Insights from my coaching journey

"The oaktreeness is already within us".

When was the last time you spoke to someone who was genuinely interested in what you had to say, let you finish all your thoughts, and didn’t interrupt you once?

Since I started my coaching journey earlier this year, I was shocked to realise how often I interrupted people to insert a comment or advice during a normal conversation, with friends, family or at work. I’ve also started noticing more when others did that to me (my husband has been on the receiving end of my new awareness!)

Being conscious of this unhelpful engrained habit does not mean I don’t interrupt others anymore in my casual daily conversations. I still do. But now at least I am working on it!

I recently had a coaching session where I didn't have to ask a single question to facilitate powerful insights for my client (though I was very tempted!). It was unusual, and it was a first for me. Coaching usually involves asking non-directive questions to facilitate clarity and insights.

The client thanked me at the end of the session, but what did I do exactly?

I didn’t try to offer advice, I didn’t try to sound clever, I didn’t feel the pressure to perform as a “coach” and “do” things. I just WAS. I was there for my client. Giving her my full presence, my undivided attention, and my genuine interest in her story and her reflections.

I was surprised to discover that, as the session went on, the quality of the client’s thinking improved until she arrived at a jaw-dropping insight all by herself.

In "Time To Think", which I quote a lot because it was the most transformative?book?I've read this year, Nancy Kline says that the quality of a person's attention determines the quality of other people's thinking. Not having to ask a single question is very unusual in coaching sessions, but it does happen when the level of the client’s awareness is already very high. The coach’s job, then, is to help the client move from the place of awareness to a place of responsibility and action. (if that’s what the client wants; sometimes they just want to offload their thoughts, and that is ok too).

The father of modern coaching, John Whitmore, wrote that awareness and responsibility are the two key elements of coaching. We cannot control that of which we are not aware. And we will not be committed and motivated to perform, ?if we cannot accept, choose and take responsibility for our thoughts and actions (if, for example, someone else has made that choice for us).

Coaches facilitate both - higher awareness and higher responsibility – by means of active listening, powerful questioning, appreciative inquiry and an occasional challenge.

We humans are programmed to jump in with advice as soon as someone asks us for help…We mean well. But is this really the help we are being asked for?

The beauty of a coaching mindset is that it assumes a person is resourceful and capable, and that they already have all the answers. These answers may be hidden from them now; they may be overwhelmed and tired and too stressed to see and feel clearly. But they know the right course of action. And they only need a little help to see it.

When we truly believe in a another person’s potential and ability to think for themselves, when we act and listen accordingly to make them believe in it too – then magic happens. Their best-feeling, best-thinking, best-performing version emerges, and their inner wisdom shines through to illuminate a path that is right for them.

I love the equation introduced by Tim Gallwey in his “Inner Game of Tennis”, another one of my all-time favourite books.

?????????????????????? Performance = potential – interference

It captures the essence of modern coaching beautifully.

An “acorn” metaphor is another good one. ?It says that we are like acorns; each of us contains the potential to become a magnificent oak tree. We need nourishment, encouragement and the light to reach toward, but the oaktreeness is already within us.

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