I’ve been thinking and writing about how good coaching mindsets lead to great coaching skill sets. In this post I want to talk about another of those coaching mindsets – The client is healthy, creative, and resourceful. This description comes straight out of the International Coach Federation’s definition for coaching and describes one of the mindsets that coaches must have.
What, exactly, does it mean to believe your client is healthy, creative, and resourceful? And what difference will it make it you do take on this coaching mindset. More specifically, how will your coaching skills improve by adopting this coaching mindset?
I guess we ought to first get clear on what we mean by these terms.
What does “healthy” mean in the context of a coaching relationship?
When we hear the word “healthy” in other contexts, we may think of:
– Physical fitness
– Lack of disease or serious medical condition
– Mental balance
– Spiritual maturity
And in most of these cases, the term “healthy” is a somewhat relative measurement. Healthy might refer to being relatively more fit, or balanced, or mature. Maybe it means my medical condition is “good for my age”, or some other such relative term.
In coaching, we use the term healthy in a similar way. “Healthy” for a coaching client means that she or he has the mental and emotional capability to participate and contribute to the coaching conversation and relationship in a meaningful and positive way. It means your client has the ability to think, process their thoughts and feelings, apply those thoughts and feelings to their situations – past, present, and future – and to make decisions for themselves.
This is, of course, a relative term, just like when we use the term in other contexts. Our clients can be more or less healthy, depending on the topic, their current mental and emotional state, and their knowledge of the issue. One isn’t either healthy or unhealthy. We can be more healthy on some days or with some topics than on other days or with other topics.
The important mindset for the coach is to assume health on the part of our clients. In other words, our default position is that the person on the other end the conversation is mentally and emotionally capable of participating and contributing to the conversation and relationship in a meaningful way. They have the ability to think and process…They can apply those thoughts and processes to their situations….They can make decisions. That is powerful mindset for a coach, and believing that about our clients can help with our coaching skillset of asking powerful questions. When we truly believe that our clients are healthy, we ask more and better “powerful questions”.
Also included in the ICF’s definition of coaching are the words creative and resourceful.
What do these descriptors add to your understanding and belief about your clients? How would your questions change if you truly adopted this mindset?
“Creative and resourceful” conjure up for me the image of the Creator knitting together this unique individual with gifts, talents, passions, and personality that make them who they are. And out of this creation springs forth a wealth of ideas, beliefs, values, thoughts and feelings that are limitless in their scope and precise in their applicability because they come from within the person her/himself. And when I, as the coach, can stay out of the way of my client’s discovery, processing, and decision-making, the new insights and actions that emerge are unbelievably powerful because they were birthed from within the client’s heart, mind, and soul!
THAT is why we focus more on asking powerful questions than on giving our own solutions, input, advice, etc…
If you want to know how to ask more and better powerful questions – how to improve in this skill – I will tell you to BELIEVE! Believe the answers are inside of them. Believe in the One who put those answers – those hopes, and dreams, and passions – in them! Believe that the coaching process will help discover what is already inside them.
When you can truly believe that your clients are healthy, creative, and resourceful….when you REALLY trust this…you’ll ask better questions. You’ll ask questions that invite the client to search themselves for the answers. Your belief in your client will inspire her/him to find the answers, the motivation, the will to make the changes they want to make and take the actions they have created for themselves.
Now of course, the opposite is also true.
When, instead of believing your client is healthy, creative, and resourceful, you believe they are lacking in some way, that will show up in the way you coach. You may believe they don’t have as much experience as you have had. Or maybe you believe they don’t understand the situation as well as you do….or they aren’t as self-aware, or emotionally intelligent, or whatever you’ve decided about your client that is less than whole… those are the times when you are more likely to ask fewer and less powerful questions, and introduce more of your own thinking into the conversation.
When your mindset is that your client is anything less than healthy, creative, and resourceful, you can’t help but ask questions that are less powerful. You are more likely to ask leading questions. You’ll ask more yes/no questions. In fact, you’ll ask fewer questions period.
When we don’t believe in the other person, we can’t trust them to come up with their own answers. We don’t believe they can find the “right” solutions or the “best” answers, and so we let them cheat off of our paper. We let them look over our shoulder at our answers because we think we know better than they do. When we don’t believe in our clients’ ability to fully participate in the coaching conversation and relationship, we get sloppy with our questions and give more answers.
I want to urge you not to fall into this trap. Let me plead with you not to replace their thinking with your thinking. Don’t substitute your insights and wisdom for theirs. Don’t fail to recognize the Creator’s work in others.
Instead, let me challenge you to believe. Believe in them. Believe in Him. Trust that “He Who began a good work in THEM will be faithful to complete it”. And get ready for some real power in your coaching questions and some unbelievable results from your coaching relationships.
