Self-assessment Requirement in Holistic Coaching
In order to serve as a model of persuasion to your client, you must live a holistic lifestyle, yourself. This may be what drew your client to you – or it may be a strength you show outwardly – and other people are naturally drawn to your personality and your social sensibilities. There are many properties of a leader who coaches but before we jump in and evaluate a client, we have to look hard at ourselves. We have to hold a very clear understanding of all the facets we coach our clients to change. We are not above the rules. So we assess ourselves – both initially (for strengths and weaknesses/assets) – and we stop and assess our coaching actions in an ongoing manner, too. We assess all parts of our life, actually – just as we would a client. Once you start this process, you will see the challenges of doing on someone you do not even know. It’s an art and a science.
Recognizing these different parts and how they affect each other is part of the growth of your leadership capacity that we want to impress upon each coach in training.
Learn this way of looking at yourself as a leader and the different parts of your life. And develop anyone of the 18 skills that I’m going to teach you about. But it starts with your defining what the different parts of your life mean to you. And what these principles are and how they look in your own life in terms of your own skills. And this is something that anyone can do. You can do this, people that you work with, your friends, family, it’s possible for anyone to do this.
Because when I talk about leadership, I’m not talking about executive authority here in this class. I’m talking about what it means for anyone to mobilize people toward goals that matter. And you don’t need to have anybody reporting to you in a hierarchy to be able to do that. In fact, there are people who sit atop big organizations who aren’t very good at leading. Perhaps, you know some of them. And then there are people who have nobody reporting to them who are awesome leaders, and who inspire people and mobilize them to move in a new direction, in ways that they didn’t think they could do. So when I think about you, a student in this class, I think about you as a leader, developing your capacity to lead, to make a difference. So what we’re teaching about here in this class is the skills that you can learn to replace the sense of conflict and fragmentation with a greater sense of wholeness or completeness.
To take steps again within your range of influence, to have an impact. And to be more focused on the things and the people that matter most, the people who depend on you. The people who love you and care about you. Are the people that want you to be successful and those you have to deal with anyway.
My hope and expectation is that you are going to leave this class feeling a bit more optimistic and inspired about what’s possible in terms of your being able to pursue whatever it is that is your particular gift, or passion, or interest. Whether that’s making a lot of money. Whether that’s being a part of a great team. Whether it’s talking about movies with your friends and parents. Whether it’s learning how to ice skate. Whether it is producing new products. Whether it is serving humanity in some important way with a particular talent that you’ve got. Whatever it is.
We’re going to be emphasizing, bringing value with whatever it is that you’ve got, bringing value to others. It’s not easy to do, and nobody’s going to do it for you, but it’s more possible than you might think, and more fun than you might think. So these 18 skills that you’re going to be learning about here is based on many years of research, teaching, and practice. And we start with your taking a realistic look and assessment of your skills.
In terms of growth and development, coaches hone their capacity to be focused on the results that matter most to our clients (we do help our clients prioritize goals if asked or allowed) Coaches who want to stay in the field find that they are constantly experimenting in creative ways that make up part of a strategy to help clients take control of their lifestyle and changes to it. On a personal level, this also allows the coach to have a stronger presence for yourself, your family, your community, and for your clients. From a health perspective, this is what Certified Lifestyle and Weight Management Specialists do each day with their clients.
So those are the principles that will guide our learning. The goal is to improve performance in all the different parts by finding new and creative ways of bringing them together, that you probably haven’t thought about or done before. You know the principles – we typically apply these same principles, but now we will focus on the skills.
Coaches have to know their own strengths. If you work with a mentor or if you are in a network of coaches, you can easily ask what others think of your coaching or your strengths. If you feel it is safe, you can ask friends “how do I come across?“ If you ask in a way that shows you are inviting comments on things that are working or things that are not working you can get an additional, and therefore, more realistic impression.
If your coach training only involved you considering the collection of thoughts from your client, it would not be complete. One of the main goals of taking this training for existing coaches is to continue your education and this means that we have to deconstruct or dissect the whole learning experience and then connect to the emotional parts of your training; this will have a more lasting impact on your learning.
How is coaching different from mentoring? Some see coaching as a subset of mentoring while others see it the other way around. On some level, we all try to help others. Outside of the coaching profession, this could include parents, friends, spouses, partners, managers, leaders, clerics, teachers, etc.. But mentoring seems to be more of a situation in which you’re trying to help someone and yet there is some degree of a status difference or experience difference between the mentor and his/her subject.
