great, Pablo.

So you're a coach, you're a coach trainer. How did you get into that? What— that's, uh, that— how did you— why and how did you get into that?

[Pablo Molina Byers] 

Right, so a little bit of splitting hairs here. I'm a certified coach.

That doesn't mean I train other people to become coaches yet. Um, that is in the works perhaps, but I do help with the coaching skills that you need when you become a coach because they are transferable to many, many other situations.

[Will Rixon]

Right.

[Pablo Molina Byers] 

So, um, how I got into it was essentially because I got to a point in my teaching career where I felt like, um, the qualifications I'd gotten didn't quite take me that step further with my learners. They were starting to have issues that I didn't really know how to help them with.  

00:01:17 

[Will Rixon] 

Um, like what?

[Pablo Molina Byers] 

Well, emotional management and stress and anxiety and exams and all of this sort of stuff going on. And other than our innate human ability or empathy, as most teachers have, well then, but I wanted something else. I didn't know that I was really being able to help them as well as I thought I perhaps should or could. And not just my learners, it was

also the teams that I was working with.

So I was academic manager for a school and a language academic language school director as well. So I started to see that perhaps I didn't have the frameworks or the skills to help people beyond telling them what to do or giving them advice, um, or making suggestions, right? That's where coaching came to be, and, um, I opened up this whole new different way of interacting with people.

00:02:16 

[Will Rixon]

Well, we're going to hear about it now and you're going to pass that all on to us, are you? You've got 50 minutes to pass.

[Pablo Molina Byers] 

You've got a lifetime of lemonade.

[Will Rixon] 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Easy, easy peasy, mate.

[Pablo Molina Byers] 

Easy peasy. Indeed.

[Will Rixon] 

All right. Well, I believe I'm going to see you again soon, but for now, have a great session and enjoy it. See you in a bit.

[Pablo Molina Byers] 

Thank you very much, Will. And let me get started, everybody, by saying thank you and sharing my screen.

Okay. And thank you, Taylor, for also opening up the, the event. Let me just check that we can all— we're all on the same page, right?

Can I get confirmation, uh, that all good? All good.

00:03:07 

Let's see. Okay, there we go. There we go. Okay. So let's get started, everybody.

Um, thank you very much for being here. Thank you for choosing to be here and investing on your CPD. It is a pleasure to be able to share this, these 15 minutes with you, and it is very tight on time. So let me get started with what my intentions are. I intend to raise awareness of what Professional Certified Coaching is, uh, briefly demonstrate 3 of its core skills, and obviously to encourage you to try with your learners and beyond.

And that and beyond, I'm hoping, becomes apparent through the conversation today. So let's go straight into it. What is coaching? Coaching, if we take the International Coaching Federation's description, is a partnering between the coach and the client in a thought-provoking and creative process. That both inspires and unlocks previously untapped sources of imagination, productivity, and leadership.

00:04:12

Now, doesn't that sound like something we'd want in our classes? Perhaps very similar to what we experience in our classes. So to practice, uh, as a certified coach, you need to demonstrate all of these 8 competencies or skills. Now, we're going to be focusing on these 3, which to me are the core. Now, maintains presence, listens actively, and evokes awareness, represented for the rest of the presentation with these 3 symbols.

Okay, so using these 3 skills or competencies won't necessarily make you a certified coach, but what it will allow you to do is to have conversations and interactions in different ways. Which I was telling Will about, and all of you, at the beginning. Now, what do I mean by different ways? Well, please accompany me to the left side of this continuum where we can see that red arrow named the directive style. On here, I'm hoping you can all see, but I'll read them out regardless, there are things that as teachers we're very familiar with: telling, instructing, telling students what to do, and giving instructions as to what to do.

00:05:24

Or giving advice or making suggestions into how to improve or how to pronounce, and even giving feedback once we've done those corrections. I think all of these are day-to-day things that we do in the classroom. Now, giving advice— sorry, giving feedback is where that red arrow finishes and the overlap finishes, and then this blue arrow begins with the non-directive style. This is what I mean by having interactions in different ways. Here we stop taking conversations in turns, per se, where we are trying to solve somebody's problem by giving advice or making suggestions or telling them what to do.

