We use this line whenever one of us needs to lighten up. Think of significance as focusing with clenched jaw or wringing fingers. It’s undue stress because we are making more important than it might warrant. And we may be laboring in the misconception that if we are significant about a problem, we have full control over it. The opposite is true.

Yes, significance has its place especially when we experience the joy of life’s wonderful moments. We capture them on Facebook or Instagram with posts and photos so we can hang on to the joy for a long time.

However, when we give this same significance to life’s little bumps and bruises, we invite worry, stress, and anxiety. And we feel a heaviness that drains our energy and affects our choices for a more balanced reaction. According to neuroscience research, when this happens your amygdala – a part of the brain that assesses threat – activates an automatic reaction in response to a perceived danger. This is vital when we’re facing a life-or-death situation but from repeated use, we react as if a late deadline, disappointing raise, or rejection is a matter of life and death.

This often shows up in the topics our coaching clients bring to a session. As we listen to their story, we are picking up the mindsets or perspectives that are getting in the way of what they want. Significance is often called catastrophizing – believing that they’re in a worse situation than they really are or exaggerating the difficulties. It can be the root of their anxiety or worry or inability to make a decision.

Coaches are not immune to this automatic reaction. How often do we blow out of portion or make significant our role in a session that didn’t do well? Moving into, what Coach and author, Marion Franklin, MCC call the crappy coach syndrome.

This is the benefit of lightness as an alternative to significance. And we invite our clients and ourselves to exercise our power to shift our perspective. Remember the 1997 movie, Life is Beautiful about a waiter and his son who become victims of the Holocaust and lightens this experience for his son by making a game out of their imprisonment. The message of the movie is our capacity to see the good in the worst of times. It’s about hope. About the natural human conviction that things will get better.

We want to take the time to identify where significance might be the reason we are stuck – closed off from new and more effective choices and action steps. As my BFF and I are fond of saying, at the end of the day, it’s just a refrigerator.

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Everyone has unmet needs. Even coaches. However, it is not healthy, nor is it realistic, to expect all of those needs to be met through our work with clients.

In Partnership Coaching – The Systems Thinker, the coaching relationship is defined as “… coach works to support the learning and actions of another person or a team.” And this is a rewarding experience for the coach. There is a deep connection, trust, fulfilment, and connection.

But it is not healthy to expect the coaching relationship to meet all our emotional needs such as our need for:

• affection, appreciation, and encouragement
• comfort, security, support and understanding
• attention, acceptance, approval, and respect
• to feel safe

They are fundamental to all of us but especially so to those who have a calling or career such as coaching. If we rely solely on our clients to meet these emotional needs, it will affect the coaching. The coach might lose objectivity, set up a dependency on or from the client, be overly empathic, find it hard to employ direct communication, and feel mentally and emotionally exhausted from their coaching.

It can be uncomfortable to develop this level of coaching presence with our clients but as coaches, we must find a way to meet the discomfort outside the coaching relationship. Otherwise, we are likely to fall into co-dependency which may result in a dysfunctional relationship that is not a coaching partnership.

• Feeling responsible for solving others’ problems.
• Offering advice.
• Poor communication regarding your observation
• Feeling used and underappreciated
• Caretaking to the detriment of our own wellness.
• People-pleasing (ignoring your own needs, then feeling frustrated)

To be truly present with our clients we strive to come to each session free of any agenda, emotional needs, or judgment. To do this we commit to work on identifying our unmet needs and naming what it is you need that is currently lacking. Then find a good time to talk it through with a mentor coach – keeping the focus on how you feel and not on the past.

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I admit I am a super fan of true crime and have a paid subscription ID Discovery – all crime, all the time.

It has struck me more than once the skills of a detective are aligned with the skills of a coach. As Joe says, our questions are based on our observations of the client.

What makes a good detective also makes for a masterful coach – both are calm, friendly, and observant, and react well to situations that require an open mind.

Also, coaches need to remember to share with the client anything that doesn’t seem to make sense or add up or sounds like a contradiction. Awareness is often invited when sharing something the client isn’t seeing.

“As I approached the crime scene, I consciously entered into a zone, focusing my mind, tightening down the screws.”

Do what Joe does without the crime scene. As we approach a session enter the zone of active listening, non-judgement, and curiosity. Tightened the screws.

What to earn your MCC or coach like one? Check out the Coach Credential Prep Course.
Special pricing for group starting September 12th.

