Life Unlimited

I attended 2 classes Wednesday on Coaching Model and Coaching Process.  Took a risk in both and shared my coaching model and got some really good feedback, so thanks to everyone who was on the call and shared their thoughts.  I was also asked to share info on the Kolbe Profile.  I have also blogrolled the website: www.kolbe.com  for anyone interested in the Kolbe Profile tool.  I am also a licenced facilitator for Kolbe and can run a session for you or interpret your results if you want to check it out as a tool.   Developing my coaching model really helped bring into focus what it is that I want to do for my clients and what they want from me.  It helped me frame what value I bring to the coaching relationship and I hope that my model will reflect this.  It also helped me understand my own process, and much of what is in it comes from the learnings at ICA and my own experiences of coaching.  I also know that my model will evolve over time as I work with it.  It was also beneficial to research other models and see what is out there and learn about different approaches to coaching.  It also boosted my confidence a little to have thought through a model and create it.  I feel like I am closer to my goal for having created it. 

I was on a coaching call yesterday about one of the power tools for coaching: “Trust vs Doubt”.  As usual, a great class.  I’m enjoying them more and more and feel I’m getting real momentum from the learnings.  One of the key learning “takeaways” I got was about the power of words and how our perspective can be changed on something by simply changing how we describe it, or the story we tell ourselves about it.  An example was looking at the concept of perfection – if you strive for perfection instead of excellence you can end up doing more damage than good to your goal and your life.  On the other hand, seeing the perfection in a situation – seeing how it was brought to you the way it was as a way of helping you learn something valuable about yourself, completely changes the experience of the situation.  After the class, I started to reflect on a number of things that had happened to me in the last couple of weeks and started to ask “what am I meant to learn from this?  What is this trying to show me about myself?”  Not easy to do, yet the excercise helped me see the people and circumstances very differently, and helped me see myself very differently.  It opened my eyes to things I need to heal and strengths I have and some I need to work on.  My self awareness has definitely been raised a bit as a result.  This is one of the benefits of the ICA experience – in the process of achieving the goal of completing my certification, I am developing as a person in ways I wasn’t even aware of before I started. 

RESULTS Model 

Reflect on the current situation and determine what the desired change is; 

Explore the options and ways to achieve the desired result and to think through possibilities for change; 

Support and encourage taking action and moving forward to the desired future state; 

Uncover blocks along the way that come up and work through any setbacks;

Leverage the learnings along the road to the goal and the personal strengths that helped achieve the wins; 

Take action with every session to achieve each step necessary to move forward;

Sustain the changes that come from achieving the desired results. 

Catherine Meyer,  Coach - Life Unlimited catherine.meyer@sympatico.ca

Last week I attended 2 classes that connected with 2 related issues that have been challenging me lately.  It was very timely in a strange sort of way to call into a class and  hear the leader and other participants talk about issues that were so clearly on my mind at that time. 

On the first call, Angela Bird lead a very insightful discussion about how to make the most of your coaching practice, and she talked about specializing to find your niche and to focus on coaching in areas that you feel passionate about.  The greatest takeaway I got from it was to “not go down the rabbit hole” of comparing myself to someone else’s success – or perceived success as a coach and worrying about all the competition.  If I focus on what I know and what I want to do and pursue it with genuine passion, I won’t have to worry about competition.  If I am good at what I am doing, I will have no problem attracting clients.  This was exactly what I needed to hear at that point.  Late that night I was on another call and one of the participants was discussing a situation with a client where she was having trouble keeping the client on track with her goals because her life was so busy.  The situation mirrored my own life so I listened, not only for the learning as a coach, but also as a client.  Everyone on the call had interesting perspectives to offer this student on how to coach her client through this challenge.  I found myself also offering a couple of ideas based on what I think I need to do.  One idea that was most powerful for me was when someone offered, “maybe this isn’t the right time for her to be pursuing that particular goal, if her life is so full of other obligations and interests right now.”  In that moment it felt like someone had hit me between the eyes.  I found myself  mirroring the question to myself: “Is this the right time for me to be pursuing this?  As soon as I told myself I didn’t HAVE to do it, that it was ok to stop and just go on with life as it was, I felt an imediate release of pressure, followed by a very centred feeling that I wanted to continue because this was important to me.  Knowing I could give it up helped me realize how important it really was to me.  I discussed this with my peer coach at our next session and she suggested that I spend some quiet time writing about all the reasons I want to be a coach and why I think I am good at it.  That process also reinforced the learnings from the 2 teleclasses.  Looking forward to my next class!