[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!]
Let’s say that your goal is to lose twenty pounds. Your coach is likely to ask you, “Okay, that’s a clear goal. And so, what’s your plan, do you think?” She may ask you this question in some other way, like “What would you like to try?” or “How do you want to proceed?” Whatever her exact language, she’s asking for the two of you to begin to create a plan that supports your intention. She wants to help you arrive at a clear understanding of what you intend to do.
A plan can be simple or complex. Simpler plans are more actionable than complicated plans, and provide greater motivation. But it’s wise to make sure that the simple plan you come up, while gloriously simple, has factored in the challenges that you know you are going to face. For instance, if you’re a writer, the plan you come up with might be “I’ll write every day.” Beautifully simple! But that simplicity may also be a bit of a dodge, if its simplicity is meant to mask the fact that you don’t want to think deeply about what’s likely to get in the way of you writing every day.
Your coach may therefore press you a bit and ask, “What does that look like?”
You might reply, “Well, it just means that I’ll get to my writing every day.”
“No set time? Just, when you can get to it? Has that been working?”
“Well, my schedule’s so irregular, I can’t really pencil in a set time for the writing.”
“Really? You couldn’t write for twenty minutes first thing each morning?”
Your coach isn’t buying that your simple plan is an adequate plan. That’s exactly her job, to make sure that you are being real and to make sure that you will actually get your writing done. So, she may press you.
“And,” she may say, “by the way, every day means the weekends also?”
“Oh, no! I didn’t mean that. I need Saturday and Sunday for other things!”
“Your writing isn’t quite important enough to get to on the weekends?”
“No, I didn’t mean that. I only meant … ”
I think you can see that creating a plan is not a neutral activity. It’s a testing sort of endeavor, as you come up against your anxieties, your past disappointments with yourself, and all of your reasons for not wanting to do what you say you want to do. A first session can be grueling in this way, as you and your coach hammer out a plan that has been tested in the crucible of reality. At the end of this process, your plan may have morphed from “I’ll write every day” to “I’ll write for twenty minutes first thing every day, even before I check email, for six days a week, Monday through Saturday.”
You can expect your first session to involve you in both naming goals and also in co-creating the plans that go with those goals. Goal-naming is not enough—planning is then wanted. Be prepared to get into the weeds, where reality is. You want your plan to reflect and address the truth about what you find challenging about the goals you’ve named. The wiser the plan, the more likely you’ll achieve your goals. Isn’t that exactly what you’re after?
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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
Read Part Seven Here: Check Your Expectations
Read Part Eight Here: Provide Your Coach With Information
Read Part Nine Here: Be Prepared to Be Psychological
Read Part Ten Here: Schedule a Session
Read Part Eleven Here: Right Before Your First Session
Read Part Twelve Here: Your First Session Begins
Read Part Thirteen Here: Don’t Expect Your Coach to Mind Read
Read Part Fourteen Here: Think Goals
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock