Guiding Without Giving Answers - Redefining Coaching as a Skill

“Coaching isn’t about being the answering machine; it’s about giving space for people to find their own answers..” - Niko Kaintantzis.

In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, Nikolaos Kaintantzis, Mark Richards, and Stephan Neck explore coaching—its essence, techniques, and the subtle distinctions between Agile coaching, systemic coaching, consulting, and mentoring. Packed with real-world anecdotes and thought-provoking metaphors, this discussion dives into what truly makes a great coach.

Key Takeaways:

• The Heart of Coaching: Coaching isn't about giving answers; it's about creating space for others to discover their potential. As Niko states, “You’re not important because you know everything. You’re important because you guide through the process.”
• Trust as a Foundation: Mark emphasizes the critical role of authenticity, vulnerability, and confidentiality in building trust, noting, “If you want trust, you need to be true to yourself.”
• The Balance of Roles: Stephan highlights the fluidity of coaching, comparing it to walking a tightrope—balancing precision, focus, and the right tools while navigating risk and distraction.
• Knowing When to Step Back: All three hosts agree on the importance of stepping into the background to let others shine, whether by switching hats (as Niko practices) or recognizing the right time to offer insights and guidance.
• Practical Tips for Aspiring Coaches: From mastering open questions to maintaining boundaries between professionalism and friendship, the group shares actionable advice for new SPCs to hone their coaching skills.

This episode is a must-listen for SPCs and coaches at all levels looking to deepen their understanding of coaching and inspire true transformation in their organizations.

Tune in now to learn how coaching goes beyond techniques—it’s an art of empowering others.

Transcript

Mark Richards: 0:33

Welcome to SPC's Unleashed Season 2, Episode 2. If you missed last week, you'll have missed the fact we're now unleashed from spending every week talking about safe competencies and we are diving into some of our favorite topics. And if you watch season one at all, you would have figured out that Nico is very passionate about coaching and he's not alone in that. So Nico, take us away.

Niko Kaintantzis: 1:01

With pleasure. With pleasure. Thank you very much. Mark. Hi Stefan. Hi. Dear audience, live audience and listeners to podcast. So today is the question how can SPCs unlock the potential of others to maximize the impact of the organization? So we start our preparation work around the week earlier with on a meter board with a framing and the framing is always the part of the moderator. And this time I wanted to know the world word coach isn't protected, which leads to a wide variety of interpretations and practices. So I wanted to explore the essence of coaching and yeah, what it means and better understand how we can empower SPCs, how we can empower other people, other consultants. So today we will explore about what coaching truly means. What's the difference between agile and coach? Agile coaching and traditional coaching, good versus bad coaching, consulting versus coaching versus mentoring. I don't know. So welcome to SPC's Unleashed Season 2, Episode 2 and how can we grow in our role as a coach? And I would like to start with your passions. What are so Mark told already, I'm passionate about this topic. What is your passion?

Mark Richards: 2:18

Look, I think you could sum up what makes coaching great with something that happens pretty regularly with one of. It's a. It's a woman I've been coaching for I guess three or four years now across multiple jobs. And every now and again I'll call to check in. And at the moment I'm not actively working with her. I'm sure there'll be another time, someone sometime soon. Well, I will be, but I'll call and check in and say how you doing? She'll say, I'm awesome. Mark, I had the best chat with you last week. And I'd go, but we didn't talk last week. And she'll say, yeah, but I had something and I was really puzzled about it and I thought about calling you and then I had this mental conversation in my head of what would Mark ask me if I called him? And I had a five minute conversation with you because I knew all the questions you'd asked me. And then I went and did what I knew that I should have done in the first place. And for me, when you build that with somebody you coach. That's what coaching is all about.

Niko Kaintantzis: 3:18

Oh, great. I can connect very much with that. I so many times had calls and. And feedbacks. Oh, you helped me so much with. You showed me so much. And in my head. So I haven't done anything. Just asking questions and realizing you're helping without really, in your case, without thinking you're helping. It's just being there and asking the right things. So it resonates very much with me. Stefan, your passion in coaching, what me.

Stephan Neck: 3:47

Gets up every Saturday morning for these episodes, is we guys, we think alike, right? From different perspectives. And I could second what I just heard from you. It's. I think it's the attitude. And I read an article about good politicians, and the article said these were the guys who served, and then they disappeared, but they left with an impact. Right? And I like that, being second line, helping people, they perform on center stage. No matter if you are here in the. In the audience, if you are at the backstage, if you are at home, just great.

Niko Kaintantzis: 4:23

Perfect. And Mark already kicked off the first question. So what makes good coaches? What makes bad coaches? Can you also share some experiences of both? Yeah. What makes a good coach?

Mark Richards: 4:35

Mark? Look, I think it's almost easier to define what makes a bad coach, because by definition, that tells you what a good coach is. A bad coach is somebody who wants to be in the center, who are looking for people to recognize their contribution, who want to be acknowledged as the reason things were amazing. And they're very centrally, like, focused on themselves as opposed to focused on the people they're coaching. And I think if you flip that, you know, what makes a great coach? A great coach is someone who makes the people they coach shine.

Niko Kaintantzis: 5:12

That's great. Stefan. What makes a good coach?

