One of the real treats of working with a coach is having someone who’s listening for us to be the most powerful version of ourselves. Someone who–when we’re daring to daydream about what might be–is there to cheer us on, rather than throw cold water on smoldering embers of ambition.
You know what the latter sounds like. Hearing “What? That’s dumb. That’s never gonna happen. You’re never gonna do that.”1Heck, you probably know people in your life that you could reliably go to to hear that sort of response. Accordingly, you probably know how and when to steer clear.
But the former? That sort of listening gives us license, nay, encouragement, to dwell for a moment in possibility. It gives a little breathing room for the “how” to start to take shape. During that precious time, that little, nascent seedling of an idea might just sprout a few roots, so that it doesn’t get washed away in the regular din of life’s general busy-ness, or indeed the doubts of self-talk. If you take what we say seriously enough to simply write it down, it is far more likely to survive.
We don’t always need that. Some ambition is manageable enough to settle on and carry through to fruition without doubt or life’s din undoing it. And some people pride themselves on never needing such encouragement from others, or are even able to add fuel to their own fire in the face of external naysayers.
But sometimes we do. Sometimes that sort of listening merely accelerates what we otherwise would have managed on our own. And sometimes its effect is more pivotal, more watershed. Turning the implausible to the plausible; the unlikely, likely; the impossible to “Wow, that’s already done! / Okay what else am I capable of?”
And almost always? It’s nice. As in it is genuinely pleasurable to have such conversations. Sometimes they are even downright life-giving.
Can you become good at this? From the “Knowing is half the battle” files, mere awareness alone of this dynamic, and what it’s like to be on the receiving end of one kind of listening or the other, does much of the heavy lifting. The rest is practice; practice intentionally providing the sort of listening that gives space for our ambitious musings to take root. You can start on your very next call.
Can you be a more attractive coach for reliably delivering this? Yes, if you communicate that this is part of what you do in a way that resonates. Describe this dynamic, that you recognize it matters, and where you stand about it.
And then do it. Make sure it’s part of the cocktail of powerful practices that you reliably deliver during your sessions.
Because this is a nice service. And if you’re earnest about it, it’s one that sycophantic-leaning AI can’t quite convincingly replicate.
So that they are not forgotten.
So that they can take root.
So that you as coach can stay aware of what they are and cheer them on as the weeks go by.
Notes:
- 1Heck, you probably know people in your life that you could reliably go to to hear that sort of response. Accordingly, you probably know how and when to steer clear.
