Category Archive

It was nice to go through this class already having my coaching model sketched, written, & printed. It solidified how I created it & why, as well as what it’s use is for. It was also fun sharing my model with the class, even if I had to describe it verbally rather than having the class go to the discussion board and look at it visually.

What was interesting is that Angela, the instructor, gave concrete reasons as to why it’s a negative to have a model - and then said that she doesn’t have one herself! Overall the class was structured as to why it’s a good idea to have your own coaching model & how to make it true to yourself, but still…it was odd. Why have someone teach a class - especially a class that speaks about something you need to graduate - that doesn’t use the tool she’s teaching about? It was interesting, & helped me see how there could be a downside to having a model, especially if it’s not being reconstructed as your coaching style changes or is being used too rigidly (which could lead to boredom and predictability).

Regardless, I love my coaching model. It helped me hone in on my strengths & individuality as well as allowing me to show my clients how each session will be shaped & how they will reach their goals. I plan to frame it & put it above my work station - that is, when I get one!

Nothing much to write about celebrating because….we didn’t talk about celebrating. Instead, the instructor coached a classmate for about 30 minutes, but because of what she was being coached on there wasn’t a lot of celebrating going on.

I did like the statement that Merci started off with, though:

“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more you have in life to celebrate”

Ain’t that the truth? It’s the rule of attraction, too (although I don’t really believe in all of that hippie stuff). But it absolutely has to do with your outlook on life, and whether you’re a glass-half-empty or a glass-half-full type of guy/gal. If you’re looking at half-full glasses, you’re gonna have a half-full life!

Celebration is going to be a huge part of my coaching model, so I loved every minute of this class.

I feel like this is the one aspect of coaching that is ingrained in me - being supportive and acknowledging the breakthroughs my clients have. After taking this class, though, I want to ensure that I spark my clients to actually celebrate their achievements, even if they consider it “a small one.”

When my 1st peer coach implemented this with me, it felt strange. “So I’m going to physically celebrate saying “no” to that invitation? Really?” Yes, really. “Well, I don’t have the money to celebrate all the time. Going out to dinner, seeing a show, throwing a party - that adds up!”

“Idiot!” OK, not the best name to call yourself, but it gets the job done. “You don’t need to sink hundreds of dollars to have a celebration! It can be as simple as:

* buying some stargazer lilies (your favorite flowers) and displaying them in your apartment

* taking time out for a bubble bath with a book you’ve been meaning to read and a glass of wine

* buying a piece of dark chocolate and savoring every bite

* watching a DVD without multi-tasking

* sitting in the park with the Sunday Times and an iced coffee, enjoying the weather and the people walking by”

I’m going to keep adding to this list, so every time I have something to celebrate I can flip to it and pick my poison. I’m in a celebratory mood just thinking about it!

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Today I’m grateful for my Mom. I have to stop giving her a hard time for nothing more than wanting to be an important part of my life.

I know, I know - I skipped Part 2! But I didn’t feel worse for wear for it. I was still able to follow everything and didn’t feel like there were pieces missing, so that was a good lesson to learn.

I feel like Re-framing is one of the most important foundations of coaching, so these classes are so important. What we spoke about today could be summed up in the question “What causes you to think that you’re right?” Immediately my mind went to “upbringing and experience”, but Angela mentioned culture as well. What else can explain all of these 18 year old entrepreneurs? And people getting married and having children a full decade  (or more!) after their parents before them? It was an interesting piece of the puzzle.

I also liked how Angela spoke about reframing a client’s perspective by having them relate from their heart and not from their head. She worked with a client who was very frustrated by a co-worker’s behavior. When Angela asked her “What do you think might be going on with this co-worker’s social life to make him act this way?” the client responded with a whole slew of depressing things that she knew were going on in his personal life. She couldn’t be sympathetic, and instead said “If it affects his work he should just take a sabbatical.” Angela then asked her client if she ever went through a personal situation that was painful and depressing. When the client responded affirmatively, Angela continued:

“Did you stop working?”

“No.”

“Were you good at your job?

“I’m not sure.”

