Foundational Beliefs of Coaching - The Cornerstones
As I shared previously, I’m practicing my 2020 intention of Surrender by writing about what I’m feeling, learning, and struggling with as I go through my Co-Active Coach Certification. I also want to question where I, as a coach, might be replicating systems of oppression and how I can shift that in my practice (and the rest of my life)*. I hope to illuminate the power of coaching, solidify my learning, and ingrain equitable and inclusive practices from the beginning. I am not an expert - I welcome feedback in any form to help me see my blind spots.
Mar 9, 2020
WHAT IS THE LEARNING?
There are four foundational elements of Co-Active coaching. In no particular order, they are:
People are Naturally Creative, Resourceful and Whole. This is about recognizing that we are all capable. We all have what we need within us. Not only our clients, but also ourselves as coaches.
There are definitely inner and outer judging voices that sabotage our efforts, but underneath that heaviness we can still return to our power. This belief puts the coach’s focus on helping the client access the wisdom and resourcefulness that is already within them, which then lets the client solve this and future problems on their own.
Focus on the Whole Person. This is about noticing, listening, and truly receiving all of someone’s complexity, all of their being and all of their existence. We never exist cleanly in one part of our whole being. This deep listening lets the coach offer up a mirror. The client can then see through the cloud of mental stories, and interpret what they are really feeling.
One way to focus on the whole person is to see that though they may be coming to coaching for one area of life, they are still a whole person with many other ways of existing. They may be an entrepreneur, but they are also a mother, or an artist, or a community leader. All of these parts matter, overlap, and influence the topic at hand. We are whole people all the time - at work, at home, in our communities - the topic of the call is related to the larger being.
Another way of focusing on the whole person is to notice beyond the mind, and including body, heart, and spirit. Using our emotional intelligence, to receive. Our bodies are speaking the truth all the time, without us even knowing it. Notice the shifts in emotion, tone, hesitations in speech, or changes in breathing - do they resonate with their words? Or is something out of alignment?
Dance in This Moment. This is about being fully present and curious and responsive to what we are receiving from our clients. Letting go of control - of any pre-planned agenda or destination, and responding to whatever shows up in this moment… and this moment… and this moment. There is an agility that grows, a trusting flow that gets the client to the places they didn’t know they needed to go. There is so much magic here.
Evoke Transformation. This is about coaching for lifelong and life-wide impact; for our clients to experience the fullest self-expression in every moment. Everything we do or say comes from who we are - our beliefs, our values, our purpose. Imagine you come to coaching for support in a job interview process. Coaching isn’t only about how to rock that interview. It’s also not just about the inner growth that you need to rock the interview. It’s about how the inner growth that you find lets you rock the interview AND also unravels impact in other parts of your life - now and in the future. It is spherical growth - in every direction, unfolding over time. This is what makes coaching an investment, not a purchase.
WHAT IS MY EXPERIENCE OF IT?
I love each of these cornerstones, and they grow me as a coach and as a human being. This is definitely not how the majority of us are taught to treat each other or experience life. When I receive coaching, I feel deeply seen, connected, and inspired to play bigger. I hope to offer that gift to my clients as well.
People are Naturally Creative, Resourceful and Whole is my favorite cornerstone because to me it is resilience. Resilience says that we are strong and powerful beyond our own perceived limitations, that we can bounce back. We are all doing the best we can with what the world has dealt us. I must release the servant leader and project manager inside of me. That part of me wants to pour everything of myself out to find an answer. I don’t need to step in and help solve their problems. In fact, as a coach I can’t have any solution in mind for them or lead them anywhere. My role is to stand beside them and ask them the questions that help them find their own clarity or process big feelings. I could have been in their shoes their entire life, and still not know the best answer for them. This cornerstone teaches me to appropriately use my empathy, and yet still establish strong boundaries. This cornerstone teaches me to trust myself on my path, and to trust my clients on theirs. I believe that my clients are the experts in their lives and they have the best wisdom on how to figure it out.
Dance in This Moment reminds me to be mindful. To surrender to this very moment, because that is where life is actually happening. It has a very “yes, and” improv energy. In fact, I want to take improv classes after my certification is complete! There is also a sensitivity and responsiveness that reminds me of mother nature - like a plant sensing light or water and adjusting accordingly. Plants don’t think about which way to go days in advance, they respond to what is present now. I have to remind myself to be here now, be with them - not thinking about the next question or where we are headed. Just be with them and trust. There is magic in this cornerstone - like the moment when dancers forget about the steps, and instead find the connection that makes music visible. When I’m in this state of flow with a client, it feels like another plane of existence, where time both ceases and flies by quickly.
