Coaching & Training: Judging versus Telling the Truth
I don’t believe that my client has the talent she thinks she has. I watched her perform – and it sucked! Do I tell her?
One of the aspiring actresses hired me to coach her in preparing her own one-woman show. She was going to invest lots of time and money in this. She invited me to see some of her work and it was awful. The problem was that she thought she did great. I wanted to be honest, but I also wanted to be supportive. I was also thinking about “judging”, which we, as coaches, are not supposed to do. However, if I didn’t tell her, I’d be out of integrity.
Whatever it was, I just wanted to do the right thing.
I went back to the ICF core competencies and read about “direct communication”, but I still didn’t know what to do. However, after reading it, I had a shift in my own energy. I decided to stay open, be thoughtful and caring, and, at the same time, be in integrity. I also decided that if needed be, Id just ask for a permission to be honest and direct. I meditated a bit before my next session with her and when we started, “things” just came up naturally. I asked her if she inquired about what other people thought of her performance. Then I asked her if she perceives her show to be a business or a hobby. Then we went into a discussion (she talked, I listened) of how differently she should be treating it now, realizing that this is her new “business”. Out of that discussion she came up with an idea of checking out her competition (other one-woman shows), making sure that her product is a high quality product (getting expert opinions), etc., etc.
My insight was that shifting my energy and emotionally preparing myself for the session enabled me to be both supportive and honest.
Were you ever challenged like that as a coach? Did you ever feel that you had to be straightforward with your client and just tell them the truth, but didn’t want to be “judging” wondering if this was your place to even say anything at all? Please share your story.
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Copyright © 2012 by Marianna Lead & www.GoalImageryInstitute.com All Rights Reserved in All Media.
Coaching & Training: Should Coaches Be Asking, “What are You Feeling Now?” Part III
Here’s another interesting point that some coaches bring up about the use of the “feelings”question. They remind us that people naturally have different learning channels and for those who are more visual or auditory, the more effective questions may be, “What are you seeing?” for a visual client and “What does it say to you?” for an auditory one. Even though these questions expand awareness, they are not focusing clients directly on how they feel. I don’t think it matters much even if we were to ask “how do you feel” question of someone who is more auditory or visual. In this context people are well aware that we are really asking about their emotional state of being and not about their sense of touch/feel. Not ever in my coaching experience, a response to “What are you feeling now?” was “I’m feeling the breathe coming from my window.” or “I don’t understand what you mean.” Sometimes certain schools of thought in coaching make very simple things too complex artificially.
I also noticed that what coaches ask to create client’s awareness depends largely on their coach training. As coaches, we must be aware to what degree accessing emotions is important to making effective decisions and/or how to help their clients to access their emotions. For scientific perspective, we can refer to the work and many books of Antonio Damasio, Gregg Braden, and others.
In attempt to avoid the “feeling” question, some coaches suggest asking “What are your thoughts?” instead. Even though it’s a great question on its own,”What are your thoughts?” invites your client to access their thinking and not their emotions/feelings. So, the intention and meaning behind these two questions are different. Granted, some people are not very much in touch with their feelings, but that is even more of a reason to help them “get there” on their journey of self-discovery. And, you can ask it differently. For instance, you can ask, “What’s coming up for you now?” This would open up a coaching conversation to either accessing clients’ feelings and/or thinking.
Join our LinkedIn ICF Coach Mentors and Mentees Group for this and other exciting discussions about coaching & training techniques.
Copyright © 2012 by Marianna Lead & www.GoalImageryInstitute.com All Rights Reserved in All Media.
Coaching & Training: Should Coaches Be Asking, “What are You Feeling Now?” Part II
People talk to their hairdressers and bartenders about feelings – why shouldn’t they be able to share them with their coach? And, in turn, why a coach should look for other words to substitute the word “feel” with?
As I’m having many conversations with a variety of experienced coaches, even though all agree that developing awareness around one’s emotions is important, many insist on staying away from that word. One of the main reasons that they offer is that it may remind our clients of therapy.
I don’t agree with that at all. Since when therapy has a copyright on that word? Of course, we don’t want to use any words that are jargon-like, industry-specific, and may not be understood or misunderstood by our clients. However, that’s not the case here. We use the word “feel” every day in our lives and have used it before therapy as an industry even existed. It’s not a “therapy” word; it’s just a word. Should we cut it out from our coaching vocabulary just because it is “popular” in therapy? Also, I doubt that people who are in therapy are going to be attracted to coaching. And, once we clarify with our clients what coaching is and what it isn’t from the very beginning, there should be no misunderstanding or confusion about that.
To my delight, some top-notch executive coaches believe that it’s totally okay to use the word “feel”. They make a very good point that it’s not so much the word that we use that matters as the intention behind using it. They say that the more up the leadership ladder you go, the more being able to access, recognize and manage your feelings becomes important. And as they work with CEO’s across the globe, interpersonal skills and EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotent) become the focus of their coaching conversations.
And, to prevent your clients from telling a long story about how they feel, one MCC coach suggest asking, “If you’d use 1-2 words to describe how you feel, what would they be?” I think it’s an excellent question. And, even if we do get their “external” feelings only – that would serve as a jumping board for a deeper coaching conversation and discovery for a client. Also, I think that the purpose of us asking that question is not only to deepen the discussion and to create more awareness, but also to be in curiosity to understand and to know how and what our client feels.
Join our LinkedIn ICF Coach Mentors and Mentees Group for this and other exciting discussions about coaching & training techniques.
