On 'Being' Coach
As someone who earns a significant part of her livelihood from a professional coaching practice, it took me a while to discover the profound difference between “doing” coaching and “being coach”. And whether I am involved in coaching coaches or conversing with coaching colleagues who practice the art of coaching with different methodologies than I use, I am continually struck by how many of us continue to engage this ‘artform’ as a series of activities to be undertaken with breadth of knowledge, mastery of skills and techniques, and advice based in acquired wisdom.
Without a doubt, each of these is an important element of achieving success in the coaching process. And yet, for so many coaches, they are simply not enough. Both coach and client frequently experience the need for more, and yet they know intuitively that applying new tools, increasing the frequency of coaching sessions, defining larger and larger goals are inadequate to provide what is missing. They know that something is missing but can’t identify what will take them to the next level in terms of both results and satisfaction with the process.
If you are one of those coaches who have discovered that doing coaching is great, but are seeking something more, you might want to begin to explore the ‘being coach’ conversation.
Doing Coaching involves helping another person engage more powerfully based on tools, techniques, models, advice, feedback, suggestions and modeled behaviors. The coach’s focus is on the client’s needs and growth requirements. Who the coach is as a human being, their needs and intentions is secondary. Being Coach, paradoxically, is just the opposite: it is all about you, the coach.
I have discovered that my capacity for coaching effectiveness with my clients is directly related to the degree of clarity I carry about myself, my values and my intentions. I cannot give to another person what I do not have for myself. The conversations that are too scary for me to have with myself become areas that I will not explore with a client. The judgements that I carry about what is good or bad, right or wrong about the world limit the degree to which I can be effective with my clients. Behaviors, attitudes and emotional states that scare me are ones that I will avoid raising in a coaching experience and there’s a good chance that I’ll re-direct the conversation if I think a client is about to go there, thereby limiting the results that are possible for that client.
Given the importance that my on-going Self knowledge is so important to the coaching experience I share some thoughts with you about what I have found it takes to live in a perpetual state of ‘being coach’.
“Being” Coach - Its All in the Attitude
For me, “being coach” requires that I remain awake to what is moving through me; mindful to the sense I am making of the world unfolding around me; alert to the possibilities inherent in every moment; aware that who I am in this moment is not who I will have become in the next. The following are a series of questions that I ask myself frequently as I move through each day, knowing that it is my willingness to be present to my journey that is more important than focusing on my destination.
1. Intrapersonal clarity :
Who am I?
What drives me?
Who am I capable of becoming as a result of working with this client?
What topics/emotional states hook me and cause me to back off, look away or over-engage?
Where do I go for coaching?
2. Clarity of intention:
What am I seeking to create in my life?
What am I seeking to create with this client?
How will I know that I am successful?
What does failure mean to me?
3. Clarity of process:
Am I at ease with not knowing, being confused, not being clear on next steps in front of a client?
How curious am I about what I’m seeing and hearing from a client?
How well do I notice my client’s language, gestures, metaphors and physiology to obtain cues for engaging my curiosity?
To what extent do I ‘mind read’ what’s happening for my client?
What do I do when I’m with a client to maintain safety for myself?
What is it about myself that I see reflected in this client?
4. Clarity of accountability:
If the client does not achieve the results they desired, is it my fault?
What are my criteria for accepting a client?
When do I know its time to terminate a client relationship?
Am I up to this client relationship and this specific client meeting?
All of the “doing coaching” elements which are very much part of my coaches toolbox only come into play to the extent that they are in support of my “being coach”. In other words, my capacity to ‘do coaching’ is directly proportional to my capacity to ‘be coach’!
Gwen McCauley
Odysseys Unlimited Inc.
www.ouicoach.com
Low Standards ...pathway to a great life
My clients are such a source of inspiration that I don’t know what I’d do without them! After pondering several recent conversations I realize that my life feels so full and rich, so easy and effortless because I strive for so little. Now that doesn’t mean that I don’t have hopes and aspirations, dreams, intentions and disappointments. What it does mean is that at some point I discovered how wonderful it is to delight in what I have rather than bemoan what I don’t have.
I recall a very old conversation as I was about marry for the 3rd time …yup, 34 years old, two marriages down and already planning another. One of my female work colleagues was both startled and puzzled by my nuptial track record. She said to me “Now Gwen, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m really curious about this marriage thing with you. I’m several years older, much better educated, I speak several languages, I’ve lived and traveled around the world, been a model so I know I have a great figure and am attractive, I invest in a great wardrobe and I have a far better job than you do …so how is it that you’ve managed to find 3 men who want to marry you and I’ve only ever had 1 short, serious relationship in my life?”
Too stunned to be offended I replied “I don’t know, I guess I just have low standards!”
I’ve reflected on that response many, many times over the years. And I believe that those ‘low standards’ truly are what have helped me create my wonderful life.
