On getting out of our own way

Remembering that we are all naturally creative, resourceful & whole

In coach training, one of they first things they tell you is that you must be able to view all people as naturally creative, resourceful and whole.

If you don’t believe this simple yet potent fact, you cannot succeed as a coach. A mentor, maybe. But a coach must be able to definitively believe that everyone already has the answers within them. That they do not need to be changed.

What coaching is - is guiding our clients to notice the fact that they indeed actually are naturally creative, resourceful and whole. They come to us because they have faltered in this belief for some reason. They have become stuck.

So we believe it for them. We hold their power in front of them. We are their mirror. And not just any old mirror, but one of those old school hotel bathroom double sided mirrors (and we are the zoom side, obviously). The one that when you use it you immediately notice all of the hairs you should tweeze. All the pores that are clogged. The sun spots on your forehead.

Coaches, however, notice the flecks of gold in your eyes. The natural flush of your cheeks. The beautifully shaped freckle on your nose. Really good coaches notice the beauty in you, when you are blinded by the noise.

To challenge ourselves in this regard while in training, we were given a homework assignment. We were asked to think of a person you would find it incredibly hard to see as naturally creative, resourceful and whole. It could be a colleague you are always arguing with or a family member you haven’t spoken to for years. For me, this person was Donald Trump.

There was absolutely no frickin’ way I could see the orange monkey as creative, resourceful nor whole. In fact, I found him naturally manipulative, a resource leech and broken beyond repair. If he came to me with a coaching topic - say “I want to change my relationship with my daughter” - there was no chance I could believe he would succeed at that. No chance that all he needed was to believe in himself. He was too far gone in his narcissistic, manipulative ways.

And yet as I sat there, contemplating this assignment, I felt myself soften. I asked myself “I wonder if anyone has ever given him the gift of self belief”? Or, “I wonder if anyone has guided him in a way that would allow him he already had everything he had to succeed”?