Coaching People to Transformation: Part III
In my last posting on coaching, I discussed relating the coaching energy to Cesar Milan’s (The Dog Whisperer) belief that change can occur only when “calm, assertive energy” is present. The same is true for coaching people in a direct, focused manner.
Another principle is listening for people’s “under story”–the driving emotion that carries that person’s narrative about the conflict, disruption, anger that brought them into your space in the first place.
It can obviously be fear, insecurity, anxiety, frustration, confusion, bitterness. The list of emotions is endless. They may not even understand the emotion underlying the action or conversation that was inappropriate or destructive.
As we listen to their “story,’ listening with our eyes AND our ears and heart, we can discern, if we are astute listeners, the underlying emotion which provoked the action, email, or conversation.
Only then can we begin to address the actions and understanding that will bring them to an understanding of the context, consequences, and feelings that they must address in order to transform themselves to be what they want to be.
And if they don’t want to be different–This is the way I am. Let others deal with it!–then we cannot force change. Forcing people to go to AA does no good.
The final posting on Coaching will be on “listening for patterns,” listening for the threads that pull all the story, feelings, and decisions together to a cohesive pattern of understanding.
