Paddington Station: Watch out for fairies. And bears.

I was told this story the other day by a colleague and just had to treat you to it, if only because it is true and, from my perspective as a coach who likes to build a safe environment; appalling. My colleague dubs this work ‘fairy coaching’ and I tend to agree with him, on the basis that it falls into the happy-clappy-hessian-knitted-teepee brand of coaching which can give life/business coaching a bad name. See what you think, here’s the story:

At his place of work my colleague has an MD who likes to hire the services of a particular ‘coach’ to help team development and promote harmony. The ‘coach’ likes to get people down and dirty on bean bags, which is not always the best way to make people feel comfortable (the client should choose, not the coach). Last month the team were treated to a new way to confront their fears. They all caught the train into London and when they disembarked at Paddington a soap-box was produced and one by one the team had to stand on it and shout out their fears to bemused commuters.

Yes really!

I had thought this kind of misguided exercise had been binned at the end of the 90’s, along with suspect outward-bound style management ‘bonding’ weekends, which only served to create ill-feeling amongst staff and in no way replicated the working life of the business. (I’ve been on three of these and having learned to abseil, found that this wasn’t a great deal of help when trying to plan a complex factory).

No New Learning

Having finished on the soap-box what did my colleague learn? Only to avoid the police, who asked the group to “Move along please” as a shop owner complained they were blocking her flower stall. The experience also confirmed my colleague’s suspicions about ’fairy coaching’ and as for team harmony, well you can guess the general reaction to the stunt.

Safety Counts

Coaching starts with clear contracting to build a safe environment. If there isn’t a contract then in the words of an experienced Supervisor: “You don’t do no coaching.” If only more people understood this and realised that coaching is client-centred, not ego-centred, then the world and my colleague would both be a bit happier.

A 'boiler plate' contract is solid and reliable

Hooray! I’ve just signed the contract with my publisher for a new book called Job Hunting 3.0 and now all I have to do is find the time and space to write 50,000 words to be delivered on 1st Feb 2010.

Although that may sound like a tough target, the publisher originally wanted 60,000 words by 1st Jan..! Given that November is racing by I must admit that my heart skipped a beat when I thought about that particular challenge, so I decided to go into what I like to think of as ‘contracting mode’. Transactional Analysis (TA) is often described as a ‘contracted psychotherapy’ and one thing that has been politely drummed in to me over the years is that contracting is key.

Without having a clear contract you run the risk of professional (and personal) disaster so it’s important to take time to do the contracting bit well. By contracting, I mean working through the goals, the ‘hows’, the admin points, the fears and the worries that need to be shared, discussed and sorted to make for successful agreements, whether written or verbal.

Mindful of this I rang the publisher and instead of simply trying to negotiate to a middle ground I asked him what his needs were, in order to find out his thinking. He wanted a book of 192 pages to hit the shops in May, or June, next year. Realising that 60k was a notional number of words and that in reailty the number of pages was more important we talked about what was realistic for 1st Feb, which is the deadline for a June publication date, and agreed upon 50k words as being a reasonable minimum.

He sent me a copy of their standard 14 page contract, I compared it to the one I had signed for my other books and inserted all the bits missing from his ‘boiler plate’ version and then we fine tuned the revisions. It’s worth noting that previously I had taken advice from the Society of Authors, who provide an excellent and free service to people like me trying to work out the details of a book contract, that is global in scope and lasts beyond my death in timescale.

My revised contract now gives me more free author copies, the right to audit the publisher’s accounts, a better split of royalties for translation rights, the right to be consulted over future editions and it acknowledges that the book is printed and sold at the publisher’s expense and risk (not mine). Added together, all these little changes mean that we both have a fair and mutually agreed contract. I feel much better that both of us shared our concerns and worked out a solution. A solution based on facts and not just a standard ‘go for the midde ground’ option.

The publisher is happy with the outcome, as he has secured a new title for next year, and I’m happy that I can deliver the manuscript on time.

Transactional Analysis (TA) has a great deal to say about contracting, notably the 3-Level Contract and 3-Cornered Contract models and we will come back to these in the future. For now though, the key things I’ve been reminded of by this story are:

• It does pay to take time and read documents.
• If I’m worried about part of the contract the time to mention it is before signing, when the parties can do something about it.
• Being worred is Ok. Staying silent isn’t. 

How well do I contract? Most of the time; much better than I used to. This is because I have given myself permission to raise concerns, find out the facts and take the time to work through the details. This is a better way to solve contracting problems without always jumping to a default middle ground ‘compromise position’. 

That’s me and I’m curious; how well do you contract? What could you do differently?