(Video) 3 Ways a Personal Mindfulness Practice Significantly Improves Your Coaching

{Transcript}

Hi, my name is Brett Hill with The Mindful Coach Method at TheMindfulCoachMethod.com

I wanted to talk briefly about the importance of mindfulness on the coach's side.

I'm not talking about teaching people to be mindful; I'm talking about the mindfulness that you bring into your work with others and the capacity that you have to be mindful and present. Because presence is, presence is actually one of the most important features of characteristics and skills of a coach.

According to the International Coaching Federation, it's one of the big ones. In fact, Magdalena Nook (CEO of the International Coaching Federation) said, “presence is the most important coaching skill”.

She said that in a talk at The Future is Mindful Conference I helped create last March.

In that talk on coaching and mindfulness, she said presence is the most important coaching skill and mindfulness is the means by which presence can emerge.

So then, mindfulness is an exceptionally valuable coaching practice for coaches.

Why, what is it? What difference does it make?

It's because when you bring a very high quality of attention, and the capacity to notice your own experience of the session - of yourself in the session and the client in the session, then that changes the framework, the context, that container for the session that you're working, and, and it changes it in really powerful, enabling ways when you are present with your own experience of the client.

So you're noticing what comes up for you as they present and talk about what's going on for them. Then you're able to track what is you rooting for. ?What are you curious about? Do you have attitudes? What are your biases? Because we all do, we all have biases, and attitudes that come up - because we're human beings, we're just wired in a way where those things fire off automatically.

And, as a mindful coach, or I should say, a coach who is mindful, you can observe those things arising in you and not necessarily buy into them. You can subtract those emergent sensations that are coming from a bias or belief as they are overlaying themselves into your experience of your client.

So for example, someone walks into your office or your session, and they look very much…Have you ever had this happen?

You meet somebody who looks a great deal like somebody you know?

And if you pay really close attention to what happens in us, our brains want us to see that person, as the person that we know. We want to make them like that person. Because that makes our world makes sense. Oh, here's a person that looks just like Marcus. And they are?so much like Marcus, I can't believe it. ?And so we look for, do they talk like Marcus, ?do they have the same attitudes and beliefs?

We're looking for that to map it out. And there's a way we kind of wish they were because that's our brains are wired - to help us make sense of the world. And so people who look like Marcus ought to be like Marcus. But they may or may not be, right?

So we do a disservice to our clients who are paying us to pay attention to who they are, not who we wish them to be.

That's just one, ?I hope, a fairly clear example of a way that being present with your experience of your client can significantly improve your capacity to be of service.

There are many, many other values here. One is having the spaciousness in your own thought process in your own streaming experience, to pause long enough to see ways to engage with your client and options that you might not see otherwise.

Very often, a really excellent way forward with a client is kind of sitting right in front of you. But if you're moving too fast, or operating on more of an automatic level, and I'm not saying we all do it right. We all do it. That's what mindfulness is about helping us to not be on automatic.

But if they say a keyword that cues you to a library of knowledge about this keyword, and you're not really listening, it’s easy to get distracted by the keyword which queues up a lot of information in your inner library, your expert system.

And you're so excited about the fact that they mentioned something that you know something about so that you miss, that maybe when they said that they had some somatic expression. Perhaps some sadness came across their face for a moment.

Or maybe they contract it or exhale meaningfully in some way.

And if you had noticed that, you might put press pause and think “Oh, I know a lot about this keyword. But really, what I need to do is contact that somatic experience or somatic expression”. Because they're telling you, at least in a subconscious way, that there's emotional content here that matters associated with a subject.

It might be worth exploring, you may miss that completely. And who knows - you contact that, that content, that nonverbal thing, particularly using the somatic techniques that are in the mindful coach method. ?And you find out that, yeah, that was a really rich way to explore their relationship to what we're talking about.

So you'll find more ways to engage better whenever you are mindful than when you aren't.

So there's at least two things I've talked about there. One is that you're able to track your own inner work in your own inner experience, and adapt what you do and say so you can better serve the client. Yeah, they look like Marcus, but I'm really going to try to see through that, I'm going to see them for who they are, and really make an extra effort.

And then also, you'll see more opportunities to engage with a client and possible paths to pursue. And many of those paths might be better paths than if you're operating so quickly, that you just miss small but significant expressions. Often nonverbal, somatic expressions are coming from our client.

Sometimes when I'm working with a client, I myself will hit pause, I’ll just say, “ I need just a moment to kind of take that all in. ?I sense there's something going on here behind the scenes and I'd like to just organize myself around it, and just say, “let me just hang out for a minute and just be with what you're saying” and see what comes up in myself.

Usually, when I'm doing that, my curiosity arises.

So that's the third thing that happens.

When you're in this more mindful place, you create enough space to let your curiosity become a coaching skill, that can often unlock new ways to work with your client.

So, we have those three things.

The capacity to watch what you're doing, to notice your own inner world, and adapt to your own biases and judgments and beliefs.

The second is, you'll see more ways to engage based on the ways the client is expressing, expressing, and have an opportunity to connect with that using a technique we use called “making contact,” and then inquiring into it.

And then finally, having space enough in your own process (because you're being mindful, so there's a spaciousness here on purpose) to notice where your curiosity goes.

[The coach talking to themselves] “I'm not sure what's going on with this client.”

?And because I'm not sure, I'm going to ask a question.

I'm going to ask a question like “ You mentioned this [experience]. What does it feel like for you, when you're in that moment?” That would be more of a somatic inquiry.

“What does it feel like for you, when you're in the moment”?- ?not ”tell me more detail about it.”

Totally legit question [asking for details], but rather, “what does it feel like for you”, and they may or may not have good skills of being able to do that. ?But that's another coaching story.

So noticing where my curiosity goes is to explore what is happening for them in that thing that we're talking about. Then I have more experientially informed details from the client to have a clearer vision of what's happening. Now I can then craft, better coaching questions to help the client get clarification on the problem that they're working with.

So there you have it.

Three ways that mindfulness is an exceptionally valuable tool for coaches.

I'm passionate about this. Mindfulness allows you as a coach to bring your best self to the session and be of service to your clients in the best way that you can.

It's so powerful and doesn't cost you anything to develop, but you have to do the work.

I believe coach mindfulness is a very undervalued skill set and resource in coaching in general. So I'm making this video in an effort to underscore, emphasize, and encourage you as a coach to take up a regular, serious mindfulness practice, however you go about doing that.

Of course, the MindfulCoachMethod.com is a big part of that in terms of what I’m trying to offer coaches. But there are many, many, many other ways to go about just learning the basic skill set of adapting or learning, or I should say, adopting a mindful practice.

So please, please do the world a favor. Do yourself a favor. Engage in a mindfulness practice on a daily basis and you and everyone you meet will be better for it. Or at least have the opportunity to be better.

Best to you.