Today I once again met a lovely woman in Cambridge who made the assumption that coaching is about having goals - “ahh don’t you have to be focused and have a goal in mind?” or “oh isn’t that all about getting to your goal”, well a lot of my clients do want to make changes in their busy lives by setting or creating new goals.
However I also have clients who –
1. Don’t have any goals in mind
2. Have had enough of working towards goals
3. Really don’t want to anything to do with goals
So Life Coaching for me is not just about goals, focus and achievements. A very important part of what I do is giving people time to work out how they got to here and how we move on to where they want to be and sometimes it's just about understanding behaviour and patterns.
For example one client I shall call Jane contacted me and we met for two hours every month for six months. She was based in the South East and after University had taken the best job offered that was many years ago, in the mean time she had experienced two bereavements, three promotions, a company car – she was doing very well. So what did she want with coach?
In her feedback she wrote that the coaching was “ purely time for me to redefine what my career and life was about … “
We did not talk about her career performance, goals or plans. She used the space literally for time to think out loud. It is my view that she used the time to really take another perspective and assimilate the bereavements, how fast her career had moved and many more events that had not been given any attention over the last twenty years but she felt were significant.
We all experience deep and moving times without any chance to really think about the impact of what’s happened to ourselves and our loved ones. We can be very hard and judgmental on ourselves at such times.
Having a coach is like having a confidante, a sounding board, a collaborative partner to support you through life’s changes. I used Jane to highlight the wide spectrum of clients I work with and to show that it’s not all about goals sometimes it’s just about having the space and time to be and in turn gaining an understanding oneself.
3 comments:
Hi i just came to your blog from Dave's in Ireland.
Nice to meet you.
I have a small question - i wonder if really there is a difference between "wanting to look forward to the next three years" and "goals"?
maybe it's just a difference of how defined those goals/wishes/thoughts about are?
I remember someone saying - if you don't know where you are going you are already there - which would seem to agree with what you say , that understanding how we got where we are is a prerequisite for moving on?
Hi popps good to hear from you especially someone who knows Dave.
I think there is a small difference between looking forward to the next three years and having a 'goal'. The goal will be clearly defined, almost tangible and keep me motivated plus I learn along the way so may be the goal changes. When I look forward to the next three years I feel warm and think generally of my life changing i.e. my boys growing etc.
If have an understanding of how you got to here and I mean psychologically and emotionally we have insight into where we're going. That's why having time out to think and reflect is so good.
I know coaching is forward looking and future focused however I take the stand that that our past events are important as they shape our view of the world and ourselves.
Thanks popps for your comments much appreciated, enjoy your Sunday!
Thanks, my sunday is panning out beautifully at the moment, greatly helpde by a big dollop of southern french sunshine.
Something you just wrote made me think - i underwent the Landmark Education forum and follow up a while back and they had an interesting approach which was to use the future, not the past to create the present.
I don't know that i fully understood or implicated it but it was something like starting with where you want to be and working backwards.
I think.
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