Recently, we conducted an Alchemy program where the outcomes were not as per our expectation. We scored our lowest ever NPS and participant feedback rating. (NPS was 0 against our average of 50% and rating was 4.1 vs. our average of 4.6). The client was less effusive than our usual clients and our own experience of conducting the program was less than fulfilling.
While we regained perspective that we were comparing against a very high trend and the rating was still higher than our minimum acceptable base (3.5), we took this opportunity to reflect on what we could learn from this experience.
First, a quick overview about Alchemy. Alchemy is a program for personal and professional transformation where participants gain awareness of their hitherto unexamined ways of being. Once aware, they are invited to choose whether they want to continue their existing mindsets and habits or choose differently, based on their personal vision of their lives. Most participants realise that the person they have become is just a function of their unconscious decisions during their formative years, based on what helped them survive. These strategies for survival become our strengths and weaknesses and we are often stuck with them. Once we reclaim authorship of our life and realise that these strengths or weaknesses can limit our progress towards our vision, we can choose differently. Alchemy then goes on to help participants practice new mindsets and habits that can help them move towards their personal visions with velocity.
The program is confrontational and unconventional. It pushes participants to come out of their comfort zones. Having been used to 18-20 years of education that is primarily knowledge transfer and not used to reflection and meta-cognition, participants initially struggle to turn the mirror on themselves. Also, having honed their strategies for survival, they mistake them for who they are and are not comfortable examining them. Very often, the amygdala fires and they see the coach's questions as an attack on their identity or self-perception. The coaches doggedly pursue participants in getting them to take action in their life. All this creates a love-hate relationship between the coaches and participants, where the participants hate the insistence but love the impact it creates in their lives.
We are used to participants resenting and resisting us. We are used to them grudgingly doing their home practice. But one thing that has consistently made it worth it, is that participants make progress. Their leadership capacity improves. They report higher levels of fulfilment in relationships, higher effectiveness at work and higher productivity in life. In this batch, while the resentment and resistance was there, the balancing fulfilment and effectiveness was less than expected!
We promote two fundamental mindsets in Alchemy: One, a Growth Mindset (In any situation, focus on what you can learn) and second, Being the Cause (In any situation, focus on what you can do)
Putting them into practice, this is what we learnt from this experience:
We need to make the program opt-in: We realise that we can only coach those who are willing to be coached. Coaching is a dyad - its gets done through the pair of a coach and coachee. No coach can outperform his coachee. We found that those who embraced and practiced the program, made progress as per their feedback. Those who resisted and pretended, did not. Next time, we'll conduct an orientation for prospective participants to share 'what to expect' and then invite them to opt-in.
We need to work on Trust while being unreasonable in our expectations from the participants: We make demands on the participants that might appear unreasonable to them, esp in their existing paradigms. Usually, people want to 'understand' something or 'get convinced' before they take action. We ask them to reverse the order and 'give it a go' before evaluating whether it makes senses or not. This required them to trust us - we could have done more to generate this trust.
We need to continuously generate the context of being a coach: It is easy to lapse into our humanity and allow our usual disempowering contexts and identities to take over. Our desire to be liked, our desire to be admired and our desire to be right is part of our survival toolkit. As a coach, we need to continuously stay above these survival strategies and be used by the context of being a coach - being and doing whatever is need for our participants' progress. We need to take us out of the equation. One or two times, I felt we were at the impact of the participants' reaction and this created an unnecessary vicious cycle, where our response further re-inforced their reaction.
We need to up our game further: Every participant found something that they could take away for practice in their life. That being the case, there were a few parts of the program where the participants didn't feel as compelled to take action. We need to prepare alternate 'ways into' the participants that can spur them into action when our existing ways do not cut it.
5 days after the program ended, we're thankful for the experience. Continued success and glowing feedback from previous batches meant that conducting Alchemy for a certain set of people was within us. The feedback and rating from this batch, indicated that conducting it for every profile, situation and context was still outside of us. That's a potential area for growth. Now that we know it, we can choose to grow or not.
