Episode 2 - WTF Is Coaching

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:01] LA: Welcome to the Positively Charged podcast. I’m a certified coach who's innately curious and loves discussing life, work family and everything in between. My guests and I are sharing how we step into our power and live a positively charged life. Let's dive in.

[EPISODE]

[00:00:22] LA: Welcome, welcome back to Positively Charged with Lindsay. I am so excited you came back episode 2. And thank you so much for listening so far. I am super excited to have you here.

I’m going to dive right in, and I want to talk to you a bit about coaching. I am a coach I’m a certified executive coach. I have been for the last couple of years. I’ve been doing coaching informally in my role as an HR practitioner for years. I just didn't know I was doing it until I actually got trained. And the coach training I did was at Royal Roads University in Victoria, B.C., Canada. It was so amazing. Amazing faculty. Amazing learning design. And truly changed my life going there. So I’ll start by just saying thank you to Royal Roads.

I also wouldn't have started coaching without the support and push from a few really important people in my career, in my life, who saw a potential in me to hold space for others in a way that was really strategic and leaned into my own power and potential. So I’m so grateful to those people.

So what is coaching? Coaching, fundamentally, is allowing someone to be seen, heard and understood in order to step into their power. So how do you see, hear and understand someone through the art of asking really fucking good questions? That is the whole point of coaching, is asking good questions. And asking questions in a way that is truly curious with no right answer, with no agenda, with no bias, or little to no bias. I won't say absolutely none. I can't turn everything off. But thought-provoking questions that have little to no bias allow clients to take their limiting beliefs, the thoughts that are holding them back, the excitement that they have growing in their bellies and take action on it.

Asking good questions allow clients to be seen in themselves. So I kind of like to say coaching is holding up a mirror, where the client is telling me what is important to them, and I am regurgitating it back whether verbally or just by holding this mirror so they can see themselves and what they're saying.

Everybody has goals. Everybody has things they want to do in their life. Everyone has limiting beliefs. Everybody has situations in their life they wish would be different or that they want to change big picture. And that means coaching is for everyone. If you have a limiting belief or you have a limiting position in your life, coaching is absolutely for you.

The process that I like to use with my clients is pretty simple. Ask thought-provoking questions. Discuss helpful observations. And listen actively to what they say. You then uncover your power and your unique abilities, your unique brilliance, your unique path. And then you identify what's important and what you want to take action on.

So one of the things that I like to say around coaching is, if it was that easy, you would have done it already. And so you may have a limiting belief or a goal that you want to achieve, or insert whatever where you want to go. And you're wondering why you haven't done it. You're wondering why you haven't got there, because you're smart. You are accomplished. You have done many difficult things in your career, in your life. But for some reason you just can't get to where you want to go with that specific thing. Or that specific limiting belief is holding you back in a way that is triggering and really just keeping you from living into your power. And that is totally normal. As I said, everyone kind of has that.

Another universal thing that I find in all of my clients is a bit of a should-do, list which is a list of things that they "should do" that they're not doing or that they think they should be doing but really they shouldn't be doing. And unpacking those pieces, I find my clients really value that and get a lot out of. You could be spinning your wheels in one part of your life or another that is just keeping you from living into your potential in another area. All of those reasons are reasons you would go to a coach.

I might not be the best coach. Like I know I’m not the best coach for everyone. My signature presence as a coach is allowing people to illuminate their personal power. So I like to use the metaphor of I’m walking alongside you holding the flashlight, so that you can see in front of you a little bit clearer. And you can use your own hands to feel through the darkness and find what is important and what you want to illuminate. It's hard to do that. You can't hold your own flashlight most of the time. I know I can't. I find that it's too cumbersome. You have too many other things going on. You have all the roles you play in your life. You have all of the achievements you wish to have. And that prevents you from really holding your flashlight to your life. So when you hire me, that is what you're getting.

There's lots of different types of coaches. There's lots of different types of people and how they show up to the coaching experience. There's as many different styles as there are coaches. And that's why coaching gets a bit of a bad rap, because there isn't a one size fits all. There isn't a one way to do it for every single client. And I’ve definitely had clients who didn't love my style and wanted something a little bit more structured or wanted something whatever, whatever they were looking for. And I’ve also had clients who have done amazing life-changing, life-altering things, while working with me. None of that is about me. Neither of those things are about me. It's more about serving the client in a way that allows them to move into their power.

