History of Coaching

1960-170 - government and large organization planning was top down. Upper management made the decisions; middle managers saw to it that decisions were carried out.

1970s-80s - organizations needed more flexibility to thrive, hierarchical control of employees gave way to trust and collaborative work relationships. (3)

late 1980s - the professional field of coaching was born - a field promoting continuous resilience and performance in persons and organizations--focused on formulating scenarios for the future, given the complexities and speed of change in today's world. Coaches were often ask about:
personal evolving
succession planning
career shifting
work performance
high performance teams
outplacement
burn-out
scenario building
leadership training
work-home balance
individual and organizational renewal.

The Handbook of Coaching by F. Hudson

This book is a "comprehensive" resource guide to coaching -- and as I looked through the table of contents it does seem to be comprehensive, offering a lot of excellent information to help someone get up to speed in this area. Every chapter has an extensive, often annotated bibliography.

"The term coach is used, in the book and in the profession, like it is used on athletics. A coach both guides and mentors., helps the client see options for becoming more effective as a whole person. Good coaches taken great satisfaction is seeing their clients discard the old, fixed, constricting rules and begin to follow new rules that give them the strength to thrive in whatever situation they find themselves. (xi)

Coaching at SJSU

At the ARC conference, Monica, Gloria and I talked about what we would love to see happening at SJSU and developing a formalized coaching/mentoring struck a deep chord for all of us. We had lunch with Ruth Johnstone from the UW and came back to campus with the determination to see if we could begin a program at SJSU like that as UW.

Monica and Gloria and I met at the King Cafe to determine steps forward. Monica talked with Charlie and he's supportive of the plan. (I know that it would be great to have such a program for faculty and MPPs as well.) The folks at the UW have been great about sending us their information. We're talking with friends in the colleges who have expertise in this area and finding out more about the City's mentoring program. And over Christmas break we're reading some books/articles to get a better foundational understanding of the field of Coaching/Mentoring.

I thought I'd use this blog for the next few weeks to capture what I'm reading about and thinking about as we plan to begin a coaching program at SJSU in the fall.

Trends

"Trends are clearly observable changes happening today and expected to continue into the future" - Strategic Foresight: The Power of Standing in the Future.

This is a very interesting podcast Ray Kurzweil discussing artificial intelligence and the Singularity--it's surprising to hear what he thinks is possible by 2020.

1. Technology is becoming cheaper, smaller,faster, and more integrated
2. Communication devices are converging
3. Digital interaction (digital pens, singularity)
4. Robotics like kokoro, robots that look like people, and actoroids
5. Sustainability - Green
6. Blurred boundaries between work, leisure, communication and information
7. 24/7 service/access is expected
8. Alternative work schedules - not Monday-Friday, 8-5--Telecommuting
9. Vigorous, longer life spans
10. Everyone is a content creator
11. Fabbing - creating individually on the fly
12. Personal Coaches
13. Customization for the individual

Are we making the right decisions given these trends?

We should keep looking for ways to personalize and customize our services. For instance, we could try to package information for people with great CDs, websites, DVDs, books, articles on various topics of interest. Everything available on one page - delivered digitally.

All of us should be observing the mall and what we read to see how technology is being used. Then we should think about what opportunities we might have to use these technologies as well. We should probablydevelop our own Think Tank -- a team that is charged with watching for new trends and technologies and bringing 2-3 innovations to try each year.

Must Visit Websites

I went to a conference on Planning for the Future and Stacey Aldrich gave us some key websites for thinking about the future:

World Future Society - Find information about forecasts, trends, and ideas about the future from the largest futuring organization.

Gizmodo

IPodder - great index for finding podcasts

Ondisruption.com - great site for keeping up with what's happening

Shifted Librarian- a blog by librarians thinking about the future and opportunities for librarians

Must Read Journals

Business 2.0
Fast Company
The Futurist
Lucky
Make
Mental Floss
Popular Science
Psychology Today
Technology Review
Wired

Must Read Books for Thinking About the Future from Stacey Aldrich

The Long Tail - Chris Anderson

As the Future Catches You: How Genomics & Other Forces are Changing Your Life, Work, Health & Wealth - Juan Enriquez

The World is Flat - Thomas Friedman

Hesselbein on Leadership - Frances Hesselbein

The Art of Innovation - Tom Kelley

The Ten Faces of Innovation - Tom Kelley

The Age of the Spiritual - Ray Kurzweil

The singularity is Near - Ray Kurzweil

Strategic Foresight: the Power of Standing in the Future - Nick Marsh, et al

The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less - Barry Schwartz

The Art of the Longview - Peter Schwartz

Exercise #23: Reflections

My favorite discoveries on this learning journey were learning about sharing Word and Excel documents on the Internet. Now I have a virtual shared network. I'm trying Zoho for now and see how it works. I think that has some real potential for me.