Stephan Neck: 5:15

Yeah, I probably have to repeat myself. Surf and disappear. Right. And I would even use this analogy of we're in the same car, but you should be in the. In the passenger seat. The people should be driving. But we all know when we learn to drive, first of all, the coach or the mentor sat at the driving wheel, showing us how to operate the car. And then you switched over, and that's for me, good coaching, Right. Bad coaching again, as. As Mark said, I'm at the steering wheel talking and talking, and people are observing me, watching me, but they would like to drive the car, but they can't. I'm driving. And that's what I saw. Quite often, even I made that mistake quite often sitting on the left side in Switzerland and Europe. Right. Driving the car and thinking, I'm doing a good job. And guess what, guys? I went on to save copilot and I punched in. What is coaching? What does it mean? And it supports what we just mentioned. You're a facilitator of change, and change is driving to the passenger seat. You promote the collaboration in the car. Right. You will have some people at the back as well talking to you. And in the end, it's whoever is at the steering wheel should be a good driver. And that's what I experience quite often with that.

Mark Richards: 6:48

I should have thinking about that metaphor of the passenger seat of the car. And I've now been through three children learning to drive. So. Excuse me. So three children learning to drive. And I have a system with every child which is I will pay for them to get five or six lessons from a driving instructor before we try and drive with them. And the main reason I do that is because I know the driving instructor has an extra brake pedal on the passenger side of the car. And.

Stephan Neck: 7:20

Right.

Mark Richards: 7:21

You know what are they? That's a safety net. If, if the learner driver is about to have a horrendous accident, you know, they've got that extra brake pedal like, and it's a safety system for them. And then as they start to grow and become a little more confident, you don't need that safety net. But I think also quite often as a coach, you're providing a safety net for the people you're coaching to stretch themselves to try new things and know that you're there if they need you.

Stephan Neck: 7:53

So, yeah, may I jump in on this one? I like the extra brake pedal. Right. And that leads me to who do I trust? I, as the learner, do I trust the coach? Right. And for me, that's a big issue when it comes to coaching. And you both Mark and Nico, you mentioned people come back to you after your coaching sessions because they trust you. And that's the best gold medal you can get as a coach or as a mentor.

Niko Kaintantzis: 8:23

If I stay in this example with learning driving a car. I once asked a colleague of mine when I was younger, around 18, why he doesn't exercise with his father. Because it's much more cheaper. Why? And they told me, yeah, each time we do something complicated, he just helps me from the other side. So. No, no, no. To park press on this. No, no, let's. It's this way here. And in my head, I've seen a comic, him just walking around the car, throwing away. And so that's the way how you do it. So. And he always told me, whatever he does, you always have somebody who's really trying to show you how you're doing right. Instead of giving me the chance, experience it myself. And that's why he really took the job to pay the driver teacher, because he said, I cannot learn it with my father because he always wants to have it perfect. He always has a better opinion how to do it. And by the way, that's not coaching this kind of technique, it's really knowing everything better and trying to create a carbon copy of you. That's not the idea of coaching. I had this year at the Safe Summit in Denver a nice epiphany. I was part of a session letting people coach, really exercising, making groups of three. One was the coach, one was a coachee, the other was the observer. And yeah, I just walked around and see what's happening there. And I've heard, I've witnessed really great coaching, but at some point, really, oh gosh, that's not coaching what you're doing. So how can you explain this now nicely? So I asked my co leads, can I say something in between? Because the next round was again a round of coaching. And then I said to them, I've seen good and not so good coaching. What makes a coach a good coach was just the question of the audience. And I thought, okay, we will wait a little bit and struggle and go forward and back. And the half of the room immediately answered, a good coach talks less than the coaching. And that was what I observed. I walked around the room and I thought, why are you talking? Why are you explaining things? Why are you saying, have you tried to do this or this? That's not the question. Yeah, it is one semantically or with a syntax, but it's not really a question. Have you tried this? And this. Have you thought to lead your partner and kill your kids? No, that's not the question. It's just a suggestion what we would do. And I was really happy to see that the people know it, but they didn't done it. So they needed much more exercise. And I'm also with you. That's not about your own ego. So it's really hard when you see the solution as a human being and you know that's the way to go. Open your eyes. Why are you struggling? But it's not about you. It's not about you giving solutions, it's about you giving the room. The people like Mark said in the beginning, the room that people can shine. That's your job. And I can also give you one example from my coachings for me was so clear what this person has to do. And there was a one and a half hour session during my education becoming a coach. And I thought, oh gosh, I will die this one and a half hours. It's so clear what the solution is. And at the end it was completely something else. It was not about the process, it was not about the company, it was not about doing no retrospectives. That was my solution. By the way. I thought you need retrospectives. You need retrospectives. How can I ask questions that you realize you need retros? And the end was not retrospectives. It was another person in the room. Whenever this person is there, my coach, he was just angry and wasn't able to listen and react. And the problem was really the chemistry between those and not the company. And we would never found that if I just jumped in and say, do a retro. Come on, let's save us an hour. Now I'm talking too much as a moderator, so. But you see, that's my passion. As Mark said in the beginning.

Stephan Neck: 12:25

Yeah, I guess, Nico, that's a good, a good point, right? For me, coaching is, as you said, less talking, more. You are the example. You do hands on stuff, you show stuff and people start following you. And I guess that's probably your experience as well because in your intros you both said people are coming back because they know it's showtime. I remember at the SAFE summit, right, the MC said it's showtime. Showtime is not you performing on stage, it's being an example. And for me, coaching is a lot of hands on stuff. And before I can be a good coach, you have to train yourself. You have to do it yourself to be a hands on coach. And for me that's a prerequisite to become a good coach. That people feel safe, they see it works, they see how it could be done. And then they move away from the shoe where they just copy to the hull where they start exploring stuff. And that's when I switch into passenger seat, right when I start observing and probably then my role will change as well as a coach.

