Coaching as a Laboratory
Posted on November 05, 2010 by Tom Patterson, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.
Sometimes, the safest way to think out loud is to do so in midst of a safe, controlled environment.
There are all kinds of good ways to describe how coaching works. One of the ways I like to think about it is as a “laboratory” in which you are safe to speculate, give voice to hunches, imagine, hypothesize, develop ideas, sort out what’s realistic and what might not be, reflect, explore, re-think, create and sharpen goals and make plans to reach them.
As a coach, my role is to ask questions, make observations (with your permission), be compassionate and curious, help you identify your main agenda (and sub-agendas), and collaborate with you to make forward movement toward realizing it. Here are just a few examples of the kinds of questions I might ask in coaching sessions:
If success were guaranteed, what would you try?
If you could say one unedited thing about how you perceive your current reality, what would you say?
How would you advise a friend who came to you with the same concern you are dealing with?
If you could describe your take on your work situation in a couple of sentences (without worrying about how articulate they sound), what would they be?
If you could wave a magic wand and create the ideal scenario, what would that scenario look like?
If the people you work with/for never change, what will you do?
What would it look like for you to show up in a more authentic way? At work? With your family? With your friends?
If you were to leave your current position at the end of two years, what would you do differently today?
These kinds of inquiries lead to lots of other questions that are ultimately designed to help you get clear about what you’re really looking for, what you actually have some control over, and what you’re willing and able to do about it.
A coaching session (and the coaching relationship in general) provides a safe space for you to consider out loud what might otherwise have repercussions if spoken out loud in another context—like your work environment. At the end of each coaching session, no one but you and I know what was discussed, and the decision to give voice to your thoughts, insights, and conclusions—or to act on them—is entirely yours.
The coaching relationship is not just a safe context in which to “try things on,” but a place to be encouraged to re-engage in a more personally authentic and clear way. Give me a shout if this is something you would like to explore for yourself.