I also like learning about Del.icio.us and how to tag bookmarks --that also will save some time so that my work bookmarks and my home bookmarks are the same. Having them organized without having to put them in folders will be nice.

I loved Rollyo search and being able to create my own searches that would be restricted to the websites that I'm interested in. Google search grabs everything, and sometimes I don't want everything.

I had no idea that there were Generators to create posters and calendars and games--no more creating my own Baby Shower games now that I have access to a Generator that will do that for me.

I can see that to be a lifelong learner of emerging technological innovations, I first need to know that there's something to learn. So I should subscribe to Wired or Web 2.0 managizes or get an RSS feed from the SJ Mercury on emerging technologies. Second, I have to make time to learn new technologies. Maybe it should be built into the work week like the Friday afternoon review. I had discovered Bloglines a couple of years ago and had set up some feeds, but after spending a few hours figuring it all out, I didn't take the time to regularly go back to make use of it. Then you forget your passwords and the time I spent learning didn't get fully utilized. I just need to realize that learning new technologies takes a lot of time and once mastered, if I don't incorporate them into my normal routine, I'll lose them. Third, I really prefer to learn from a book or training video. Learning online requires more hit and miss, "try this and see what happens" type of learning. I find that I get stuck and then I'm not sure how to proceed, or I don't really understand the power of the new technology until someone shares how they're using it with me.

I think that this program could be improved by completing it over 23 weeks instead of 9. One exercise a week would have been fine for me. Or even one new service a month. Learning out podcasting this month -- here's some websites to read, here's some training to go to, here's how to set it up, here's how to use it. I'm afraid that by going so quickly through this exercise, I really didn't have time at work to complete the projects and really explore as I would have liked.

I think eliminating the opening podcast on goals would be great. That exercise really gave me second thoughts about wanting to do this at all.

I think that the Bloglines exercise got too complicated and I'm not sure why. I think that I spent several hours on it, and because it came so early in the series, I thought that each one coming after would be even more confusing and time consuming. So it would be good to break that one up a bit, let people know that it was a hard one and that if they don't have time, they could skip to an easier one and come back to it.

Thanks for the opportunity to learn all of this and I look forward to what's coming next.

Exercise #22: ebooks

I liked learning about the various sites where ebooks are available for free. I knew that our King library had ebooks but I didn't know about the others. I didn't realize that there were so many current books available digitally. I'm not sure what it would be like to try to read a book from my computer - and I wondered about downloading Adobe's Reader 8.0 that would read the book outloud to me. That might be a nice feature for the car, once it gets Internet access.

Exercise #21 Podcasting.

Listen to a Podcast on using Web 2.0 in Libraries. I didn't know that podcasts had RSS feeds so that I could be updated when new podcasts become available. I also didn't know where to go besides iTunes to get lists of podcasts, so this exercise was great. I think that we should be using lots of podcasts since people have access to the wonderful presentations that are being given all over the world. We should be podcasting some of our programming as well.

Podcast.net
Podcastalley.com
Yahoo Podcasts

Exercise #20: YouTube

YouTube is awesome. I love being able to see clips from years gone by and find home videos of my children and world events. I think that being able to find or upload clips and then embed them so easily into my blog is a wonderful feature as well. No wonder this site has had the exponential growth it has.

You'll enjoy this YouTube video clip. It's from David Letterman's "Great Moments in Presidential Speaches" bit.

Exercise #19 LibraryThings

See what I'm reading these days at LibraryThing.com

Here's my list.

This is a great site where you can keep lists of the books that you love and let others see what you're reading. It also lets you connect with other people who are reading books that might be of interest to you as well.

Exercise #18 Online collaboration for documents and spreadsheets

I just created a document on the web so that you can go in and make changes. I used Zoho. A pretty nice tool. I think that I will definitely try out this option when I'm working with people from across California. In my work group we use a shared network drive -- I'm not sure if having documents on the web would be easier or not. We'llhave to give it a try.

Exercise #17 Creating a Wiki

Create a wiki and give friends the password and you're on your way to creating a website together - true online collaboration.