Focus on the Whole Person reminds me that we contain multitudes, and we are more than just our minds. It teaches me to trust what my body is saying - both about me and my surroundings. I’m learning to go ahead and name that I’m feeling a tension or an excitement. I’m learning that if I’m feeling it, they generally are too. I can notice things that are in dissonance or resonance, but only the client can speak to why. They have the full picture of their lives. Even if I had stood beside them their whole lives, I still haven’t walked in their shoes.
Evoke Transformation can feel so mysterious - a quote I’ve heard many times from my instructors is “focus on the life to be lived, not the problem to be solved.” So the topic of the day becomes a doorway - to dive deeper and get closer to the core. This means looking at my client’s desires and challenges as connected to their bigger inner life. We notice when we’re getting caught in the trap of today’s details, dive deeper, find the insight, and then reconnect it to today’s challenge. When that happens, we reorient back to curiosity about the spirit inside the human. To keep returning to this spirit and encouraging it to sing how it really wants to.
HOW CAN I INTEGRATE EQUITY AND INCLUSION INTO MY PRACTICE? WHAT AWARENESS DO I NEED?
I love these cornerstones, as an articulation of how to be a catalyst for someone’s growth. The cornerstones, the empowered relationship, and the model overall are a solid foundation and I want to layer on additional transparency to make my coaching more equitable and inclusive.
What about my privilege might make me ignorant? I believe that naming my power and privilege, and discussing any dynamics they create with my clients, also lets us both speak more freely throughout the relationship. What if part of designing our alliance was creating space for how our identities, blind spots, and power dynamics might show up? I feel like it could be a starting point for an empowered coaching engagement that is custom to the needs of each person.
I also have to continue to do my own work as an individual - always unlearning and relearning new ways of being. My clients are showing us a new way to be in the world, and I must do that too.
People are Naturally Creative, Resourceful, and Whole Though we are all resilient, we need to acknowledge that those who face greater systemic and intergenerational trauma have had to work harder. I must center my client as the expert, 100% capable of their own growth without me. I cannot know what it is like to live their life, I can only offer a mirror and my genuine curiosity - what’s in the way? How do you want things to be? This fights off the savior complex, especially white saviorism. This saviorism can be true across all the ways I may hold greater power than my clients - race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, etc.
Dancing in This Moment requires trusting intuition… and I want to question the source of my intuition. Is it intuition? Or is it ignorance? What stereotypes or social and cultural norms might I be playing into? To refine the intuition that I’m trusting, I want to integrate cultural humility practices into my coaching. Cultural humility is a life long process of self-reflection, self-critique, and self-education on cultures different than mine. I use the word culture to mean not just a national culture, but how different class, region, gender, race, ability, sexuality, etc all may have their own culture too. I will consistently educate myself, while also acknowledging that I can never know everything and definitely not perfectly. Instead, I can name my ignorance up front, name my own cultural influences, and design our alliance to invite my client to let me know when I make a mistake (if they wish to).
Focus on the Whole Person is fully receiving someone’s signal - mind, body, spirit, emotion - and the multitudes they hold within them. There are intersections of these multitudes that we can’t see. Self-awareness is really important here - what does a perceived lack of eye contact mean to an Indian woman versus a white man? How do I perceive the resting face of a Black woman as opposed to a white woman? I can notice it in the moment, but again what stereotypes or cultural norms am I ignorant of? In my kickoff discovery sessions I want to open the conversation up to our particular power dynamics - acknowledging my known and unknown implicit biases, committing to actively work on undoing them, and welcoming being called out.
Evoke Transformation - Diving into your inner life is a vulnerable proposition. For BIPOC especially, this type of vulnerability might be harder to offer because the risk of being hurt is higher. When I’m challenging my clients to be their highest self, I still want to make sure I’m not glossing over the very real challenges that systems of oppression may create for them.
HOW COULD THIS BE HELPFUL FOR ANYONE IN THEIR LIFE?
These cornerstones and unlearning the norms I grew up with are helping to create better relationships in every part of my life - personal and professional. I wish we all interacted this way, all the time!
What’s your experience of this (as a client or as a coach)? What is one thing that I am missing? Am I making an assumption or holding a bias that I can’t see yet? Let me know in the comments below.
*I fully expect to make mistakes and miss my own biases, I welcome being called out when I do so. If possible, I hope for conversation and connection and shared learning throughout this experience. Let’s keep talking and see how we can be together in a new way.