Opportunities for catching biases in daily experiences

My mother approached me the other day with a problem - she could not send messages from her mobile anymore. And she wanted me to sort it out for her.

As a coach, I often advice my clients to ask questions first instead of offering solutions immediately.  So I thought it would be a good idea if I followed my own advice once in a while :)

I asked her if this was a recent problem. Did she remember any particular incident after which she had this problem? Maybe she hadn't paid her bills? Maybe she changed her plan by nodding her head to some offer without realizing what she was doing? Maybe she dropped her phone and that particular key was jammed?

I was thinking about all kinds of possibilities. (Actually my own biases and assumptions about her were popping up but I was not yet seeing them as such)

She said that she was facing this problem ever since my son borrowed it from her for a couple of days when his mobile was under repair.

My son wasn’t around for "interrogation" so I asked her to show me what happened that prevented her from sending messages. She cycled through the menu correctly ( I discovered that I assume that she may not know that) and came to the screen where she could type out her message. When she tried typing out a test message, some garbled text was appearing on the screen.  And she showed me that as proof that she could not send her message.

Ok, so this was a different problem to the one she told me. Her problem was not that she could not send her message. She was getting garbage text on the screen.  I assumed she may have changed the setting on the language option and since I hadn’t been watching her type out her message, I asked her to do so again while I watched what she did. (Another wrong assumption on my part – my mother fiddles around with the settings without understanding what to do!)  

As I watched her type out her message, it was apparent to me that my son had turned on the predictive text option while using it and hadn’t told her about it. This was something my mother knew nothing about. (How can she not know even this?)

So I showed her how this worked and asked her if this was something she would be comfortable using. “No” she said  “I want it the way I am used to.” (How can you be so resistant to something that is so useful?) Anyway, I went into the settings and turned predictive texting off and asked her to try again. This time there was no hitch and she could send her messages again! And she was thrilled that her problem had been fixed.

So her problem was not that she could not send messages. Her problem was that her phone was typing garbage. The other problem she faced was that she didn't know how to fix that. 

My problem was that I had a whole bunch of assumptions and biases that were operating during this whole time and I was not even aware of all that chatter in my head at that time. 

Reflecting on this experience, I realized there was a lot of lessons for me as a coach.

Often, I run with the problem as told to me by the client or the sponsor.  

I don’t ask them to explain to me as to why they think this is a problem. 

I don’t always realize that the presented problem may not be the actual problem. I get pressured by the sponsor to show results so I go with the presented problem.  I don’t catch all the assumptions or biases I am making about the client or my favoured approaches or solutions.

I don’t spend time thinking about how I need to accept the reality that it is ultimately my clients’ challenges and that solutions need to work for them?

Lots to think about and lots of learning….this time thanks to my mother.