Beyond Defensiveness

If in the field of coaching, your competitive advantage involves your continuous learning, what is the key to continuous learning?  I know you know the answer!  It is openness to feedback (Morpheus #36).  You know this with your clients—if your client is defensive and closed to your interactions, your suggestions, the processes that you used, they will get next to nothing from your coaching.  That’s why you match and pace, you create rapport, you access the person’s values and goals— all to facilitate an openness to the processes.

How about you? How open are you to the processes of continuous learning?  Among coaches, because we regularly deal with defensiveness, we know that we do not want to be defensive, so when we are—we are generally more subtle and covert about it.  Do you know what I mean?  I will tell to call out defensiveness in a coach when I ask simple questions during the supervision.

“What do you think about some more grounding questions?”  “I’ve already done that, we’re ready to move to the next WFO question.”  The defensiveness shows up in not asking me questions.  “What do you think is not well grounded at this point?”