Published in Kingstown College Coaching Magazine 2020/2021
Design thinking is a process of applying designers’ human centric techniques to solve problems in a creative and innovative way.
The “Designing Your Life” book helped Sinem Bahadırlı to redesign her life, prepared her to leave the corporate world and start a new life as an independent professional coach. Here she describes the design thinking approach and how we can integrate the principles into our coaching practices.
During my coaching program at Kingstown College, I discovered the new field in psychology, positive psychology. Working on strengths in positive psychology rather than improving weaknesses resonated so much with me. After studying the research of Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the creator of the flow theory, a colleague of mine recommended me a new book that is based on Seligman’s and Chikszentmihalyi’s studies and built up a new perspective on them by adding the design thinking approach. That is when I met with the “Designing Your Life” program (DYL).
After teaching design in Stanford University for several years, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans realized that their students didn’t have much of an idea about how to kick off their new lives after they graduate. They needed help to design their lives. Therefore, they created the “Designing Your Life” elective course in Stanford to teach their students how to apply design thinking to their lives and build their careers with fulfillment and joy. The course became the most popular elective in Stanford. Shortly after, its fame expanded to the tech companies in Silicon Valley. Google even has an internal group of facilitators to deliver the “Designing Your Life” program to its employees. For the ones who cannot attend live workshops in the US, Burnett and Evans wrote the book, “Designing Your Life” to share what they teach with the rest of the world.
“Designing Your Life” book helped me to redesign my life, prepared me to leave the corporate world and start a new life as an independent professional coach. Since then, in my coaching practice, I frequently referred to their methods and applied their tools with my clients, especially with the ones who are ready to start a new life. Burnett and Evans developed a DYL coach certification program for professional coaches who want to learn how to apply DYL methods and tools in their coaching practices. This summer I finally had a chance to attend the DYL coach certification workshop to learn from the creators of the program. In the workshop, I practiced how to apply design thinking in various different coaching scenarios. I learned that the DYL tools also work with the clients who aren’t necessarily aiming for a major change in their lives. The methods and tools in DYL can be applied to all types of coaching clients, who could be looking for either more self-awareness or an incremental change in their wheel of life.
designing is a process, not an event, and it takes time to reach the ultimate design
Good design solves problems for its users. Design thinking is a process of applying designers’ human centric techniques to solve problems in a creative and innovative way. The process follows a series of steps which starts with understanding the user, challenging assumptions, defining problems, creating prototypes, testing and redesigning. Although the concept was born by designers, design thinking isn’t exclusive for designers. The approach has gained a lot of popularity in the past decade. Today it is also widely used in art, science, engineering and business (Johansson‐Sköldberg, et. al., 2013).
Bill Burnett and Dave Evans suggest that design thinking can be used to design lives. Especially for the ones that feel stuck without options, the design thinking process helps to get them unstuck and initiates the creative process to be able to map out new options for their future. In DYL, both the designers and users are the same people. They can either apply the program themselves by reading their book or alternatively get support from the DYL certified coaches to facilitate the design thinking process for them.
The Designers Mindset
An important requirement which Burnett and Evans explain in their book is that in order to achieve successful results with the design thinking approach, the client/designer needs to adopt the designers’ mindset (2020). Designers are curious. The beginner’s mind motivates them to start with the process. Curiosity is also handy to prevent falling into a judgement trap. Designers have the ‘bias to action’. They turn their curiosity into action. As long as they try new things, they learn what works and doesn’t work for the users. The first design is rarely good. It is an iterative process that they continuously build up the initial design by trying and testing new things. That’s why they know that designing is a process, not an event and it takes time to reach the ultimate design. Designers are also open to reframe problems. If the problem is not actionable, then it is a gravity problem, a problem which one cannot do anything to change. Good news is that DYL tools are also helping with reframing. The fifth mindset is that designers ask for help. They are open to collaborate, talk to other people, learn from them and ask for their help when they need it. These five designer mindsets aren’t far from the coaching world. Although we might name them differently, we expect our clients to adopt a similar mindset during the coaching sessions. As a coach you can either discuss this mindset expectation with your client in your chemistry meeting or include it in your coaching contract. Whether you use DYL tools or not, I believe that adopting the designer mindset definitely facilitates the coaching journey both for the coach and the client.
a good way to assess how much they like the plans can be through storytelling
The design thinking process follows a series of steps. The standard design process starts with empathy. Through empathy, the designers put themselves in users’ shoes, try to understand what they feel and what they think. In DYL, Burnett and Evans add another step in the process that comes before empathy, which is “accept”. Before empathizing with the user (the client in DYL), it’s important to look into the nature of the problem; whether there is a gravity problem that they need to accept or not. That step is crucial to pick the right problem, thus the right goal to work on. Once the client accepts what they cannot control, they can open up a space to redefine it as an actionable problem.
From the second step onwards, the rest of the program follows the same steps in the standard design thinking process: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. The chart below explains those steps, comparing the standard definition in design thinking vs. in DYL program:
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DYL in a Coaching Scenario
Let’s use an example to understand how to use those steps in a coaching scenario. In this sample scenario, a coaching client has his work visa is on hold for his new job offer in the US due to Covid-19 restrictions. He feels stuck and unhappy, looking for a solution in his coaching sessions. In the “Accept’ stage, the coach can use the inquiry method to understand the overall situation and clarify if the client can do something about the visa process. In this scenario, the client can’t change the process and can’t start the new job without the visa. So, the coach walks with the client in this stage until the client accepts that he has a gravity problem.