Niko Kaintantzis: 13:40

Thank you very much. Stefan. While we are there, I've seen the preparation. You starting asking copilot of safe about coaching. And first when I read it I thought, okay, that's a stupid answer. But there's more than just a stupid answer. Can you, can you elaborate a little bit? What, what happened there?

Stephan Neck: 13:56

It's interesting. I, I went I'm sometimes lazy. Right. I went on to save copilot and said, okay, what's coaching? And again, interestingly, I found the article of Jennifer Fawcett where she talks about being a good coach. Right. And I highly suggest, guys, I'm not telling you what it is. Go on to Safe Studio, do the research, ask the same questions, and you'll find out. It's an awesome. It's an awesome article from Jennifer Fawcett about being a good coach in the safe universe.

Mark Richards: 14:35

So can I just pause on that one for a second? Right. Because I think so many people get so confused about coaching. And one of those, I think for me is the difference between coach as a role and coaching as a skill set. And if you look around at the moment and you look at, you know, what are people looking for in leadership? One of the big skill sets they look for in leaders is coaching skill set. And some of the best leaders that I've worked with have had very strong coaching skill sets. And so I think sometimes you can look at it and go, well, there's the role, which is the coach, and then there's the skill set, which is coaching. And that can be a little bit different.

Niko Kaintantzis: 15:17

Say more.

Mark Richards: 15:18

Well, one of the ways I think it might be a little bit different is so if you look at Lisa Radkin's work, and she probably wrote some of the earliest stuff on coaching in the agile world, she used to love to talk about the four coaching stances, and she would talk about teaching, mentoring, coaching, and facilitating. And a lot of her thrust was to go, you know, which stance is right for that moment in time and to recognize the stance you're in. And I think, you know, we've been focusing in our conversation so far very much on the coaching stance, which is those skills which are relevant regardless of whether you're a role as a coach or whether you're a leader who coaches. But I think if you start to flip lens a little bit into perhaps my role as a coach, then at that point in time I find myself flipping between various roles, stances. What do people need from me at the moment? I don't know about you guys, but I found every now and again, I'll go a very long time where all my work is coaching, and then I'll get back into the training room and it's almost liberating to be in the training room and be able to actually impart knowledge.

Stephan Neck: 16:32

Yeah, right.

Mark Richards: 16:35

And you know, you're still going to be facilitating in how you do it, but that Moment to go, oh, now I'm in training stance, and I can just give you knowledge as opposed to I'm in coaching stance, and I'm sitting in a very different seat in my relationship with you. And I think that kind of awareness of coaching skills being relevant regardless of your role. But actually, if your role is to be a coach, then probably being much more aware of, you know, which stance is right for the moment in time, given your role.

Stephan Neck: 17:08

I think, I think, Mark, this is really crucial, right? The right stuff at the right time in the right way. I would summarize it like this. And to use another analogy, I would talk about my backpack, right? Sometimes on a journey, you need a light backpack, and it's on your back. But sometimes when you have a rest, when you have a pause, it's not on your back, it's on your side. And you might pick something out of it. But sometimes it's just there just in case you need it, right? Someone shows up and says, oh, after a 10k hike, I do have a blister. Do you have some remedy? Do you have something to help me? Right? And then you need your backpack as well. So the question for me is always in a certain context. And that probably leads us then to the ties to being a consultant. Do I assess the context in the right way to be a good coach? The right stuff at the right time? Sometimes a light backpack, sometimes you do a march in the army, we did that with 25 kilos on our back because we knew we had to overnight somewhere in the wops. And you need a tent, you need a sleeping bag, you need extra stuff, right? Otherwise you won't survive. You will starve. So I find it interesting what you said, Mark, changing also between role activity, the contextual behavior. Sometimes I'm training, sometimes I'm just giving out information, bringing people on the same flight level. I'd say, right? And sometimes I'm leading. I might even be influencing in a certain way as a coach, right? But in a good way. Not what we see nowadays in social media. And I think this is the exciting part of being an SPC or an spct, having every day a new perspective, getting ready for the day, not just walking into the day and finding out, oh, I miss my backpack, or it's too small or it's too heavy.

Niko Kaintantzis: 19:24

It just inspired me to another story I didn't put on my preparation board is when I tried to be more coach than consultant or more systemic coach than agile coach, I did one trick for myself. I changed the consulting hour, on the coaching hour. So I was at the same client and they had two rates. Am I now an agile coach or am I systemic coach? Because I realized it must be so difficult staying in the role I've chosen or they've chosen for me. And so really I increase the coaching billboard, the coaching rate. And whenever I tried to break out of coaching and being in a consultant or whenever they ask me, so please give me an advice, I said, okay, yeah, but you paid for coaching and now you want to have consulting. Do you want to do that? Or let's do it at the end, if the coaching doesn't help you, let's go to consulting the last five minutes with the higher rate. It was just a trick for myself and it really helped a lot, staying on the coaching and letting people think and work on their own issues. So. And for me it was really helpful to distinguish between when am I an agile coach, which is sometimes more consulting than coaching, to be honest, and when I'm really only a coach. And this also made it a bit difficult because I sometimes felt, okay, am I not only a question machine as a coach? And a lot of intervention sessions about that, because I really wanted to say, okay, my identity is agile coaching. And now I'm trying to do something else. Is it okay that I ask these questions or it's okay that I intervened and I get a lot of great answers from my peers in the intervention sessions. And saying, you also as a coach have your personality, not bringing it in, not caring for your people. It's also not coaching. So that's why at the moment I don't have a fear of AI because they don't have this empathy for the others. As a coach, you still make connections, you still sometimes have to choose, okay, now I will say something because I care for you and it's still coaching and not advising or consulting or something else. Thoris, from your side.

