THE MAGIC OF ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In this series I’m highlighting recommended insights for you in your coaching.

3) Learn to do critical acknowledgments. As a skill, acknowledgments in Meta-Coaching is so simple, so easy to do, so quick, and yet even when coaches can do it in practice groups, can do it on demand, when in a live session, so many seem to have complete amnesia to acknowledgments. It’s really astounding. When I’m in person and can interrupt a session and say, “Would you like to do an acknowledgment?” most coaches can immediately and effectively do it. But when I have been watching the dozen or more videos that I’ve received this year—very few do it in the live session.

Now to pull off a proper acknowledgment is to do the following five steps:

1) Identify a statement that the client makes that seems to be semantically loaded. It is a significant statement. It is not just repeating some facts. Repeating facts and words is good but that’s not what we mean by acknowledgment. Typically it is a small statement; a short sentence. “It’s critical to my well-being.” “I never pictured it that way.” “I owe it to my son.”