My favourite coaching tools: Archetype Cards

How to use the Archetype Cards in various ways to help illuminate other perspectives with which to understand or act from for Self for others. Ancient civilisations all around the world have described archetypes in their mythology and religious systems. Carl Jung also contributed greatly to current thoughts about them in psychological studies.

Archetypes Inform Us A Great Deal About Ourselves, Others and Humanity At Large

The Caroline Myss archetype cards are easy to use by anyone, and are designed to help find and/or illuminate the sub-personalities / sub-personas / archetypes that are most active in the personalities - personal realities - of the people who use them. Cards like these are great for turning a lot of abstract and hard to grasp theory, into a practical approach to finding deeper personal truth and meaning.

This archetype cards writeup is about the understanding self perspective, before deciding a course of action to change some thing(s), when guiding self or others :)

With a deep enough commitment and explanation, sceptics do tolerate a sensible coach facilitating this exercise with the coachee with kindness, gentle humour and positivity. The archetype cards may look a little out-of-place in work environments (like tarot, oracle or angel cards to the uninformed). So, be sensitive and sensible when using them - more discretion in a safe environment is often beneficial for the coachee's experience.

Background:
Over the years I've attempted to define my value system, my principles, my motivations, my behaviours etc. And then understand them. And then feel better about my life. But I learned over time that the tools I was trying were not helpful to me - not fit for purpose nor for use. Then I was introduced to the Archetype Cards (UK) (or US) by my coach in 2011.

But let's go back in time a little, and share some stories!

My journey to discover my personal values started off with being given a blank piece of paper and told to "think hard", and "now write down your most important, or top 5-10, values" which left me with "writer's block" pretty much every time. Eventually as time ran out, I would scribble down things that sounded "good", and hope I would be able to live up to what I thought I wanted to be like. And not long after that I would feel guilty and wonder why I thought I had this value X but constantly broke it.

Then the tools got more sophisticated, and I was given a sheet of "values" and told to circle the top 10. Again, as time ran out, I would circle the ones that sounded "good". And have similar experiences as before - leading to guilt.

The tools got even more sophisticated and suddenly I had 60 odd cards in my hand with "all" the possible values, and I had to sort them, halve the pile, halve it again and again, until I had just 10 or 5. And inevitably I would reach a pile of 30, and really struggle to bring that down to 29, let alone 10. I could not tell which values were actually mine, and which did I want to be!

Every time, I felt I had just managed to pick some [semi-]random words that sounded good. Every time it was deeply unsatisfying to me. Over the years of working, I noticed a similar thing happening to my career - I do not fit into a box! (certainly not a small, typical org-chart box anyway)

So whilst pondering what this all meant in the background, another coach showed me Caroline Myss' Archetype Cards.

Required:
Quiet room
Big enough clean table
Archetype cards (Archetype Cards: An 80-card Deck with instruction booklet UK or US)
Pen and paper

Optional but not required:

1. Read the instruction booklet that come with the archetype card set
2. Read the Sacred Contracts book describing the archetypes in the card deck as well as more: 

Sacred Contracts?? Seriously? That title sounds "out of this world" weird! And, YES! Coaches (like me) read a lot of different things! The wise ones discover(ed) that fundamental human truth exist everywhere!! :-)

For the coach: Type all the card names, light attributes and shadow attributes into 3 columns in a spreadsheet

Step 0: Shuffle the archetype deck and make sure all cards are pointing the same way.

Step 1: Spread the archetype cards out, face down and let the coachee pick a random card. Make a note of the archetype.

Step 2: Put the random card back and shuffle the archetype deck again. Give the deck to the coachee to look through so that they get an understanding of what is really in it. Explain light attributes are typically considered "good indications" and shadow "warning indications". Explain that archetypes are a model, and that no model is 100% right, but it is valuable nevertheless at providing a few valid insights.

Step 3: Depending on how self-aware the coachee is, you need to do this part of the exercise in different ways and it takes longer/shorter. You're aiming for about 10-24 cards, but this is determined really by the coachee, not the coach or some rulebook. It is a sliding scale that will become visible only once begun.

Ask the coachee to now go through the entire archetype deck, look at each card's name especially, and briefly on the light attribute.

Very self-aware: ask for the coachee to pull out any archetype card that resonates with them

Not self-aware:
1. Ask the coachee to pull out all the cards they like, as fast as possible
2. Ask them to check the discard pile again and pull out cards they overlooked, as fast as possible
3. Now ask them to go through the "like" pile and discard any that are definitely not some aspect of "them" that they play/show at least once per day

Step 4: Ask the coachee to "cluster" the cards that they see are related/connected to each other in some way as quickly as possible. To ensure they're doing it correctly ask them to explain the relationship/theme/pattern they're interpreting when 1 cluster is 3 cards big.

Step 5: Once the affinity clustering is complete - looking for 4-8 clusters approximately, again this depends on the coachee. Ask the coachee to come up with a short sentence / a descriptive phrase for each of the clusters. Sometimes they might only choose 1 word, sometimes that is enough. It is their journey...so balance carefully what you know, what you think you know, what you think the coachee knows.

Step 6: Ask the coachee to write their own Light Attributes and Shadow Attributes for the clusters - using concise sentences or phrases. AVOID single words, comma separated.

Step 7: Record all the information - cluster names and card name members, all the Light Attributes, all the Shadow Attributes

* Tip copy the card names, Light Attributes and Shadow Attributes from a spreadsheet, into a spreadsheet just for this coachee.

Step 8: Now take a copy of the card names and their attributes. Ask the coachee to edit the attributes to better reflect themselves. It could mean deleting the entire attributes, or changing from multiple to single or from single to multiple. Changing from external to internal focus or vice-versa. Essentially change it to themselves.