Mark Richards: 21:34

Do you want to go first, Stefan, or shall I?

Stephan Neck: 21:37

No, just shoot. I can see you bubbling.

Mark Richards: 21:41

I'm going to shoot on this one. And again, it's something I think there's a lot of confusion about.

Niko Kaintantzis: 21:46

Right.

Mark Richards: 21:47

If you're sitting in that, what is an agile coach? If you look really strictly at coaching definitions, then by definition there almost can't be such a thing as an agile coach. And this is this separation between am I there to help you discover the knowledge you already have by finding the right question you need versus my need for knowledge? And I actually say there was Quite a wave of this confusion in the Australian market. And went through a phase where a lot of large enterprises were gearing up and hiring very large armies of coaches and they wound up hiring one particular organization hired probably 30 coaches who'd never done any delivery and never worked in agile, right? They all had great life coaching skills and they knew how to ask questions to probe people's feelings. They had no clue how to do agile delivery and it was a complete fiasco. And I think there's a piece in that if you think about so much of coaching is finding the right question, you need to be able to draw on a knowledge base to understand the questions that might be useful. And that's the bit where it's becoming an agile coach is what's the knowledge base I draw on when I find the question that's going to help you in this moment?

Stephan Neck: 23:09

Let me pick that one up, Mark. I think, let me use the analogy of soccer, right? You can play backyard soccer, you can play Champions League, Both is soccer, right? The question is where do you start? Where are you in your evolution as a team, as individuals, as an organization? And then let me throw in what gets me now and then is if you look at LinkedIn and other platforms, almost everyone is a coach nowadays, right, without any training. So yes, probably you can play and coach backyard soccer and declare yourself as a coach. But when it comes to Champions League, I am sure that the big teams, they only accept a coach who really does hands on stuff, who probably played soccer, who has a good understanding of tactics and what is the opponent able to do? What is the impact of the environment? So again, contextualize what's going on as a coach for me is important. And for me, if I look at the label coach, the first thing I do is I look how do they play soccer, right? And how's the impact of coaching? And that's for me either good and true coaching or it's just coaching by name. It's just a change of labels or is it a game changer? And that's the aspiration for me as well as a coach, right? How do I invest in myself as a coach? Because coaching backyarks soccer, I probably can do that. When it comes to the regional league, to the National League, to the Champions League, that's a whole different abstraction layer which is demanding. And I'm pretty apprehensive calling me an executive coach or a coach on a certain level. If I haven't done that, if I haven't learned from the best in the trade Right.

Niko Kaintantzis: 25:15

And that's really a cool thing you're saying now, Stefan, why it is important to know the context you're coaching because usually you can coach when you have no idea about the topic. And by the way, this was one of my feedbacks during my education. You're best when I have no idea about the topic. So okay, is this, is it really true? Yeah, it was great in being a poor coach, but usually knowing something about the matter you're coaching helps you. And I can give you one little story. With one company I worked, they really separated it. The systemic coaching, the leadership coaching and the agile coaching. Two separate companies. And they are specialized companies only doing leadership coaching. And they ended up that we messed up agile because there was one talk from a leader, he asked, yeah, they are not planning anymore, the agile people. And it's really hard. And now an agile coach would go to a different path or a coach with an agile background would go to a different path. This coach had no idea about agile and he started to say, okay, oh, had you had similar experience in the past where something like that happened when your team go to a different direction, then you went, yeah, had it done. And then, and then, okay, so what tools do you know? What resources do you have to change to challenge this? Yeah, then I just said, you go there, there, and then I set direction. Okay. Oh great. So you have the tool set. Go for it. As a systemic coach with agile backgrounds, I, I would ask, oh, that's interesting that the people are not planning. Yeah, that's how agile is. Okay. Wow. That's how agile is. Okay. Why do we have this impression? Where does it come from? I don't know. So, okay, maybe to the next session you tell me the references why this happens. So why theory is saying that you same theory saying that. So you go to completely different path to going back to your, what you've done before to your DNA or, or reflexes going to a different path where you'll learn about. And that's why sometimes, or usually it's okay having this knowledge. It's not okay telling them so what they're not planning. They are stupid people. They have to plan because. And you come with, then you are consulting and that's really, it's a fine balance what you are doing. But you need, as you said before, to be a football coach, I have to know a little bit about football because otherwise, it's not the best idea. Yeah, exactly. Mark, I've seen you just put a card what you want to talk about next on our backstory meter board?

