Tag Archives: coaching
NLP, Coaching & Training: Getting Ourselves in an Optimum State
What is an “optimum state”? It’s a state of mind that you are in when you are “in the flow” or “in the zone”; a state of mind you find yourself in, when you accomplish things in an effortless way, and it feels as if “it was meant to be”. The question is, can we get there by will, consciously placing ourselves in that “winning” state of mind?
If we could do that, we could go for any interview, participate in any debate, take on any challenge without later on thinking back about what we could have said or done, because we would have said and done the exact “right” things in the moment when the opportunity presented itself right there and then. There would be no regrets, only the wins. We would be able to demonstrate our abilities and skills in the best possible light; we would be able to be extremely productive and more valuable. So, can we do that by will and if so, how?
One of the ways of doing it, is with NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) technique.
1. Access the feeling associated with that state of mind
2. Intensify it as much as you can (by imagining all the details of one of the events that had caused you to feel this way in the past)
3. Let go of the event and just keep focusing on the feeling allowing yourself to experience it fully and powerfully.
4. Anchor it by placing your hand on one of your knees, or on your chest, or by putting your thumb and forefinger together – whichever feels more natural to you
5. Whenever you want to get yourself in that state of mind, just doing #4 should be able to do the trick. If it’s not working, you must choose a different trigger, meaning, a different event that would create a more moving, more empowering feeling within you, and repeat the steps.
If you know of any other ways of accessing your optimum state, please share.:)
Join our LinkedIn ICF Coach Mentors and Mentees Group for exciting discussions about coaching & training techniques.
Copyright © 2012 by Marianna Lead & www.GoalImageryInstitute.com All Rights Reserved in All Media.
Ways of Teaching: Rules or Anarchy?
When people register for trainings -whether it’s hypnotherapy, coaching or any other modality – they expect a solid set of rules they can follow. I always believed that rules are the spine of any teaching. However, as important as they are, we should be allowed to swerve from the rules upon our judgment. Especially in trainings that are not based on strictly analytical thinking and math, feeling that you can be innovative and creative is a necessary ingredient and one of the rules in itself. As Carl Jung once put it, “It’s almost a rule that I don’t want to make too many rules.”
From the very beginning, from the very first class – no matter what training you are signing up with me for – I tell my students that we must be flexible to some degree about applying the rules and that rules are created for our benefit. I warn against putting yourself in a proverbial practitioner’s prison of rules to follow. Go ahead and change them! My only request, if you want to change a rule, do it consciously and be able to explain your rational behind it. This way, we are not encouraging anarchy, but we are encouraging independent thinking, imagination, and creativity. All of which may contribute to creating a new rule or maybe even a new theory! Most important, it warrants great learning.
Join our LinkedIn ICF Coach Mentors and Mentees Group for exciting discussions about coaching & training techniques.
Copyright © 2012 by Marianna Lead & www.GoalImageryInstitute.com All Rights Reserved in All Media.
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.
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 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.
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.