Executive, Career, Business, & Life Coach
BUILDING GREATER SELF-AWARENESS; THE KEY TO LASTING CHANGE
The focus and ultimate goal of coaching is to work in the here and now. Our aim as we partner together in the coaching relationship is to build greater awareness. The doorway to attaining any and all goals that you may aspire to is within and your ability to reach your potential or your desired state is made possible to the degree that you are aware of your role in the process. Awareness is the key, but it is not easily obtained. It takes hard work and dedicated practice to build your capacity for self-awareness and to harness the power and potential within you. Thankfully, there are many great tools and models that have been skillfully designed to make this work easier and more possible.
In the sections below, you will find a psychological assessment tool (MBTI®) and four powerful learning/coaching models that I use, among others, to help with the process of building greater self-awareness.
Learning/Coaching Models:
The Immunity Map is a practical 4-step model that aides in peeling back the layers of discovery between the goals that you want to attain and the hidden beliefs or assumptions that result in behaviors that are contrary to your goals.
The Five-step Trust-building Model is a blueprint for creating the environment that will foster greater self-awareness by building a foundation of trust in the coaching relationship.
The ABCDE Model (Cognitive Behavioral Coaching) fosters greater awareness of how we can form destructive beliefs regarding events
in our lives, allowing us to challenge those beliefs and replace them with more constructive perspectives that lead to more satisfying responses to those events.
The 3 Levels of Listening model gives us a framework for a richer understanding of interpersonal communication. By becoming aware of and practicing these progressive levels of awareness in listening, we open the door to greater meaning-making and add depth and strength to our relationships.
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PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENTS
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) assessment is one of the world’s most popular personality tools—because it works. Used by more than 88 percent of Fortune 500 companies in 115 countries, and available in 29 languages, it has become the go-to framework for people development globally. With more than 70 years of science-based, research-based insight, the MBTI assessment is a robust tool for self-awareness and improvement. It provides positive language for understanding and valuing individual differences. With practical insight that’s easy to understand and implement, the MBTI assessment has helped thousands of organizations and millions of people around the world improve how they communicate, learn, and work (MBTI® website).
THE IMMUNITY MAP
Is simple awareness of the reasons behind our destructive behaviors enough to free us from being stuck?
In their book, Immunity to Change, Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey introduced The Immunity Map-a comprehensive approach to problem-solving that helps with discovery of hidden obstacles to development and change.
This 4-step process begins with the establishment of a desired development goal (step 1). This is followed by a list of existing, opposing behaviors (step 2) fueled by competing commitments (step 3). Finally, a list of “big assumptions” is developed that reveals the veiled fears that keep us stuck and powerless to achieve our goals (Kagen & Laskow, 2009, pp. 78-126).
This tool is appropriate for situations in which you have identified a desired goal but you seem unable to attain it. In fact, you know exactly which behaviors you wish to demonstrate but you seem unable to perform them. Instead, you cling curiously to seemingly illogical opposing behaviors-ones that keep you from achieving this goal.
The Immunity Map helps you to bring the "why" to your conscious awareness. By becoming aware of the reason for your antithetical actions you achieve the power to change.
This process is very beneficial and applicable to professional settings, personal goal achievement and organizational goal attainment. It requires that you have identified and can explicitly articulate a constructive goal that depends on a change in your behavior or your organization's processes.
It is not suited for psychological issues more appropriate for clinical therapy or counseling.
Reference: The Immunity Map illustration: https://blondeau.wordpress.com/2014/12/09/driving-with-one-foot-on-the-gas-and-the-other-on-the-brake-robert-kegan-and-the-immunity-to-change/
THE 5-STEP
TRUST-BUILDING PROCESS
In a powerful book by David Maister, David Maister, Charles H. Green and Robert M. Galford called; The Trusted Advisor, the authors introduce a very useful model for establishing an effective and productive coaching and/or consulting relationship. In this case, I will focus on its application in coaching.
As one might imagine, building trust is vital in coaching. Effective coaching requires vulnerability and therefore a sufficient amount of psychological safety between the coach and the coachee. Only by establishing trust can the client and the coach achieve the goals and results they hope to attain from the coaching engagement.
This model is a wonderful guide for setting expectations and for providing a vision for how the process will unfold. It can help to clarify and crystalize the progressive steps that both parties must work together to establish and maintain. Whether you are familiar with the coaching process or it is a new or perhaps mysterious concept, this 5-step model will provide clarity and utility.