I think that we could use a wiki for Administrative Services. We could have a wiki with various pages like Lotus Notes, Facilities, Student Assistants, Travel -- and we could post information and others who have information or tips could add their insights as well.

Exercise #16 Wikis

I love wikis. I think that it would be great to start a wiki on any topic that you have a group of people who are interested in contributing to developing it. I know that you can have some people join a wiki and add their opinions as fact, etc. but the dangers of having someone taking over the wiki are small I would hope. I think the benefit of being to able to gather all kinds of knowledge and perspective together in one place would be tremendous.

Exercise #15 Library 2.0

I think that using the Internet to create applications and to collaborate with others is awesome. The digital world is developing so quickly that it seems a little overwhelming to try to stay up with the changes. I don't think that we'll be able to document everything as specifically as we have in the past, because the environment is so dynamic and we have so little control over the changes, that we just have to stay agile and learn how to navigate various sites as they change. Learning to use these tools for teaching and learning will become obvious as we get more familiar with them. Are they teaching English 1B classes how to use the Internet to do research? I think that the blogosphere is becoming the new primary resources - the equivalent of interviewing various people to gain perspectives. Information Literacy is essential when 150,000 new blogs are created daily!

Exercise #14 Technorati

Check out Technorati by watching a video that shows you all about it. I like having lots of options about what blogs everyone is reading, and finding out what the hot topics are. I've heard "professionals" talk about spending hours every day reading lots of blogs. I know that the impact of blogging is huge and it seems that Technorati is a way to stay up on what's happening.

SJLibrary2.0

Exercise 13-Del.icio.us

I decided to open a Del.icio.us account and begin using it to create bookmarks that I can tag. It's fascinating to see what everyone else is doing. Lots of people really like it. I don't go to tons of websites --managing my bookmarks hasn't been a problem. However, I think for doing research and keeping track of websites for a project I'm working on with other people--this would be a really cool feature. I like tags. I've used them a lot with Adobe Photo Album and have found that they really make finding my photos easy.

Exercise #12 Rollyo Search Tool

This is quite cool!

Since I'm involved in Womens Ministries, I thought I'd create a search tool of various national womens ministries organizations so that I could quickly search what they are doing.

Search various womens ministries sites using my new tool

Exercise #11

http://library20.ning.com/

I found the list of awards wonderful -- amazing what can be done with Internet based tools. I thought it was fun to find a group of other libraries using 2.0 on NING -- a website that seems to aggregate lots of individually created networks.

Exercise 10

My creation, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

Generators are really fun! I had no idea that they even existed. I'll enjoy exploring more of these tools.

Searching for various news feeds was interesting -- I hadn't looked at Feedster.com before. I don't think that I care as much as other people do about what celebraties are saying, or about what the latest buzz is.

If you want to see my bloglines and see my family's blogs:
http://www.bloglines.com/public/JournalKeeper

Lesson 8: RSS feeds

I like using RSS feeds to have all of my kids' blogs all in one place. Makes it easier to use. I've also liked having some RSS feeds as part of my personal Yahoo account - so I get the news I'm interested in coming there. I added some feeds to my bloglines account - and to my Internet Explorer. I think I'll prefer using the feeds folder in my Explorer because I won't have to go to Bloglines to look at them; I can just click the Feeds icon in Explorer.

Lesson #7 - What I like about technology

I love being able to be connected with my grandchildren in a way that wouldn't be possible without blogs. I can watch Ellen, Isaiah and Micah grow up -- almost day by day --because their moms are great at posting pictures and fun comments on their blogs. Blogs are a great tool for sharing information and photos with lots of people all at once.

Colorado Rocky Mountains

Colorado Rocky Mountains, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

We were at 10,000 ft in the Rockies today. The views were spectacular and the weather gorgeous. After driving into Rocky Mountain National Park as far as the roads were open, we went into Estes Park, a little town and enjoyed poking around. Then drove back to Denver, taking a little time to see Boulder and the University of Colorado.

Elk in the Rockies

Colorado Rocky Mountains, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

As we drove down the road, a whole herd of elk were in the meadow. Several buck had large antlers. It was very cool.

Colorado Rocky Mountains

Colorado Rocky Mountains, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

I'm at a conference in Denver this week. Before the conference began, Kevin and I had a chance to go to Estes Park and the Rocky Mountain National Park. The sun was shining and the temperatures were just above above freezing. It was gorgeous, and when the gusts of wind came up, it was COLD! But rather exhilerating. We parked the car at Bear Lake and hiked (256 steps) to the frozen lake. Since we didn't have snow shoes, we didn't venture any further.

