Jeanine: Welcome, listeners, welcome to this edition of the empower world coaching and leadership podcast, and this evening here in Australia, I’m Jeanine bailey and I’m with my amazing business partner, Marie Quigley, it looks like a nice day there in the uk, Marie.

Marie: It's pretty cold, but it's bright, let's put it that way. There’s snow on the ground, I’m not sure if you can see that in the background, but there’s snow on the ground, it's a little bit chilly, but it's fresh.

Jeanine: Well, you look as though you're comfortably comfortable and your temperature there looks like a beautiful setting where you are right now. And today, what we thought we would do in this podcast is look at reflective practice in coaching. And as we're coming to the end of 2020, we thought this would be a wonderful topic to bring up on so many levels because wow, 2020 what a year it has been. Like potentially I mean, every year is different, but this one is significantly different as we experience very similar situations and challenges across the world.  It's truly incredible with the with the corona-virus.

Marie: Yes, it's caused a lot of pain, a lot of upset, a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety, and also on the other side of that, there's been a lot of new growth, a lot of time for checking in about what we truly want now. It's making a lot of my clients and a lot of the people I work with and myself included, redefine what's important to us. It's kind of been a wakeup call for many people looking at, you know, what does matter now and how can we create a world that is more connected, more aligned to what we want to create in the world. So, I know I’m seeing that on my side of the world. I know you're seeing it in your side of the world, both in yourself and your clients, Jeanine. And this is why we thought looking at a reflective practice, because so many people forget the time to sit back and take a look back. We tend to do it, don't we, when new year's is coming. Let's have a look. But potentially more of what we want moving forward than what we have reflected on. But as coaches, it's our practice in the work we do, is to reflect on a regular basis about the work we do and how we are being in our work and how that can really make a difference to our client and our client systems. Jeanine and I, we’re both accredited coach supervisors. We've been through a magnificent journey of self-development, doing our training, but also working with coaches in a supervisory role. And that doesn't mean looking down and telling people what to do. That means a collaborative, connected space that allows deep reflection of our work and who we are doing. So, we thought we come on. And we talk about some different ways that we can use reflection in our coaching practice, in our everyday lives to support us to create more and more of what we want. So, some of the ways that we do reflective practice in coaching is to get a supervisor and work in a formal way of reflection. So, you can do reflection work in groups, you can do it individually; you can do it in silence in a group. It's funny I’ve just had an experience of that recently and that was magnificent to do it within a group, but not actually speak to anyone in the group just to do our own work. But there's so many ways, apart from supervision, to do this reflective work. So, Jeanine, what are some of the ways, in addition to your own supervision process that you have for self-reflection, do you use to reflect on your work?

