GETTING BEYOND LAME AND WIMPY COACHING

“A careful conversation is a failed conversation. When we enter the conversation with a goal of being poised, clever, instructive, we are inhibited, and all possibilities of intimacy are held at bay.” Susan Scott (Fierce Conversations, p. 183)

I’ve seen some courageous coaching and I’ve seen some wimpy coaching. When I sit in as an observer and benchmarker of courageous coaching, I feel like I have a front-seat on reality. The conversation is real; it is authentic; it is getting to the heart of things. It is often emotional, personal, and in it two real people are meeting and encountering what is real at that moment for the client. I don’t see that many sessions like that, perhaps one in ten, but when it happens, even as an observer, I am touched— and sometimes changed.