GETTING TO THE THINKING BEHIND THE WORDS

Perhaps the most obvious thing about coaching is that to coach you have to use words. Since coaching is a conversation, you begin a “coaching conversation” by asking a question, “What do you want to achieve?” And you continue the coaching by engaging in an exploration conversation until you have a basic diagnoses regarding what compassionate challenge your client needs.

But as you know, words are not all that reliable. For one thing, we cannot count on words for truly conveying what we are thinking and feeling. For another, words can get in the way of thinking. They can distort thinking, bias thinking, and generate false ideas and understandings. Often in coaching, we have to probe beyond the words, even set aside some words, and eliminate other words to get to the truth of a situation.