Reflections from a Coaching Workshop
20/6: updated to include my reflections and notes from part 2 too.
I attended a Performance Coaching Workshop by SingaporeWorks on 13 and 20 June! We learnt about various useful distinctions between managing, leading, counselling, teaching and coaching. You can find my notes here for part 1 and part 2. Pre-workshop homework reflections are here, may be good to read both to get a better grasp of the context of my sharing. Or feel free to dive right in!
What stood out for me most were these three things:
1) The intangible aspect of goals I often forget;
2) My experience in coaching N, my groupmate who is from Cambodia
3) My relationship with “challenge”
1) Intangible aspect of goals
When we set goals, we often think about the achievements we want, such as mastering a skill, or getting a degree, or house for example. These are the tangible aspects of a goal.
What we often forget, is what do these goals mean to me? The intangible aspects of our goals. It may become and endless chase for achievements after achievements if we don’t pay close attention to it. Actually, I do feel like social expectations and society’s definition of success ‘pushes’ many people into this direction. I’m not saying that it’s wrong.
There is no connection between the tangible and intangible aspects of a goal, one can feel rich, but empty.
It is worth questioning: what do my goals mean to me? For one, i think i get distracted by what fancies me at the moment. So these questions help to to re-focus on what matters to me most.
Think about your goal - you are actually not after the material aspects of things. If your goal is to earn a million dollars, perhaps what you are after is actually the feeling of financial freedom. If your goal is to save enough for a holiday, perhaps you are looking for the experience of novelty, rest, or relaxation.
I invite you to think about what your goals mean to you:
What is the experience you are looking for? What is the feeling you want to create with this goal?
If I had a magic wand, and you had these achievements you wanted - what would it be like? Where else would you want to experience this?
When i think about this, I think the experience I want is to feel deeply connected with people around me. To feel loved, to have open, meaningful conversations with each other - conversations about our dreams and building each other up with our words and actions. I would like to experience this in my family, and also with my friends and in workplaces.
This is why I really believe in the power of communities - humans are fallible. No one is strong all the time. (That would be borderline psycho)
When we fall, who catches us?
Who are the people we think about? Who are the people I want to surround myself with?
Who do I want to catch when they fall?
We can’t catch everyone. That’s not the point. The point is that even when there is just one person who reaches out, it makes the whole difference to someone’s world.
I want to build strong communities that hold this healing space, so that we can all grow to be more whole and live the lives we truly want.
This is your Why. This is what powers your commitment.
Coaches are powerful not because they impart knowledge. If it were just knowledge-based coaching, the person can only become as good as the coach. Knowing and doing are two different things as well. Americans have the best knowledge in losing weight, yet they have the highest obesity rates as well. Finding out how is not as easy as doing it.
Commitment-based coaching - It’s about doing the practice, identifying what is blocking you, and taking action. With that, growth is infinite!
2) Noticing myself - my first coaching experience
During the workshop, we had the opportunity to get to coach in 2 sessions.
I noticed that when I am focusing on the coachee, i am most in flow. I think about what questions i can ask to support him, and do my best to be a clear mirror that reflects him, asking him if that’s something he really wants to work on. Without judgement, or assumptions. Moments of ‘purity’ i call it.
But there are moments where I notice my own fears, did i catch what he said right? I notice myself feeling the heaviness as he shared his problems - as if it was my responsibility to solve them? The coachee is responsible for doing the work, to continue playing in the field; it is my responsibility to have him reach his goals, and take intentional pauses to reflect and ensure we are aligned to those goals. I notice the tendency to jump in and i want to do this to make myself feel better, instead of holding space for uncomfortable emotions. I notice the feelings of uncertainty, lost - there is comfort acknowledging I don’t have the answers. No one knows, anyway.
3) My relationship with “challenge”
One of the homework given to us after part 1 was to seek feedback from people around us, on whether we are more relationship-focused or challenge-focused.
(Invitation for you to take a pause: which is your dominant muscle?)
Largely the feedback i have gotten is that I am more relationship-focused, though i think in my family i could be more challenge-focused haha.
Through the coaching session with S, I realised this resistance to challenging people comes from my misconception of what ‘challenge’ meant. I realised i narrowly interpreted challenge as being assertive and direct, which could potentially cause conflict. I have the tendency to be conflict avoidant, withdrawing is how i usually respond to tension.
But what I realised when S challenged me to a bigger goal, it gave me more confidence, it felt good. Challenging need not look intimidating; a relationship of growth is when we challenge one another to do better. :) Underlying the challenge, is the belief that ‘I believe you can be bigger’. ‘I see something in you that you may not be able to see right now.’ So the role of a coach is to help people see that potential in themselves too, which otherwise they might not have.
Like what I mentioned in this blogpost:
Believing is seeing. Choosing to see. Helping people to see something beautiful within themselves that they don’t see. Sometimes we forget our own beauty within and we just need people to remind us. We need to remind each other the beauties of our existence, for none of these paths are “by chance”.
Ultimately, what i learnt is that when we focus outwards, these fears become less important. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. If the intention is to want to care for and help someone, we realise these fears which come from the focus on self will begin to dissolve.
Final thoughts:
The power of noticing and observing are what differentiates good and great coaches perhaps. Noticing what is going on within themselves, and noticing what is going with the coachee.
In fact, if we slow down and notice what is happening within and around us, we may be pleasantly surprised at what we can find.
I noticed that I tend to complain about the feeling of boredom which comes with frustration. This week i notice that if I tried to sit with the boredom, and not jump in to use my phone to distract myself, i become curious about boredom, and how my body feels, what is this boredom trying to tell me?
I haven’t quite figure this out yet - let me sit a little more with it first.