Coaching Executive Mindsets

I can't believe it's taken me SO long to share this conversation with the Amazing Elise Foster.

Elise is a powerful coach, an accomplished author, and a friend. She's the co-author of The Multiplier Effect with Liz Wiseman and Beautiful Questions in the Classroom with Warren Berger (who's written several bestselling books on powerful questions).

She was a thinking partner for me when I was in the early stages of writing my second book, and I was shocked and honored when she decided to come to my Facilitation Masterclass and even more shocked and honored when she actually got something out of it - proving that it really is more about what they practice and the container I create than what I teach!

I'm also honored that she's been a great member of the Conversation Factory Insiders' group - we started 2 years ago with alums of the masterclass meeting monthly for experiments and intentional practice, and 2 years and 22 sessions later, we've all learned a tremendous amount about leading groups online. Elise was kind enough to lead a session for the community on the QFT, a Question Formulation Technique from the Right Question Institute which has shifted how I think about Powerful Questions and how I coach teams on them, too.

In this conversation, I wanted Elise to unpack not just some of her favorite "Eye Opener" warmup exercises to help get teams to think differently, but also how she thinks about bringing them into sessions with teams, and why they matter.

Lots of folks talk about icebreakers - and they can be helpful to help us connect to each other from afar…but they are such a broad class of activities - they can include games like "Two truths and lie" which are just about connecting people as humans or "three things", a classic improv game which helps folks just warm up their brains.

Priya Parker asks folks to check into the chat with where they are and what actual substance is beneath their feet, to help ground and connect us.

Eye-openers are both about what we do, as leaders and coaches of people in the moment, in order to create an experience for people…and eye-openers are also about how we help people reflect and unpack that experience and how to connect it to a larger idea about transformation and development.

Elise kicks our conversation off by talking about the "Hand Clasping Game", a classic exercise that you can try now since we talk about it, but don't give it enough time to "breathe" in the conversation.

Just clasp your hands together naturally.

Of course, this assumes you have two hands. If this doesn't apply to you, I hope you can imagine the process.

Now, unclasp your hands and "reclasp them" but shift hands - whatever hand was "pinky out" let the other hand be the "pinky out" hand. Elise calls this "reversing the weave" of your hands.

What do you feel?

Discomfort. Oddness. Weirdness.

That is a raw, visceral experience. Now, the magic happens when Elise unpacks this experience, and applies it to the context she works in - Leadership Transformation. 

Having a toolbox or a mental "file" of these exercises can be great…in fact, I have a whole online course about them. But as Elise and I discuss, having the wherewithal to bring one of these out in a session also takes some guts and some faith.

You take some trust the team has in you and burn it…risk it on an edgy experience…and hopefully you earn that trust back, with dividends, at the end of the unpacking.

Also worth noting is that this is the second episode on the theme of "An experience is worth a thousand slides" when it comes to coaching executive mindset shifts... The first conversation was with Jeff Gothelf, most notably the co-author of Lean UX, where we talked about the Vase and Flowers exercise, another powerful eye-opener that I love very much.

This episode is short and sweet, so without further delay, enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

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