What is Coaching?
People often ask me what coaching is all about. To me the term coaching isn’t the best term for what I do, but since I haven’t found a better one I’ll stick with it for now. For any of you who have wondered what coaching is all about let me tell you. I think these skills and ideas are transferable to anyone who ever talks to people (hopefully all of you)! These are powerful techniques for interacting.
Coaching is Exploration of Self through Conversation
What I offer you is deep, honest, powerful conversation focused exclusively on you and the world you are trying to create for yourself. In it’s most simple form this is what I do. It sounds pretty simple, eh? A little too simple perhaps?
Let me ask you this… when was the last time you got to really unabashedly talk about yourself and the journey you’re on and to do so in an honest way with an impartial listener deeply listening to you? When have you been challenged if you are bullshitting yourself and been engaged in compassionate but deep conversation?
Most of us don’t have this and perhaps never had it.
For me this is the essence of coaching. I see each conversation as a grand adventure. It is a voyage of improvisation and discovery every time. Together we enter into unknown spaces within your mind and explore what answers we may find.
We travel to these places through the questions that I ask. The place we go is not the place where you store your memorized thoughts. It’s not even the place where you store your rehearsed thoughts. This is not the place where you store previously made decisions. I take you to the place where you really think about things. I take you to the place where you don’t know the answers and we explore together. It’s like we walk side by side through places neither of us has discovered before. And we’re looking for clues to help you develop flow. I act as a guide, with my questions being the flashlight, and my ears being the eyes that help me see what you are trying to find.
The place where we go is like a cavernous room of darkness but not in a scary way, in the way of amazing untapped potential or information. Have you ever looked closely at musicians who are improvisational playing in the moment? Their faces look like they are in another place, almost as if they were in another realm. Well, that’s because they are. They are listening so intently that the music becomes the world in which they live. In our conversations this is the place I travel to and invite you into.
People often think of coaching as setting and achieving goals. While that can be effective that is not the foundation. What most people really need in life is opportunity to explore these places in their minds. It’s like going on a vacation without leaving your own head. All the peace, flow, and creativity is up there we just need to dig it up or move it around to get it in sync.
The process of exploration can uncover blind spots in how you operate, it can uncover kinks or limiting thoughts that prevent you from taking action, and it can show you possibilities you’ve never seen just through reframing.
Exploration of this space and the information it uncovers is sometimes all the fuel a person needs to have a powerful day or week. I’ve found that often the thoughts uncovered in these sessions, once settled into new thought patterns, is victory enough. However, sometimes more is needed…
Coaching is development of self through Project Management
OK, so now you have some new perspective to deal with or new ideas about what you’d like to do. Sometimes, just sometimes, you need help in laying out a plan of attack for how to translate new thinking into action.
My operational and organizational side kicks in to help lay out a plan. Again, in this case my mind moves into a place of visualization. I see the elements in front of me and I can connect dots from where you want to be to where you are now. Typically what I see is a series of projects or exercises to accomplish – each one bite-size and measurable.
Instead of getting overwhelmed in trying to accomplish a big plan we break it down into mini-projects. From week to week we’ll look at projects to accomplish.
I should mention at this point that this line of thinking comes from 10+ years of being a project manager, a small business owner, and a manager of musicians whose entire careers are project based.
This is an equally fun process, with each step yielding cool results that help determine what the next project will be.
If you see that your life is a business then your daily life is the operational side and I come in to help you Project manage. I help you define projects (just like a project manager) that add value to your life and/or improve your operations.
Coaching is teaching or passing on a way of being
This is the one I’ve had the toughest time with. For the past year that I’ve been doing this I’ve often asked myself who the heck I think I am for implying that I’ve found a good way of being that’s worth passing on. But you know what, it’s true, so I am going to share it.
What I teach, mostly through the experience of coaching, is that life is a practice and that the goal of our practice is to have peace and flow within and throughout.
Of course, there will be challenging times and times that cruise. But how we mentally deal with our daily experience is really all we’ve got. All of the answers about how to deal with anything and how to build a powerful life for yourself are held within you. I’m teaching the practice of how to listen to yourself, build projects, consider, and move forward. It is the process of self-awareness, mindfulness, and balance that I teach.
In my own life, I have treated curiosity as my greatest value – more than any other form of wealth. I try to pass on this idea.
If life is a practice, then you are both the student and the teacher. You will learn everything you need to know for our personal journey inside your own head. I merely facilitate this.
I teach you through conversation how to touch the source within you. More than anything, I want to pass on this feeling.
More than anything, I hope this explanation helped clear up a little bit what coaching might be all about!
