A discussion with hidden argumentative undertones is going on in the comments of some posts.
It’s about coaching.
Most people want gentle guidance. They want the results, but they want it all to be easy, nice, a walk in the park. They can’t find this anywhere, so they sign up to my coaching calls, but they don’t like what they are getting. They wanted gentle guidance, but they get coaching.
A coach’s job is to make you do what you don’t want to do so you can have what you won’t have if you do what you want to do.
It takes a resilient person with long term vision to become a coach. It takes a person who can take hate, anger, resentment, belligerence, and such from clients and not give up on them.
It takes a person who is clear on who they are and what they want to even come near being coachable.
It takes taking the pain like a “man” to grow, to go to places you are afraid to go, you find painful to go. Without pain, without confrontation, without the occasional distress their is no growth: the stabilizing aspect of you, the Ego, will keep you on the same level of pain, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.
It also takes some intelligence to see that coddling won’t get you where you want to go. That it is you who needs to say yes to the confronting actions the coach demands of you, because it is you who will need to take the actions.
If you even consider that kindle, gentle guidance is what you want, I don’t want you to think you can get that in any coaching program deserving of the name.
Even the gentlest program I offer is going to get confronting, but the confront will come from clarity this time.
In the Playground program there are no coaches, there is only you doing the one action you don’t want to take in a way that is confronting, and that one action will bring the kind of clarity that, from time to time, you will want to throw up… guaranteed.
The Playground is pretty much a self-coaching program, and unless you have what it takes to be merciless with yourself, demanding of yourself, you’ll not get what you want.
Coaching, whether it is coaching yourself or others, require you to choose between nice, pleasant, comfortable, and what’s possible. Coaching requires you to believe in the human spirit instead of miracles, or instant anything…
Coaching and being coached are the ultimate expressions of the capacity “responsibility” that most humans are weak at.
Coaching is causing, being coached is causing… causing growth by doing what is uncomfortable.
Obviously not all that is uncomfortable will cause growth.. but that is topic for another article.
I don’t get coached a lot, but I got coached today. And it was confronting
Here is what lead up to the coaching: I shared with a friend of mine that I have just about given up coaching given that the clientele I serve are not interested, not ready to be coached. I said: “I need people who are up to something.”
He asked: “how do you find people that are up to something?”
I said: “Exactly. How do you find people that are up to something?
He said: “You find people who are up to something by being up to something.”
I stopped and looked. I saw that as I am considering giving up, I have stopped being up to something. That as what I have been up to turned into “s-h-i-t” I stopped being up to something, in fact I stopped being up to anything.
I said: “That hurts. That actually cut into me. Thank you.”
He said: “Did I manage to say something useful?”
I said: “Very. Real coaching. Thank you.”
And I am left with myself with insight, the clarity, that I am just like you, that I have been just like you.
And with the painful task of inventing something to be up to, and then fan the tiny flame to make a brush fire.
As I got home, I made a phone call to set up a team to do what’s next for me.
Now, I am up to something. Without that painful coaching it would have not happened. Not now, maybe not ever.
This is the magic of coaching. The good hurt.
