Coaching in Action
Michelle here!
People tend to think of coaching as giving and receiving advice, like a third base coach telling a player to run home. This isn’t completely wrong. Coaches do have solution-focused direction to offer, and lots and lots of support. But most importantly, coaching is you-centered. Coaching is taking a walk down your path, bringing awareness and insights to the things that you bring to it. Sometimes, it feels like shining a light on things that are already there, that you already know. And that is the point. It is not about steering you in a direction that we think is best for you. It’s about helping you find and commit to your direction.
Being coached requires vulnerability, and so does coaching. Still being in training I have experienced both sides of this. It has been rather enlightening to engage the process of coaching and be engaged by it. I’ve described it before as enchanting, magical, and one time I even called my mentor a witch (she reacted surprisingly well). This was in my first practice session with her, where I was in the position of client. I was EXTREMELY resistant at first, for personal reasons that, believe it or not, I am beginning to overcome through coaching. I was barely giving her anything, or at least nothing genuine. My eye contact and body language screamed avoidance. I was almost feeling attacked by her questions which were under the umbrella of, “Who are you when you’re at your best?”. I started feeling this sort of defensiveness because going into it, I thought I would have the answers to these types of questions. We all have our own definitions of ourselves in our heads, right? We might even rehearse them to prepare for five minutes of fame type situations that force us to capture ourselves quickly and wholly. But when she started asking the questions, which were honestly very vague in nature, they stripped away the layers of resistance and defensiveness. Clear insights were not immediately on the other side, either. I felt lost, like I was falling infinitely, and like I was scrambling for direction and answers…that I did eventually find. And that is when I called her a witch, because I realized that I had fallen under the spell of her coaching process. It was her intention, not to send me down any particular avenue, but to just give me the space to breathe, think, and dig in my own direction. While I was breathing, thinking, and digging, I passed by so many shiny things. Imagine digging a legitimate hole, except in a fantasy world where the bigger and deeper the hole gets, the more treasure you come across; embedded in the walls, falling all around you as you try to catch it. Maybe even like Alice in Wonderland, except I was both the rabbit and Alice. I followed me down my own rabbit hole and oh the things I found along the way. Did I continue on down this rabbit hole even after our meeting? Absolutely. I wanted to get to the bottom of it. But, surprise! There is no bottom. Just more and more room to grow and I’m in love with that.
Am I putting my piece of coaching experience out there to scare people out of it? No. But is this, in essence, coaching? Yes. Coaching is spilling out your concerns, identifying which of those concerns you want to focus on, and walking down your path with the intention of leading yourself to your own solutions generated within. Along the way, you might be encouraged to engage tools such as resilience and “your best self” (as you read, the minefield of really crunchy croutons that I got stuck in). We might identify some other means of support, maybe identify other professionals for you to involve in your life. Most importantly, we will establish something actionable to address your concern. We will define the next step, and even imagine what might get in your way. If you can at least see it coming, you might be less likely to get derailed.
Find comfort in the fact that, still newborn, I sometimes find coaching to be just as uncomfortable as I found my initial being-coached experience to be. In the practice coaching session Claire and I did where I played the coach and she played the client (featured in our podcast, “Coaching in Action”), there is actually a piece at the beginning that we cut out because I started….logic-ing….when my job was to listen to Claire and to ask open ended questions. To develop trust with her, to bring her into her own focus (rather than it being on me and what I have to say), to acknowledge and celebrate her work within herself, to support her forward focus. Which I paused and reset to do, and according to her feedback, successfully. She said that I gave her space to work through her anxieties piece by piece, and that she felt steadied by bringing it to dialogue. I even successfully got her (by offering my support) to establish an action plan for doing something that she was avoiding doing; having a conversation that she was afraid to have. To do these things as a coach, I have to show up the same way that I expect you to show up: engaged and vulnerable. Ready to follow you wherever you take me, ready to support you where you fall weak. This can be scary for someone who has an overwhelming amount of empathy. So, know that you are not alone in maybe feeling afraid to show up in coaching. You’ll find your peace in that discomfort before you know it.