Mark Richards: 27:42

Look, it feels like I'm almost shifting our direction, but, you know, one of the prana questions you gave us was, you know, what makes a great coach? Or, you know, what are some of the attributes? And for me, one of the biggest ones is your ability to build trust. And is it trust that you have good intentions? Is it trust that you're a safe space and anything that's said to you will go no further? Yeah. The moment when you can start to really have it as an impact as a coach is the moment when you've built some trust. And it could be as simple as people going, where's that? What directions? What's behind that question? And it's like the race is not to show people how good you are or how much you know. The race is to build a trust relationship, which gives you a foundation for almost everything that happens after that.

Stephan Neck: 28:36

I second that, Mark. It's. You become friends over time. Right. It's not customers anymore or clients. It's more like a relationship, a friendship.

Niko Kaintantzis: 28:48

And that works well. Yeah.

Mark Richards: 28:51

Mark, please, quick aside on the way through. That gets tricky a little bit, though, because it is like that. Right. And yeah, my wife can tell sometimes. She can tell from the other end of the house who I'm on a coaching call with because she can hear the tone of my voice. And. And you do get these really deep relationships. But I've had a couple of long term coaching relationships that have become friendships. And then it's kind of weird because, you know, the things you know about that person and their life and their challenges and their struggles and their hopes and fears because of your coaching relationship are completely out of all proportion to what you would know about them as a friend. And you're suddenly in this moment, oh, we're friends now, but, you know, we're kind of new friends and, you know, I know your life story for the last five years in its intimate detail. It's an interesting one when you're crossing that friendship boundary. But I interrupted you, Nikko. You are going to take it somewhere more serious.

Niko Kaintantzis: 29:48

No, no, it was going in the same direction. So what I fear as a coach is that the professional relationship we are having is becoming too much a friendship and you are funnier and not serious anymore. And what I try to do is my coachings always have an end. So when you pay or buy a systemic coaching from my side, you got the train ticket with six marks. You can just go and stand for it. And the first time you buy the tickets, you write the goal on it. And then the first session is just finding out is it the right goal for you. And then you have five more of them. Sometimes you need four, sometimes you need six. But when the ticket finishes, so you, each time you come, you just take one ride. And then the last ride is about checking do we arrive on the goal you're having or not? And if we arrived there, I try to anchor the new techniques you learned on this session and then it's over. So you can buy a new ticket, but it's really something you do actively. I want to have a new six tickets for this train ride with you. And if not, that's great because now the next half hour, half year or a year, you can see if you can do it by your own. And then if you need again coaching, you need a new ticket, where is the goal? And so on and so on. And that's how I try to protect me from just becoming buddies and me not being professional anymore. And do you have any such kind of boundaries or how do you handle that?

Stephan Neck: 31:22

Let me clarify what I meant with this friendship and then let's move on. It's the friendship on the playground because the playground sets the boundaries off field. It's a different thing, right? And I distinguish between those two areas or environments. It's the playground, but it's a different game because you have a certain friendship that really works between coach and coachee or mentor and mentee because you play together, you're together in the car, but if you're outside the car, different world. I go left, you go right.

Niko Kaintantzis: 32:00

Get trust you need you have on the playground with your colleagues. Oh, that's great. Next thing, I'm going to sit in.

Mark Richards: 32:08

That boundary section for a second because, you know, it's a truth a lot of us have to navigate. We're working with people, we're working with people wearing different hats. And if you have a relationship that there are, there will be sessions or moments in that relationship where it's coaching that's the basis of the relationship, and moments where it'll be something else. Developing some deliberate protocols to recognize. You know, I know when I was first learning facilitation, they taught us one thing that said, look, sometimes as a facilitator, you've got to join the conversation. You know, you're asked to join the conversation, you've got a signal to the room that says, I'm no longer in facilitation mode. I'm joining the Conversation. Because I'm now no longer the impartial, you know, listener and opener of a conversation. I'm offering an opinion. And, you know, we learned this technique that said, if you're facilitating your standing and. And you. You announced to the room, hey, if you need to draw me into the conversation, I can. When I sit down, I'm taking off my facilitator hat. Now, what is that quite explicit thing that goes backwards and forwards? And, you know, I remember when I. When I first really got deep into coaching, I spent three years studying how to ask questions, right? And it was literally just book after book trying to figure out how to ask more powerful questions on the basis of a coaching session I received that just blew my mind. And my wife would come to me to talk about things, and I would automatically go into coaching mode with her. And it wasn't long before she said, mark, I need a husband, not a coach. But then every now and again, she'll say, hey, I need coach Mark. Or I'll have a friend who'll say, hey, I'd really appreciate some coaching through a moment. And I'll look back and I'll say, are you sure you want coach Mark? And say, yes, I want coach Mark. Okay, you can have coach Mark now. And, you know, we signal the fact that we're switching into coaching mode, and then we'll signal the fact when we switch back out and, you know, building a protocol if you've got to navigate your way through moments.

Stephan Neck: 34:10

Yes, yes.

Niko Kaintantzis: 34:12

I would also like to add that something I love doing, it is saying, okay, let's now me being the coach. Let's now me being the architect are. Me being in the role of that and that. And that sets a frame for. For your audience. Because if you have a lot of experience, you had many roles in your life and. And many experts with role. You're talking now helps the people. Because it's not Nico talking. It's Nico in the head. In the head being an architect and now being the consultant and now being. Being the coach. And somebody once told me, it's really interesting, you always do this gesture before you say, I'm now. And it's somewhere in. In my body. I don't do it with conscious. It just happened when I say, let me switch the head. And doing this. And people realize, okay, now he just. On the television. Now it's a different channel. Let's listen. Okay, now it's coaching. It does something with the people. I want to switch to something which I don't Know if Mark fears or likes, because at the beginning he says, oh, no, go. She's hurting me with that. Nice questions. We call this now jiggles. This part of the episodes is this time it's the question if coach, if the coach would be a circus artist, which one would it be? So you are now a circus artist. As a coach, who are you and why?

