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Good coaching is a bridge… Bad coaching is not.
We all have some area where we don’t already have a bridge, a path, to where we want to be
What bridge? What is a bridge?
The bridge is what happens between an idea and its fulfillment, materialization. What happens between a problem and its solution.
Most bridges are connectors between words and actions. Or future words and the process that will make it work. Or teaching and what we actually make of it.
Or maybe our words and the feelings we want to feel, mostly about ourselves…
Words and feelings. Words and doing. Doing and something built in reality. Different ‘modalities’.
Every time there are two things of different modality, you need a bridge… and it is never distinguished, nobody tells you it’s needed, you are expected to have it, and if you don’t, they call you stupid, slow, or retarded.
Understanding often misleads a person. You understand the words in one modality: listening. But in another modality: speaking, writing, something utterly different comes out. The non-existent bridge phenomenon.
I have students who understand, and then, to everyone’s utter amazement, what they do seems to have nothing to do with what was said.
This happens to me all the time.
And it happens to all the coaches I know.
The difference between all the coaches I know and myself is that I know that what I say doesn’t matter, however brilliant it may be, until and unless it is acted upon: exactly.
And that is tricky and even rare, mainly because of the missing bridge or bridges.
When a client ‘hires’ a coach, essentially they say that they need help… for what? to bridge something. Really. They need to be helped through a tricky, treacherous patch on their path, and they say that they can’t do it alone, fast enough, well enough.
Unless they, of course, they misunderstand what coaching is.
Coaching: a coaches job is to make you do the things that you don’t want to do, don’t know how to do, can’t see how to do, so you can have what you want to have.
Of course, most coaches I have had, most coaches I have known, most coaches I have analyzed in a vibrational review, are talkers. Or writers. A lot like a dog no covering its poop. Don’t even look. They consider their job ending when they stopped talking.
In the coaching program I am a client in, The Pirates, only one of the eight coaches even looks at the results clients produce with the coaching. The rest? Talkers. (same happens with healers, by the way, but that is a topic for another day.) If you pay for talking, you are overpaying… because your results are not, cannot be guaranteed.
If you can get where you want to be without coaching, on your own, then you are not an ideal client: you’ll want to do, insist to do what you want to do, not what the coach tells you to do, shows you to do.
Now, the tricky thing is to not be mislead by the feedback.
Actions speak louder than words… In fact only what actions say are worth hearing.
A good coach may enjoy the praise, but doesn’t get swayed by it.
If the client isn’t doing what they were asked to do, then two things should happen: 1. repeat the instructions until the task is done, exactly how it is supposed to be done. 2. fire the client.
I have fired almost everyone who wasn’t doing what I asked them to do… and will fire everyone who is not doing what I ask them to do.
It is better not to have any clients than to live in a delusion… I say.
Setting boundaries
If you are a coach and don’t set boundaries, you are signing up for a lot of abuse and suffering.
How do you set boundaries? Many people ask this. You can be a boss, a mother, a trainer, a friend… this isn’t only true for coaches…
Prepare to be surprised. Setting boundaries is setting who you are, what you intend to do, what you expect the client to do, and what is the consequence if they don’t do what you expect them to do.
It is a bunch of well crafted ‘I am’ statements… instead of ‘you’ statements. They are not rules, they are principles… about who you are, the behaviors, attitudes, integrity, etc. of the relationship to each other and others. It is not the easiest to craft, but when it’s done, and spoken with authority, the world responds with respect.
I started to set boundaries late in life. Before that I was a pushover, maybe even a doormat, needy.
Today my number one commitment is to myself. My number two is to the results I want to produce. and only my third commitment is to the client.
If I am not for me, who is for me?
If I am only for myself, who am I?
If not now, when?
The last line says: NOW. Not one day some day. Also: not forcefully.
Force tells the truth of desperation, weakness, neediness.
No, learn to stand for yourself and for what you stand for… And life will be a lot smoother, and a lot happier.
- So where can you learn to stand for yourself?
- And where can you get a coach who will carry you through the rough patch if that’s what’s needed?
I can and do.
In today’s Saturday webinar we’ll work on setting a context, a vision, a purpose for your life… very much in line with how to stand for yourself and what you stand for.
Get help setting your vision and purpose
Ask your question to get clarity at the office hourswords used inaccurately is a common mischief. Unless you learn the real full meaning of words, you’ll always be a bumbling idiot, and people will take advantage of you.
This article attempted to clarify the word ‘coaching’ and coach.
I hope you found it useful.