And then we start to do these different things where we ask open questions, or we paraphrase what we believe we've understood, or we help them reflect, or we listen deeply. So the 3 skills that we're going to look at today hopefully will enable you to move within this side of the continuum. Okay, I'm not saying ditch the rest. We know those things work. We've been doing them for over 50 years in the ELT industry.

00:06:32

Just incorporate these two. So that's the theory. Now let's get to the practice. What we're going to do now is the first skill, being present, and I'm going to invite Will to come on. And what Will and I are going to do is take 15 seconds to connect.

Connect. How are we going to do that? Is we're going to stop. It's going to be a very different energy from this fast-paced, uh, description to up till now. So Will and I are going to stop and we're going to focus our attention for each other.

And yes, you've seen that, right? It's not a typo. We're not focusing our attention on each other, we're focus— focusing it for each other. And we're going to do so in silence, observing each other, judgment-free. We're going to observe our breath, our eyes, our face, our shoulders, our body.

And what I'd invite you to do is to take these 15 seconds to sync with us as if we were devices. So to take the time to stop, to focus your attention for us, and to allow yourself to observe judgment-free. So, Will, are you ready?

[Will Rixon]

Good to go, Pablo.

00:07:44

[Pablo Molina Byers]

Okay, so let's take the time to stop. Let's go.

Thank you, Will. That is 4 seconds extra, 19 seconds. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Now everybody, you might have felt this was a bit awkward, you might have felt this was a bit weird, you might have felt this was a bit intimate perhaps, or very different to the energy that we were bringing, but it is essential.

We are— thank you for the reactions— we are starting to synchronize energies there very, very briefly, and it was only 15 seconds. If you practice mindfulness, or if you know about mindfulness, you could say that this is something similar. Now, let's move on to number 2, skill number 2. The reason we've just done presence is because presence is step 1. You cannot listen if you're not present, if you haven't stopped, and if you haven't focused your attention for the other person.

00:09:01

Now, one of the beautiful things about listening is that the word itself tells us exactly how to do it. And how to do it is by remaining silent. So let's now move on to practicing that. I'm going to ask Will to come on again. This time, I'm going to ask him a simple question that we hear every day: "How are you?" And he's going to have 2 full minutes to answer this question.

Now, during these 2 full minutes, I'm going to be present. I'm going to be holding that silence. I'm not just going to be simply here waiting for the time to finish and Will to blab on. I'm going to be holding that silence, trying to establish that rapport with him, listening judgment-free all of this time, trying to further connect with Will. Now, instructions for you are to observe what happens when someone is given that space to fully explore and when they have somebody truly listening.

00:10:03

So, Will, are you ready?

[Will Rixon]

I'm ready.

[Pablo Molina Byers]

Let's go. 2 minutes. How are you?

[Will Rixon]

Yeah, I'm good, thanks, Pablo. Uh, we're in New Voices, so this is always a really, uh, special day for me. I think, uh, it's a huge part of my job, these events, uh, and New Voices is a really standout event for me. It's something that I think I was really central to when it started a few years ago. So when it actually happens, it makes me feel really sort of proud to be in the job that I'm in and to work with people like you and the 4 others backstage and my colleagues, of course.

Yeah, it just generally feels— it feels good, you know, on a day like this. I generally feel pretty excited and there's no lack of energy. I think there's no lack of adrenaline on days like this. Um, so yeah, I mean, um, generally also, I think this is when it gets a bit difficult to elongate how you answer. I'll do my best.

00:11:04

Um, so yeah, I think generally I also feel good. I've got a holiday coming, a short holiday coming up at the weekend. So I'm excited about that. Um, bit of time away. Um, and, and yeah, we've got another big event coming out.

So, so work sort of ramping up a bit, you know, my job sort of ramps up a bit at this time of year.

[Pablo Molina Byers]

Will, I'm terribly sorry to interrupt you, uh, but I'm going to cut you short there. That was a minute and 10 seconds, but you demonstrated what I was after, so thank you very much. Everybody, you can stay on if you'd like for this little bit, but did you see, everybody, what happened once I held that space and I gave space for Will to carry on exploring? We got the first superficial bit about, you know, the, the, the event, the day, the job, And the second he had a little bit more time to carry on exploring, he volunteered something extra, which was about him generally and his holiday coming up, etc., etc.

