āThings are goodā¦. Well, they could be betterā¦. Actually, Iām really fed up, and Iām thinking of quitting my job. Iām chopping away here, and there are no chips flying.ā
John, a production manager for a software company, is speaking on the phone to his new coach. He runs his hands through his sandy blond hair, noticing again how much less of it he has now than he used to have. He smiles ruefully at his vanity, at how it pops up at the oddest moments. When he was in grad school, he just hadnāt imagined that someday heād be sitting at an overcrowded desk feeling like heād somehow missed a train.
He isnāt quite sure what he signed up for with coaching, but he figures at this point he has nothing to lose.
āI had six meetings yesterday, and I walked away from each one with so much work I donāt even know what hit me. Iām working late every night, my wife seems permanently angry with me, I feel like I havenāt seen our kids in weeks, and the best people on my team are all about to quit because the workload just isnāt easing upāitās getting worse.ā
āWow,ā says his coach, āthat sounds tough.ā
āYeah,ā John says, āand what really burns me is that I seem to be complaining about the same things over and over again, and I just donāt seem to be able to fix anything.ā
āOkay,ā the coach launches in. āLetās tackle this and see if we canāt make some changes so that at least you can move on to some new problems.ā
John laughs and sighs. āWell, that would be a relief.ā
āLetās take a look at the whole picture. At how youāre functioning in your work, personal and family life, and all parts of your life. Weāll establish exactly where you are right now and where you truly want to be.
āIāll help you look through some different lenses so you have plenty of new perspectives. Once you can see your life more clearly Iāll help you leverage some things and let a few things go and ultimately help you decide what actions you can take that will permanently eliminate reoccurring frustrations.ā
John likes what his coach is saying but still has some real doubts about getting this kind of help. Heās never seen himself as someone who needed help. As far back as he can remember, he was a golden boy on and off the basketball court. He was always the guy people came to for advice. Why canāt he do this by himself?
āCan you really do that for me?ā John asks, excited but dubious.
āYouāre going to do it, John, not me, but I will show you some principles and a fail-safe process that will help guide you,ā says the coach. āPlus, Iāll listen and nudge you toward what you say you want. Iāll remind you of the many things you do that are working, and Iāll keep your eye on the ball. How does that sound?ā
A moment passes before John takes in a deep breath and says, āGood. Letās do it.ā
GET A COACH IN A BOOK?
Sound good? To see yourself objectively, to cut through the layers of accumulated mental detritus, to make clear-headed choices, and to take effective action toward creating a life that works beautifully? Whenever we describe what coaching can do for people, the inevitable response is āI want a coach!ā Who wouldnāt? When someone works with a good coach, they are making an investment in themselves like they are a hot new stock, and it causes them to take off like a rocket toward the destination of their choice. This book is our way of offering you the coaching process and the best coaching tools available.
Replicating the coaching experience in a book is fiendishly difficult because the perception is that the power of coaching comes from a relationship. While this is partially true, the most relevant relationship coaching addresses is the one you have with yourself. As coaches, we do a number of things with all our clients. We create an environment in which people feel safe and will grow. Then we use a processāa set of principles and a frameworkāthat is easily repeated. Long after we have stopped working together clients often say, āI still hear your voice in my head.ā But we know that it isnāt the coachās voice they are hearingāitās their own. Their own voice is now informed by a framework and a set of principles that helped them to gain clarity. Coaching helps people have better conversations with themselves; it helps people make better decisions about what is best for them on a minute-by-minute basis. Great coaches donāt tell people what to do; they help people build their own personalized system to figure it out for themselves. This book can help you find a new mental framework and operating system. Call it new internal software, if you like.
WHAT IS COACHING?
Coaching is a big, broad term that has heretofore meant a bus (a means of conveying people to and fro) or a professional who assists others in the area of sports and other skills. Confusion abounds. Today a business coach can be anything from a Ph.D. in organizational psychology to an entrepreneurial fast talker. Frederic M. Hudson, Ph.D., founder of The Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara, one of the most respected coach training programs, came up with a wonderful way to describe what coaching does for people in his book, The Handbook of Coaching:
The notion of having a personal radar system and a gyroscope is a compelling one.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines radar as āA method of detecting distant objects and determining their position, velocity, or other characteristics by analysis of very high frequency radio waves reflected from their surfaces.ā
Letās forget the high-frequency radio wave part and focus on the idea of being able to detect distant objectsāin the case of personal radar, objects like competitors, layoffs, a change in interest rates, and changes in important relationships come to mind. Wouldnāt it be great to be able to assess āposition, velocity, or other characteristicsā more effectively than you currently do? What about the concept of the gyroscope? More from the American Heritage Dictionary: āa device consisting of a spinning mass, typically a disk or wheel, mounted on a base so that its axis can turn freely in one or more directions and thereby maintain its orientation regardless of any movement of the base.ā
The key point here is āmaintain its orientation regardless of any movement.ā Often we are caught in so much turbulence that we wouldnāt know which way to orient ourselves if our lives depended on it. Our lives may not depend on it, but our quality of life certainly does.
Our world has gotten a lot faster, a lot more dangerous, and a lot bigger and harder to navigate. Like an automobileās on-board GPS system, coaching was invented to help people navigate our faster, bigger, more complex new world.
Coaching is an art of the soul, and coaches are artists of the soul.
Coaches help people to do the hammer and chisel work required, eliminating what is extraneous so that they can arrive at the things in life that matter most. In The Secret Life of Bees, author Sue Monk Kidd has one of her characters ask another why her house is painted bubblegum pink:
Choosing what matters is hard. Choosing what matters has consequencesāsometimes unexpected ones. Most of us donāt choose what matters most to us because we donāt have a framework with which to assess the logical consequences. We often default to the obvious or safe choice. Coaches help people construct a personal framework for consistently and consciously choosing what matters most. They use a process and tools to help individuals get to the heart and soul of the matterāchoosing the best ways to invest in themselves.
THE COACHING PROCESS
The main goal of coaching is to help clients objectively see where they are (current state) and where they need to be (future state) and then to develop a plan to get from here to thereāto go from point A to point B with as little effort and with as much fun as the law will allow. While moving from point A to point B may seem straightforward and simple, it rarely is. Many people have a clear idea of where they are going and may even have a plan to get there and still somehow never seem to arrive at their destination.
It has been said that the hardest line to draw is a straight one, and certainly it is the hardest line to follow. This is due in large part to the things that always seem to get in the way of well-laid plans. In addition to helping clients get on their way to achieving what they desire in life, we also help them anticipate and deal with the obstacles that may undo their well-laid plans. The coaching process helps people get from point A to point B and enables them to gain the confidence to plan and achieve greater things in the future, long after the coach has left the scene.
As you gain the ability to understand your own life and its dynamics, a side benefit will emerge. The knowledge you have of yourself will help you to better understand the people in your life. Imagine if you were able to understand more about the people around youāyour boss, coworkers, spouse, friends, and family membersāreally understand what made them tick. There is no question that understanding oneself and others well is the key to improved communication, relationships, and results.
FIRST STEP: ACCEPTANCE
What made you pick up this book? If you want to fix long-term damage within y...