Mentoring is more about opening doorways to what is possible and can be looked at in terms of its instrumental properties; with mentoring one is opening a door, or maybe you are introducing somebody to a network for the purpose of having the person being mentored build social-emotional relationships. The different coaching domains we have explored in the literature suggest that it is the building of the relationship which has the most sustaining power in helping someone engage in positive change and sustainable change.
The competencies of effective coaches have also emerged for us to consider. These competencies predicted whether or not clients were able to reach their outcome goals with their coach. There were three competencies noted. The first was the degree to which the peer coach was demonstrating emotional self-awareness. Could the coach go inside of their feelings and identify what’s going on at that moment with their client?
Another vital competency is empathy. As a coach, can you tune in genuinely and solely to your client?
Pattern recognition is the more cognitive type of competency needed in coaching. At times challenging to the coach, they might need to learn the value and importance of understanding our client’s patterns and abilities. Patterns speak to predictability; ability is closely tied to the client’s view of their self-efficacy. There might be something we can tap into here from the client. We just have to listen for it and follow up (by clarifying or reflecting) afterward.
There now exists some neurological science that reveals different brain actions based This is important because coaches use empathy – a lot of it. The research presented in one study shows that there is an activity that starts in the medial prefrontal cortex of our brain at times when we are engaging somebody else through a reflection of ourselves.
Empathy – A Foundation for Coaches
This can get complicated but it is like you are understanding the other person by going inside of yourself. You might think “how would I be feeling if I were in my client’s shoes?” This is a more self-centered version of empathy. The other version of empathy documented by science in the research literature happens deeper, in the rear of the brain networks; this is part of the default social network mode of our client. We do not need to master this information but we do want to understand that empathy has different roots. But the part of the brain responsible for a client genuinely opening themselves up to the coach has direct implications in our daily interactions with them.
When we are coaching with compassion, we rely on this empathy to build resonant relationships and deep caring that helps us engage with our clients. It can be very powerful.
Try this for yourself, now. Try imagining how you would have a conversation in which you tried to bring the client into the positive emotional attractor. Being innovative with clients can help keep coaches more engaged and enthusiastic about their coach practices, which means acting with creativity by continually experimenting with how you get your work done. Trying new ways of looking at things and challenging the way things are presently done is the best way for coaches to learn their strengths and preferences; it also reveals some actions that might need to be changed. The parallels to the coach/client relationship are very apparent here.
Assessing Using Appreciative Inquiry
Much of what you learn in the coaching portions of this program is based on the tenets of Appreciative Inquiry (AI). In more recent times (the early 90’s), coaches trained at secondary schools or universities began to study advanced models of communication and dialogue and it is out of this era that Appreciative Inquiry become synonymous with coaching whenever behavior change was the primary goal.
The idea was – and still is – that if we can build rapport with our client by questioning them about their strengths, we immediately start to empower the client toward improved levels of self-esteem and self-efficacy by building on what our client views as important. With behavior change, clients will usually have struggles in the areas related to their “selfs”- self-esteem, self-efficacy, and even self-confidence. Also related to the self (but less of a barrier to change) is the client’s perception of what their true self is, as seen through the eyes of others.
The client’s private self represents an area of self-knowledge that clients of themselves but have not yet disclosed. With specific coaching styles, this is easier to discover in your client, as they need to share only what is necessary to assist the coach in their collaborative efforts and large areas of their lives may be off limits. Coaches may inquire about personal matters they deem important. However, if clients hold back, chances of success will diminish proportionately to the importance of the information to their stated agenda. If, for instance, a client has an eating disorder or a serious substance addiction but still wants to work on achieving optimal levels of wellness, information that is withheld can affect the strategies used and influence the order to proceed in the most appropriate manner; in some cases, this information helps to determine whether the coaching relationship is viable or congruent with the coach.
The blind self is another interesting view some client share. When viewing oneself with a blind self-perspective, a coach can often see things in others that they seemingly have little awareness of. In the coaching process, the task is to help clients become aware of relevant aspects of themselves, especially those that manifest through actions or unconscious communications. Of course, you would not always disclose information of which you suspect your client is unaware, and of course, timing is critical, as is a regard for the legitimate agenda of the coach-client relationship. If the information is pertinent to the coaching process, then, at an appropriate time, you may need to use various approaches to create client awareness of the blind self. When the information is irrelevant to the coaching agenda, it may well be left unsaid.
Lastly, there is the unconscious self. Much of the early work in psychoanalytic theory (Freud, 1949) was premised on the belief that we all have significant areas of unconscious experience, and this information remains virtually unknown to us or to anyone else until pivotal events surface previously unconscious material. This is a lot like when painful memories of traumatic experiences are often repressed, only to emerge later. Indeed, some people have little recollection of significant periods of their lives, typically in childhood and adolescence. One function of a psychotherapist is to enable clients to bring forth these memories so that they can resolve the presumed effects of these repressed experiences. As coaches, we use the information of our assessments and coaching strategy is to form an intuition about our client’s many “selfs”.