Now, because of time, I cut him short then, but in the practice run that we did, Will actually did something similar and opened up and offered more information. So thank you, Will, for demonstrating that. You're welcome. Now let's blast along, let's carry on. Number 3, evoking awareness through asking questions.

00:12:22

Now, the questions that we ask have to have these 3 characteristics. They have to be open, simple, and one at a time. And top tips for when you're in a conversation and you're trying to put all of this together is to use the same words that the other person uses. Or if no question comes to mind that is going to further open the conversation, then just carry on listening. Just carry on being silent.

So how we're going to demonstrate this is that Will and I are going to role-play a situation that's based on a conversation I've had with a learner, with one of my learners. And instructions for you are to observe how it all comes together, how the 3 skills come together to provide the space to be, explore a situation together, and once again, to truly connect. So, Will, are you ready?

00:13:22

[Will Rixon]

I'm ready.

Okay, let's go for it.

[Pablo Molina Byers]

So, Will, uh, how are you finding the start of the academic year?

[Will Rixon]

Uh, pretty busy, but all good.

Well, actually, a bit overwhelming at times. Um, there's just a lot going on.

Overwhelming? Yeah, I feel like I'm constantly trying to keep up, and whenever I get on top of one thing, something else comes up.

I think that's what gets to me. I always feel like I'm behind.

[Pablo Molina Byers]

What does feeling behind mean to you?

Hmm.

[Will Rixon]

That I'm not where I think I should be. That maybe I'm not doing as well as I should be.

[Pablo Molina Byers]

Mm. And, uh, what happens when you think that?

[Will Rixon]

I start doubting myself, I suppose, wondering whether I'm actually good enough.

And then I try to control everything even more, which probably makes me even more stressed.

00:14:25

[Pablo Molina Byers]

And what does being in control give you?

[Will Rixon]

Uh, safety, maybe. If I know everything's under control, then I feel like everything will be okay.

[Pablo Molina Byers]

And what happens to that sense of safety when something isn't under your control?

[Will Rixon] 

I suppose it disappears. I start worrying, questioning whether I can handle it, which is a bit of a problem really, because I can't control everything.  

So if I need everything to be under control, I can feel safe. I'm never really going to feel safe, am I?  

[Pablo Molina Byers] 

What are you noticing, Will?

[Will Rixon] 

I think I've been trying to get confidence from having everything under control when maybe I need to trust that I can deal with things even when they aren't.  

[Pablo Molina Byers]

Thank you very much, Will. That's the end of our roleplay. And everybody, before we carry on, I have to confess something, and that's that this roleplay has been adapted not only from a conversation that I've had with learners, but also with conversations that I have regularly with clients that are language school owners, directors, or team leaders. So Let's carry on. That's how it all comes together.

00:15:48

All of those three skills put together. Now, before all those Kinos in the chat ask what the questions were, here they are, and you will have them when you get a copy of the slides. So before we continue, I understand that there will be some objections also, and admittedly, yes, coaching isn't for everybody all the time in every situation. And admittedly, a certain level of language proficiency or speaking the learner's L1 and/or the learner having the cognitive maturity, all of those things help. But the intention is the same regardless.

What we're trying to do is have these conversations differently, moving in the spectrum, in the part of the continuum where we are in the non-directive style, because that is exactly how coaching skills help us connect. They create the space, they hold that silence for the other person to fully and freely explore what they think, what they feel, and what they want to say. So in a sense, what we're doing is saying, "I see you," as they do in Avatar. But if you'd like something perhaps more pedagogically accepted, we could also quote Maria Montessori when she said that any unnecessary help is an obstacle to development. And that is perhaps what we sometimes do, I feel, in the classrooms when we are constantly telling or giving instructions or giving feedback or making suggestions.

00:17:20

Perhaps we could encourage agency in our learners by opening up and holding that space for them to be who they choose to be. So Thank you very much, everybody. It's been an absolute pleasure, if not a sprint. Please scan the QR code now to access a reflection sheet where you can actually take these skills and try to put them into practice. And you can also stay in touch through this QR code, through the socials, and even sign up to my newsletter.

I'll, um, put it in the chat also. I'll put a link in the chat for anybody who can't scan. Thank you very much, everybody.