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The following are key elements of ICF Core Competency #2 – Establishing the Coaching Agreement that invites you to hold off on nailing down the outcome or goal until you have explored for specificity. This is permission to go deeper to consider, what is the mindset, thought or belief underneath the challenge or stated focus for the session.

Often, there is an issue beneath the issue? The initial “issue” is rarely the “real” or underlying one. Let’s use the example of a client who comes to the session with a focus on time management. They say they want a plan, tips, techniques to get a handle on their schedule.

The temptation is to go straight to strategy which steps over the exploration of the issue under this issue. Given the unending apps and tools out there to manage time, don’t believe your client lacks information. Instead, consider what mindsets lurk beneath this surface.

Maybe they are unwittingly buying into the belief there is never enough time, that other people manage their time better than they do or they say yes to too many requests believing this is what a generous, popular, or competent person does.

If we overlook these curiosities, any strategic action going forward will likely be a temporary solution. But if we partner with them to find a truer, more productive perspective the challenge might be permanently transformed – and with it the person.

Want some more practical tips to boost your coaching? Check out the Coach Credential Prep Course and/or join my mentor groups.
www.coachcredentialprep.com

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We often mouth the words mistakes are learning experiences, that failure is a given and happens to everyone. Yet do we fully step into this truth?

In ICF Competency 2: Embodies a Coaching Mindset is something we MUST pursue for ourselves if we are to demonstrate this in our coaching. When it comes to your coaching, are you open, curious, and flexible? Do you really know that one doesn’t need to be confident to learn? You just must be confident that you’re committed fully to this process, which is an ongoing, life-time goal. The only choice is to keep going. Don’t get stuck in a limiting belief that you are not a good coach.

In the current ICF PCC Marker Training we are encouraged to “Regularly access all aspects of yourself (intellect, emotions, physicality, intuition) and see how your ways of being might impact how you evaluate.” That’s my invitation to you when you review your own coaching.

Want some more practical tips to boost your coaching? Check out the Coach Credential Prep Course and/or join my mentor groups.
www.coachcredentialprep.com

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You do the hokey pokey
and you turn yourself around
That what it’s all about.

Seems a bit random but this participation dance and lyrics defines the process of coaching from both the client and the coach’s perspective.

When we coach, we put our whole self in. We listen with our whole being, with all 5 senses and with our entire body. We eliminate distractions both environmental and mental. We are receiving another person not just their problem or goal, but their humanity, their creativity, and resourcefulness. See through their narrative to learn about the person before us.

We also put our whole self out or out there to be more specific. When you put yourself out there in coaching you are literally welcoming uncertainty and vulnerability. You are saying to the world, I do not fix my clients, solve their problems, or advise them on strategy. I’m curious about my client’s mindset or perspective and what has them stuck or seeking. I ask the bold questions, challenging their tightly held beliefs and partnering with them through the shift in perspective. I also hold that such direct communication increases the level of trust and protects something more important than the cost of momentary discomfort – it protects the truth.

For our clients, putting your whole self in means you are a thinking partner in the coaching. You are not waiting to be told what to do. You are searching all your 70 trillion cells for information and insight that supports your dream, goal, or vision. You let go of blame, comparing yourself to others, perfectionism, and fear.

And in doing so, you put whole self out to the world – unapologetic and confident that who you are is enough. You take care of yourself, set and enforce boundaries and you do it with kindness and assuredness.

Yes, and you working with a masterful coach turn yourself around. And that as the Hokey Pokey asserts is what it’s all about.

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Now you are probably wondering, “Why in the world would I want to make my hearing fuzzy?”

Let’s relate it art. Art teachers often invite their students to squint helps them to see greater definition of values and shapes. If you have trouble with contrast in your drawings/paintings then this tip is especially helpful.

An artist’s squint is not used to improve visual acuity. Rather, the opposite. They squint to visually simplify the values in the scene, to eliminate the perception of reflected light, and to better see the entirety of an object or subject

So, it is in coaching. We listen with a squinting ear as it helps us focus on Who the person is and not just their problem. If you have trouble sorting the story from the person, just soften your listening and hear beyond the obvious or narrative to receive the whole of the client before you. To better hear (or see) eliminate your initial perception and to see the perception, idea or belief that is causing the client’s issue.

I take a page out of the art teacher’s lesson and I mentor coaches to see the whole of a person, to recognize their creativity and resourcefulness by initially softening their gaze and their hearing then to slowly focus in on where to shine the light for you your client. This light is the lightest light in the moment and as such it is the lightest light in their session. This light shining continues until the painting or the session is finished. Some artists call this process, coming out of the mist.

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