WAIT = Why Am I Talking?

Let me preface this entry by saying that there are many different styles of coaching, just as there are different schools of psychology and therapy. Some are more warm and flowing and friendly, while others are more pointed and direct and task focused. The best style in both coaching and counseling -- it seems to me -- prioritizes listening as the most basic skill and tool, regardless of the client's agenda or the coach's (counselor's) personality.


There's a reason for this in therapy that no doubt would also apply to coaching. Research shows that clients heal and change more due to the quality of the relationship that is built between counselor (and presumably coach) and client, than due to any other single technique, tool, strategy, or philosophy of change. But the key component of that relationship is that the client feels listened to in depth, uninterrupted by the professional, and truly heard and understood.


That quality of relationship can't happen if the professional talks too much -- whether the talking is about her own experience, or even in the set up of asking a powerful question. Perhaps that's why in our coaching training we learn the acronym WAIT to help us remember to talk less. WAIT stands for Why Am I Talking.


In both coaching and counseling I find it best to keep a 90/10 ratio of listening to talking. That is, listen 90% and talk only 10%. Neither counseling nor coaching are the appropriate venue for sharing my experience. The coaching alliance is not a friendship in which thoughts and feelings are mutually shared.


Treating the coaching or counseling relationship as if it were a friendship that allows the professional freedom to talk about her own experience like girlfriends or sisters do, takes the process away from the client, and worse, can make some clients feel as though they need to take care of our needs to be listened to and validated. Creating that kind of climate, most coaches and clients agree, is an abuse of the contractual relationship.


Self-disclosure (talking about your own life) is a big no-no in counseling, and I'm learning it's equally frowned on in coaching. This is not to say that I don't do it at all. But when I do, it is ALMOST ALWAYS as a last resort because I have failed to help the client gain awareness or shift perspective in any other way.


Conversely, I don't believe in withholding information about my experience when clients ask, like many therapists do. And I don't require clients to turn inside out to process how knowing my experience or having personal information about my life will serve their own thoughts and decisions. I personally find that kind of interrogation offensive and not at all a contribution to healing or empowerment.


Questions work best for the clients when those questions directly serve the purpose of getting them to think more deeply, which usually can't happen if we are filling the time with chatter about ourselves.


One of the most useful things I've learned is to ask a question and then shut up and wait. And wait. And wait. Giving the client the time and unintruded upon space to think and find her own answers is a high level coaching and counseling skill. For us, holding the silence is a huge part of what it is to coach.


Novice counselors and coaches both sometimes feel the impulse to give advice. In both professions, advice-giving is regarded as a bad idea. Doing so robs the client of the chance to form their own opinions and come to their own decisions about what will be best for them. It's the equivalent of giving a fish meal, rather than teaching how to fish.


You might even say that advice-giving is fishy, or that it's fishing to soothe your own ego rather than working to help the client find their own confidence. Again, research shows that changes in behavior last when people have ownership of the idea, process, decision and design of the change they make. Taking our advice denies them that crucial ownership, and instead gives them hand-me-down thinking that they may borrow but are unlikely to fully own.

Some Distinctions Between Counseling and Coaching

One big concern coaches have concerns not engaging in therapy and calling it coaching. I know my colleagues in the counseling world are particularly worried about coaches crossing this line, and I hope my coaching colleagues are vigilant about holding this boundary as well.

Yet, there is a lot of confusion about where that line is. Here are a few guidelines I use to keep myself from wandering out of coaching mode (and other coaches may do it differently, so I'm not the prime authority here):

~ I don't ask about how a problem got to be the way it is
~ I resist wanting to know much about a coachee's history
~ I refuse to "process" every little thing to death
~ I'm not overly interested in or accommodating of the coachee's emotions
~ I refrain from analyzing psychological drives and conflicts
~ I keep the client focused on her stated goals, don't allow the telling of lots of story that takes her off track
~ I hold myself ruthlessly uninterested in the trama/drama of what happened in the past that forms the excuses for current reality

Essentially, much of what a coachee wants to tell me is irrelevant to helping them move forward. People are caught up in their stories, and I try to be compassionately unengaging with that, because it's their story that keeps them stuck. I'm sure that sounds harsh, but I don't think it comes off that way when doing the work.

