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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These days it’s easy for us to see the world as a chaotic and disconnected place. And many of our coaching clients struggle with the uncertainty this causes. The Jedi however realizes that all things are interconnected and interdependent, in an infinite cycle of ups and downs. And so does the coach. By keeping in mind that infinite possibilities are always present, and our questions and observations hold this lens up close.

Coaching is a practice of non-judgment, of acceptance that in every life there are challenges. Like the Jedi, we can use the Force or our higher power to interpret and understand even the most painful of life’s events. And learn from them. Failure, disappointment, and disagreement are inevitable. It’s the price for being an earthling. The Jedi and the coach does not deny that terrible things happen; they merely hold that this is simply another part of life.

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Ok I admit this one is a bit of a stretch but what the heck, let’s play with it anyway.

As we said before, emotions and intuition must be understood and utilized in the life of a Jedi and a coach. To stay in partnership with our clients, we resist playing the role of expert shifting the power dynamic in favor of the coach. To do this we must check in with ourselves before we lose both our objectivity and the coaching partnership. The Jedi Code says passionate use of power leads to the Dark Side. In coaching the Dark Side could be leading with our own agenda – even when we think we are only being passionate advocate for our clients. So, the Jedi and the coach works to act with a calm and presence, observing each situation while resisting cheerleading or ‘fixing’ the client and/or their problems.

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Here is a reminder of the Jedi Code – rules governing the actions and principles of the Jedi Order which eventually became the mantra:
Emotion, yet peace.
Ignorance, yet knowledge.
Passion, yet serenity.
Chaos, yet harmony.
Death, yet the Force.

Both the Jedi and the coach must be “unbounded by preconceived notions and try to understand the galaxy that is surrounding them.” Ignorance in this case means disregarding the thoughts and beliefs of others simply because it doesn’t align with our own viewpoint. It reminds the Jedi and the coach that we need to use our rational mind as well as our observations and intuitions to help our clients find the truth of their situation and unearth new possibilities for the change. In doing so we create an authentic and safe space for the client as laid out in Competency 4 Cultivates Trust and Safety Partners with the client to create a safe, supportive environment that allows the client to share freely.

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I was recently invited to a new podcast hosted by coach and author Gudjon Bergmann who was intrigued by my assertion that masterful coaching requires an adherence to the Jedi Master Code. And before you picture me dressed up as Obiwanobi at a Star Wars Comic Con, I saw only the first 3 instalment of the trilogy. However, what inspired me was the basic premise of these films taken from a myriad of sources including, according to the creator, George Lucas, Joseph Campbell’s book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

From there he created the Jedi Code – rules governing the actions and principles of the Jedi Order which eventually became the mantra:

Emotion, yet peace.

Ignorance, yet knowledge.

Passion, yet serenity.

Chaos, yet harmony.

Death, yet the Force.

Ok so ride along with me in Part 1 How to be a Jedi Coach of Human Potential!

Emotion, yet peace.

Like the Jedi master, coaches are not immune to feeling emotions. We don’t bury them or dwell on them. We see them as valuable insight to the beliefs of our clients. This precept is a reminder that our emotions when coaching is to be witnessed and released so we can bring peace to our client’s situation. It is our duty (and the Jedi’s) to explore their feelings objectively and with detached compassion. Emotions are not to be overcome or denied but rather explored with the intention of seeing what perspective might be at the heart of such feelings.
By doing this we demonstrate ICF Coaching Competency 2. Embodies a Coaching Mindset
Marker 6 -Develops and maintains the ability to regulate one’s emotions and Marker 7-Mentally and emotionally prepares for sessions.

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Without it sessions can lean too far into the client’s story. And we could miss the subtle cues that tell us what idea, belief, or perspective is getting in the way of what the client wants.

An agreement allows the coach to pause the conversation and invite the client to reflect on what they really want vs what they thought they wanted when they came to the session.

I ask my coaches to imagine you are in a boat in the middle of a lake. You can’t see the shores, but you know they’re there. In this analogy the boat in the coaching session and the shore is the agreement – what the client was to achieve in the session. This allows freely row along with the client while mindful of that we are heading to the shore.

Don’t like that analogy. I have another one.

Imaging boarding a train expecting to get somewhere but you have no idea if the train you’re on is heading in the direction you want and you’re not sure of where you want to go. So, you ride forever getting nowhere. The similarities are obvious. The agreement allows us to ride freely because we know where the client wants to go. And if that changes, we can stop and re-route the session.

What to earn your MCC or coach like one? Check out the Coach Credential Prep Course.

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