Relieving the Pressure!

What would it be worth to you to relieve the pressure in your head of all the things that are occupying space in it? We walk around on a daily basis taking up space in our brains related to several things that we are pre-occupied with.  Sometimes these things are the regular everyday issues that need our attention but we fail to take action on them so they stay in our head, taking up space. These things aggravate us over time. We drive home and see that outdoor project that will help us make more room in the garage still lingering in our brain. The image creates anxiety because we haven't done anything about it and now its winter and you so wish you had done something about it because now you have to leave the car outside and get dumped on by the blizzard going on just in front of your house! 

We tend to have an array of such issues that take up our brain space and our worry space. This space could be used to focus on a dream you want to pursue but that gets frustrated due to these unattended and unfinished resolves to improve our life and surroundings. I was reminded of this recently when I ordered some siding to finally finish up a project at the front of our house. I realized that I had spent a better part of a year letting this project linger in my head. Every time I pulled up to my driveway, the unfinished project was starring me right in the face. Every time I had a spare brain moment, I was reminded of this. I realized the relief of having worked a plan and executed that plan to completion. This project holds no more brain space in my head because its completion has made room in my brain for other more desirable things! 

What would it be worth for you to free up some of that space in your head for something that you really have wanted to do for a long time.  Connecting with a coach and getting them to help you set a goal and create action steps is a way of getting to the free space in your head. If this really resonates with you then I encourage you to do the following: 

• Find a coach and share what is taking up space in your head. If there is no coach available, have a family member or close friend use the PLAN in this book to help you.

• • Ask the coach to help you establish a PLAN – with a goal that will reach the target of getting that project finished and behind you. 
• • Break the goal down into manageable steps to get to where you want to be. 
• • Create realistic action steps that have a high degree of commitment on your part. 
• • Follow through on the action steps and watch as the project gets done. 
• • Throw a party with loved ones when you’ve reached the POINT in the horizon where your goal is complete. 
• • Take the time to share with your coach how completing that project made you feel and you learned from the experience. 
• • Take the confidence you have achieved and tackle the next thing that is taking up space in your brain. 

If you are proactive and follow these steps, I guarantee you that you will be a happier person. There will also be less stress in your life. Sometimes the project doesn’t get done because the resources aren’t there to do it. Connecting with a coach and talking through a strategy that helps you solve the resource issue is the place to start.  A coach will help you deal with what is the present issue regardless of where you are in the process of getting a project done.  The point is getting started and then following it through to the end.  As a coach, you can help others get there and a coach can help you get there too! 

What does a Coach Do?

Some might ask what does a Coach actually do?  In reality a coach doesn't do anything; its the client that does in the coaching relationship.  The better question in terms of coaching is what does a coach provide?  A coach provides a structure for a conversation that leads a client to take action.  A coach asks questions that help bring more awareness to the client about what is going on in their life and what they would like to pursue or accomplish.

 

A coach will always think about what the client needs to do.  By listening and helping the client dig out information, the coach leads the client into discovering what they need to do in their situation. Without giving advice, a coach leads the client into discovering the pieces of information that bring more clarity to their client's situation. This new clarity gives them a focus for taking responsibility in their own lives. A coach is never responsible for their clients actions because a coach empowers a client to be responsible for their own actions.  In this sense then a coach actually doesn't do anything.  They rather create an optimal environment that allows the client to do what they feel and know they need to do.

So you  might ask again: What does a Coach do?  The answer is they do nothing.  The Client does all the work and creates a plan to get where they want to go.

How to Stay Focused on the Client

One of my certification clients just recently asked me about what I think it is that distracts us as coaches from focusing on our clients.  I thought it was an excellent question and I have posted my response here.  Hope this helps:

I find that there are several things that take our attention off of the client and on to ourselves:

1. Our sheer curiosity to want to know information for our benefit not necessarily the client’s benefit – to satisfy our curiosity rather than give the client room to pursue their curiosity.

2. Our lack of confidence in what we have to offer.

3. Our own insecurities – the client’s sharing with us remind us of things that we go through – things that we need to deal with.

