The journey of a coaching client (and the conversation itself)!

Background: Last week, a coach colleague reached out to enquire about using “not knowing” state while coaching. This is my fundamental state to be in, whether I am doing 1:1 coaching, therapy or facilitating a group workshop or intervention.

I won’t go into the actual topic of the demo coaching conversation as that is confidential, but I am reflecting more on the conversation we had afterwards, to figure what she picked from the demonstration.

As we dived in, to debrief the process of the coaching conversation I had just conducted, my colleague indicated the following concerns she faces during her coaching conversations:

• I start prescribing.
• I lead the conversation and end up giving solutions.
• I don’t know what prep to do.
• I wonder if there is a list of questions that I can ask from.

A client’s conversation is like a drawing they are making on paper. For them, the idea is already in their mind, and they are piecing it together. As a coach, you don’t know what’s the idea, even if you think you do. So, it is best to consider what the client says, as lines on a piece of paper. This represents a piece of their world, their life, so you have to treat it as that too, even if you cannot make sense of it. And it isn’t your job as a coach, to make sense of it, rather it is important that the client makes sense of it!

The only challenge is – the client has all these ideas but doesn’t know what to do with them. So, in a sense, a coach is like a mirror who just reflects back what the client is mulling over, and like a mirror allows them to discover what is, as is. Another way to look at a coaching conversation is that you are merely helping the client take different idea threads out and put them on a table in front of them. In their heads, it is a muddle, hence they cannot work out what to do. But once laid out in front, different and disparate idea threads start piecing together. That’s when insights and connections get formed and they discover some answers. As a coach, we have to let them go through this, and not come in the way or interrupt this “process”.

Another thing that comes up quite often is – how do we know what to ask, and when to ask it? Consider this situation. On a Monday morning at work, two colleagues meet at the coffee machine, and one asks the other “how was your weekend?” “Good” is the answer. Out of courtesy, the other person asks the same question. The answer again is “good“. They smile and go back to work.

In a coaching conversation, clients use words that seem to have common meaning and as coaches think we have understood what they are saying. This, I call it the “trap of knowing”. How do I know what “good” means? One person’s “good” might mean they finally went on for a family outing which they had been planning for a long time. They had ice cream and watched a movie and felt relaxed. The whole experience was enjoyable, and they felt that they should do this more often.

However, for the other person, “good” might mean that they had to visit the hospital to see a relative who is dying. They may have been avoiding this, but finally decided to go. On seeing the relative, who had been very close to them, they were gut wrenched to see their state, and felt a tinge of sadness. They were glad though, that they didn’t postpone this visit and that they at least got to spend some time with this relative.

When both of them said “good“, the other person would have had no clue, other than a very surface level, shallow idea about the other person’s experience. But as a coach, if we probe on such things, then the richness of the experience comes up. “Good“, then, carries a life’s experience, as that person is experiencing life in these moments. In unknowingly getting hooked to our own meanings, we miss what is happening in the client’s world.

That’s where the “not knowing” state comes in. If we don’t probe, we go with our world and we try to add our template, our understanding to their world, which doesn’t fit their world, it won’t make sense to them. But if we stay with them, it allows their world to open up and enables awareness, like standing in front of a mirror. A mirror shows what is, as is. Not like a convex or concave mirror that distorts the image. Sticking to what the other person is saying, is therefore, important. My client as an expert in their life, not me, I am just a coach. My job is that of a mirror, and being an expert mirror is what a coach can be.

One final question that came up was – what does the coach do if they are “just” a mirror? And I sense that this can be perceived as a passive function, rather than an active function! When that phrase “hold the space” is used, that is a highly active function, and not to be seen as we are “just holding” – what’s the big deal?

What we are holding space for, or holding up a mirror for?

• to help the client stay with slowness.
• to help client discover and dwell on ideas.
• to assist the client, to stay with uncertainty.
• to help the client navigate through the range of choices.
• to let the client choose what they would like to keep or discard.
• to let the client work out, what is good enough to start with.

Each of the words highlighted above is something a coach feels he or she must do, but rather, the coach must let the client be in the space in the conversation, where they do all of this.

And while the client “does” this, we must keep our temptation to reach a “conclusion” aside. A client is on a journey in which the coaching conversation is just a piece of the larger conversation or idea flow. What if the journey is – failure, disappointment, sadness, dejection, hitting rock bottom, awareness, some action, relief, feeling nice, and then some success……..

As a coach, there is no way for you to know which part of this journey the client is on – and not knowing allows us not to interrupt the client’s journey. That’s the most important part. Not knowing, helps us not interrupt them in arranging in front of them what is jumbled up in their head. Once they speak it, they can then see for themselves all the options available, and what to do next. So, the coaching conversation is help them move forward in their journey. And movement for them might mean:

• going from not knowing anything, to confusion
• going from confusion to some clarity
• having clarity but feeling stuck
• moving from knowing many actions to narrowing down to the smallest action
• having a clear idea, but wondering where to start

Each of these, is a space the client is going through, so to assume that clarity is a good thing or confusion has to be eliminated, is rushing a client through the spaces they need to go through. Each of these spaces bring different awareness, and the need to figure out what’s next. When we say, “we hold space” as a coach, we are holding the space they are in now, and at the same time helping them figure out if they are okay to go from this space to the next. There is uncertainty and unfamiliarity in going ahead also. Just because someone is clear, doesn’t mean they will go ahead!! You are helping the person slow down and reflect and consider what is next.

Because the client is an expert, and you are not. A coach is an expert in helping the client reflect on the choices – the ones that are available, the ones they wish they had, and the ones they must consider next!

Tailpiece:

At the start of the demo conversation I had with my coach colleague, she wanted to talk about (I have paraphrased):

• “I am on a career break and a new phase of life, and I am settling down to these changes in my life now. I want to figure out what my career options for the future should be. I need to understand what happens next, and the plan for it. It is a bit muddled right now. It would be good to get clarity on what’s next and how to make that happen.”

And at the end of our conversation, here is what she found (verbatim):

• “One thing that I really want to go after, for now, is being an effective coach.”