In considering the agenda of holistic coaching, this unconscious domain is never the focus of direct intervention but it is always noted. As a coach, you are not attempting to unveil aspects of your client’s unconscious. This does not mean, however, that the person’s unconscious self is irrelevant to coaching. Any process that has a substantive effect on someone’s functioning stands some chance of bringing to light memories or awareness that may not have been within the person’s conscious mind; if your client has experienced this, encourage them to talk through the details so that you can follow up with the appropriate questions.
This may include:
“I understand that you have worked with a therapist before – how was that experience for you?”
“What are some of the highlights of what you learned about yourself when you went through therapy before?”
This can help eliminate surprises while clarifying what the client has done before with a coaching professional.
Later in this lesson, we will learn the descriptors of the different principles of Appreciative Inquiry. Unfortunately, even fewer coaches and trainers know of these concurrent themes that are akin to coaching tools – making our jobs easier, more natural, or organic, and in the process, getting some great information from our client. It’s all about the assessment here, we have no basis for our work without it.
While many in the health, wellness, and fitness industry do not know very much about Appreciative Inquiry (AI), some are getting results for their clients simply by being a leader. This is especially true for personal fitness trainers, who have their own systems for one very specific aspect of holistic living – physical fitness. But what about a coach who is not a personal trainer? Or, what about a client who already works out and manages other parts of their (whole) life pretty well – but they are still seeking something unknown. We get so much more about our clients when we view them holistically. We have to learn what is important to them and what they are currently doing well. Then we appreciate those strengths. But there is so much more to Appreciative Inquiry.
Appreciative Inquiry has become a mark or cornerstone of great coaching and distinguishes the professional from the novice; new coaches are encouraged to master the art of appreciating their clients. This skill is so vital, that AI training is now commonplace in business settings, as leaders come to realize how it has the potential to become a guiding principle in mainstream business thinking – and could really change the way tomorrow’s business leaders and managers communicate to their team members, how collaborators work together on new challenges and even the communications within their organizations. It is a revolutionary idea that is really taking root in many settings. For those of us in coaching, we use it to build the client up and to learn more about what’s important to them through good, open-ended questions.
The Principles of Appreciative Inquiry
The core principles of Appreciative Inquiry are Constructionist, Simultaneity, Anticipatory, Poetic, and Positive; these principles serve as the basis for how you apply Appreciative Inquiry to work with clients.
Using the principles that represent the underlying philosophy of Appreciative Inquiry work, we can use a multi-dimensional flow or circuit to include coaching strategies that are practical for coaches, while serving as a process model for approaching change at all levels within part of the person as a whole; it is also a vital part of assessing your client. Experienced coaches know that a coaching strategy can address just certain parts of our client’s overall needs – or, we may have to prioritize some goals as more immediate. A coaching strategy will most likely have different specific action plans, as it will also depend on where the client is relative to the stages of the change model (discussed later).
Since looking at our client holistically may have many facets, we have to be open to a few truths: one, we may not have all of the skills to work with every client we evaluate, and two, we have to gather as much information about our client and then sort it out completely in order to assess where they are at, holistically speaking. Later, we will also learn that we assess more deeply than just the mind, body, and spirit.
The different dimensions for the coach and client to consider include:
Define the topic – This is pretty straightforward – but begin by asking “What is the topic of inquiry?“ It is important to define with our client. What is the overall focus of the inquiry – it could be what the system wants more of, for example. The definition is used to clarify the area of work to be considered. This is really a formality, if you’ve reached this point with a client, you are already somewhat aware of the general topics to approach but your assessment will also tell you more to inquire about with your client. Before we can get our client to go through the next stages, we have to define what that is. The Definition defines the client’s purpose or goals and can typically include the real curiosity the coach has for what the client wants to achieve. In this phase, the guiding coach question might be, “What generative topic do we want to focus on together?”
Discovery – Appreciating is a very clever way to learn the best of ‘what is’ from our client – Discovery is based on good dialogue, as a way of finding ‘what works’ or ‘what’s working well’ for the client either in the past or currently. It can serve as a memory of something the client rediscovers and remembers and when we hear this, we absolutely want to really talk up the client’s successes, strengths, and periods of excellence.
