3-Minute Video: Putting the Power of Art into Your Coaching

If your life were a canvas, what picture would you paint?

Jennifer Lee, a San Francisco coach, asks that question a lot. “I believe that powerful change happens one person at a time and that coaching and creativity are catalysts for personal transformation,” Lee says. “My clients are all naturally creative, resourceful and whole, and my job as their coach is to help them reach their goals more quickly and live their most fulfilling, authentic life.”

Along with an ICF credential, training at CTI, and a Master’s from USC, Lee’s also a yoga instructor and a lifelong lover of art. It was only after years working in corporate consulting that Lee realized she wasn’t expressing her creativity in her work. She found a way to do that through full time coaching.

“I finally decided to flee corporate America after co-facilitating a leadership retreat for a friend’s non-profit and empowering participants to live their big dreams. I realized I needed to stop living my own dream ‘on-the-side.’ I needed to walk my talk!”

As the founder of Artizen Coaching, Lee brings creative expression into every aspect of her coaching, urging clients to “live in full color” and to awaken their “inner muse.”

As Lee tells her clients—some of whom work with her in person during coaching sessions that incorporate the creation of art—“sometimes pictures, colors, textures and movement are better mediums for articulating our thoughts and feelings. So, through expressive arts activities such as collage, visualization, storytelling, dance, drawing, painting and book arts we’ll gain a fresh perspective on something we’re coaching around or help crystallize your values and vision. Plus, the artwork is a great visual reminder for what you experienced and learned.”

And the message is the same to fellow coaches: art and coaching serve each other brilliantly.

“As coaches, we’re helping clients get a deeper understanding of themselves, to help them get clear about what they really want, and to develop goals and actions to get there,” Lee says. “And the great thing about incorporating the arts and creativity into that is that it enhances the process even more.”

Lee makes art a daily part of her life, and just completed a ten month program in expressive arts teacher training, where she followed her own suggestion to pour her inner muse a shot of espresso or two. “I loved gaining a deeper, more intimate understanding of intuitive painting and expressive arts and appreciated developing more skills to faciliate this internal creative journey for myself and others,” she said. “I continue to be in awe of how the creative process provides such valuable insight and opportunity for self-development.”

So how can you bring a little art and creativity into your coaching?

Lee suggests opening the coaching conversation to include all forms of art, from painting, drawing and photography to dance and drama—and for many clients, a combination.

“If you’re working with a client and helping them tap into their body through dance or movement…you can have them experience that, really get it in their body, and then by bringing in something like sound, you can help them get an even deeper experience.” Lee says sound can come in any form, from singing to humming to grunting. The form matters far less than the expression of something true. “Anything that’s going to help them tap into that creative expression even more.”

And no, you don’t need any recognizable artistic talent to use art in coaching. The key—again—is finding a way for clients to express themselves. “Everybody can do that,” says Lee.

Lee believes artistic expression works on all sorts of levels—not the least of which is moving coaching from the spoken word of the left brain, into the images, sound, movement and emotion of the right brain. “By tapping into that right brain, we’re helping (clients) think of the big picture, to see broad brushstrokes and patterns” and ultimately, perhaps, a path to deeper understanding than the left brain would allow.

And it can be fun, to boot. Giving a client a box of crayons and permission to do anything they’d like with them can bring about some smiles—and often an unexpected path through blocks that stand in the way of moving forward in coaching. You don’t even need to be in the same room with a client to get them scribbling and discovering. “This is something simple you can do with clients over the phone, you don’t need much, and it can be very powerful.”

The crayon on paper doesn’t ever have to see the light of day, Lee says, for the art ultimately isn’t the point of it all. (Though a drawing—masterpiece or otherwise—can be a vivid reminder to a client of their path and their goals, like a vision board)

“It’s not about the end product,” Lee says. “The process is where the juice is going to be for a client.”

To see some of Jennifer Lee’s own art—and a few of the easy artistic projects she’s used with her clients and you can bring into your coaching, watch CoachReporter Mark Joyella’s video here:

CoachReporter: Art and Coaching from Mark Joyella on Vimeo.