Coaching is an Awareness-Based Process
Coaching is an organic, spontaneous process based on the intention of helping a client think more broadly for themselves. To do this, you must:
• Seek to go deeper into the client’s experience instead of jumping to find solutions
• Release both evaluations of the client and yourself
• Be willing to be share what you sense and able to accept you could be wrong
• Open your heart to the essence of what is being conveyed
• Open your gut to courageously share with compassion
• Receive the gifts the person is sharing – their vulnerability, insights, yearnings and fears. Check out if what you sense rings true for them and give them time to process what they are coming to understand
There is so much more to coaching than asking questions. Yes, powerful questions initiate profound shifts in thinking, believing and actions. The bulk of what a coach does is asking. It’s asking in the service of creating a new awareness. Noticing, sharing, encouraging, challenging, and silence are important parts of this process as well.
This article was originally posted on the International Coach Federation Blog.