Copyright © 2012 by Marianna Lead & www.GoalImageryInstitute.com All Rights Reserved in All Media.
Coaching & Training: Should Coaches Be Asking, “What are You Feeling Now?” Part I
On my journey to MCC (Master Certified Coach) credentialing with ICF (Int’l Coach Federation), I’m having conversations with many MCC coaches about their views of coaching as well as getting their direct feedback on my coaching.
As a result, I’m really surprised at how many different opinions I’ve collected about asking a simple question “How do you feel about that?”
It looks like everyone agrees that feelings are important, but many feel (no pun intended) that asking that question is a bad coaching choice.
Some feel that the “feeling” question is not being specific enough. That argument doesn’t make any sense to me at all. Wouldn’t that be the very reason to ask it – so that our client could have the space to reflect and identify his/her feeling and make it specific? It’s up to our clients to identify their feelings and make them specific, it’s not up to us. It’s about increasing their awareness to how they feel. And, if they have difficulty identifying their feeling/s – that’s going to serve as a great indicator in terms of their ability or a lack of it to identify what they feel & their EQ awareness, which they can choose to focus and work on with their coach upon that discovery.
It gets better… Since, according to them, this question is not specific enough, they suggest asking “What are you thinking?” instead. Does that make any sense? In what way can it possibly be more specific? We are just asking our clients to access their thinking instead of feelings – that’s all. “Thinking” is just as general as “Feeling” in that context, isn’t it? What am I missing here?
And some coaches say that we shouldn’t ask that question because some clients may not know how to access their feelings. According to ICF we must view our clients as “whole, creative and resourceful”. Wouldn’t anticipating that your clients wouldn’t know what they feel suggests a lack of believe that your clients are really “whole”? A person who is whole should be able to access both their thinking AND feelings. We are not robots, we are human beings. Trusting that your client can only access thinking and not feeling, is like saying that they are half whole or, even worst, not human enough. Only humans – as opposed to computers (built on logic and void of feelings) or animals (have feelings but can’t think them through) – can not only have feelings, but also are able to use their thinking to analyze them.
Another BIG concern is that if we ask about “feelings”, we’ll get into the realm of therapy. I don’t believe it’s the case. However, it’s getting too long for one blog post. To be continued…
Join our LinkedIn ICF Coach Mentors and Mentees Group for this and other exciting discussions about coaching & training techniques.
Copyright © 2012 by Marianna Lead & www.GoalImageryInstitute.com All Rights Reserved in All Media.
Does Universe Mirror Your Challenges in Clients Who Hire You?
This keeps happening to me over and over again… As soon as I got back to work after a really bad car accident about 20 years ago, my first client was someone who wanted to overcome their fear of driving via hypnosis. Was that ironic or what? And now, here we go again. As I’m trying to get fit for this summer, a woman hired me to hypnotize her to lose weight. I see the same pattern with my coaching clients and students. When I supervise my students coaching each other in my coach training and coach mentoring classes, over and over we encounter this weird phenomena. When someone has doubts on how to build their coaching business, they are asked to coach someone with this exact dilemma. When someone wants to become more assertive, they attract a client who wants to work on being more assertive as well. And so on… Do you have similar experiences? What do you think causes this to happen? Is this the Law of Attraction at work, a simple coincidence, or something else?
© 2012 by Marianna Lead & www.GoalImageryInstitute.com All Rights Reserved in All Media.
Coaching & Training: Being Aware & Managing Your Feelings as a Coach
One of my coaching clients is a project manager. During our coaching session, which was focused on some time management issues that he had, he asked me to share how I manage my own time. I felt a bit uncomfortable about his request, but rushed to offer him all I know about time management and how I manage my own time. After talking for a few minutes, I mentioned that our schedules and life challenges are very different. I asked him how what I have shared might have been useful for him. He didn’t respond to that directly, but my feeling was that the time spent on that wasn’t very effective.
When our coaching session was over, I thought to myself about why I went into explaining how I manage my time. And then I had this discovery : I acted out from the “wrong” place, from the place of not wanting to be judged by my client as someone who withholds useful information, someone who is too secretive or even worst, not helpful enough to her clients. If I were to take a moment to really understand my feelings at the time when he asked me to share “my story”, I would have acted differently. I would have said, “I’m happy to share with you how I manage my time, but our lives and challenges are so different. And as a project manager with as many years of experience as you have, you must know a lot about time management skills. In what way could you apply them to your life?” That would have made our session much more productive and we would have gotten to the solution much quicker.
My big insight: being aware of your own feelings (as a coach) and managing them is just as important as understanding your client’s feelings. Just as we check in with our client to make sure that we understand them and that we are on the right track, we must check in within ourselves to make sure that our questions and comments come from the right place.
Copyright © 2012 by Marianna Lead & www.GoalImageryInstitute.com All Rights Reserved in All Media.
Natural Stress Relief: 7 Ways To De-stress For National Stress Awareness Month
By Amanda L. Chan | The Huffington Post
In case you haven’t heard (you know, because of all the stress in your life) — April is National Stress Awareness Month.
A little bit of stress is good for us, in that it provides energy and keeps us aware of everything going on in our lives. But even though stress is a daily occurrence for all of us, it’s important to keep it in check. When left to its own devices, it can lead to or exacerbate a number of health problems, from heart disease, to acne, to obesity, to depression and anxiety. It can even worsen ulcers, WomensHealth.gov reported.