Community Service

Community Service, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

Gardner Community Center is a really great facility that provides a lot of services to the people in their community. As a church, we are really glad to be forming an alliance with the Community Center in order to help people in need in our community.

Community Service

Community Service, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

Some of the teens from the Community Center were helping as well.

Community Service

Community Service, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

Rhonda was helping out. Kevin's going up a ladder

Community Service

Community Service, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

After we power washed and scaped the house, then we primed it.

Community Service

Community Service, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

People from my church, New Life, and Gardner Community Center joined together on Saturday to paint a house. We had a great time working on the house together. There were about 25 folks. It was really a great way to give back to our community. The house is located at 333 Virginia. Here's a few photos.

Chris Tomlin & Matt Redman Concert

Community service, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

We had awesome seats and were invited to stand down in front of the stage which was really fun as well.

Chris Tomlin

Chris tomlin, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

We went to see Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman in concert last Sunday night. The Event Center was packed and we had a great time. I took a couple of photos with my phone.

Week Three. Exercise Three.
I found it interesting to see all of the possibilities for using Flickr -- and the various mashes. I went to the Chris Tomlin concert on Sunday night at the Event Center and took a picture with my cell phone. I'll have to see if I can upload a photo from my cell phone to my blog.

Sarah

Lindsay, Christy and Debbie

Lindsay, Christy and Debbie, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

After we had dinner we had a chance to sit around and get to know each other before we played some Party Rook.

Jeffra and Nadia

Jeffra and Nadia, originally uploaded by Journal Keeper.

Here's Jeffra and Nadia eating a bowl of chili with cinnamon rolls.

Week Two. Exercise Two.

Well I've successfully created two blogs - one is more personal, one is more work. I had the personal one before but didn't use it much. This week I've explored linking a post on my work blog to my personal blog -- that seems to work pretty well. And I've changed my settings so that Kevin will get emailed when I add a new post. It'll be fun to see if he decides to comment. Next, I'll add some photos.

Girls Night Out

We had so much fun last Thursday night. Twelve of my friends from work and church came over for chili and cinnamon rolls (an old Seattle Public Schools tradition) -- we also had salad and corn bread for the non-experimental folks. We chatted and laughed and had so much fun getting know each other. And then we got out the cards and played Party Rook. Everyone had a great time. Christy Wold won and Debbie Dills lost -- which meant she won as well. Unfortunately a couple of folks got sick, so they couldn't come. Can't wait to do it again.

Lotus Notes doesn't have to archive everything!

I just talked with Don Baker and found two new ways to make Lotus Notes work better for me.

1) Select the folders that I don't want Notes to automatically archive (eg. "Action" and "Waiting For" folders). Then, emails in these folders won't go to "Archives" but will stay in that folder until I move them which is exactly what I want.

2) I should be using the "Junk" folder and have Notes automatically identify "junk." This should eliminate a lot of the spam that I'm receiving.

I also learned that if we want to use Outlook as a client - we can have our Notes Domino server send our email to Outlook. Interesting!

Relational approach to Rapid On Boarding

I enjoyed our first Work Lead training and discussing Rapid On Boarding for new employees. The biggest insight is that we almost always think that what is most effective for new employees is a huge information dump; however, the research shows that strategically helping newcomers to develop relationships with the people who know the information they are going to need is essential. It's also important to think about how introductions, initial projects, and weekly one-on-ones help newcomers to prioritize their learning and get up to speed quickly.

Life Giving Moments

Kevin and I have started concluding our day by lighting a candle and sharing the most life giving moment of our day, and the moment that was the least life giving. It's been wonderful. This is a version of Examen. Remembering these life giving moments has enriched my life. It's interesting to me how they have been the very simple experiences like a friend who seemed genuinely happy to see me and came over to sit with me, a colleague who popped in my office to say "hi," the graciousness of a grand-daughter showing her grandfather how to do something. Over time I think that this practice will help me to recognize the moment as it happens and be more fully present to it. It also fills me with gratitude for all the good things the Lord has brought into my day.

Week One. Exercise One.

I just remembered why I so dislike online tutorials. I don't like my learning to be so totally confined to a one size fits all curriculum. Lifelong learning, determining what I want to learn, setting goals, figuring out obstacles and finding the resources I need is not something that I needed to have read to me. I turned off the sound and read the tutorial for myself and still found it really annoying. Please!

It's funny how I was so looking forward to this opportunity to learn 23 things and how the initial tutorial really irritated me.