Coaching with Iemke

Here is my 4 step communication process in action:

Yesterday, I had a conversation with my son about homework.

He told me that he talked to his teacher who said that I should be helping him with homework, which according to him, I was not doing.

Now my definition of ‘helping’ and his are slightly different, and we kind of butted heads there on what ‘helping’ meant.

I let go of trying to convince him that what I was doing was helping, which was obviously not working. I stopped myself getting exasperated emotionally, took a deep breath, and turned into ‘label and question’ mode:

“What does helping mean to you?”

“How would you like me to help?”

“Are you saying you want me to do your homework for you?”

After a series of clarifying questions, and reflecting back to him what I thought he was telling, we went into the negotiation part. I specifically told him not to use the word “help” in what he wanted from me, since we still didn’t see eye to eye on its definition.

“So if I do a part of the exercise for you, and you do the rest, would that be fair?”

He agreed.

I thought it was a win-win, especially because of the way I’ve seen him do some of the exercises by himself. What he needed was a clear practical example of how to do it, and I had to let go of my ego about how I thought he should do it.

The key part in this last thing is getting to the root of the “needs” here, and mostly understanding what yours are to the fullest. My “need” in this case was getting him to do the homework in a motivated way, ensuring the kind of attention to detail I’m looking for. If that means sacrificing a part of the work where I do it myself, then so be it. I’d rather take a piece of a big tasty pie, rather than an entire small pie that’s kind of burnt and leaves a bitter after taste…

After homework, we connected by skating together in the park.

This story illustrates my 4 step process in a nutshell.

Let me know if it gave you some insights.