On the heels of the observation that coaching naturally bleeds into therapy, here’s a premise to help your coaching avoid doing so.
The best coaching I got was rooted in the premise that people are ALREADY whole, complete and perfect. You weren’t broken goods; you didn’t need to be fixed; and whatever happened in the past was not nearly as important in what you were committed to now.
In other words, it treated people as already inherently well. Which frankly is deeply respectful. And if someone is inherently well, there’s no need for therapy1And again, to be crystal clear about our terms, “therapy” is literally defined as “medical treatment of impairment, injury, disease, or disorder”, i.e. it is predicated upon there is something wrong that needs to be fixed..
When you relate to us like this and make it clear to us clients that there’s nothing wrong with us that needs to be fixed, we can, often naturally and without fuss, take that cue and run with it. Remember, it doesn’t have to be strictly true to be useful. Some of us may push back at being told we’re whole, complete and perfect. We may have one or more “yeah but”’s. You can take those in stride and say something like “That’s cool and I won’t try to change your mind. But when we’re working together, you can count on me to relate to you as this and nothing less.”
Because if we’re whole, complete and perfect? By the rules of that game there are no insurmountable showstoppers. There will be barriers, obstacles, challenges, certainly. But those are part of the game, like a challenging level in a video game rather than your Nintendo controller literally has a broken jump button that may or may not be fixable. Coming from there, one can dwell in this little bit of wisdom I once heard in Jamaica, “There are no problems, mon, only situations to be dealt with.”
Whole, complete and perfect.
When you relate to us as that, it cannot help but create something within us in how we know ourselves. It’s empowering. It’s an implicit vote of confidence. And it takes the need to process or dwell on the past completely out of the equation.
It creates space for doing the real work of coaching, which is to plan and take meaningful action in pursuit of what matters to us.
Putting the work into these real world structures of accountability is a total fit with relating to someone as whole, complete and perfect, for that person can be with making promises with deadlines, executing on time, tracking what matters, and doing the work.
Notes:
- 1And again, to be crystal clear about our terms, “therapy” is literally defined as “medical treatment of impairment, injury, disease, or disorder”, i.e. it is predicated upon there is something wrong that needs to be fixed.