“Why didn’t you stop working?”
“Because I wanted to throw myself into my work to distract me from my personal life.”

The client made that statement and immediately starting crying. THAT is what connected her to her co-worker, and it wasn’t until she “saw it from her heart” that she was able to reframe her perspective and relate to him.

This is honestly making me want to try and reframe every thought I ever had!

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I’m thankful today for the ability to take a step back and breathe.

10p classes are tough for me. It’s hard to concentrate and I get tired about halfway through. I hate to say it, but the 7a classes might work better, if I wake up at 6:15 and am still able to head out to work at 8:15a. I can treat it like a gym day. But will I be more alert at 7a? Only one way to find out…..

Today we spoke a lot about having a client be accountable, and what our role is as a coach is order to ensure the client’s accountability. Merci’s take - which I agree with - is that coaches should just show up and bare witness. That’s enough to keep a client accountable. Pretty easy. So far we got:

* Show up

* Bare witness

Let’s add

* Don’t judge when there isn’t accountability

Easy rules to live by, in theory. But honestly, it’s a cut-and-dry topic. Part of the reason clients come to you is to be held accountable. But I liked when Merci told us about a quote from some dude that generally said, “Your client is going to get where they are going with or without you. The reason that they have you help them get on their way is that they want to get there in the most productive, efficient, enjoyable way possible.” People who seek out a coach are not the type of people to not hold themselves accountable. So if you have a client that isn’t able to follow through with a commitment they made, it might not be the right time for them to be coached.

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In keeping with this theme of accountability, I want to hold myself accountable for paying attention for the entire hour I’m in class. No searching the web! I hate admitting this (I’m judging myself!) but my mind wanders, and I go into Facebook, and I go on the ICA site to see what other classes I want to take and….I missed a major point. No more!

For those of you not familiar with the term, re-framing is basically a shorter way of saying “Looking at something through a different vantage point.” I was really excited for this class, as I think that re-framing is a huge part of coaching and I think it’s something I need to help my current client with.

For me, the greatest tidbits I got from this class was all of the questions you can ask to help you shift your perspective:

* “What is this situation asking of you that you haven’t yet called forth?”

* “How can you turn this around and grow from it?”

* “What do you give your attention to? What do you wish you can give more attention to? Less attention?”

* “What’s your intention when you do this?”

* “Put aside what you don’t want. What do you want?”

We spoke a lot about attention and intention, and how you need to shift both of these in order to re-frame a situation. We also gave some time to the Law of Attraction (although we didn’t call it that), since the things you give your attention to seems to grow & grow, and the things that you don’t give attention to will eventually whither & die.

I know that when I have my next session with my client I will ask her to picture the situation, take herself out of it, observe it, and describe what she sees. As a challenge, I will ask her to take a mental picture of what happens when she finds herself in a situation where you wants to change her way of thinking. What is she doing? How is she feeling? What does she want to feel? Since I know that she journals before our time together I’ll ask her to journal about these moments the day they happen. Angela made a point to not try to do anything about this, but just observe. I’d be interested in seeing what she comes back with.

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Today I’m grateful for a work environment where I’m finally being looked out for.

Tonight we discussed how to hold yourself, and your clients, accountable - and how to handle it if we/they are dropping the accountability ball.

It has taken me a while to see the difference about being committed to something and being accountable. And while I always thought that you can be accountable to yourself, the definition of “accountable” states:

1: subject to giving an account : answerable <held her accountable for the damage>

2 : capable of being accounted for : explainable

So, being accountable means that you have to answer and explain yourself to someone. So you can’t really hold yourself accountable to yourself. I never saw accountability that way before.

Take, for example, a week or so ago when I woke up early to go to the gym and my fiance stayed in bed and slept. Since he committed himself to going to the gym with me in the morning when I wake up early, I could have held him accountable for not joining me (but I didn’t, because he’s so cute when he sleeps and I hate waking him up). And if he didn’t go and I lost my motivation to go and slept for another hour, then I could have held him accountable - he didn’t own up to his end of the bargain.

If my fiance was my client, I would try to see why he didn’t hold himself accountable for waking up early, and I have a feeling it would tie into commitment. Is he really committed to this goal of losing weight? Why or why not? What got in the way of having him be accountable for this action?