Dream – Vision is a large part of our client’s dream. We have to get close enough to our clients so that they are free to imagine ‘what could be’. Imagining uses past achievements and successes identified in the discovery phase to imagine new possibilities and envision a preferred future. It allows people to identify their dreams for something bigger than themselves; maybe from already having discovered ‘what is best’ in some facets of their life. They have the chance to project their dream into their wishes, hopes, and aspirations for the future Some coaches call this finding the ideal scene for the client. We want to fish for what the dream is for each client.
Design – Determining ‘what should be’ – Design brings together the stories from discovery with the imagination and creativity from dreams. We call it bringing the best of what is together with what might be, to create what should be– or we might also say that this is the ideal.
Deliver/Destiny – Creating ‘what will be’ – The final stage in the process identifies how the design is delivered, and how it’s embedded into our client’s whole life. In the early days of appreciative inquiry development, it was called ‘delivery’, based on different nomenclature. The term destiny is more prevalent now.
One exceptional method for getting a client to open up and talk about their experiences is to ask them about someone who has influenced or helped them the most, who brought out some sustained changes and aspirations in their lifetime – and this is usually from a time reference that includes an early age. When you get this from a client, they are giving you a significant piece of their world. They are giving you SAEs and reflections; they are clarifying what is important to them and they are giving you a meta-view of who they are, as a person.
So we tap into this powerful tool – and part of our coaching model that helps us to understand our client and how a sustained desire can change for individuals. Appreciative Inquiry. Part of this exercise from the coach’s perspective is to really get the client to focus on the content of what was happening to your client while they were remembering the people who helped them the most. While you were hearing this – your client remembering moments – you remain mindful of how sharing these stories affects provides a glimpse of our client’s perspectives. In social settings or groups (families) there is an element of emotional contagion? What does your client spread or catch (contagion) by remembering these particular moments? This matters. The balance of positive to negative emotional attractors matters; when it is imbalanced, it may emerge as part of this process.
What we started to look at a few years ago, as coaches looking to advance our industry and profession, is that, it seems that the process of change is not a continuous one, happening around these tipping points or around these moments of emergence. Well, what moves us ahead in the intentional change process, the tipping points that move us into what I’ve called the positive emotional attractor, the PEA.
Logically put, the positive emotional attractor is a state that is really the opposite of the negative emotional attractor. Now let’s look at what your client probably talked about in these moments. In research studies, hours have been spent interviewing people about the PEA and NEA. What was discovered was that it’s very likely that when your client talks about the person who brought out the best in them or who helped them the most, you remembered it clearly. It could be just a moment in time with a parent, etc. At one point in our client’s past, someone influential brought up an idea that became a possibility. Your client had a profound reaction to what they were exposed to. The truth is, your client was opened up to a new possibility and at that moment they thought “wow, this is what I want!”
It is not always realized through something stated, but in fact, it’s through their embodiment.
Picture a mother – and she is working over a sink and she is grimacing in pain. A neighbor comes by and says, “Carol, I need your help”. We see her wince and straighten up and she smiles and says, “Sure, what do you need?” At this point, we look at this strong presence, embodied as a mother willing to do anything for anyone and we think “THIS is how I want to be, this is what it means to be a good person. I want to be like that when I’m her age”; in this example, this mother has become a role model and an influencer; she’s also been a PEA for the recipient.
In your coaching practice, you will see nearly all clients have a relatable “someone” that helped them – and in most cases, it was a story that involved your client remembering someone who invoked a part of their aspirations, ideal self, or their personal vision. For others, it might be somebody who believed in our client at an important time; this might be the first time our client felt that they were trusted and someone showed confidence in them.
When we are tasked with opportunities that may be above our skill level, we proceed not knowing for certain what the outcome will be. But like any manager or boss who gave a directive, there is an implied belief that the request comes from some who believes you can handle the assignment; The request comes from some who is endorsing strengths. Does this sound familiar? It should, this is what we do with clients at every session and every interaction. We believe in them, we show we have confidence in their ability to work through goals to live holistically.
It is this combination of invoking part of our client’s vision and strengths that we call activating or arousing the Positive Emotional Attractor.
Why is this so important?
If we can examine just one potential outcome from a demonstration/exercise like this with our client, it may help you see how this works.
To try this, ask someone (a client) you are working with to remember someone who tried to help them in the last two years. This could be anyone, for any reason. We ask our clients to name anybody who influenced them, provided direction or support, or maybe just someone who proffered some solid advice. This would be someone who helped our client along at a key moment of their life, whether it’s a spouse, friend, or even a manager from work doing a performance appraisal.
As you can now see, there is much to consider as a qualified coach who has empathy and a desire to help your clients.
Click here to learn how to get started in coaching.
Click this link if you want to choose a coaching certification course.
