CATCHING MIS-DIAGNOSES

To ask for coaching and to pay for coaching, you can expect that clients have some kind of diagnosis about themselves, their lives, their inner experiences, and what they want or need. How could a thinking human being not have some kind of idea about what’s needed? Of course, when the client gets to you and sits in your coaching chair and you ask them, “What do you want?” they often say, “I don’t know.” So you ask, “Well, what is the problem that’s stopping you from being your best self?” And again they say, “I don’t know.”

Now as a coach, what do you then say or do? Are you stuck? A lot of coaches are. But engage with me for a few minutes in some inferential thinking. “What do you know from those two ‘I don’t know’ statements?” “What can you infer?” The first thing you can infer is that the person has depleted all of his resources and choices. He has tried to figure out what’s going on, what he wants and/or needs, and what will satisfy things, and he has not discovered the solution.