DONE!

This information is now in 4 categories:
1. Random
2. The "like" pile
3. The clusters, cluster members, and cluster attributes
4. The edited for self

You now have 3 categories (2-4) that can be used as reflections of the values and principles of the coachee!

Either or all of the 4 categories, or specific members of these categories, can be used to ground coaching goals and plans around. The Random card can be used as a beacon to draw attention to learn new skills, or as a mirror to compare against, or as a single card to represent the coachee.

Thankyou for reading! Let me know how your practice works out!

My favourite coaching tools: The record, typeup and playback

Caveats:
I feel you can use this tool with anyone - no matter how open/closed you/they are. You can use it for yourself even. However I do realise that it is possible some thing(s) might come up/be mentioned that require a much more safe environment and a much more experienced+educated counsellor to really deal with appropriately. Try to avoid those things.

Required:
Quiet room
Pen and paper
Knowledge of Johari Window (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johari_window)

Optional, but HIGHLY desirable:
A sensible/sensitive enough recording device (that you have previously tested) is preferable but this exercise can still be extremely fruitful without

Step 0: Record the date, start time and coachee name on the paper - remember to record the end time as well. Make sure your own mind and body are comfortable and restful - you too will be fully engaged in this session for it to go well!

Step 1: Make sure your coachee is focussed and engaged and happy to be recorded. If the coachee is happy, start the recorder, else put the recorder away. Prepare for much note taking.

Step 2: Ask the coachee to pick the start date. Usually in a work environment I ask for the date to be when they met for interviews or their first day at work. Take brief note of the date and try to understand the coachee's body language.

Step 3: Ask them to try to cover as much ground as they can in 15-20 minutes - their timelined biography of what they did, what they learned, what they felt, how their career progressed. Usually the coachee is really good at timeboxing the story they're telling, not that it matters too much. What's important is capturing what is remembered and very important - how it is remembered. Make notes, and make notes of questions that you might want to raise to get more of the story and emotion surfaced.

Step 4: Ask the questions and record the answers - look especially for areas which you believe might be important in the person's work life that were not mentioned (obviously this depends on how well you know the person by this stage). Avoid questions that are beyond the scope of the relationship you have with the coachee at this stage

Step 5: Wrap up and explain what happens next, make sure the coachee is comfortable and thinks enough was said (you can paraphrase the timeline). Turn off the recorder and take a note of the time! End the session.

Step 6: Get some headphones, play the recording back to yourself slightly slower speed, and type everything that was said. You don't have to analyse it, but you need to make sure it is an accurate type-up of exactly what the coachee said - beware of the shortcuts you would and DID take mentally during the interview. Type what the coachee said, and how they said it - if they giggled, or hummmed, or errrrrrred, or paused... make sure to catch their words, not your translations. Initially you think this will take a long time, and it does, but you do get better at it, and your typing does improve a great deal! This is because your WIP memory expands a great deal it is exercised more thoroughly and intensively.

* As an aside it is interesting and educational for you/yourself to also take a note of what you thought you heard, and what was actually said!

Step 7: Read through the type-up and make notes for yourself about what you see that the coachee does not - this feeds into the Johari Window rooms. I've found spiritual and leadership potential, I've found root causes of huge levels of frustration and anxiety at work, trust issues and lots lots more.

Step 8: Have another session with the coachee. Ensure they are safe and engaged. Provide the type-up document, and the audio file back to the coachee. Ask the coachee to read through the document and if there is anything missing, add to it.

Step 9: Now you can give the coachee some work to do and this is where you need to be a little creative sometimes. You've now uncovered some things - either content, emotion or personality - in this person's [life] story at work over this period, that they're not aware of - and it might be good to educate the coachee about Johari Window at this stage.

Often there is enough in the type-up for the person to really think about, and together you can plan some coaching goals and work to achieve them to improve an aspect even at this stage.

Often there is more, deeper work that can be undertaken by the coachee on their journey if they become more aware of it. However you, as coach, in this session, are not allowed to give direction. You are allowed to design 1-2 "filters" though to help the coachee sort and categorise things, which might make them more aware of things about themselves they are currently blind to.

I used different filters for coachees to apply successfully in the past:
- Mad / Sad / Glad
- What Went Well (WWW) / What Did Not Go Well (WWW) / What I Learned (WIL) / What Puzzles Me (???)
 - I lead / I followed
 - Drop / Keep / Improve
 - Motivations: Health / Mental / Spiritual
 - Recognised for / not recognised for

And I am sure there are many more. With the categorisation done, allow the coachee to reflect back to you what it means. Sometimes they have many questions, sometimes they don't understand what they have just done, sometimes they do not profess to having learned anything new or worthwhile from the time invested.

But often they do, sometimes they even see the things you see. Sometimes they see things you did not (the rose-tinted spectacles take a long time and much practice and reflection to become clear!).

Whatever they outcome is though, the coachee now has material and some idea(s) about what coaching goals to prioritise and work towards with your help.

Step 10: Make some notes for yourself about how the session went, the type-up, what you learned at the various stages, and what the outcomes were. How did the coachee's body language reflect different things as they were saying them, and did this concur when you asked the questions? This is also about continuous self improvement, in order to help others on their journeys much more effectively.

See also my post on Peter Drucker's "manager's letter" which can also collect incredibly powerful insights into the work experience of a coachee.

Waltzing With Bears by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister

Why I recommend Waltzing With Bears:
Reason 1: It is a very fast read covering many topics concisely and accurately
Reason 2: It is the best book I've read about risk and managing risk
Reason 3: And the shortest best book on estimating


It has been 3-4 years since I read this book and I still recommend it to every PM and PMO and any other team member who is interested in the topics in it.