Framing and Check-In: Auburn staff

Grounding: cohort facilitator

Digging Deeper: Auburn's Practice of Mirror Observation and Coaching

Why This Practice? 

• Healing centered leadership is both essential to and grows from our work to build community, bridge divides, and pursue justice through narrative change. ​
• Coaching can harm or heal depending how it is done. ​
• Auburn's approach to Mirror Observation and Coaching is intended to be healing centered, done in the context of a community, attending to the dynamics of doing so across differences, and looking to write the story of our best selves in how we offer, respond to, and grow from it. ​
• What does it mean to listen for the sacred in people? To look for healing within and/or between? What is the gift and challenge of a conversation that calls us to hold the personnel and pastoral/rabbinic/irshad leadership roles together? ​
• Not easy but important to give and gain feedback across differences, especially when it is about something people care about deeply.​
• Practice that can be done with compassion and intent to stay in relationship with the person.

Research on Feedback

• Too often we give or receive feedback in ways that triggers our fright-flight-freeze response. We fear failure. ​
• There are steps to framing feedback that helps people stay in our prefrontal cortex—the part of our brain where we can be self-reflective and adjust and grow. ​
• Specific and Observable Feedback is most helpful:​
• Not "every time" statements ("Every time we xxx you always xxxx)​
• Not character statements ("You are stubborn" "passive" "domineering") ​
• Specific examples of skills and capacities reinforce behavior and action; generic compliments feedthe ego but don't help the recipient grow.​
• Taking notes helps keep it specific, focused on what was observable, and ensures that the feedback when it is given won't have become vague.​

Mirror Coaching recognizes that when people are in the moment, they are usually leading or interacting in way that they think is their best, often unaware of how it is really impacting others.This isn't a character flaw but a natural limit to how we can perceive ourselves when we are in the moment. The gift of Mirror Coaching is that it holds up an objective mirror of one's actions in a context and the observable impact on the group or the clearly identified impact on the observer. ​

Mirror Card Observations

Use the Framework: Context, Action, Impact

Examples: What's Not Working? How Would You Reframe?

Coaching

Asking Permission, Sharing Observation, Asking "Is that what you intended?" and Listening

Small Group Practice

1. An example of feedback you received that was helpful. What made it helpful to you? How did it impact your leadership after receiving it?

2. An example of feedback you received that was unhelpful​

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Small groups will discuss the four feedback examples you identified in advance of this session, and ways to revisit them using Mirror Feedback and Coaching insights

Wrap Up: Auburn Staff

Closing: Cohort Facilitator