My low standards have not been a barrier to accomplishment. Educationally I’ve acquired both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree. I was clear through both experiences that marks weren’t the basis for judging myself. As an adult learner I knew that there were things I wanted out of both experiences and that getting A’s wasn’t an indication of whether I was accomplishing my goals. I recall the long hours my peers undertook to make the honour roll. And I was clear that those high marks didn’t make them any better people in this world. Nor did they translate into increased employment opportunities, promotions or raises.
I became aware as I moved through my education that my low standards upset many people. How many professors told me that they saw much more potential in me than my marks indicated? All I had to do, they said, was knuckle down a bit, be a little less free spirited, show them that I understood their points and I would raise my marks significantly. But I was clear that someone else’s approval of my thoughts wasn’t a measure of success for me nor was my capacity to regurgitate facts, figures and opinions ever enough incentive for me to burn myself out. I was interested in learning the things I thought were important, not what they thought was important.
Before I left the corporate world I accomplished a lot, most of it with my high school diploma. I rose from clerical positions to senior management ranks. I worked hard, but there were many people around me who worked both harder and longer. I was smart but there were tons of people way more brilliant than me. Three traits seemed to make a difference. First, I was always up for trying something new and didn’t worry if it didn’t work out perfectly. As a trailblazer I’d discovered that getting something started was more important than perfection. Second, I was always willing to engage with people as people and to cut them some slack for their idiosyncrasies. This approach included presuming that people who worked in highly specialized disciplines weren’t communication disordered, but simply may not understand the needs of someone from another specialized discipline without a translator. Finally, I became aware that it took a lot to de-stabilize me in situations where everyone else was going crazy. My low standards typically involved anticipating that some things would inevitably go not as planned and being willing to ride the wave of the crisis. I think I have my mother to thank for that particular skill. She was notoriously accident prone and I spent much of my childhood cleaning up blood after she cut herself, burned herself or otherwise was rushed off to the hospital, leaving me with the mess and a bunch of bawling siblings to be taken care of!
I have the greatest friends in the world. I’m aware that my low standards help make for great friendships because they create space for us to laugh at our foibles. We accommodate one another’s quirks. I accept their periodic absences in my life and they accept mine. My house doesn’t have to be in perfect shape in order for us to get together and we don’t always have to be ‘doing’ something in order to make spending time together worthwhile.
And then there’s my marriage. …still working on #3 …actually, my husband fondly refers to himself as lucky Door #3! And it wouldn’t be entirely honest if I didn’t share with you that when it comes to folding sheets and towels, he has a different story to tell about my low standards …(not)!
From listening to countless people talk about their exacting expectations of their partners, once again, my low standards have been a real boon not only to the longevity of my marriage but to its overall quality. My low standards have invited Greg to be the autonomous adult he is. I am willing to clearly and directly state what my needs and expectations are, to acknowledge when they are being met and to have an honest conversation when they aren’t. Mostly we engage as two intelligent, consensual adults able to talk through our issues rather than flip-flopping between being mom/dad/rebellious teenagers/self absorbed children with one another.
My low standards demand that I always be Me. I always know when my standards have risen because I start becoming other than me and the quality of my relationships starts to slip. The awareness that something is missing is my on-going way of reminding me to not only be Me, but to stay awake to who I am always in the process of becoming.
So my question to you is this: where can you lower your standards in order to achieve more in your life? Where do you drive yourself crazy believing that by being exacting you’ll get more, only to have it boomerang on you? Who would you become if your standards were a bit lower?
My garden is the place that best reflects my zeal for low standards. It is a wondrous place: small, eclectic, a wild array of colours, shapes and forms in the sea of gentility typical of suburbia. I encourage annuals to re-seed, allowing them to flower where they sprout. I weed occasionally. I water but flowers droop when I’m busy; the occasional drought toughens the hardy ones up. The more I think about it, the more I know that my approach to gardening is very instructive as a metaphor for the joys and benefits of living from low standards. It is robust, unique, appealing to all the senses, bountiful, brings delight and joy to many and requires a minimum investment of time and energy for the massive rewards it offers.
In closing, my wish for you is that you get to live like this too. Aware, awake, creative, reveling in your uniqueness and keeping your standards low enough that the lushness of life has space to flow in and fill you up with aliveness.
Gwen McCauley
Odysseys Unlimited Inc.
www.ouicoach.com
The Art of Choosing a Coach
Coaching has quickly risen to become a significant way that we seek to improve the quality of our lives and our ability to produce results. While the roots of coaching may have begun in the world of high performance athletes seeking to constantly achieve more and performance artists seeking to raise their capabilities, coaching has burgeoned to serve many needs in post-Industrial society: personal growth and evolution; life mastery; executive performance; sales and customer service excellence; career transition, entrepreneurial evolution, spiritual growth; improved parenting and partnering, to name but a few.
Anyone who has searched the Web seeking a coach or browsed through a health and wellness magazine is sure to be overwhelmed by the feast of coaching approaches, methodologies and practitioners promising inspiration, transformation, and access to your full potential. This article is for those people and is offered as a way to help you sort through, for yourself, some important questions as you consider whether coaching is what you are seeking and, if so, who would be the best coach for you. Because selecting the right coach is truly much more of an art form than it is anything else!
