Had a couple of “power” coaching sessions today. Not trying to impress you — I just felt the sessions were rushed through. On both occasions, the clients powered through their objectives before concluding the session. They were happy to have arrived at a viable solution. I wasn’t. In fact, I was thoroughly dissatisfied with missing two great opportunities to explore their values and beliefs.
Why even bother? Here’s why — the solutions they arrived at is only a temporary respite to what is an obvious long-term challenge. How do I know? Simply because if things were so easy they would’ve done it already! This may sound like I’m underestimating their capabilities but I am telling from experience — they simply identified what’s on the surface and decided to run with it. Without addressing the root causes or the underlying issues that prevented them from not identifying in the first place.
If you’ve ever asked yourself, “why didn’t I think about it before?” you know what I am talking about. The insights that you gain upon a deeper introspection deepens the learning, allowing you to take better and rational decisions in future. And that’s all coaches (at least the best ones) want to do — take the insights and have the clients challenge themselves by evaluating their applicability in the other aspects of life.
You miss that as a coach, the session was just a chit-chat session (albeit in all modest, it’s still a productive session by client’s perspective) with some directives. And we can definitely do better than that!