Mark Richards: 35:31

You're waiting for me, aren't you, Stefan?

Stephan Neck: 35:33

I do, I do. We can tell.

Mark Richards: 35:39

So I have to tell you, like many of Nico's questions that he's asked over time, the first thing I had to do was go to ChatGPT and say, list the 50 most popular types of circus artists that I could scan it. And I had a moment of tension for the temptation for the knife thrower's assistant. But it didn't really feel like a coaching question for me. It's, you know, with the trapeze, the flying trapeze, there's the catcher, and they basically do nothing, right? They just hang upside down by their legs. They never do any tricks, and you never really watch them. You watch the amazing person doing triple some assaults in the air and backflips and all kinds of craziness. But that catcher is like the anchor. And without the catcher there, the star could never be the star. So if a coach was a circus artist, they'd be the catcher on the trapeze.

Niko Kaintantzis: 36:39

Perfect. Thanks for the summary because we lost at the beginning, or in my case, I lost the beginning. So the. The catcher of the trapeze thingy. Great, Stefan.

Stephan Neck: 36:48

When I read the question, I first thought about the people standing at the entrance to the arena moving the curtains. And then I reread the question and you were asking for a artist. So I would say a coach is more someone who supports. Right? And then, okay, I said, yep, Nico, you want an artist. And again, like Mark, I googled, okay, what are the different artists you could find that are closest to being a coach? And I found the tightrope walker. It's a lot about balance, but also precision. If you are not precise, you fall down. Right? It's about taking risks. Sometimes you have to move faster, slower. You need some tools like the big bar to get your balance. You will have missteps for sure. I'm still not the best coach. And sometimes it even has fatal consequences, right? And you have to bear and you have to live with that. And the other one is, if I want to be a coach, I have to be mentally tough and focused. I'm on the rope now. Please, no distraction. But the world throws a lot of distraction at me, even as a coach in that context where I'm tempted to do this and that. And I have another answer. And I have another topic that I could throw in. No, let's be focused and move away the distractions. So for me, it's the tightrope walker.

Niko Kaintantzis: 38:22

Great. Great. When I wrote the question, I thought, okay, you will not come with a circus director or with the lion dumpter or something like that. I was aware of that. And then yesterday I realized I have to answer this question too, for myself, because I was sitting there, okay. And I had similar thoughts as Stefan. I would love to put somebody there who is not an artist. And then I thought, okay, there is an artist in the circus which is not really an artist, and that's the band. So I've chosen. I know it's not a circus artist, it's an artist in the circus. But I've chosen the band because they support the real artists. They are not telling them what to do. They're not being in the foreground and imposing and saying, yeah, I'm now the solo drummer or I'm anthropology guitar player. They're just there in the background and making the show even better and let the people shine. And that's why I cheat a little bit. I've chosen an artist, but not really a circus artist. Yeah. That's when we have to answer your own questions. Thank you very much. But taking these pictures with us, did you have any challenges as a coach? Being the circus director, being the dumpster and realizing, no, I'm the rope artist. I'm the one who catches on trapeze. I should be the music player in the background. Did you have such experience in your life as a coach, such challenges?

Mark Richards: 39:42

Quite a few, yeah.

Stephan Neck: 39:44

You guys have quite a few, but. But, okay, quite a few. I think still, my biggest challenge is to know when to step back. Changing role or just observing. Right. I've done my job. It's good enough. They can drive the car, they can play the game. I'm still too much involved too long. That's one of my challenges I have. And I'm still working on that one.

Niko Kaintantzis: 40:12

Right.

Stephan Neck: 40:13

And the other one we already mentioned, to maintain boundaries. Right. We're on the playing ground, we're in the action. Or it's a pause. It's a different environment. So again, to bring the friendship into the right perspective. Right. We're human beings. We have relations, but the relations can change even within the context. And for me, these are the two biggest Challenges I really face as a coach.

Mark Richards: 40:45

I actually, the more I think about it, the more I like your tightrope artist, Stefan, and the precision aspect of it, of choosing exactly what's right in the moment, recognizing what somebody needs from you, where they're at, what the situation is and being able to respond appropriately. Because there are times when a deep coaching question is not the right answer.

Stephan Neck: 41:11

Absolutely.

Mark Richards: 41:12

And, you know, there's a little mantra that I always run. You know, is it a learning opportunity or a cliff? Somebody's about to do something stupid. You know it's the wrong thing. You know it's a stupid thing to do, but you know, they're just heading for it. And no matter how gently you probe and question, they're going down that path. You've got to figure out is this, you know, is it a mistake they're going to make that there's a learning moment in. And perhaps can I plant some seeds for them now that after the learning moment we can go back and really capitalize on. And not in a kind of I told you so way, but drawing their attention to some of the repercussions about what they're going to do so that you can get coach back into them as opposed to going, are they about to run over a cliff? Consider they're about to run over a cliff. There's no coming back and learning from that mistake.

Stephan Neck: 42:05

Yeah.