In line with our mission of continuously pursuing excellence in developing leaders, we choose to put these learnings into practice and become better in what we do.
Failure is Great!
While we regained perspective that we were comparing against a very high trend and the rating was still higher than our minimum acceptable base (3.5), we took this opportunity to reflect on what we could learn from this experience.
First, a quick overview about Alchemy. Alchemy is a program for personal and professional transformation where participants gain awareness of their hitherto unexamined ways of being. Once aware, they are invited to choose whether they want to continue their existing mindsets and habits or choose differently, based on their personal vision of their lives. Most participants realise that the person they have become is just a function of their unconscious decisions during their formative years, based on what helped them survive. These strategies for survival become our strengths and weaknesses and we are often stuck with them. Once we reclaim authorship of our life and realise that these strengths or weaknesses can limit our progress towards our vision, we can choose differently. Alchemy then goes on to help participants practice new mindsets and habits that can help them move towards their personal visions with velocity.
The program is confrontational and unconventional. It pushes participants to come out of their comfort zones. Having been used to 18-20 years of education that is primarily knowledge transfer and not used to reflection and meta-cognition, participants initially struggle to turn the mirror on themselves. Also, having honed their strategies for survival, they mistake them for who they are and are not comfortable examining them. Very often, the amygdala fires and they see the coach's questions as an attack on their identity or self-perception. The coaches doggedly pursue participants in getting them to take action in their life. All this creates a love-hate relationship between the coaches and participants, where the participants hate the insistence but love the impact it creates in their lives.
We are used to participants resenting and resisting us. We are used to them grudgingly doing their home practice. But one thing that has consistently made it worth it, is that participants make progress. Their leadership capacity improves. They report higher levels of fulfilment in relationships, higher effectiveness at work and higher productivity in life. In this batch, while the resentment and resistance was there, the balancing fulfilment and effectiveness was less than expected!
We promote two fundamental mindsets in Alchemy: One, a Growth Mindset (In any situation, focus on what you can learn) and second, Being the Cause (In any situation, focus on what you can do)
Putting them into practice, this is what we learnt from this experience:
We need to make the program opt-in: We realise that we can only coach those who are willing to be coached. Coaching is a dyad - its gets done through the pair of a coach and coachee. No coach can outperform his coachee. We found that those who embraced and practiced the program, made progress as per their feedback. Those who resisted and pretended, did not. Next time, we'll conduct an orientation for prospective participants to share 'what to expect' and then invite them to opt-in.
We need to work on Trust while being unreasonable in our expectations from the participants: We make demands on the participants that might appear unreasonable to them, esp in their existing paradigms. Usually, people want to 'understand' something or 'get convinced' before they take action. We ask them to reverse the order and 'give it a go' before evaluating whether it makes senses or not. This required them to trust us - we could have done more to generate this trust.
We need to continuously generate the context of being a coach: It is easy to lapse into our humanity and allow our usual disempowering contexts and identities to take over. Our desire to be liked, our desire to be admired and our desire to be right is part of our survival toolkit. As a coach, we need to continuously stay above these survival strategies and be used by the context of being a coach - being and doing whatever is need for our participants' progress. We need to take us out of the equation. One or two times, I felt we were at the impact of the participants' reaction and this created an unnecessary vicious cycle, where our response further re-inforced their reaction.
We need to up our game further: Every participant found something that they could take away for practice in their life. That being the case, there were a few parts of the program where the participants didn't feel as compelled to take action. We need to prepare alternate 'ways into' the participants that can spur them into action when our existing ways do not cut it.
5 days after the program ended, we're thankful for the experience. Continued success and glowing feedback from previous batches meant that conducting Alchemy for a certain set of people was within us. The feedback and rating from this batch, indicated that conducting it for every profile, situation and context was still outside of us. That's a potential area for growth. Now that we know it, we can choose to grow or not.
In line with our mission of continuously pursuing excellence in developing leaders, we choose to put these learnings into practice and become better in what we do.
Failure is Great!
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