Jeanine: Yeah, thank you Marie for that beautiful summary of not only supervision and reflection and 2020. So, I just really want to add that I guess my reflective practice has really grown, particularly because of 2020 and deepened so much more. It's always been there; I believe that reflective practice. But as a consequence of what we have experienced in 2020, we've had to in our business, we've had to really pivot and change what we do because our training used to be face to face. But now we've gone online. So, when covid-19 started it really, I guess, created a whole lot of… what are we going to do? And it set off a journey for me to actually do a whole lot more meditation work for myself. And it was through that meditation, work and reflection work of who am I? Who are we? What are we doing? Who we being? And so much more that through that, again, that meditation practice, that what came to me was that actually these new perspectives ignited and allowed the creation of a very different way of us being as empower world. And as a consequence of getting so much more, I guess, again, coronavirus gave me that opportunity to do a whole lot more supervision. To be supervised, to supervise others, to supervise groups, to be part of groups that are supervised as well. So, again, it was just really opening up my world and discovering, I guess, much more about who I am being as a coach. So, enhancing my skills and my way of being. So other ways that I would go on a journey of reflection would be through my journal writing. So as much as possible, I try to journal. I say I try because it's not every day and it is as much as possible. But writing down, what am I learning? What am I grateful for? What is my intention? So that's quite a regular practice. Marie we've been so busy this year. It's been a little challenging to find space for that, particular reflective practice for me. But other ways that I do this reflection is through my exercising, which is generally walking. And I do a lot of walking in nature. I'm down by the sea. So that's a beautiful opportunity to just be still. When I get to a point in the walk where I see a beautiful view in front of me. It's an opportunity to just take it in, drink it in. And that allows me to go on a journey of self-reflection. Who am I being? What is this world about? What is this situation, these challenges and these opportunities that are also showing up? What are they all about? So, it's really. Yeah. Being out in nature, allowing myself that space that I can do again, some deep digging of self. And also, another thing that coronavirus has supported me to do, which I’ve not done before, which is actually to create a vegetable garden. So, it's a new skill set that I’m developing. And I’ve been thoroughly enjoying just seeing things grow. Seeing things coming from seeds just evolving and growing and providing us with nutrients, beautiful nutrients free of chemicals. There might be a bug or two in there, but it's been incredible and we've been lucky enough in Australia to grow quite a variety of crops. Crops? I don’t know if that's the right word, a variety of vegetables in Melbourne to what I’m actually putting on stuff which has fed us throughout the whole year. So, it's been an exciting adventure. So, when I’m in there, I’m just getting lost in my thoughts and reflecting upon what is truly important and again, being a coach it’s such a way of life. And I it really does feel my thoughts and fills my I guess not every waking moment, but a lot of waking moments. So, these are some of the ways that I reflect. And very briefly at night, again, I look at what I’m grateful for, what am I learning? And again, because coaching is something that I’m passionate about that generally seems to pop in. So, these are some of the ways that I reflect in terms of challenging myself, supporting myself to continue to evolve, develop and be a better version of myself as a coach.

Marie: Wow, Jeanine some absolutely beautiful gifts that you've given the listeners and a glimpse into your life and what you're creating for yourself and how powerful that's been for you. So, thank you so much for sharing that. I know myself, I’m an activist by nature. And so, reflection is something I have to really enhance and kind of choose consciously to do. So, it doesn't come as easily as the doing bit does. And I’ve been practicing on and off. I'm certainly not a regular meditator, but I’ve been practicing meditation since 1993. And when I do choose it, it really enhances my ability to connect with the deeper part of me. The person inside that is the is wiser than the external version that sometimes takes a lot of action. Coronavirus has allowed me a little bit of time as well to go out and walk. I was sharing with you earlier. I went out in this magnificent walk with my daughter the other day, and as I moved from lower ground to higher ground, it just spoke to me so much about my work as a coach and how on the lower ground we can focus on the wet, dirty, muddy walk walking space about putting our feet one foot in front of the other, but as we move onto higher ground, if we stop to pause and take a look around and think of what we've created in our coaching work or even in our business together, Jeanine, the landscape that I can see from higher ground is so much more magnificent and so much more telling about the vision than only focusing on the lower ground. So, I’ve used that walking practice that I have put in place as a way of reflecting. So, I’m active and reflective at the same time. And I love metaphors. So, in my own coaching supervision work, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting using trees. And there's so much wisdom that comes from objects, live, natural objects and the even looking at the tree and how it grows, its roots, its branches, its leaves, the spaces in between the branches that maybe you don't even notice at first. But when you pay attention to that and then ask yourself the question, how does this reflect on my client work? What am I seeing in this tree? That is true of my relationship with certain clients. It can be really telling to ask yourself that question using these beautiful, magnificent things in nature that we have. I use rocks. One of our mutual friends, she posts magnificent pictures of mountain scenes in her social media posts. And I take those beautiful mountains and I ask myself, how is that impacting my work as I see the magnificence in it? What do I see in my own work? But also, the things I don’t like very much. You know how is that also a reflection of my work, so it's going out into nature. It's using metaphor. I do kind of I’m going to say force myself to sit and journal because it's not a natural thing for me to do. I rather speak things out. So, for me, the process of supervision of formal supervision is so important because I get to speak out what I hold inside of me. When I speak things out, I can see it much more clearly. But I do think the formal writing of reflection has enhanced my ability to know myself. So those are some of the ways that that I use reflection.