4. Our lack of focus – approaching our client sessions without getting focused on what the client wants and needs.

5. Random stray thoughts that simply catch us off guard and draw us away from listening.

6. Our own guardedness – and reluctance to be authentic.

These are but a few that come to my mind – off the top of my head.  What I think gets us focused on our clients is our ability to lay aside the things that we know will distract us.  Our ability to prepare ourselves for our client sessions is important [spending a moment in prayer asking God to help us as coaches to cooperate with what He is doing in the life of our clients].  As well, creating relationship with our clients by our offering authenticity I believe creates an important openness in the relationship from both ends – our willingness to be open about ourselves [as we demonstrated authenticity in level I workshop] creates an openness in the client and brings the relationship to a deeper level. 

Giving ourselves in this way also helps us get focused on our clients, disarms our own uneasiness and establishes a level of trust.  If we lower the guards and feel comfortable in our own experience and our own skin that will translate into a level of comfort in our client sessions.  Practicing this is very important – it creates an important level of openness in our coaching. This last point about authenticity is by far the most important and is the crucial obstacle that we need to overcome in ourselves.  It alone will create an openness that will foster healthy coaching sessions where clients feel that coaches are real human beings that care about what they are facing and care about their goals that they want to pursue.

A Hunch should stay a Hunch

Part of the discipline as a coach is to remain on the curiosity side of a conversation with your client so as to be as objective as possible and let your client lead the conversation. More often than not, while we are engaging our clients, we get hunches related to what they are communicating to us. Those hunches, if entertained, sometimes lead us down the road of starting to diagnose and subsequently produce solutions for our client. At this point we have crossed the objectivity line and are no longer coaching but advising.

The best way to prevent ourselves from crossing the line from curiosity to diagnosis is keep hunches as hunches. Its okay to have a hunch that goes something like this: My client just said that they "hate their boss." Sounds like she may have anger issues."  Having such a hunch is okay. In fact in a coaching conversation they happen all the time. The moment we cross the line into diagnosing is when we follow up such a hunch with: If she has anger issues then she will need to find a way to deal with that anger. A good step would be for her to find an outlet for the anger so its not directed toward her boss. Maybe getting out to the gym in the morning and burning off her steam will prevent her getting angry with her boss later."  What just happened was a move from curiosity to diagnosis and from coaching to advising.

Since coaching keeps the responsibility for action on the side of the client, we don't need to follow up our hunches with our own solutions. What we can do is ask questions that keep our hunch a hunch and let the client work out whether its true in their situation and how they then want to respond to it. Following up a hunch can sound something like this: Tell me more about your relationship with your boss? or Have you felt that way before? Responding this way gives the reponsibility to the client to define what they meant by I hate my boss.  Rather than spend energy on following the solution trail to our hunches, as coaches we can learn to take our hunches and pour our energy into crafting questions to get our clients to discover more about their situation. This route can help us organize our thoughts so that we stay focused on our role as coaches and not as advice givers.

In the example I gave, the response from the client might be something like: When I get pressured into doing things I get very anxious and hate feeling that way!  In terms of the initial hunch and the question asked to follow up the hunch, the coach can then think: Hmmm ... so she actually doesn't hate her boss but hates being put into certain situations. I'll ask her about how she wants to deal with such situations.  Because the hunch stayed a hunch, the coach can stay focused on the conversation and keep the client responsible to address their awareness of their situation and encourage the client to come up with solutions to change their experience.

Keep a hunch as a hunch and you'll always keep your coaching conversations focused on the client coming up with a solution to their situation.

Avoiding Backlash

When working with a client in a coaching relationship sometimes a sensitive issue arises in the conversation that the coach wants to ask more about but is hesitant to take the direct approach for fear of backlash. The last thing a coach wants to do is cash in on relational capital by touching on a sensitive issue that gets the client's back up.

In such situations the coach is the best one to determine if addressing the issue is both timely and appropriate. Sometimes waiting and letting the conversation get there from the client's perspective is the best way to deal with it. But if you feel that its very important to address the issue, here are some strategies that a coach can use to soften the direct approach without losing its impact on the client:

