Review: Choice Points The Paper Room System

While perusing Warren Bennis’ On Becoming a Leader this week, I saw a sage quote attributed to  Satchel Paige.  “It’s not what you don’t know that hurts you; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.”

I had the chance to experience a training program called Choice Points: The Paper Room System that offered a remarkable methodology for clients and for us as coaches to “unlearn what we know that just ain’t so.”  Using it has allowed me to accomplish with clients in 4-8 hours what may have sometimes taken 6 months or longer in the past. Also there have been some very sweet and unexpected ripple effects in my relationships with colleagues, spouse, friends and family.

If you are hungry for something new, to unlearn something old, or simply to treat yourself to some professional/personal “candy,” I’d recommend Choice Points: The Paper Room System

When I went through the Qualifying Program to pursue certification in Choice Points: The Paper Room System , it was at the invitation of highly respected colleague, Dr. Roger Pearman.  Roger is a world-renown author, leader, consultant, coach, trainer, entrepreneur, and innovator extraordinaire.  He operates on the cusp of new thought and systems and I have become smarter and more efficient over the years because of Roger.  When he  speaks, I listen.  While listening to Roget has proven to be a very wise course of action repeatedly in the past, in this instance it was “wisdom on steroids.”  Thank you, Roger.

I thought the process looked interesting and I was ready for a fix for my insatiable learning appetite, so the time was right.  I had a particular client in mind that was at a significant “choice point” in her career in an organization that was also at its own critical “choice point.”  So, when invited, I just said yes! Initially, I thought that my purpose for being there was to add a new tool to the tool box, satisfy my need for a learning hit, and obtain a new process for this client who is a self-proclaimed strategic pioneer who requires the highest standards of innovation in her strategic partners.

Had these alone been the ROI on my time and tuition, it would have been a great return.  Yet, the gifts were so much greater. I don’t know how to convey to you how much potential I believe that this process offers the fields of coaching, creativity, innovation, leadership, ethics and its capacity for organizational impact in all sectors. We could look to the transformative effect that digital technology has had on photography, communication, telecommunication and it might offer us a glimpse of what is available here.

I experienced just such a glimpse during the two-day qualifying program.  This tasty morsel whet my appetite for more.  I contracted with Marilyn Taylor for the full-course meal–going through the complete Choice Points Paper Room System as a coachee with the interactive benefit of a master coach. For those of us who are coaches, we know the invaluable benefits to our clients when they experience our full attention, presence, giftedness, and rich listening.  Magic happens.  Marilyn is such a coach.

If I tried to pick apart all of the ingredients that make this recipe work, we would lose the gestalt of the whole. It is a kaleidoscope of images, constructs, thoughts, feelings.  It includes storytelling and the story that is depicted is one of immense interest to most of us—ourselves!  The story is recorded visually on panels that reflect one’s origins, history, values, and eye toward the future. It invites one to check in on all life and work domains. This check-in might be likened to the preventive maintenance servicing we arrange for our automobiles that ensures quality of life for the length of the vehicle.  Yet it is so much more than this…more like ensuring you’re driving the vehicle of your dreams than simply maintaining the existing vehicle.

Have you ever played with the toys the kids call transformers?  When you start out with the thing, it has one shape and form and by the time you’re done, all the component parts remain, yet it has assumed a whole new shape and identity.  Well, the Paper Room reminds me of those transformers. These panels depicting one’s life start out appearing in one form, yet more layers and new meanings and shape appear before your very eyes.

I am told that the ancient Hebrew word manna, the substance which fell in the desert to sustain the Israelites for forty years, was the literal translation of what they exclaimed when they experienced manna for the first time – “What is it?” That describes what I can say about the Paper Room.  It is manna that fell in the desert to feed me.  It’s not like anything else I ever tasted.  And who can adequately describe something so confounding yet life giving?  I can say this: The Paper Room promises to provide direction, energize, challenge, refresh, and make new if you let it.

At a retirement reception for gifted colleagues Bill Sternberg and Kerry Bunker of the Center for Creative Leadership, I heard two quotes that seem to apply. In his forty-year tenure at the Center, Bill led an estimated 20,000+ people through leadership development programs. He condensed forty years and his life’s work into these few words: “Leadership is making the world more like the place you want it to be.” The Paper Room System is about that kind of leadership.

A second pearl offered that day was “Trust the process and get out of the way!”  Marilyn has a softer manner of expression. She invited me to “trust the process and reap a harvest of gifts.”

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Guest blogger: Joyce White is an executive and organizational coach with twenty years of diversified experience from the Executive Suite to the factory floor; from healthcare to government; and from church to military.  In addition to her own business (www.newcoachingsolutions.com), she is an adjunct faculty member with the highly respected Center for Creative Leadership, a global provider of leadership systems. You can reach Joyce at joycewhite@newcoachingsolutions.com.