Jeanine: And again, I resonate so much with what you share. I too am an activist. I don't. Prior to coaching, and I still do post-coaching as well, utilize my time as much as possible, and I find it challenging to sit down and sit still. So, these are practices that I’ve started in the last couple of years. But certainly, I wouldn't say that I’m there for long. And so, some of you may resonate. Some of you may be resonating with both Marie and I as we share this. And so, it's not about spending loads of time, although it might be. For some, it might be spending loads of time doing that. So, my meditation practices are quite brief and I think and I believe it's enough to support me. The amount that I do and the journaling that I do, I have a lovely I can't show you, but I’ve got this lovely notebook which has got in it: what are your top priorities? What's your intention? What are you grateful for? What are you learning? And how many glasses of water are you drinking a day. So, it's just a smaller than an a4. I just use that for my reflections. But it is when I’m out in the garden or when I’m out for a walk or on a bike ride or hopefully when I get my paddleboard out onto the sea, which hopefully will be very soon, those will be the opportunities where I can go internally while I’m, and swimming as well, swimming is another thing that I love that is almost meditative in its actions. So. There was something else that you shared and Marie using nature and asking, you know, when you see something that strikes you and reflecting upon, you know, how is that a reflection of my practice? I think it's a beautiful thing. And it reminds me of something that I did with one of our coaches that have done our training that they got a number of us to go to an art gallery and we saw these beautiful abstract paintings, but, you know, we went really close up to the paintings to look at all the detail and then we step back from it. And again, it was asking ourselves, how is that a reflection of us? What does that mean to you? What does that mean to you and asking again, all of those wonderful coaching questions, so.

Marie: Love it, so some more food for thinking about how to use reflection, and yeah as you're talking, you see and this is what happens, I think, when you're in a reflective space with a partner, new thoughts emerge. And as you're reflecting and I’m reflecting, as I’m listening to you, Jeanine, I’m recalling, I recently, at the end of a supervision session. Listen to some music and all of us just listen to some music. And we did some free writing and what emerged and I didn't know it was there was this beautiful poem that emerged about the time that we'd spent together and even that allowing that creativity to unleash because I love creative activities. I love painting, I love drawing. And this experience of writing poems. I used to do it when I was a teenager, but I haven't done it in so many years. But it emerged from the process of reflection. So, it is fascinating if we do give ourselves the time to reflect what can happen.

Jeanine: Absolutely, and so we encourage you listeners, whether you're a coach or not, a coach, to do this for yourself, go on a journey of self-reflection and ask yourself those powerful questions of who am I being what is it that I’m intending for myself, for others, the greater good. What has been working well? What could I do differently that will continue to enhance how I’m being and walking through this earth? What's perhaps my legacy is what I’m doing is everything that I’m doing in alignment with my purpose and so much more so, beautiful questions and really stretching yourself as to, you know, stretch your thinking beyond your conscious mind, what’s here, what's really here, what's going on? What's my body actually saying to me? And again, listening beyond the words in your head, listening outside and just going on a powerful journey of development. And again, coaches, we encourage you to also look at the core competencies of coaching and continue to reflect. Am I meeting those core competencies or how can I meet those core competencies in an even more powerful way?

Marie: I think that's a beautiful way to end today's podcast, Jeanine, thank you for sharing. And thank you, listeners, for listening. 2020 is coming to an end and there is so much learning that it has brought us all. We encourage you to reflect on this year, to reflect on the work you do, and also then to reflect on who you are being as we enter into 2021. We wish you more happiness, more peace, more connection and more fulfillment as we move into the next year.

Jeanine: Thank you. Marie beautiful words to support ourselves and everyone listening to move through from 2020 to 2021. And again, I can only repeat what you've shared. I think you've shared it beautifully. I do want to share that batman; you might have heard him. My, my cat, my four-legged cat. I did have a cat that just had three working legs previously. So, batman you could probably hear him in full swing. He also wishes you the very best for the new year and may it continue to improve and be beautiful and connected. Lots of love.