Feel Good is Crucially the Reason we Coach

Met an Executive Coach the other day who expressed a different perspective on Life Coaching from how I saw it till then.

{A disclaimer at the very outset: I have a stake in both life and executive coaching and my win will surely be if both grow bigger in the individual and organizational consideration-set as immensely valuable, effective and result oriented interventions that can lead to measurable growth and improvement}

This senior internal Executive Coach of a leading technology services organization described Life Coaching as ‘feel good’ coaching. Her views on Executive coaching, (as compared to Life coaching) was that it is more structured, quantifiable and hence measurable.

While the Coaching industry in India goes through its adolescence and tries to rid itself of the image of its intangibility, let’s try understand this better through this very example. Let’s imagine a scenario in the case of this technology services behemoth – How will it be if Executive Coaching measurably prolongs an 18-month employee attrition cycle to 19 months and eventually to an ideal 22-24 month cycle! Can you imagine the impact of the coaching initiative? I just did and visualized the rush to hire coaches to address all level of employees in this organization. Let us next imagine a more contained impact – a coached employee’s ratings going up from 2 to 4. Whoop! That is a momentous impact and if a sponsor initiated Executive Coaching intervention can convincingly take credit for that – the future of Executive Coaching has arrived decisively!

At this point, we must take note that in Executive Coaching what is critical is the buy-in from the Coachee after he has answered the ‘what’s in it for me?’  & ‘why me?’ questions for himself. Other areas of sensitivity: the reality that a Coaching intervention commences via a nomination (sponsor-led) and is very often (seen as) led by HR. All of this inherently frames the first line of mistrust that the organization has to deal with and assuage. To me, the rest of the process is similar to any other niche of Coaching (that has been duly named). Of course, the tools applied will be specific to each intervention.

At this point, let us look at Life Coaching and what it can impact. A Life Coach, in all cases, is directly hired and paid a fee (directly) by the Client (an exception is an adolescent where the Coach is hired by the parents). The fee is at an average 3K-5K an hour/ per session, for a minimum number of sessions. Safe to assume that there is Client buy-in. The Client has decided to invest money to impact, streamline, perhaps kick-start a part of life from a limbo, directionless or energy sapping position. The trigger could be in a simple belief that life has the potential to be much better, that there is scope for enhanced clarity and purpose for life ahead.

In Coaching circles it is said that every type of Coaching engagement becomes about Life Coaching from the 3^rd – 4^th session onward. It makes sense, as work too is an integral part of life and cannot be simplified and explored in isolation. Any effective Coaching intervention is able to view life as holistically as the Client is able to share of them with the Coach.

What does the Life Coach typically get hired for? Here I share an extract from my website (LifeAlignCoaching.com)

Do you often wonder about your strengths, values and life-purpose?

Are you feeling at a crossroad; that a deeper and more meaningful success may be possible in your life, career or venture?

Are you raring to maximize your abilities, leverage your strengths, know and manage your weaknesses, have more satisfying relationships or become an authentic, effective individual?

Is there a longing for greater clarity, confidence, calm, balance or sense of purpose?

Are you often yearning for focus, looking to create a plan and move past your doubts into action, to make a genuine and sustainable transformation?

Is there a best version of you awaiting expression?

Do you want to manage your time more effectively? And commit and keep to deadlines?

These are only some reasons that a Client signs me on for.

All such reasons and the outcome of interventions thereon become measurable when the basic tenet of the Coaching intervention is set crystal clear right at the beginning. ‘Establishing the Coaching Agreement’—no. 2 out of the 11 Competencies laid down by ICF International Coach Federation—is absolutely paramount to begin the process. This naturally ensures result orientation, measurement and assessment at the end of the process. Objective setting is empowering as it sets a clear goal and framework for the coaching conversation to move within and ahead. And it is empowering as much for the Client.

And if the desired objective is feel good about a specific issue in life – that too can be broken down into ‘what does feel good mean for you?’/ ‘how will you know you have succeeded?’/ ‘how will success look like for you at the end of this session?’

For the uninitiated, in Executive Coaching setting up the coaching agreement and goal setting is primarily done with the sponsor. More specific session goals and progress thereon are agreed upon with the Coachee from session to session.

As an intervention model, Coaching, in all its niches, is singularly result-oriented.

 

In my experience the real distinction that Coaching brings (from other interventions like Therapy) is accountability. As a Coach, I work with Clients to be responsible for their thoughts, feelings and habits and take action that will challenge their comfort zones, create new habits and augur transformation. I collude less with the emotional self and more with the desire for growth that is overshadowed by the emotional self. I focus on the past only in terms of how the attitudes developed then are impacting the present and their future.

In Coaching - taking action; holding a vision of what is possible for the client beyond the story; being open to challenging the Client to discover, create and choose new ways of doing and guiding the Client towards accountability is the big difference that we Coaches can make. And it becomes tangible only when the Unit of Success has been laid out at the time of establishing the agreement.  That is imperative.

