One of the cool things about my 23-year-old daughter Jessica is that she challenges me to stay open and young in my views on everything from fashion to yoga.
This past March, she and her best friend Lauren invited me to a yoga retreat at Villa Sumuya perched on a mountain in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. It is one of the highlights of my life for too many reasons to write about here. I was in a place with very little access to electronic stimuli and felt like I had entered a time warp in a healing space, a place where I could really just be – something I guide others to do as a coach.
In many ways, I was invited back to beginner’s mind about where I am in my own life and work. The environment invited me to view every breath, delicious meal and meditation through hours of yoga and quiet time for reflection. Oh, and there was an exhilarating ride through the jungle down a series of zip lines! It was there that I was reminded, “we teach best what we most need to learn,” a favorite quote of mine from Richard Bach.
During the retreat I was challenged to consider my approach to motherhood, to writing, and to my work as a coach. I beheld Jessica and Lauren differently. They were wise 23-year-olds, beautifully articulating their views of life as they embarked on that post college journey with a new view of the world and all the possibilities it holds. They gave us elders in the room, a shot of fresh perspectives during mindfulness exercises.
Through a similar experience of launching the Healthcare Coaching Institute this year, I am witnessing coaching through the eyes of our newest coach colleagues and class members. I have been coaching for a long time and I often forget what it was like to be new to this enlightening profession. Things that now come naturally were once consciously practiced as I developed an inner awareness of what is needed to be a successful coach.
I was pleasantly reminded of what it was like to be new again when Sandra Birckhead, one of the students in our first Healthcare Coaching Institute class, shared this list of the five most valuable insights she’s had on the path to becoming a certified coach:
- Know thyself – It’s not possible to truly begin to connect with others until you have delved into what makes you tick. I’ve learned that the areas where I get stuck in coaching are the areas where I have faced a similar challenge or crises in my life. It’s amazing how having a client talk about something that they are having difficulty facing can trigger past experiences.
- Presence is everything – It’s not about having a list of “good” questions to pull out when the time is right. It’s all about being available and present to what is going on with your client. I find that when I am listening with my brain, gut, AND heart the right questions come easily and they don’t come from a prepared list.
- Patience is a virtue – I am a problem solver. Coaching is not problem solving. I must enable my client to explore and discover what they really need to work on before getting them to move to action.
- Abraham Lincoln was right – You can coach all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time but you can’t coach all of the people all of the time. A client must be ready, willing, and able to fully take advantage of coaching. A coach must be ready, willing, and able to identify when a client is not getting what they need from the experience.
- Notice the patterns – Listening and learning about a client can reveal the patterns and belief systems that they cling to. Helping them to identify what is myth and what is reality can be the most important thing that a coach can do.”
The coaching challenge here is simple – do something new, a yoga retreat with a daughter – a cooking lesson with your son – a sack race at the kid’s field day – a tandem jump out of an airplane – attending a class to learn something new such as dancing or fishing.
Consider what is going on around you and practice seeing people, places, and situations newly… through the “Beginner’s Mind.”
Enjoy your journey.
