more learning for collaborative coaches

You'll remember that we began the Collaborative Coaching course with an exploration of the kinds of learning one can do. We called our framework the ASKS Inquiry-Based Learning Model. This way of thinking about learning starts with a metaphor and a question: Are we working on Land or Ocean learning? Land learning is what most of us imagine when we think about learning: Gaining new facts or skills. In the coaching course you learned a lot about the ideas of coaching which were facts or knowledge -- learning about. You also worked on practicing different skills to use when coaching -- learning how. This was the LAND learning of the course.

To continue to grow professionally as a coach requires ongoing practice of the skills. This you can do with your teachers and bring elements of your coaching skills to your interactions with friends, family and others. Especially the skill of listening to understand. To read more we can suggest two websites that are in alignment with the values of the course:

The land learning is explicit and cognitive. You can take a quiz to check whether you've learned the facts. We can observe one another's skills and compare them to a rubric to watch our skills growth. Ocean learning is not so stable, so firm, so clear. Ocean learning is about deeping our awareness, sharpening our attention and shifting our stance. It is often more implicit -- living in our beliefs and attitudes, and affective -- about and connected to our feelings and emotions.

While knowledge and awareness are ways of learning by gathering information, skills and stance are learning that is about acting on information. One's stance is all the conscious and unconscious beliefs and influences that lead you to act in the ways that you do. These come from our culture, our families, our experiences. Learning that engages one in identifying one's stance – most often in the form of the assumptions we make - involves examining where the assumption comes from and how it influences one’s approach to a situation. This kind of learning process is often called reflective learning or reflective practice. It's the kind of learning in which paradigms can shift, resulting in a cascade of learning and change–an experience of transformative learning. Some of you had experiences of this when you discovered something you didn't realize, some of you described thinking you were a good listener (assumption) and discovering that you weren't, but wanting to be (change of stance).

Much of the course was designed around asking you to reflect on your experience. Making your experience, and your thinking about it, concrete is the first step in being able to examine it. Moving it from thoughts in your head to words makes it possible to reflect. That is the power of reflective listening. But how can you reflectively listen to yourself? Journaling. Developing a practice of journaling about your experiences can give you the tool for reflecting on that experience -- of actively listening to yourself, questing with yourself, empathizing with yourself. Personally I (Sean) find that I do this best with paper and pen. So one tool you already have is the green journals that we gave out at the beginning of the course.

The ASKS model is intended as a framework for making sense of the complexity of learning. By capturing the many elements that go into learning and change in the four quadrants of ASKS, we create a framework that helps us see four general kinds of learning. It also offers us four questions we can ask about our own learning or the learning of others. However, learning is a holistic, dynamic, messy activity in which all of these (and more unknown factors) are involved. It's important to recognize the interconnectedness of each of the quadrants with the others, each influencing the others.

With deep appreciation for joining us on this learning journey, and the sincere hope that you keep juggling with these ideas and skills.

Anabel, Karlans, Mary, & Sean