Coaches Listening to their Own Insight

There it was, in class, with a dynamic and master trainer, Bill Davis, inspired to re-evaluate some of my services, re-examine my plan, my strategies. What is it I was missing? The daily planning, the weekly planning.

The single most powerful piece my clients and I discovered was taking the time to sit back on a regular basis and evaluate where things were, see what was the most important to get done, see what was blocked, imagine new inspiration.

Being with a coach that process happens automatically, by virtue of having a witness to your experience.

I had not been giving myself the planning sessions. They are delightful, so fun and interesting, as long as I give myself enough time to explore the possibilities.

So that's the insight for this week - take quiet time to examine the state of things, write it down, turn it over, see what the next most important tasks are and envision your new goals and what it takes to move you closer.

Blogs by Coaches

Just as an exercise I checked out the approximately 30 members of inSide919.com's Coaching Collaborative. While about ten or so may not be coaches, of the others, only 9 had live blogs, and of those, one had a format which did not lend it self to the free publicity of Blog Rolls, which show the title and most recent publication date for blogs.

While just about everyone had a Website, those that do not have blogs are missing the opportunity to provide additional points of connection. Often Web sites are written formally, not quite as formal as a resume, but still quite formal. The blog on the other hand allows for informal expression and helps readers get to know who you are.

Would I recommend that all the coaches have blogs?

No.

Not everyone likes to spend time on the computer. Not everyone likes to write. Some people fret so much about their writing that it really isn't cost effective.

While no one can be expected to write daily, when I found a couple of blogs that were seemingly abandoned, from last year or even earlier, it does create a little bit of a sense that the blogger might be absent. While that is hardly true, perhaps it speaks to the value of cleaning up our internet assets when we no longer use them.

For those coaches who do write easily and don't mind writing, having a blog is another way to get found in search engines; it's another point of contact for potential clients to see if they are a good match for your style and interests; I would recommend having a blog that you periodically update. But all of us have so many choices on where we spend our time, this can hardly be a blanket recommendation.

Coaching Writers, Authors, Aspiring Writers

It is a great privilege, as a life long writer, as a writer who perhaps knows every way around writing (literary exaggeration here! go with it), and the frustration of not one completed manuscript, at least not a conventional manuscript. (I do have a book of single words per page, complete, just not published.)

In the last six months I have had the privilege to work with six authors.

First, it is so very exciting to work with people who are so passionate about something that they want to write about it. Being around people with energy and vision is very exciting.

Second, each one is different, unique. Coaching is not cookie cutter, not the way I coach.

We've heard it before, in different arena's, that the teacher or master works with each student individually, challenging each in the way they need to be challenged, no two exactly the same.

So it is here. One person is fully clear on what to write, only wants accountability, someone to witness their progress, and someone to facilitate any blocks.

Another person is also totally clear on what to write, but it is their thinking that is clear, the actual writing process creates challenges.

Yet another narrates their story into software that converts it to text. They need a fresh eye on their work. An observer of process. A holder of the bigger vision. Ever been doing so much in the house and you find yourself looking for something but you can't remember what? The coach can help hold the vision, clearly with conviction, if you are prone to distraction or discouragement.

Yet another has such a personal and powerful story that it is like mountain streams making their way through rocks, mud, hardened earth, down rocks into torrents, through mud making quick sand, over the earth making a slippery slide. Here it is the holding of the space, of the presence, while the journey through their being into words on the page happens. Here it is helping clarify the outcome in small enough parts, like pieces of cloth on a quilt, so that the torrent, the quicksand or the slide doesn't discourage or distract, doesn't take the writer off the track.

The quality of attention that this coach offers in her sessions is part of the pure gold that can come with coaches. There is little more precious in this life than attention. Perhaps it is, water, food, touch and attention when little, and later it is water and attention. Perhaps attention first.

I don't have to be right, but did what I write give you something interesting to think about?

Overwhelmed? Not sure which of your many tasks to do next?

Sometimes any of us can get stuck and not know which of a whole list of things to work on next. We aren't like machines that perform the same hour after hour, day after day.  We are more like the weather, with a lot of variability within a day and from day to day.

Taking the time to sit down and review what tasks there are is a valuable step. 

One technique is is to review the tasks by three criteria:

• which tasks are the most emotional, the ones that you find hard to do
• which ones have the biggest impact, will show the biggest results
  
• which ones are the easiest to finish, to get an early success

Once you've identified these it really becomes clearer what your choices are.

Do you want to tackle the hardest thing to get it behind you? What can you do to make the task easier? Get a friend to keep you company? Put on the TV? Have your favorite music? Make a hot drink?

Do you want to start on the one that will have the biggest result? Get the most important task done first so you'll have a big win behind you? What do you need to do that? Do you need to clear enough time, maybe several hours, instead of half an hour? Do you need to list the action steps, thus breaking it into bite size pieces?

Or do you want to get a quick success? Go for the easiest thing to finish. Get a quick win under your belt.

Which ever way you go, you're looking for action, movement to get something done.

And very importantly, notice how you're talking to yourself, the tone of voice and spirit of your self talk. While it can sound childish, you'd be surprised at how many of us carry around very impatient, intolerant and negative voices. While such voices may be necessary during wars, during times of peace, they actually reduce our ability to get things done.