The steps are simple but deserve some thought:
Engage: Initially we begin with a clean slate; both coach and client consider the process ahead and ponder the purpose of coaching. Each examines with curiosity their own feelings and thoughts about their individual roles and how they will contribute to the engagement.
Listen: Each individual begins with an attitude of humility. This stage is critical because trust must be earned. Listening opens the door to learning. To learn is to presume not to know. Each participant must avoid presumptions about the situation and the perspectives, understanding and motives of each other. Each approaches with openness and curiosity. Acceptance without judgement is critical at this stage.
Frame: If coach and client are successful in stages one and two, they will eventually progress to the framing stage. The problem or objective of the coaching will be identified and made apparent by the mutual process of working together to explore and uncover the issues to be addressed in the coaching engagement. This agreement is the catalyst for the next two steps.
Envision: With a clear objective(s) in mind, both coach and coachee can collaborate to paint a picture of what the end game looks like. This is the stage where possibilities of a new and better reality for the client can be imagined and formulated.
Commit: Once all four of the previous stages are successfully established, the participants can agree to work towards final goals and resolutions. The commitment stage is the fuel that will allow coach and client to both progress in clearly identified steps and also maintain a system of accountability, ensuring that the coaching engagement will be a success.
There are many scenarios where progress will be linearly structured as implied in this model. In cases where the problem or the goal of coaching is easy to identify, the course of the engagement might very well move as shown in the model. For example, if the coaching is employed to assist an individual with establishing a path to a desired job promotion. Or, it may be that the coaching is being sought out to assist the client with best practices for a clearly-understood negative behavior pattern. In this type of scenario, the client knows the desired objective, such as better physical fitness, but is struggling to gain control in the context of a new lifestyle change, such as managing work-life balance while working from home.
Some situations that benefit from coaching are less predictable and less understood at the outset. The 5-Step Trust-building model is just as relevant in these instances but the path to commitment may not be as linear. There may be several layers of discovery in the attempt to identify the most relevant problem or goal to be addressed.
The coaching engagement must be viewed as fluid so that it may unfold naturally. Sometimes the goals of coaching only become apparent as a result of the coaching process itself and new questions and paradigms must be formed in order to reach truly satisfying outcomes. This latter, less predictable process can result in the most profound experiences provided by coaching. Be prepared to expect the unexpected!
CHALLENGING BELIEFS WITH THE ABCDE MODEL
This coaching model is based on scientific studies in the area of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It is a simple but powerful process for empowering change through awareness, discovery and new thinking, leading to new and more productive beliefs and behaviors for the client. "A" represents the activating event, problem or issue. "C" depicts the resulting consequences in the form of undesirable thoughts, emotions and behaviors. "B" is the focal point for change as it represents one's beliefs about the items in the "A" column. Conclusions arrived at in the "B" column may be negative and seem unchangeable. They, in fact, can become changeable if one is 1) aware of them and 2) open to challenging them with alternative data. "D" is the section used for disputing the negative perceptions in "B", and "E" is the area where the client learns to develop new and more effective responses, thoughts and behaviors.
3 LEVELS OF LISTENING
In chapter 3 of the book, Co-active Coaching, the authors have offered an extremely valuable framework for listening. They propose that there are 3 progressive levels of listening. In the first, dubbed Level 1, we listen with our attention focused on information-gathering to serve our most immediate needs; what's going on around us, what are we feeling and thinking, and how we might respond to the information. The focus is on ourselves.
At Level 2 we shift our focus to the other person. We pay attention to emotion, body language and expression. We lean in to the other person and our senses are more keenly aware of their presence. At Level 3 we achieve a more connected state, not only with the other person but the environment and the experience of the connection itself. We pay close attention to what is not said and the we pick up on the attitude, vibe and energy of, not only the other person but the room. The authors call it global listening. At this level we work with intuition, gut feelings and hunches.
All 3 levels are important. As a coach, I gather information at Level 1, but the most impactful work is accomplished at Levels 2 and 3. You, as the client. will also use and will benefit from practicing all 3 levels of listening. Perhaps the most beneficial aspect of this model is that it allows both coach and coachee to identify when and why we move between levels and how that can better enable us to discover, learn and grow.
