[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!]
You should have high hopes for the coaching you’re about to embark upon. It may well prove useful and maybe even life-changing. At the same time, check your expectations. Coaching can’t make your boss stop his bullying, it can’t make an editor plunk down a six-figure advance for your novel, it can’t make a feature of your original personality vanish as if it never existed.
A good coach will support your goals and align with your goals but she will also reality test. Maybe you announce as one of your goals that you really must get better organized. You say, “I’m going to get my space organized by the next time we meet.” A wise coach will next ask, “Tell me what that entails,” as she may rightly be worried that you are biting off more than you chew by imagining that you can undo seasons of clutter in a short amount of time.
As you begin to explain what’s required—multiple trips to the Goodwill, creating an organizational scheme for your jewelry business, getting the spare bed moved out of your office and off to that unused room in the back that is itself cluttered and disorganized, etc.—you may well hear your coach murmur, “Wow, that’s a lot.” She is signaling to you that your worthy goal likely needs to be modified and downsized. Hopefully, you will hear her and sigh, “Yes, that is a lot.” Then the two of two, still with optimism and enthusiasm, can co-create a wiser goal and a doable plan.
It is altogether possible to hold big goals but at the same time to know some important truths about the process: that achieving your goals may require both a lot of work and significant luck; that you can’t reach a goal in a gulp but only step-by-step, to-do list by to-do list, and day-by-day; and that biting off too much and then disappointing yourself by not following through is demoralizing. Hold the biggest goals in the world, if you like, but at the same create a plan for reaching that goal that is clear, specific, and intuitively doable.
If a client says to me, as many clients will, “I want to write this book and that book and the other book and also get to my painting, do a little songwriting, and start my photography business,” I will say, “Great!” But then I will immediately add, “What’s your top priority?” My client may well reply, “All of it!” I will feel obliged to wonder aloud, “That sounds like a lot. How has been getting to all of that been working for you?” When my client replies, as he or she likely will, “I haven’t been getting to any of it,” we have stepped onto the path of reality. That is just a first step—but a vital one.
As you think about the coaching you are about to begin, expect a lot and also be modest and real. That is not a paradox. It is good that you have important dreams, goals, aspirations, and expectations. But you can’t get to the top of Everest by flapping your arms—you must trudge up. That climb may prove exhilarating, but it is still a trudge. Expect to get to the top, but not by noon on the first day.
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“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
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Read Part One Here: The Coach’s Way: User’s Guide to Coaching
Read Part Two Here: Can You Tolerate the Truth?
Read Part Three Here: Can I Collaborate?
Read Part Four Here: Picking a Kind of Helper
Read Part Five Here: Picking Your Coach
Read Part Six Here: Don’t Worry If Your Worldviews Differ
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock