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I recently wrote a piece about the many misconceptions regarding what Coaches do, not Coaches in the sports world but in the executive, organizational, government/political, and business worlds.
I wanted to set the record straight, at least from my perspective.
I want to go beyond that, to how we can change the perceptions many people have about coaching, just by how we hold ourselves in the equation and create a paradigm shift in people’s minds, not about what we do and who we are, as much as who our clients are.
My clients are not damaged people who need to be fixed. They are very healthy people who want to fly and partner with someone who can help them do just that.
It always amazes me when some people ask me what I do and when I tell them, immediately they jump in and say “I know someone who could REALLY use you!” or “Oh. I don’t need a coach.”
I know many other coaches hear these two lines as well. Question is…how do you answer?
I turn around and say, “Oh, why does someone need a coach? Because he/she is a rising star and wants to evolve?” or “Who DOESN’T need a coach (though I don’t use the word need, more like WANT) to work with them – someone who’s there to help them recognize hidden talents and strengths, remove roadblocks, experience breakthrough and evolve to their level of excellence with a partner who is a non judgmental professional – who can help them get where they want to go?”
My clients are amazing people who want to learn what they don’t know and see what they don’t see. They’re not people who think they’re experts or the best at what they do. Even if they are deemed best, they realize they will be really smart when they recognize they don’t know everything there is to know.
So taking this all into account, when I look at who my clients are and how they’ve flown and still want to work with a coach, I say BRAVO and double BRAVO for political leaders who park their egos and work with me. They are open to changing, being more powerful, seeing their impact and learning how to truly connect with those they lead. So if anyone from the media is reading this, applaud those political and government leaders who are working with a Coach, ’cause remember, these people don’t have to be fixed….they want to evolve into their levels of excellence.
Coaching is now in the psyche of the general public. They talk about coaches and recognize we’re here to stay. We have to articulate what we do from a position of power, positivity, strength and growth.
In order for people to see the power of coaching, they need to see it in the light of healthy appetite for growth and learning, not fixing.
My three cents….
Donna Karlin
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There are 8 Responses so far...
I agree completely!
In my executive wellness coaching business, I get this message across by introducing myself by saying “I help SUCCESSFUL Executives Improve their Health and Performance.”
I also do NOT fix people, rather I help them improve further to acheive the next level.
Chuck Schroeder
Nice one, Donna – my experience, and practice focus, mirrors your own. I believe that coaches can improve and enhance the public impression of our work if we eradicate the words “need” and “fix” from our own vocabularies, and educate around us when we hear them from others. I also think there’s an interesting connection between your article and Mark’s recent one on coaches running the risk of getting “sick” by being exposed to too much fear and anxiety. If we are truly operating on the basis of coaching being a choice, for healthy, high functioning people who want to excel and thrive, I don’t think there’s much risk of getting drawn into drama and despair. Thanks for, as always, “A Better Perspective.”
Thanks Karen…
I believe some coaches coach symptoms and are so busy “partnering” their clients in their despair and sadness and stress that they bogged down in the emotion along with their clients rather than help the clients acknowledge the emotion and, through the strength of feeling that emotion be stronger and evolve beyond it rather than let the emotion define them.
When we as a coach can help them acknowledge the emotion, name it, look at it, look at their shadow sides and then look the emotion in the eye the power of doing that is tangible….energizing and empowering.
Hi Donna, Chuck and Karen:
Wise words. Good reminders of the coach’s job to provide context and perspective. The moment we become enmeshed in the client’s drama, we lose both, and the fun goes out of coaching. Distance — intellectual and emotional — is key to good coaching. As is fearlessness in saying what is true. I’ve often had the thought that coaching is less about change, per se, and more about generating awareness on the part of the client. They then make a shift, or sometimes a leap, that is purely involuntary and they can never go back to seeing things as they did before. This is as distinct from “fixing” as Saul’s experience on the road to Damascus.
Donna, loved your presentation on the Coaches Care Success Summit.
best, shirley
Does anyone know of any resource that depicts the ‘conversation/dialogue scripts’ for comparison & analysis purposes between a coaching conversation, mentoring conversation, counselling/therapy conversation, consulting conversation, teaching conversation, etc.?
Perhaps then, we will be able to know to a certain extent, what really should a coaching conversation encompasses; to ‘pass off’ as truly a ‘coaching conversation’? Perhaps the ‘characteristics, traits, patterns, principles, compulsory elements, & core critical features’ can be identified as distinctively belonging to the domain of coaching?
Billy C H Teoh
Malaysia.
Hi Billy
I have a difficult time even contemplating scripts for coaching. I think a coaching conversation has to be in the moment, illuminating something for the client and not follow any script whatsoever. For me the core critical feature is to let the questions flow as they should…a give and take in conversation that evolves the client. As each coachee is different as is each coach and approach I would hesitate to even begine to compartmentalize what those questions or conversations look like. Sometimes my questions are 3 words. They work. My client gets it and uses it to evolve. That’s what I look for, not whether or not it’s ‘a true coaching conversation’. A great coaching session evolves and teaches. I’m not going to start second guessing which category my conversation fits into. I do know they work and my clients are flying.
A great question, though and one that was great to put on the table. Thank you
Hi Billy,
I’ve looked, but I haven’t seen the sort of resource you mention. I’m hoping that the instrument Tatiana Bachkirova and I will be creating will help shed some light on what happens during coaching conversations that might lead to more detailed comparisons with other sorts of conversations.
I wonder if we may eventually find that the distinction between coaching, therapy, mentoring, consulting, etc., has more to do with who the client is and what they are dealing with than with distinctions in the conversations. It may also turn out that the differences in process or more a matter of degree (e.g., tendency toward more confrontation in coaching) than whether something occurs or doesn’t occur in the conversation.
As a trained coach and therapist, I don’t “fix” people and don’t see them as “broken”. This was true before my coaching training and is a viewpoint shared by many therapists. As someone familiar with both paradigms, I see more overlap in what we do than is sometimes acknowledged.
I think there can be more of a focus on “healing” in therapy (which may imply pain without having to suggest being broken or needing fixing) than in coaching, but I wonder how that statement would apply to grief coaching. To the extent that we can look at some assessment of level of functioning, it might be true that therapists are trained to work further down the spectrum and that some therapists may work exclusively at the lower end of that spectrum.
I suspect that if we were to look at an assortment of therapy transcripts, particularly from certain styles of therapy, we might find conversations that look a lot like coaching conversations. If that were the case, would it mean that the therapist wasn’t doing therapy, or might this be a case of “both/and” rather than “either/or” (that it doesn’t have to be therapy or coaching, but could be therapy and coaching).
Donna, what I meant was analyzing typical coaching,counseling, mentoring, consulting, teaching, etc., conversation scripts/transcripts to elicit, dissect, capture, and detect ‘similarities’ & ‘differences’ in these conversations; with the ‘hope’ of identifying distinctive ‘features’ that would characterize the domain of coaching, if that is feasible?.
We may discover and arrive at ‘either/or’ in the final analysis of these conversations? Is it then worth our time to doing this for the sake of ‘discovering the true coaching conversation’ since conversations seldom has the same ‘shapes & structures’?
Billy C H Teoh
Malaysia.