Fun and Laughter in Coaching Relationships

Learn to laugh at ourselves

Laugh at ourselves

We’ll laugh at ourselves

We’ll find it fun.

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From the song ‘Meet Me at the Water

By Christina Wells

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While winding down our second coaching call, I acknowledged and appreciated my client's thoughtful completion of their homework despite a busy week of work and travel. I identified this as evidence of the high degree of investment they were bringing to the coaching process.

My client responded that they planned on milking the engagement for all it was worth. Before you knew it, I replied, ‘I will be your cow,’ and ‘I will be your udder.’

Instantaneously, we both erupted in laughter, at which time I dryly admitted it was the first time I had ever spoken those words – more laughter. How fun is that?

My statements were sincere and made with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek. The client understood that they were expected to invest themselves in the coaching process and ultimately be responsible for their growth, development, and change. It did not have to be grueling. It could be fun.

What does shared laughter reveal about relationships? What makes coaching relationships fun? What gives coaching relationships their potency?

What Does Shared Laughter Reveal About Relationships?

Genuine, spontaneous, shared laughter indicates trust, rapport, and connection between people. It evidences confidence in the strength of the relationship.

Laughing easily and openly necessitates lowering your guard and opening yourself up. Collective vulnerability increases the safety required for deepened acceptance, rapport, and appreciation.

What Makes Coaching Relationships Fun?

With a coach’s backing, clients can exert maximum effort while letting go of taking themselves or their situations too seriously.

Frequently, the very same efforts we believe we need to make to further ourselves are the ones most responsible for holding us back.

Flogging yourself does not make you better. And it hurts like hell.?

A coach’s dedication to their client forms the basis for extreme trust, promoting risk-taking in its most beneficial form.

The coaching space was a safe, judgment-free, and fully supportive zone, with the client firmly in the center. The client can experiment, take risks, and speak with uncommon vulnerability and honesty.

It can be challenging and soul-searching at times and joyful and celebratory at other times—a powerful combination.

Acknowledging the confounding number of ways you sabotage yourself can be freeing and comical – provided you let go of self-condemnation.

Working in high-trust relationships and environments is more fun and productive.

What Gives Coaching Relationships their Potency?

Admitting that we have found the problem, and it is us, as individuals, members of a team, or leaders in an organization, liberates us. Honesty opens the doorway to more extraordinary courage, increases confidence, and lessens our resistance to change.

Acceptance, forgiveness, and compassion are pathways to showing up more fully and genuinely. This makes you more approachable and accessible, building higher levels of trust and connection, which furthers your leadership.

Penetrating questions unlock the things that hold you back and help you determine how you relinquish them. Increased awareness indicates the process of change and development has already started.

Sometimes, laughter erupts from being asked to confront a significant fear head-on. Who, when they are genuinely afraid, feels like doing that? ‘You’ve got to be kidding me? You want me to do what?’

Coaches help you stay with courage and curiosity by listening intently, witnessing, acknowledging, and affirming, along with helping you do those things for yourself – and others.

Coaching relationships are democratic and thoughtfully co-created. Each party commits to the process, to each other, and to fully invest in the relationship. Knowing you have someone in your corner is vital.

Clients hold the agenda. Coaches hold the container where you can confront your deepest fears, take complete responsibility, and develop and explore new options – which takes courage, curiosity, and letting go of taking yourself or your circumstances too seriously.

Coaches help us remember that our fears, anxieties, and complexes make us relatable to others. If we could ever achieve the ‘perfection’ we strive for or secretly believe we need, we would set ourselves apart from others and be unable to relate or connect with them.Ouch!

Therein lies one of the magical attributes of coaching relationships. They permit and encourage you to let down your guard, your need to project an image, and to protect yourself.

This is an excellent practice for leaders to emulate in their companies.

Getting help seeing yourself more clearly and accepting yourself more completely prepares you to change and grow. Doing this intense work while committing to fun and laughter helps you let go of what holds you back, thus freeing you up to be the best version of yourself.

Clients often thank coaches for all they have done for them. However, it is the clients who do the heavy lifting.

You tend not to notice all the work, changes, and growth when you are having fun and feeling good about it.

Worthy Considerations:

1.??? What does shared laughter tell you about a relationship?

2.??? Have you found that laughter eases the pathway to change? If so, how do you cultivate humor in yourself, your team, and your organization?

3.??? Does fun build trust? How can humor contribute to completing work? How can it make more intense efforts more tolerable?

4.??? How can honesty, vulnerability, and fear evoke laughter and promote change?

5.??? When a coach creates safe, trusting, and fun spaces, how does it impact your capacity and willingness to take risks and play with options? What could these do for you, your team, and your organization?

If you want to discuss ways to develop and grow your leadership to benefit yourself, your team, your family, or your organization, please reach out to me. I welcome the connection.?

Robert Hackman, Principal, 4C Consulting and Coaching, helps people live and lead with fewer regrets. He grows and develops leaders through executive coaching consulting, facilitation, and training of individuals, teams, and organizations. He is committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He facilitates trusting environments that promote uncommonly candid conversations. Rob is also passionate about the power of developing Legacy Mindsets and has conducted over 50 Legacy interviews with people to date.

A serious man with a dry sense of humor who loves absurdity can often be found hiking rocky elevations or making music playlists. His mixes, including Pandemic Playlists and Music About Men, among others, can be found on Spotify.

Bravely bring your curiosity to a conversation with Rob, schedule via voice or text @ 484.800.2203 [email protected] .