It’ll be interesting to see where the next 2 parts of this class go.

The teacher didn’t show! I rushed my butt to get here, dialed in right on time, and waited……for 20 minutes…..until a resourceful student decided to dial the moderator code and the students hijacked the class. I absolutely know that this was karma for not showing to be a Peer Client for Joanne this morning! When she emailed asking, “Where were you?” I think I yelled out “NO!”, which isn’t so good when you’re in an open office.  And the kicker is that I got out of a training session to be there, only to miss it when my Lotus Notes (the poor man’s version of Outlook) Alarm didn’t go off! Holy crapballs was I mad.

So, just desserts. No teacher tonight, which super stinks because Moving Forward (Part I) was an eye-opener for me and I was looking forward to the second piece. I also just realized there’s a Part 3, but I can’t do anything next Thursday night so I have to wait until freakin’ July and August to finish this module. Ugh!

Thanks for letting me get that out. In reality, it wasn’t terrible because I got to listen to a coaching session, done by a student who was taking her very last class (which meant that she was good). So, there ya go.

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Today I’m grateful for this week being over, as the weekend starts tomorrow for me!

This class was so interesting! It’s been a while since I’ve taken a “regular” class (at least it feels like it) and I loved how Angela described decision makers.

Esentially, there are 3 decision makers:

* Thinkers: these are the people that make a decision with their minds. They arm themselves with a lot of facts and then choose the smartest decision.

* Feelers: these are the people that use their hearts - or other parts of their bodies - to tell them what to do. Some even say they literally, physically feel something in their stomachs, shoulders, elbows, eyebrows, etc and they make the comforting decision.

* Knowers : these are the people that make a decision because…well…they just “know” it’s the right one. If you ask them how they know, they can’t answer you. They just know, jeez!

Now, everyone is a combination of these 3 decision makers, but one element is the main decision maker and another one is usually a back-up. Looking back on all of the vendors I’ve chosen thus far for my wedding, I know that I’m a feeler who then collects some facts to justify her decision. Or maybe I’m a thinker who arms herself with facts so that when something feels right she can jump at it? Hmmm…..

OK, let’s see how I chose my vendors:

* DJ: did a bunch of research, compiled a list of half a dozen people, told Luke about one of them. He loved her website and the song selections she listed, we met with her, and I told her we’d book her then and there. Feeler for sure.

* Venue: did a bunch of research online, compiled a list of places, called them to find out pricing, made an appointment with one of them to see it. Hated that one, went to the second one, walked in the door and said “This is it!” Feeler again.

* Rabbi: did some research, met with the rabbi, loved her, booked her the next day. Do we see a theme?

OK, so I’m a feeler who’s not really a thinker. Doing research to find vendors does not constitute a thinker.

“So, who cares?” you ask. “What does this have to do with coaching, or moving forward?”

“Good question,” I answer, with a glint in my eye. “Y’see, society has brainwashed the entire world that the only right answers are the smart ones - the ones with lots of facts, data, scientific crap and mumbo jumbo. But what if you made the radical decision to go with one - and only one - decision making tactic? What if you knew that you made decisions because you felt them, and you let the rest go. Wouldn’t that be freeing? Wouldn’t that be scary? Wouldn’t that lead to the best decision for you?”

I  take a step back and think of all the wasted time and wasted opportunities, trying to find ways to justify my decisions - or even making decisions that might not have been the right ones for me, but that seemed like the smart decision. Like not taking my dream role because I was in a serious relationship. I’m in a serious relationship, so I should want to stay home with my boyfriend and not perform my dream role - right? Even though I know that role in a theater in a strip mall wouldn’t have have catapulted me to Broadway, but I regret not doing it.

It’s such a breakthrough. Maybe that’s where your regrets come from - going against the way you make decisions. If you make a choice to only choose based on your feelings (or thinking, or knowing), would you live a life of no regrets? I feel like it’s damn worth trying.

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Today I’m grateful for the sun still being out when I get to my apartment at 7p. It keeps me upbeat and happy.