• Using the Third Person to ask the Question:  Rather than asking a question directly based on the issue that surfaced, create a third person in the conversation and let that person ask the client the question.  This may sound something like If someone close to you asked you if taking that approach is a good idea, how would you respond? By creating a third person who asks the question, the client's response is solicited toward the third person and not toward you as a coach. The benefit of this is that any possible backlash that may surface from the client will not be directed to you but to the third person you created.  Since its a hypothetical scenario, clients are less likely to take the question personally and more inclined to be objective about it.
• Share a Story:  Maybe there is a story from your own experience as a coach where you were behaving the same way and it turned out to be a challenging but learning experience. This would be a good time to share it.  It will help the client to hear how you worked through a very similar issue in your own life and in response create more authenticity in the conversation that will make them comfortable to dig deeper.
• Connect your Question to the Client's Goals and Values:  If your client has stated some clear values that they live by and their issue goes against their value then simply open up the opportunity for the client to dig deeper by reminding the client of the value and asking them to measure the issue against that value. The same goes for a goal that they have developed with you. If the issue they share is at cross purposes with their goal, make the connection for the client and let them assess whether the issue aligns with their goal.
• I'm on Your Side Technique: If you have had a long standing relationship with the client and they are comfortable with you holding a high degree of trust in the relationship then you can take the standpoint of siding with the client for their own growth.  This could sound something like this, If working through this issue gives you more growth in your life then how would you start dealing with it? Another phrase to describe this approach is the I Believe in You approach. Given the scenario that digging deeper will foster more growth in the client's life, the client is more keen on talking about it.

The Power of Listening!

It almost sounds strange to mention this but the reality is that most of us aren't aware of the power of silence in our relationships with others. That power comes from our ability to listen to someone else. I don't think we quite grasp how significant this truly is.

 

If you're an internal processor like me, [with an introverted personality] you go through all kinds of thoughts and analyze them on a regular basis. Some thoughts you think are good, others you wonder where they came from, and some you dismiss outright. One thing that amazes me is that when I share those thoughts with someone who I know cares and listens attentively to what I have to say, what I thought was "out to lunch" actually begins to make sense. I found myself recently reminiscing about this outcome with another coach.

 

What is it about having someone listen that changes our view on the value of what we're thinking? Of all the elements we attempted to identify, the clear front runner is that of significance. When someone offers a listening ear and lets another know that they care about what is being shared, the words being communicated suddenly become more significant! In fact, when I've been listened to in this fashion, I tend to communicate more intently about what I've been thinking, dreaming, and planning. What we have to offer in this powerful silent posture is verification that what someone is communicating matters. This power of listening causes the one who is communicating to take seriously what they are sharing and tends to take themselves seriously in sharing it. Suddenly a level of legitimacy is attached to what we've been thinking. Its not just in our head anymore. We've risked putting it out there and we give each other the opportunity to validate it.

 

The next time you think twice about sharing what you're thinking, find someone you know who cares about what you have to say and ask them to listen to your idea. You'll be surprised how your evaluation of what you were thinking takes on a different level of importance! What you thought was "far from reality" could suddenly become something as signficant as affecting the very next step you take!

The Power of a Conversation

Have you experienced the power of a conversation? Those of us who tend to work things through in our head need reminding that a conversation with someone you trust and who will truly listen to what you have to say can produce more information, creativity and solutions than if you kept mulling it over on your own.

There tends to be a crucial element in having a conversation that results in greater clarity, certainty and discovery. In the presence of someone who believes in you and lets you talk, there can be the key to your next step in solving where you might be stuck or in affirming what your plan is for a certain task or goal. When I have had several conversations concerning an idea or a plan that I have thought about I immediately notice that I don't say it the same way twice. There is always something that I add to the description of what I'm doing or at times I've stumbled on an insight right in mid sentence.

What is it about a conversation that generates what doesn't tend to happen when we re-hash in our mind? Here are some key things to value about having that important next conversation:

•  Someone who truly listens to you causes you to speak with a level of confidence. Confidence creates an affirming atmosphere that makes what you say believable.
• Saying it as opposed to thinking it creates a greater level of commitment to what you are planning. When its in your head no one hears it and so it can quickly be dismissed. When you say it to someone else, the words give your ideas a sense of reality that makes it harder to ignore.
• Knowing that someone else cares enough about your idea to sit and listen intently causes you to believe in yourself and so helps you go a bit further with your thoughts and imagination.
• When comfortable with whom you are conversing, the level of comfortableness creates an atmosphere of risk taking with your words knowing that the listener is cheering you on. If what you say is being received well then you have room to be creative and add that bit extra that no one - even yourself - has heard before.
• A level of accountability occurs when your words get "out there!" When they're "out there" its hard to get them back and so leads to a degree of self-accountability because you said it in the presence of someone else. If that person is supportive, then the self-accountability is positive.

Before you mull around in your head that last thought you had the previous day about an idea you think might work, have a conversation with someone who is supportive and will listen. You may be one conversation away from an important part of your plan that will make your goal a reality.