Twitter & Coaching - Part II

Twitter is simply a brilliant tool.  It allows me to connect in real-time with the community that I'm tapped into.  As of this moment, I'm directly connected to 309 people who contribute with tweets that I find absorbing and relevant to my interests.

One of my goals was to build a community of Tweeters that had similar interests to me (some of those interests I stated in my previous post).  I've kept to this decision from day-one.  Perhaps if I was not so choosy I might have had double the amount of followers as I do today, but that would have meant I accepted everybody.

Unfortunately, Twitter is no different from the rest of the internet.  It, too, is filled with a lot of useless static and distractions.  I felt if I wanted Twitter to be interesting, fun and practical I needed to be selective.  Like most things I've found in life, quality of community takes time to build.  You need to invest time and contribute effort to get a decent ROI.

This is a great site to learn more about the 'hows' of Twitter and tweeting. http://www.ehow.com/how_4670029_tweet-twitter.html

Twitter and Coaching - Part 1

It was about 18 months ago when I really began to pay any attention to Twitter. At first, I thought it was just the flavour of the month and it would be replaced by the next cool tool. The reason I believed this is when I jumped on and saw that people were tweeting about mundane things they were doing at that moment. I decided to jump offthe tweet train and look for other social media outlets to get my fix.

It was about eight months ago that I was reading an interesting blog called Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel ( http://www.twistimage.com/blog/ ) where Twitter flashed up in my mental radar again. I sighed in exasperation remembering my last encounter with Twitter.

Although I managed to expel every hint of oxygen in the world's
longest sigh, I continued to read the blog. Somewhere in the middle of
the entry, Joel referred to Tweeting as micro-blogging. Bing!, went
the mental blip on my radar.

I know this connection of Tweeter and micro-blogging is a given for 
everybody else on the Planet of Social Media, but for me I honestly
never connected the dots. It was a mind- blowing revelation.
(Reader, please allow room for a little exaggeration).

After finishing reading the post, I immediately jumped back on to
Twitter and opened my shiny new account - @MINDtalkCoach. I got
back on the Tweeter train again to give it a second chance. I was not
disapointed this time around.  The train ride has been, and still is, fun.

What I discovered was relevant, stimulating, intriguing content. It was not some guy telling me he was sitting on the can or someone else who was cleaning their cat's fur ball off the new carpet. Instead, there was a whole community out there with similar interests about coaching, communication, psychology, business, social media, entrepreneurship and tonnes of geek-stuff.

I praised the social media Gods for my enlightenment, and as of six
months ago I've been using Tweeter to my advantage. I'll get more I to
those advantages in my next post.

For now, if you are in the knowledge industry and you've been thinking more about the different roads of social media, don't ponder too long about Twitter.  Join and reap the benefits of the network you will build.

Cordially
Jason W Birkevold Liem
phone: (+47) 957 66 460
email: MINDtalk@email.com
web: www.MINDtalk.no
blog: www.jasonliem.blogspot.com
twitter: www.twitter.com/mindtalkcoach

Basis of Identity

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, my methodology of coaching is a collection from a broad spectrum of psychology. What I will do in the next few postings is to elaborate at a more detailed level what I do and how I do it.

I base most of my coaching on the idea of the self-concept, which is better known as a person's identity. This identity or self-concept influences how, for example, you interpret and interact with the world. It also strongly influences your behavior, attitudes, opinions and decisions. This
entry is going to introduce the model of the self-concept that I use when coaching.

Your self-concept (SC) in the simplest terms is who you believe you are. It is based on three categories; your values, your competenciesand your character traits.

If you imagine yourself at a business mixer, a convention, a party of any other type of engagement where you meet new people. When you introduce yourself or people introduce themselves to you it typically begins with a name, job position, the company, responsibilities,
location and so on. As the conversation continues likes and dislike may be shared, hobbies, interests, places traveled as well any number of other points of interest. Basically, the both of you are trying to formulate a picture of who each other is and what each of you are about. What you tell each other, if not all, fall under the three categories of the SC mentioned earlier.

When you speak about what is important to you you are communicatingyour values.

When you speak about what you do, your education, your interests and hobbies you are communicating your competencies.

When you describe who you are of what you are you are communicating your character traits.

These components are key to helping clients work through their issues, because they directly influence how they behave, how they act or react and how they make decisions. I have only briefly detailed the components of the SC in this post. Since they are so relevant in my coaching practice I will dedicate an entire post to them next time.

Jason W Liem
www.MINDtalk.no
MINDtalk@email.com

Tools of the Trade

When it comes to sitting in a coaching session, I've found it very useful to keep the tools of the trade low-tech. Having a small notebook and a couple of pens works best for me.

Conversations have a tendency to be very organic. That is, a conversation is like a tree. It will begin on a main root, but will naturally branch off in a new direction. The reasons for this are as numerous as the leafs on a tree. The point is that a conversation can branch of several times in different directions. Perhaps it may return to the original root of the conversation or it blooms into a completely different direction.

I have found it to be critical to be aware of these conversational branches and to mark them down in my notebook. I usually write down a key-word that the client has said that has triggered the change in direction. This helps me to track the flow of the conversation. I do this for several reasons.

Sometimes the client may be in the midst of explaining an issue using general and vague terms. If it is at a point in the conversation where they are still in a flow of thought, I will note down the key-word or phrase. When he/she comes to the natural end-point of their thought-flow, I will reflect back to what I wrote down and ask for clarification.

I have developed my own little symbols and short-hand to note down these conversational branches. It's necessary to do this since coaching dialogues move very fast and the direction can shift in an exhale. It allows me to move with the rapid speed of the conversation while still taking notes to move the client to be more specific and concrete.

I've yet to discover anything that is better than a notebook (my choice is moleskines http://www.moleskine.co.uk/ ) and a couple of pens.

The WOW factor

Welcome to the MINDtalk blog.

What I wish to convey through this blog is to share with you, the reader, the insights I have learned through coaching corporate and entrepreneurial clients since 2000. My wish is that you will walk away with a bit of knowledge on coaching and communication that will add onto your current skill-set.

Although, I might be very familiar with the subject matter of coaching and communication there is always something to be learned, always some insight that builds onto my knowledge base and always a new approach to helping the client to solve a problem or answer a question. I call it the WOW factor.

Whenever I feel the WOW factor I write it down in my ever-present moleskin. It is exactly like when you read a sentence or passage in a book that raises a flag of interest in your mind and you highlight it with a pen or highlighter. It allows you to easily find your insight in the future when you flip through the pages of the book. Thus, it is my ever growing collection of WOW factors that will be the subject of my posts.

I look forward to posting my WOWs on coaching and communication and hope you will walk away with some tidbit of knowledge that will, in one form or another, help you.