Mark Richards: 42:06

And just recognizing and. And then, you know, holding the. Holding your nerve because. Because sometimes. And this probably comes back to being an agile coach, sometimes you just really desperately don't want them to do what they're about to do and. And you just gotta go, yes. But if they do it and they learn from it, there's so much better in the future than if I found some way to prevent them from doing it because they'd never have that moment of just be okay, listen to Mark because he knows best.

Stephan Neck: 42:37

May I pick that one up? May I pick that one up, Mark, before it comes to kind of a learning opportunity or where you really have to stop people before they jump off the cliff because it's dead end. Right. For me, before that, there's the moment of gut feeling. And over the last few years, gut feeling has become an issue as well for me as a coach. Any experience from your side, Nico and Mark?

Niko Kaintantzis: 43:04

Yes. That's why humans are still the best coaches than AI because we have a gut at least. But it only works. Gut feeling only works if you have the experience. So gut feeling doesn't work in new situation. And that's really the important thing. And whenever I realize I don't have this gut feeling, I make a break. So this was one of the tips I want to set earlier. You are not the answer machine or the perfect question. A machine. When you're overwhelmed yourself by the situation, just recognize and say it. And in my case, I say, okay, I think we need fresh air. Let us open the window, make a break and then you have time to take a break yourself because it's really a huge job you're doing, you're strong, you are doing, and then you have time to just reevaluate the situation. And this also learned in my trainings. I witnessed a great coaching by an expert and at one point she just said, let's make a break, let's bring some fresh air. And nicely. You can open windows in Europe. No? So you open it, fresh air and then you have a break and then it starts completely somewhere else. And yeah, a gut feeling is something with experience. And that's why good coaches are mostly older than just yesterday. I've done my master's degree in something, so yeah, it needs, it's possible without. But that's the difference between good and great.

Mark Richards: 44:25

I think there's a maybe just doubling down on gut feeling and looking at it through a different lens. One of the, you know, I look back and I go, who do I feel like I learned most about coaching from? And there's two names above and beyond everybody else. It's Jerry Weinberg and Esther Darby. And you know, wow, did I learn a lot from them. And I had a moment when, you know, I had the privilege of being on a six day immersion course with Jerry and Esther. And I was watching Jerry and you know, he was in his late 80s at the time and these were long days, right? It was often 10 or 11 hour days and there was no teaching. Right. It was all exploratory, experiential, learning oriented. And it was all about what he could draw out of us. And we'd actually started the week with a personality profile session and we'd explored what your personality profile could tell you about yourself and perhaps about interactions with others. And he'd shared his. And he was a deep introvert. And I looked at him and, you know, I walked up to him, day three, day four, and I said, look, how are you doing it? You're 88. You're in that chair 10, 12 hours a day with us. You're a deep introvert. Don't you just want to run screaming and find your cave and he said, look, no, because I've just got to listen to the music. And I said, what do you mean you got to listen to the music? He said, you've got to pay attention to what's going on within you. Because if you can feel yourself, your heartbeat start to race, if you can feel your emotions start to rise, it's actually a signal back to yourself that you're probably trying too hard and instead of drawing the energy from others, you're trying to provide the energy yourself. And you know, we had quite a chat about it afterwards. And he said, look, it's one of the biggest things you've got to learn is to understand what's going on in you because whatever's going on in you is going to be influencing everything that else that's happening and paying attention to that. And sometimes your body will tell you things that all of your other powers of observation won't. You know, back to Nico's comment about sometimes you just got to take a break. It's that moment when your body's telling you, hey, you know, this is not an atmosphere in which good things are going to happen. We've got to find some way to step away and reset that. So I think gut feeling, there's gut feeling which is, you know, intuition just pointing you in the right direction. But I think the other thing is, you know, what is your, what's your gut telling you? What's your body telling you about what's happening in that moment? And are you actually listening to yourself as well as the person you're coaching?

Niko Kaintantzis: 46:56

Oh, that's great. Let's continue with this kind of tone at the moment. What, what do you see how young ASPCs or SPCs can grow in this area, in this realm we're having. So listen to your body, listen, feeling the atmosphere. Do you have other tips what the young SPCs we still SPC's unleashed.

Mark Richards: 47:18

Okay. If you, if you go back to the young spc and I think we rewind the conversation a long way back to your systemic coaching days where, you know, it was like the more, you know, the harder it's going to be a good coach. Right. Because your knowledge is going to get in your way of actually powerful coaching. And SPC is a knowledge based certification. There's nothing involved in coaching skills and being certified as an spc. Right. I have studied, I have learned, I have acquired knowledge and I could use that knowledge to pass an exam.

Niko Kaintantzis: 47:52

Yeah.

Mark Richards: 47:53

And, and there's a natural temptation to go, well now I'm an spc. My job is to share that knowledge. So you know what's the first thing? Well, how are you going to use that knowledge? Are you going to use that knowledge to find amazing questions or are you going to try and use that knowledge to impart it to somebody else? If you're a young spc, you need to go study coaching somewhere. Is it, is it systemic coaching? Well, that's the kind of aggressive one. Is it, you know, go on a very coaching oriented course, is it read books? Is it? So what is it that's going to teach you about coaching? And the further you go from agile in the title of where you're learning about coaching, the more likely it is to be useful to you.

