Quantum Coaching
I recently met an old work colleague for a beer and some catching up. We hadn’t seen each other since Y2K days. Nick worked as a technical support analyst at the ISP when I was appointed to manage the support center, battlefield promotion-style.
“Like a supernova whose light reaches us years after the star’s explosion, the meaning of significant conversations often reveals itself long after the words themselves have faded from memory, or even consciousness.”
When we started planning to get together, he mentioned how much a talk I used to give to new hires had stuck with him. After many months I was able to find some old notes for the talk in my cluttered garage, and I made a copy to give him.
Looking it over in the bar, he smiled. “I have to tell you, that talk got me two jobs” he said. He’d remembered the key concepts, including Servant Leadership and the inverted Org Chart, and referenced them in job interviews.
Turn to today when I read A Quantum Theory of Conversation, by João Sevilhano in a newsletter:
“Think of a conversation that fundamentally altered your perspective on something important. Years later, what stuck with you? Probably not the exact words or the specifics of the setting in which it took place. But the transformation you underwent—how your thinking changed or emotional landscape shifted—that you’ll recall.”
In life, we talk ceaselessly. How much is truly heard? What gets remembered? And, how do some conversations sit dormant in the consciousness, set to blossom in the far future?
Sevilhano writes, “Like a supernova whose light reaches us years after the star’s explosion, the meaning of significant conversations often reveals itself long after the words themselves have faded from memory, or even consciousness.”
What’s more, we see that a conversation is not just the transcript of what was said. Think of the work of Albert Mehrabian, who found that in certain contexts, the impact of in communicating emotion was heavily weighted away from the words spoken (Body Language – 55%, Voice– 38%, and the actual Words– 7%).
While there is so much more to unpack in Sevilhano’s piece, I’ll just add one more thought – what does this mean for coaching? A conversation may take years to foster change in our clients, probably long after we stop seeing them. And, the actual words we say form a small portion of what they take in, with our tone and body language sending messages as well. It’s yet another reason to listen more than we speak with our clients, and to pay attention to mood, emotion, and energy. This is why ICF standards state that coaching should “notice, acknowledge, and explore energy shifts within the client” and a coach must “integrate the client’s words, tone, body language to determine the full meaning of conversation.”
Like quantum particles, the precise effect of coaching conversations is difficult to predict, and their impact may take years to manifest.