Let’s begin by making a distinction between coaching and two closely associated practices, namely counseling and therapy. It’s been my experience that many people are confused by the differences and whether their needs would best be served by a coach, a therapist or a counselor.
In truth, the distinctions tend to be fairly murky, in part, because each of these disciplines is growing and evolving over time and because there is no consistent legal framework that defines them like there is for, say, doctors, nurses, or engineers. For example, throughout North America there is a fairly narrowly acceptable definition of what constitutes a medical doctor or a nurse; there are legal institutions which manage and govern the training, certification and on-going standards of practice associated with each of these professions; there are clearly defined legal sanctions for those who make false claims of their professional status.
This is not the case for coaches, therapists or counselors. Some jurisdictions have licensed and regulated the practice of therapy and counseling so that the only people who can use these designations have received specific training, must maintain a license and meet certain standards of practice. However, in many jurisdictions anyone can call themselves a therapist or counselor. To the best of my knowledge, at this time there is no jurisdiction in North America which governs coaching, although there are some industry created and monitored certification agencies.
So what, if any, differences are there among the three? As a generalization, there is an assumption in therapy that the client or patient is unwell, diseased and needs to be cured or healed. For example, a client may have an emotional or physical “problem” such as anxiety, substance abuse or lower back pain that the therapist is specialized in treating. In counseling, there is a general assumption that the client is seeking advice or guidance on a particular topic or issue such as career transition, family communication, or behavior problems.
In coaching, the general presupposition is that the client is seeking some sort of process that will allow them to experience some aspect of their life, or their entire experience of living, differently. The coach is there less to provide answers or solutions and much more to offer processes that allow the client to think about their situation differently and create different solutions for themselves. However, be aware that many people offering coaching services were previously trained as therapists or counselors, which undoubtedly impacts their approach to coaching.
As you can probably tell from this short paragraph, there is huge potential for overlap amongst all three of these disciplines. Part of your coach selection process, I believe, will be to sort out for yourself whether you believe a therapist, a counselor or a coach will best meet your needs. If you conclude that a coach is for you, this article will help you to match your needs and expectations to those of the right coach for you.
From my many years of experience as a coach, as well as an educator who trains other coaches, the following list constitutes some of the questions I love to be asked by potential clients and which I recommend people have thought through before searching for a coach.
Questions to Consider When Choosing a Coach
Am I clear about the outcomes that I’m seeking to achieve through coaching?
Am I committed to moving beyond talking about change and actually making changes in how I engage my life in order to achieve different results?
Who do I consider to be responsible for the outcomes I achieve through a coaching engagement?
What is the world view of the coach I am considering? How does it map to what I am seeking to accomplish through coaching?
Do I believe that the credentials a coach has are important? If so, what credentials do I believe that a coach needs to have in order for me to engage with them?
Do I believe a coach needs to have experience in the life sphere I am seeking to explore (e.g. if I’m considering a career change, has this person personally experienced career transition?; if I’m seeking Executive Coaching has this person been an executive?) If yes, how can I assess that their experience is relevant to my situation?
What specific methods, approaches, models and frameworks will I encounter during the coaching process? How directive are they? If I am uncomfortable with any of them what happens?
Can this coach give me examples of how they have used their own philosophies, approaches and models to achieve changes in their life?
Does this coach actively receive coaching from someone else? What other ways does this coach use to grow and evolve as a human being as well as a professional providing growth services to others?
Can I interview the specific coach I will be working with before making a commitment? Is there a complementary consultation offered?
What kind of contractual commitment is expected from this coach? What are success markers I can anticipate? What is the process for stopping the coaching process if it isn’t working for me? What are the financial implications of stopping the process prior to completion?
Will this coach provide me with references for recent clients they have worked with? Can I contact them directly?
Am I comfortable with the venue and the times when coaching will occur?
Do I feel a sense of connection and rapport with this coach? Can I imagine myself openly and freely expressing concerns or reservations about the process to this person? Is there anything about their approach, demeanor or personality that I feel uncomfortable with?
Do I think this coach is expansive enough to take me beyond what I currently hold as limitations for myself, yet do so in a way that is invitational and honors the human spirit?
After considering my needs and intentions, doing my homework and interviewing this coach, when I sit back and think about it, is that little place inside me that “knows things” saying go for it, or is it my practical, rational side talking me into selecting this coach?
You will surely have your own specific questions that you’d like to add to this list. Just remember that there are lots of us coaches for you to choose from. Keep on looking until you feel that “click” that says this is the right person and time for you.
My belief is that the best coaches are very aware of how deeply their own growth and evolution is tied to that of their clients. If you are interested in discovering more about the kinds of questions I recommend that coaches ask themselves, you might like to read my article “On Being Coach”.
Best wishes to you in creating a coaching experience for yourself that will press the boundaries of who you are capable of becoming in a way that is both fun and life enhancing!
Gwen McCauley
Odysseys Unlimited Inc.
www.ouicoach.com