What someone might notice when observing my sessions is a dynamic that could go like this:

~ coachee launches into their story
= I ask: what's the UAC that's operating here
~ coachee talks around UAC by telling more story
= I ask: what's one thing you could do that would make the biggest difference with this?
~ coachee tells me the things that won't work
= I praise their ability as a researcher to know what doesn't work and I bring them back to the question of what will

Etcetera

I figure coachees are paying me to help them do the following:

• Set goals towards a much bigger life than they now have
• Take action to get them from here to there
• Accept responsibility for their thoughts, words, and deeds
• Be more invested in their future and present than their past

Getting Fit

I bet you thought this entry would be about physical fitness, didn’t you?

Well, sorry to disappoint -- I’m speaking here about getting the right fit between coach and client. And maybe there will be some similarities, if not analogies or metaphors that can be made between the two concepts.

Why is getting fit important? I think there are a number of obvious reasons. For example, without fit:

· Coach can become an obstacle in coachee’s process

· Coachee may struggle with investing in the process

· Coachee may not feel understood or supported

· Coach may be unable to assist in goal attainment

Although it may not be possible to have a perfect fit, just due to the nature of differing cultural and experiential backgrounds, education, or personalities, there may be a few ways to ensure the best possible match, such as:

· Coach can market to an ideal client niche

· Coach can resist temptation to take on everyone

· Coach can claim her own expertise and stick to it

· Client can be clear about her initial goals

· Client can ask for what she needs and wants

· Client can be view herself as a hiring authority

· Coach can be quick to say when there’s not a close enough fit

It’s not a bad thing to refuse a client, or for a client to decline to hire. In fact, I suggest it’s a sign of integrity to know your limits, know what you want and accept only the best chances of getting that.

Here’s how this resembles physical fitness, which is about toning muscles and improving functional endurance.

Getting fit between coaches and clients is a process of exercising the mental, emotional, spiritual muscles of truth telling, empowering relationships, investing in self-commitment, asking for what you want and need, and knowing that it is in everyone's best interest to do so. And that is what improves the functional endurance of the coaching relationship.

Coaching Styles

The debate about what coaching is or isn't has popped up this week in various classes and with several clients. The official position is that coaching is not mentoring, teaching, counseling or consulting. Really?

I think this depends on what your personal style is, what the client needs and what your contract with them is, and what licensure you are operating under. It isn't as compartmentalized, and cut and dry in actual practice as the espoused ideal makes it sound. In this week of the opening of the Summer Olympics, perhaps we need to rethink what athletic coaches do for their charges -- can you imagine an olympic coach not mentoring, teaching or counseling at various points in an athletes' training? I can't.

While it may be useful to hold the intention to not be exclusively a mentor, teacher, counselor or consultant in the "coaching" context, I assert that all of these shades of difference are called for at one time and another with just about every client, if we are truly serving their best interests and genuinely helping them achieve their goals. Perhaps it is useful to keep an awareness ever present in ourselves of the distinctions, but also of the usefulness of each role and the types of moments in which each role would be more useful than "coaching" per se.

Coming from a background as a counselor and a teacher for 18 years, perhaps it's just being difficult to shed those skins and to find the "coach" costume can be restrictive to my range of motion. That's possible, and I'll own that I don't see it to be necessary. In fact, I believe it would be a disservice to my clients if I neglect using all of my skills and experience for their benefit.

What drove me crazy as a mental health counselor was the notion that we were supposed to be something other than human, with human flaws and characteristics. I never bought that idea as particularly healthy, for myself or as an authentic role model for my clients. Now I hear coaching instructors stating that we shouldn't make judgments, or give advice, or be much of anything but an unopinionated sounding board.

Uh, no. That's not a very powerful model of coaching to me, and would not be authentic to my personality or coaching style.

I was greatly relieved the other day when one of my favorite coaching instructors confessed to doing some teaching with her clients. YES!! I thought. Finally, someone who is real, and uses all of who she is in service to her clients. That's the model I aspire to. That how I already work with people.

The coaching model of powerful questions and requests that move clients into action towards making a big difference in their lives is what sets the profession apart from most of these others, in my view. But my coaching style will also incorporate teaching what the client needs to know in order to answer those questions, fulfill those requests and know what actions to take. And my style will also incorporate the counseling needed to help the client face fear, shed shame, and claim confidence, as those as mental and emotional health issues.