The most common misconception about coaching is that you have to be a manager, an executive. Like I’m a certified executive coach for instance, and this kind of turns people off sometimes because they're like, "I’m not an executive. Maybe I should be going to her. I shouldn't be going to a coach who has that certification." And the reality is coaching is coaching is coaching. It's the person that you're hiring to coach you that is more important than their certifications behind them. That's my opinion.

If you are looking to make changes in your life and someone holding space for you to help you tackle those things is in service of you, coaching is definitely right for you regardless of your title. Me, personally, I have a few stay-at-home mom clients. I have a few stay-at-home parent clients. I have a few CEOs. I have everything in between. And all of them get something different out of coaching.

I don't have a program. Most coaches. Don't they don't come to the table with an absolute program that you follow. Session one is this. Session two is that. Most coaches are there to hold space for your uncovering and whatever makes sense for you. You might sign up to different programs with different coaches, and that makes total sense. So if you're looking for a one-day intensive about marketing with a coach, you could totally find that out in the interwebs and hire that person. That person will probably hold space for you in a way that is really empowering, and you get a really beautiful marketing plan out of it or whatever you're really looking for.

Another misconception about coaching is that you have to commit for a really long time, or you have to meet your goals and have certain checkpoints. And a lot of people see coaching as performance management, which is absolutely not. HR is my first career and background. So I can definitely fluently say that performance management and coaching are not the same. Performance management is around taking the performance of an individual who's not necessarily meeting expectations and up leveling it or changing it in order to get a certain result. That's a main priority for the organization. Where coaching is about the individual. Coaching is really about having an individual approach to someone who wants to make a change in their life. It's not really taking a performance improvement plan and adapting it in your life in order to make change. It's about really looking at your life and really examining the areas that aren't working in order to make those changes.

I’m sure, there's many other questions, there's many other concepts around coaching that are confusing for people, and I totally understand. There's so much out there in the sense of coaching. Most of my business is done by referral for that reason. You have to be able to trust the person to hold the space for you. There's no person I’ve met who can't benefit from coaching. I really like to live by the concept of everybody can be coached. There's no un-coachable person. There's no, "Okay. Well, if I do this, then I can get a coach." There's no specific revenue that you need to make. There's no entrepreneurial status you need to have. There's no professional designation that makes you coachable. Every single person who wants to live into their life, just even live into their life deeper, is eligible, and willing, and worthy of getting coached. So I want to leave that concept imprinted here.

Like I said, the process of coaching is pretty simple, which is, literally, I ask all of my clients in the first few moments of connecting with them how I can be of service to them. What can I do for you today to up level whatever you're wanting to up level in your life? They explain that. I ask why. Why is it important? Why is it important to focus on that? And that really drives our conversation.

A really important part of coaching for me is around action planning. So bringing you into an action space where you may have not otherwise brought yourself. So having true action items that are for your own accountability, for your own development. I kind of joke that most people are looking for an accountability partner when they hire a coach. I’m not truly your accountability partner, though, I’m just holding space for you to identify the accountability that you need. So that might be with someone else. That might be with yourself. But truly, I think most of my clients can vouch that accountability is a happy consequence of coaching, but it's not really the point. Action is the point.

I love talking about coaching. I love holding space for people to kind of figure out whether coaching is right for them. And if this is you, definitely let me know. There's absolutely no pressure ever to sign on as a client. But just really get clear about what coaching is. I’m happy to hold that space for you to figure that out. And it may come up in our conversation that something else is more important, like perhaps seeing a therapist, or perhaps some other form of healing that maybe you haven't considered. And I’m happy to hold that space for you to figure that out as well.

So this is my invitation to you to reach out to not necessarily me, but any coach that you feel confident and comfortable with, and figure out whether they can support you in up leveling your life. I’m pretty sure they can.

I will leave you with that. I’ll sign off by saying keep your life positively charged, friends. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.

[OUTRO]

[00:12:13] LA: Thank you for being here with me. If you loved this episode of Positively Charged, please rate and review wherever you get your podcast. If you could benefit from illuminating your own personal power, please contact me to get a free coaching consultation. Stay positively charged, my friends.

[END]