Stephan Neck: 48:38

I fully support that Mark. It's, it's like for me the best way to bridge the gap between I know something, how can I adapt it or how can I become a good coach was acquiring the new skills and then go into training mode. Right. Because they then throw questions at you where you find more gaps. And that helped me to become in certain aspects a more a T shaped person having a certain knowledge.

Mark Richards: 49:10

Right.

Stephan Neck: 49:11

But then deepen your knowledge in certain domains and areas to become a better coach over the time. So training is a good step for me becoming better. And then also the longer I'm a coach, I will probably observe that I will move from coaching to mentorship. What's the difference? For me that's my definition. Coaching is the hands on stuff I do in the context. Mentorship is more like being a lighthouse, right? Lots of ships passing by and I'm like a reference point, observing. And if you see that the ship is really deviating then you have to get onto your radio and say guys, hey, steer to the right, to the left. You're on the wrong path. Right.

Niko Kaintantzis: 50:00

Just give me idea for the next episode. Stefan. Perfect. I really loved your advice and I think one thing that is difficult for a young SPC or a young person is not having the I want to shine, I want to show and that's usually as a young person you want to see how you that you are worthy, that you know something. That's exactly what the coach isn't doing. It's like you said before, you're in the background, you should let others shine. And I think that's an important thing you're realizing you are not import, your knowledge is not important. You don't have to shine with your knowledge. Of course you as a person are important because you build the trust you build the environment. Your knowledge is important because you can help others. Not going into the wrong direction, but it's not you on the stage and answering and shouting out what's the real truth. And that's hard for young people and people just becoming fresh knowledge. People like, like you said, Mark, I have a knowledge certification. It's really difficult. So the first thing I would say to you is try not to shine with your knowledge and then you will become a great coach. That's one of the first steps. And having the right education, right exercises and exercise, exercise. You're not, say, tomorrow I'll be a great coach. Let me read five books and then I'll read. It's finding camps and exercising it and sharpening your skills while you're doing it. You can read about a book about sharpening a knife, but we have to sharpen it.

Mark Richards: 51:28

It's also, I think, starting with very small things like, I don't know how many times we've said the word question in this episode. And I think we could probably do a whole episode just about how to ask good questions. But, you know, the very beginning is, can you train yourself to use open questions and, you know, even just master three open questions. Because I see a lot of people start this path and they keep tripping over their words and it's like, oh, that's meant to be open. And they get very embarrassed. And you can just go and find two or three common open questions and teach yourself those to give yourself muscle memory. Because you will learn, right? And the other thing you'll learn is that you've got to have the courage to hold the silence while you wait for answer. And maybe the first thing you do is you go, I'm going to master the question. What questions do you have for me? Because that's a very different question to do you have any questions? And if you can take know, 1, 2, 3 of these kind of classic open questions and you can build them into your muscle memory, you'll build that confidence and you'll start to see how differently people respond. And then you can go deeper into, you know, more sophisticated questionings and, you know, being able to learn to use that person's answer to find the next question. So just starting really small, building small habits. And you know, these days you can cheat with AI if you have transcripts of your workshops, right? And most of us these days, pretty easy to have. We had a workshop. I was part of the workshop. Download the transcript and ask an AI to analyze how Often you asked a question versus making a statement, you might get a pretty unpleasant surprise. But again, it's going to start to help you build that self awareness. That's certainly not a tool any of us have when we began. It'd be one that I'd think about very quickly these days.

Niko Kaintantzis: 53:21

Great questions. Let's go to our last two minutes and I wonder how many people just go to the end because if you had only just one takeaway of this episode, just one takeaway, which one would it be? And I would like to start with Mark. Your one takeaway.

Mark Richards: 53:41

My one takeaway. Sorry, I just glanced over and saw Stefans and could have predicted that one. So my key takeaway, if you want trust, you need authenticity, vulnerability and confidentiality. You can't copy somebody else's style as a coach. People will sense that and you're dead. You've got to be true to you. You've got to find what is you as a coach. You've got to have the confidence to be vulnerable because it will invite that in response. And you've got to prove that the coaching conversation stops with you.

Niko Kaintantzis: 54:13

Great. In my case, you're not important because you know everything. You're important because you guide through the process. And finally, Stefan.

Stephan Neck: 54:22

Yes, Mark? I'm a bit predictable. I'm using my mantra that I use quite often. Show up, keep up, shut up. Why am I using it as an sbc? Show up, don't fear the environment, but assess it carefully. Right. Keep up, close the gaps, invest in yourself. And if you're there and if you think you take center stage, then you shut up because then you are in the right coaching mode.

Niko Kaintantzis: 54:49

Perfect. That's a great coach. I just shut up and give the last words to Mark.

Mark Richards: 54:54

I was about to say, Nico, you know, it was your episode, surely you've got the last words for this one.

Niko Kaintantzis: 54:58

So let's. So thank you very much. I hope it was interesting. Leave some comments wherever you watch this, we can improve because our next step is the retro. But we're doing this without you. So thank you very much. Thank you to you both. Was much more cooler than I've seen in the preparation. I really love the episodes and also our listeners just give the feedback hearts or whatever you can give there and comments to see how we can continue our journey. And for the next week it's. I think it's you, Mark. Right?

Mark Richards: 55:27

It is me. For the next week we're going to explore great facilitation which of course, if you're an agile coach, is probably one of your stances, but, you know, let's not muddy the waters too much. So we'll see you next week. Thanks, Nico. Thanks, Stefan. And we are signing out.