COACHING BIASED CLIENTS

You and I coach biased clients. The primary reason I can write that is because there are no other kind of clients. All clients are biased just as all human beings are biased. It comes with the territory of being human. And, frequently, clients are clients because they are biased and their biases are now undermining their effectiveness at work, their connectedness at home, and their joy of life.

But, as a coach, it will not help to go after the biases directly. “Tell me about your cognitive biases,” what biases are bothering you these days?” Ask that and you will get nowhere. Consider your own biases. Take a moment to name them. Ah, caught you, didn’t I? The problem with biases is that they mostly work at unconscious levels. While we all have biases, we are mostly unaware of our biases and we are especially unaware of them as we are thinking and reasoning about things. Given that, expect the same in your clients.