A witness to your process

Most of us never get the chance to show our inner processes, the ways we face our tasks and make decisions on what to do. We just do what we do, some of it well, other parts with difficulty.

A very valuable part of having a coach is that the coach gives you the opportunity to show your inner thinking and decision making processes. 

With sports, coaches evaluate how the body performs and also influence the state of mind of the athletes. With work and daily life however, most of us do not have a coach, do not have someone to observe how we handle things and give us the chance to reflect on what works, and what needs changing.

The people I have coached have found it incredibly valuable to slow way down and actually talk about how they think. How we think is the very process by which we face our tasks. The chance to make that explicit, to examine how it is working, is very helpful.

Insight and Understanding of Process

One of the most precious gifts of coaching is getting to see clearly our own semi-automatic processes. These can be thinking, feeling, reacting, taking action, hesitating and more.

We have a host of automatic or semi-automatic responses and habitual behavior. Some call it "conditioned tendency," others, just "habit." But usually we don't get the chance to see what goes on behind our behavior, inside us.

While the coach doesn't delve into history, that being the realm of the counselor or psychotherapist, the coach can help a person see how they respond.

It's sort of like seeing that when you turn the windshield wipers on, one wiper doesn't clean the window, the other does. The same is true with us, in how we handle situations and decisions.

The realm of the coach, so different from the consultant, is to help you understand your own process - make it visible and conscious - so you can choose what serves you, what will help you reach your goals.

The self-understanding that comes from a coach, who is a witness to our process, is similar to the kind that comes from structural integration bodywork. The structural integrator sees how we stand; exactly where our weight is on our feet; is one shoulder higher than the other; is one eye lower than the other; is there a twist in our spine... When they help us to see how we have adapted, it is very exciting, because it is the place that we live from.

The same is true from the coach. The coach can see that you might get overwhelmed when someone gives you a project to accomplish. The coach can help you to see that there are several different ways of looking at things, and can help name and give shape to the way you are looking at it. That kind of a handle helps you see and identify what you're doing, and then decide if you want to continue doing that.

Insight. Understanding. Process. Finding the place where the rubber hits the road, and making the adjustments in the car to shift how the rubber hits the road - if it needs shifting.

Encouragement, of course, is something we all think of coaches as offering. (Discipline and encouragement.) Encouragement is precious. But insight - clear seeing of how you habitually respond to things is gold. The non-judgemental experienced witness of a coach makes it possible to see yourself more clearly than most people can see themselves on their own.

And the coach doesn't take the insight away when you stop working with them. You own the insight. You own the increased awareness and consciousness. You've just gotten better understanding of how to live with you.

Coaching Session by Atlanta Based Coach Em Stecker

Recently I asked for a coaching session with my coaching classmate, Em Stecker.  We were classmates in the Business Coaching Institute training program in 2004 in Apex, North Carolina.

Em is a very accomplished woman, with an impressive education, and excellent work experience focused around project management in major software companies. 

With an intensive internet marketing project taking morning, noon and night, for a period, I hadn't had time to sort out what I should be working on, and found that I was experiencing anxiety and confusion about marketing my own work.

Em listens well. She creates a space in which I get feel heard, which simultaneously helps me hear myself. Then, when I present the line of thinking in which I am stuck, Em will turn it around and ask if I have thought about it from a different angle, or if I could do that. It's amazing. I feel like a kid who is only looking in one place, not finding what they are looking for, and then an adult turns them in a different direction, and voila, there it is!

The most valuable part of the session - or at least the most noticeable part for me - was when Em made a short remark after I said something. Listen in.

Me: "I don't have it all organized. I'm not ready for business. I haven't set everything up. Sometimes I think I can't do it, won't be able to, and should just go back to working for someone else."

Em: "That's convenient."

Me: "What do you mean?" I didn't get her meaning at all. It definitely was a challenge though.

Em: "Well if you keep things disorganized, then you have an excuse not to pursue your dreams. It lets you off the hook."

Somehow that revelation that I was hiding behind my fear to avoid moving forward really helped me see a dynamic that I'd been wrestling with for months. All of a sudden, the fear stepped to the side, and was sitting away from me, rather than controlling me. 

That was very effective.

Thinking is quite a skilled activity, if done well. Imagining, too, takes experience to make it useful. When addressing new areas in life, especially areas which cause some fear to arise, then the normal processes we have for decision making can cloud up. So having an observer to our thinking deciding processes is invaluable.

You'd think we'd learn how important having a coach is, when we know from the Olympics, that all great athletes have a coach. You think we'd get it. Why, would thinking and discerning be considered easier than training our physical bodies to perform? At least you can see what the physical body is doing!

I came out of the hour session much clearer, as if the brier had been clipped away, and I could see my path through the woods. I felt free-er, able to move forward. The hesitancy and confusion had dissipated.

Especially when a person is trying new things, and growing, periods of doubt, confusion, resistance and hesitancy arise. And when they do, having a coach observe our process and mirror it back to us, asking questions that open our mind to see what we're doing, to see a new way of doing things, is so helpful. It's like getting a bridge over troubled waters!