[This User’s Guide to Coaching series explains everything you need to know to successfully engage and work with a coach—a life coach, a creativity coach, an executive coach, any sort of coach. It accompanies Dr. Maisel’s latest book, The Coach’s Way, described as “the finest resource available for anyone who wants to develop or enrich their coaching abilities.” Grab your copy now!]
We’ve looked at the questions “Am I willing to work?” and “Can I tolerate some hard truths?” The third question you’ll want to consider, even before you decide what sort of help you need, is “Can I collaborate?”
The solution to many sorts of problems and challenges require real collaboration between the helper and the person seeking help. A successful wedding requires that the couple and the wedding planner collaborate on virtually every detail. A successful legal defense requires a careful collaboration between lawyer and defendant. In collaborations of this sort, including the collaboration called coaching, you want to make your wishes known but you also must allow your helper to try to help.
Probably your everyday style is more to be swayed by advice or more to keep your own counsel. It’s natural to develop a personal style over time that inclines in one of these two directions. Maybe you’ve been fighting your whole life to retain your individuality and you find it very hard to listen to what anybody else has to say. Or maybe you grew up in an environment where you were taught to follow the rules and to not question experts, elders, teachers, or just about anybody. Very few people find themselves in some perfect middle, where they can both assert their individuality and take in useful information from others.
Let’s call that “perfect middle” collaboration. In a collaboration, your voice is heard and the other person’s voice is heard. When and if you disagree, you find or create ways of dealing with difference without fracturing the relationship. You arrive at that beautiful place of being both flexible and adamant, flexible enough to make use of the good ideas and wisdom of your coach, adamant enough that you don’t let yourself be railroaded or bullied.
Collaboration requires two willing partners. You can’t collaborate if your coach isn’t collaborating also. You will sense this rather quickly and your decision to continue with a given helper will hinge on whether or not you feel that you have entered into a genuine collaboration. Is he coaching from a stiff model? Is he not really listening? Does he have an agenda at odds with yours? If so, you may be ending the coaching rather quickly.
Every collaboration will have to endure a little friction. Some may have to endure a lot. We expect co-authors on a book, collaborators on a musical, or business partners to have strong opinions. You and your coach are not in a relationship of this sort, but the two of you will certainly come to each session with your own opinions, ideas, and world views. You don’t have to leave all that at the door—if you did, you wouldn’t be you. What you do want is a mutual willingness to collaborate.
Having managed to answer these three questions in the affirmative and now standing ready to collaborate, to do the work, and to hear some hard truths, it’s time to think through what sort of helper you want to approach. To take one example, you will have a very different experience if you take your marriage problems to your priest, a marriage counselor, a divorce coach, your best friend, or your mother. Let’s look at this question next: what sort of help are you looking for?
***
“The Coach’s Way is possibly the finest resource available for anyone who wants to develop or enrich their coaching abilities. This new book is designed to give coaches the confidence and structure in their practice that will generate real results for their clients. Any- one who makes a living in the coaching arena will benefit from Dr. Maisel’s tremendous experience and training as a therapist, coach, and human. I’m so glad to have this book as a guide for my own coaching work and will recommend it to many others in the helping professions.”— Jacob Nordby, author of The Creative Cure: How Finding and Freeing Your Inner Artist Can Heal Your Life
**
Read Part One Here: The Coach’s Way: User’s Guide to Coaching
Read Part Two Here: Can You Tolerate the Truth?
—
Photo credit: iStock
—
This Post is republished on Medium.
