Teamtalk | It was only 5 minutes in when the magic started to happen. We were in the peer-coaching workshop and had just started the pushing for insights and surfacing assumptions exercise, participants were in pairs asking each other the surfacing questions including ‘what if your assumptions were false how would that change how you see yourself and the world?’ and then close to me it started.
One participant’s eyes went up and to the side as she visibly tried this out inside her mind. What if… You could almost see energy go up and down neural connections as a little cart on a rollercoaster: ‘what if the underpinnings of that statement I just made were not true….’ The little cart went down the huge pylons that support the rollercoaster: what if this is not solid but floating on air… what then… and then suddenly her whole face shone up, as if there was now a crack of light in the tunnel she had been trudging along in. It was internal light of course but it shone on her face as if the sun just burst through.
Seeing people gain huge insights is seeing people at their absolute best and most beautiful. It’s daunting and awe-inspiring.
It’s Aha and haha combined.
It makes you a believer again in human potential if you were ever lacking there.. Creating space for insights leads to deeply individual understandings. It’s not about turning people around. It’s about giving them space to seek out the new in their thinking and the clarity and freedom that can come with that. And the outcome is sheer magic!
Peer coaching is an element of the THNK Creative Leadership Program. It involves helping a colleague or friend examine their thinking which can then lead to breakthroughs. Since allowing the new in your thinking is quite difficult but so valuable, I am constantly on the search for further insights on how to enable this magical moment. Do you have any ideas or thoughts?
Robert Wolfe, coach at THNK