Success, you would agree, is directly about the ‘feel good’ for the Client and that ultimately is the essence of Coaching. Feel good is about oneself, about knowing one’s strengths and learning to value and utilise them, about one’s worth at home and workplace and engineering self to build value; feel good is about growing in self awareness, confidence, conviction and clarity about one’s inner resource and capability to work things out; feel good is about knowing and preparing to construct a future capably and intentionally; feel good is about becoming accountable to self and setting and delivering deadlines set and received. This list is ongoing but we can see ourselves in the middle of at least a couple of these. This is a Coach’s delivery, the rest is only nomenclature to help market ourselves in a niche we feel comfortable to deliver and find Clients in – Life Coach, Executive Coach, Accountability Coach, Wellness Coach and so on.

Of course, there is specialised Training, Tools and Techniques that a Coach will do well to learn, reskill in and acquire mastery in, to better their skills in listening, questioning and holding the space.

And in the final assessment, if the result is ‘feel good’ for the client, the sponsor, the employee as well as for the larger organization as measured against the objective set up at the beginning, it is an absolute win in every way. Simply put, the measurability of Coaching lies in the softness or tangibility of the objective set and that steers the delivery of the critical ‘Feel Good’ at the closure of the intervention.

Nivedita Das Narayan, CPC, PCC

Executive & Life Coach

LifeAlign Coaching

Skype: niveditadn

Website: www.sohumansoimperfect.blogspot.com

Power Tool: http://coachcampus.com/coach-portfolios/power-tools/nivedita-das-narayan-perfection-vs-simplicity/

Coaching Model: http://coachcampus.com/coach-portfolios/coaching-models/nivedita-das-narayan-f-i-r-e-f-l-y/

Mobile: +91 7738143477

The Crossroads of Should and Must

If there's only one thing you read today, make this the one.
https://medium.com/@elleluna/the-crossroads-of-should-and-must-90c75eb7c5b0#.y9utc9xhd

Choosing Must is a daily practice,
a recurring choice.

Just because we chose Should yesterday doesn’t mean we’ll choose Must today. And just because we chose Must today doesn’t mean we won’t slip back into Should tomorrow.

This is a Must read

by elle luna
elleluna.com 

Expanding the perimeter of Comfort

Getting out of my 'comfort zone', has always been easier to preach than to practice.

Coaching has reframed this possibility for me  - that of a conscious, meticulous  acceptance and expansion of competence beyond the cushioning of comfort.

That getting into that sometimes scary 'discomfort zone' is essentially expanding our capacity for entering and staying in a place hitherto unfamiliar, untested and untried.

Think of the day after this travel out of comfort! We would have pushed out the boundary of comfort allowing more possibilities into our competence-kit.

The New Normal.

What we have done is expanded our individual tolerance for committing to an unknown and exploring into it.

How can we deliberate this?

In a state of awareness and conscious observance of self, we can identify that feeling of aversion (fear, doubt, discomfort) which rises as a reflex to a call to action beyond our zone of the familiar. 

Identifying each emotion for what it is, is the sweet beginning.

The progression lies in changing our relationship to these feelings over time. By exposing ourselves repeatedly to these inhibitive emotions and fears of potential awkwardness, recognising them each time they arise, we can begin to be less reflexive about them. 

Overtime, we will find ourselves comfortable being with them, without the reactionary emotions taking over. 

This is the stage where we are beginning to refine our response to the emotions. 

In the process, we have allowed new capabilities in.

These new competencies now have a permanent berth in the Normal. The new behaviour is now an integral part of competencies that we are comfortable committing to; albeit before the next discomfort comes along!

Give-in to the Flow. Yes, give-in to Life.

Calling It Out

Feeling stuck, indecisive. Pause and ask  'What Am I avoiding?'

Notice what comes up.

This IS the 'raw material' to work with. The stuff that will aid in finding a way out of a 'limbo-laden, stuck, dissonant' state.

Explore.

The inquiry will inch us closer to 'the authentic self'- the truth.

Because, it is more terrifying to stay in a place we Already know is where we don't want to be!

Because, most often the answer is in what I am avoiding.

Practicing it!

Freedom in Nothing-ness

I Don't like this.

I Never do that.

I can Never be like that.

I am Not that.

I Am this.

These are definitions and identity-traps we've willingly walked into, holding tightly to our ground —arrogant, self righteous— at very weak moments in life when we felt the ground slipping away. When it most certainly felt we would lose out if we didn't utter the 'I never' or 'I am' and desperately latched on to an identity, a definition! To feel victory - merely in that moment, in a context!

How often soon after, till much later in life, have we felt the shackles of one such momentous utterance, felt forced to live by it, till it strangled & coiled around our necks and juiced the happy energy of living out of our veins, however invisibly.

A moment of victory, a cross for life.

When there is no definition, when my possibility is everything, there is no pressure to merely mimic or conform to a foible, a weak moment.