The initial problem that the client framed isn’t actionable, however he still needs a change in his life. In the second stage, the coach could either take a step back and ask the client what he wanted to change before he got the new job offer or move a step further in the timeline and invite him to visualize his life after they got the work visa. Even this simple questioning in the ‘empathize’ stage can uncover significant insights about the client and what they want to change in his life. The coach can also use other coaching tools and exercises to help the client improve their self-awareness and deep-dive into the source of the problem. One tool in the DYL program used in this stage is the lifeview & workview exercise. The client writes their lifeview and work view, a short description of what good work and good life look like for them. Whatever is important for the client in work and life is reflected in their views. Burnett and Evans believe that who you are, what you believe and what you do need to be aligned. If not, one struggles to find inner peace and keeps questioning why they are doing what they are doing (2016). After writing work and lifeviews, the client reviews them to check the consistency between their current lives and the manifestos they wrote. This exercise can be considered as an alternative values assessment tool, as it checks if the client honors their values and helps them to spot the things that can be improved to live up to their values.
After the self-discovery stage, the coach works with the client to reframe their initial problem statement. Let’s assume that in the sample coaching scenario, the client came to realize that one of his top values both in life and work is self-growth/learning and he doesn’t feel he can grow any further in his current job and the main motivation behind his job change was the need to learn new things. With this insight the coach can ask the client to reframe his problem and set a goal for this new actionable problem about self-growth.
The process gets more interesting in the ideation stage. The initial solution that the client thought of, which was the job offer in the US, is out of the picture now and the client feels like he’s lacking options. The coach can use different creative tools such as mind mapping, brainstorming, sketch notes etc. to facilitate the ideation process for the client. There is another great exercise that Burnett and Evans use for ideation, which is called Odyssey planning. For this exercise, the client maps out 3 alternative 5-year future plans. In case they struggle to come up with different plans, you can suggest them to use their existing option as their plan A. For the second one, they can draw what they would do if plan A can’t happen. In the third one, they can go wild and imagine a future without time and money restrictions. After they draw the plans, they evaluate their plans based on their resources, confidence level, coherence with their work and lifeviews and also assess how much they like them. A good way to assess how much they like the plans can be through storytelling. The coach can observe their body language while the client tells them about different plans and ask the client how they felt when they’re telling the stories. In the end, they don’t have to pick one plan. They can mix and match the components they like in different plans.
In the Odyssey plans, there will be some ideas that the client doesn’t know much about but they are curious to find out more. Let’s say that the client in our sample scenario is curious to find out more about the “back to school” idea he had in his plan B and understand what it is like to study an MBA program. He can turn his curiosity into a prototype question in this stage and ask open-ended questions such as “What can I learn in the MBA program?”, “How much would it cost me?”, “Where can I work after I finish the program?” etc. To find answers to his questions, the client can either have prototype conversations (e.g., with the ones who have done an MBA) or if possible have a prototype experience (e.g. attend a class in MBA program).
In the final stage, the client assesses their learnings during prototyping. If their learnings are enough for them to make a decision, they can choose to start applying the future plan they choose. Alternatively, they can start with partially applying some ideas in their plan.
Whether one needs to rebuild their life or have an incremental change in their life, “Designing Your Life” program is offering different tools and exercises to support your clients’ creativity and learning during this journey. It brings many familiar coaching theories together in a very practical way that can be easily understood and applied by the clients. My advice would be to try the tools and exercises on you first, understand how you can integrate them with your practice in an impactful way, then adopt and offer them to your clients.
References
Burnett B. & Evans D. (2016), Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life, Vintage Digital, New York: USA
Burnett B. & Evans D. (2020), Designing Your Work Life: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness at Work, Knopf Publishing Group, New York: USA
Johansson‐Sköldberg, U. & Woodilla J.& Cetinkaya M., (2013), Design Thinking: Past, Present and Possible Futures, Wiley Online Library
By Sinem Bahadırl
Sinem Bahadırl began her professional career in Google, Ireland. From customer experience to sales, she worked in different roles and managed various projects for Google’s digital marketing and advertising products. During her time in Google, she designed mentoring programs, worked in building the coaching culture in EMEA sales organisation and mentored Irish startups. After leaving Google, she founded Positive Coaching Center, offering 1-1 and group coaching for people development, designing and facilitating workshops for team development. She is also working as a Global Development Volunteer in the European Mentoring and Coaching Council.
In her coaching approach, respecting the authenticity of every individual, by applying positive coaching tools and methods, she helps her clients to discover and build on their personal strengths, broadens access to the person’s intellectual and psychological resources, resulting in improved performance. Her field of work includes, but not limited to, changing perceptions, dysfunctional beliefs & behaviours that are limiting to reach one’s potential, optimising work performance, conflict management, increasing productivity, expanding career opportunities, increasing self-confidence, managing work/life balance.
Apart from 1-1 coaching sessions, she is also delivering Designing Your Life and Designing Your Work Life group coaching programs. For more information: https://www.positivecoachingcenter.com/book-online