Let's try it the next time.

and experience this Freedom in being identified for Nothing.

From my private classroom : An excerpt

My classroom with my 7-yr old {February 5'14,7:30 am}

Aaditya: "Mama(earnestly), sometimes I feel something I can't tell!

It's in the middle of happy-sad, it's in the middle of surprise-angry. It's in the middle of everything."

Me: "Ok I understand. Can you tell me a little more about it?"

Aaditya: " It's something (voice trails off)... sometimes it goes down, sometimes it goes up or it goes faster. I don't like it!"

Me: "Ok... when does it happen?'

Aaditya: "I don't know! Anytime it can happen. BUT I DON'T WANT TO FEEL IT!''


Here he is, a boy-child, intimately in touch with himself. He is deep into the 'I wonder' practice of life. A boy easily in touch with his feelings, the sensations of the highs and lows and he is often eager to express how it makes him feel, even as it feels in his young bones & sinews.

I flashback to my childhood - was I ever into this practice of expressing? I grew up with 3 siblings, happy and carefree - were we ever sharing the 'I feel' world taking place inside of us? The answer is a revealing NO. I can clearly remember feeling these feelings, deep and throbbing. What I cannot remember is ever venturing to share them around. It was a different world—far muted.  And I realise, that must've been the way with many childhoods.

That's one kind of growing up.

How does this kind progress? How does it manifest later in life?

The other end of this growing up shows up much sooner than later in life:

•   As the Teenager we are Parents to ('My child doesn't talk to me any more'/ 'I wonder what goes on in my daughter’s head!')

•   In the relationships we try to nurture and possess and feel one-sided about ( I just don't know how to make her/ him express'!)

•   As the Spouses who want to be nagged for having a real conversation with (' I don't know what's happening in his/ her life any more', 'I am scared to ask him/her.... just doesn't share!')

Grownups - guarded, unsure, scared to be audible, visible, vulnerable, conditioned to view vulnerability as cowardice and weakness, scared lest we are seen as 'not strong enough'! To make up for it, we give fuel to small talk, chatter, the noise of nonsense as conversation, the utmost soullessness of human connections. 

The feelings muted; the decibel cacophonous.

This is how the muted-ness advances. The context is simple albeit confusing : Feelings are weak. Expression of feelings (fear, anger, mistrust,  shame) is weakness. We are meant to exude courage, often act invincible and any expression otherwise is akin to baring us as weak, making us seem less human, utterly vulnerable. And this context reaches a zenith : and soon we bottle and cocoon up in our attempt to be the strongest version of ourselves! 

Uninhibited at birth and restricted in growing up!

A Child is born open to the universe of experiences, to be loved, to be cared for, being dolefully dependent, eager to trust, ready to express a want - a vulnerability, to voice disagreement and discomfort, to emote relentlessly and fearlessly. And somewhere early these instincts get blunted, muted for the purposes of growing up. Without going into the reasons, let's just say growing up conditions these basic human instincts.

And my realisation is that we Parents can convincingly keep this free flowing conduit of feeling-to-expressing alive and clog free. In the least, we can commit to prolong the duration of this phase for unconditioned outpours and feelings.

In my private classroom with Aaditya, lessons arrive not so much in how well he explains, it comes bundled in his urge to express every bit of it, his willingness in his every attempt to put a word to these indescribable highs and lows that his mind churns up. He does not stop to judge the feeling before sharing; he does not care that it might make him sound like a scaredy-cat. My little Teacher teaches me the sheer courage in vulnerability, in laying bare the deepest disturbances so willingly, so trustingly. Be it for the mundane Monday morning blues or the natural low of missing cousins and friends in a distant country or the sheer thrill of going on the roller coaster ride! 

He is game to share anything   - a flutter, a tug or a murmur!

Sometimes, It's enough to know what I don't want.

'What do you wish to eat?'

'I don't want anything fried, I don't want any soup, no starters...'

'but what do you want?'

(feeling pressured, still drawing a blank) 'I don't know!!'

A shot from your life too?!

How does it make me feel in a situation where I have to end up saying 'I don't know?'.

Uncomfortable. Less confident. May be even a bit guilty (in the face of pressure to throw up an answer).

It has been uncomfortable and all of that for me. It has made me fumble and choose the next best that comes up hurriedly. Or accept one that is offered in respite. The feeling in the pit has been a constant : discomfort.

Then something shifted, unnoticed. As years have advanced, I have learnt to grow comfortable in not knowing. More grounded in knowing less about what I want than what I don't.

I am growing  surer of what cannot and does not interest me.

I can legitimately voice what I don't wish to do than perhaps what I can.

I am far surer of Who I am not, than I can ever be of Who I am.

And I am comfortable in that admission.

Because today, right in there is guidance. In there is my opportunity to explore.

And all that was needed was to be comfortable.

There is as much guidance in what does not and cannot happen in my life as there is in what can and does, maybe more!