You are the material
Image by Korney Violin (@reka) from Unsplash
I believe that every professional coach should have regular supervision. This is something I have prioritised since I began my own coaching practice in 2020.
I could write another post about the merits of supervision, my experiences so far, ethical responsibilities to ourselves and the people we work with, and a whole host of other supervision-related topics. For today, however, I’m going to focus on one small piece — the insights I gained from the Masterclass recordings from 3D coaching.
I’m currently a Silver tier member of their Supervision community, but I gained access to these invaluable sessions when I enrolled in Mentor Coaching toward my next credential with the ICF.
I’ve listened to the eight Masterclass recordings several times now. At each revisit, I’m a new coach, in a new place, open to a new piece of learning.
The recordings have something for everyone, at any stage of their coaching journey.
Who I become when I listen
Sometimes, when I’m coaching, I’m in the weeds. I’m overthinking every word, my stance, what to do with my arms.
Do I sit on my hands, metaphorically or otherwise?
Or allow myself to be messy and distracting, waving my arms and words around to fill all kinds of space?
Well, of course not.
But this is where Claire’s guidance simply reminds us to be normal, how to cultivate that normalcy, and how everything already is normal.
And she explicitly guides us out of the weeds, too. With extremely specific and practical advice. Insightful rationales that have us rethinking words like ‘client’ — she uses ‘thinker’ and offers a very sound linguistic explanation as to why that might be preferable. Or how we might use “Today?” as a way to transition a conversation from a backward-focus into the present, so that we might move it forward.
Through her stories, we not only have concrete examples to work with, but a collection of principles that guide how we might consider any word choice for ourselves.
Is this phrasing clear, short, forward-thinking?
These helpful heuristics to allow us to hold all of these things more lightly…to learn and let go.
We’re reminded to steer ourselves away from the language of problems. And we’re given permission to interrupt, especially if the thinker is not thinking; they can get lost in the weeds, too.
We’re shown how to face forward — with our body, our words, and more. How to right-size the conversation. How to not panic when the world is dropped at our feet in the final minute of a session.
We’re reminded that it’s not up to us to make the meaning from what is shared. This is their work. That’s how coaching is different from other conversations. We are given ways to remind the people we work with of this. Early and often.
New ways to hear and let them be heard
The episode Listens Actively has been particularly valuable. We’re encouraged to listen for what’s underneath. To not listen too hard, lest you get sucked into the story. Rather, to listen “slightly out of focus”.
These metaphors are useful, as listening is a slippery thing.
Evoking Awareness
The Evokes Awareness masterclass allowed me to connect my own interest in language with new insights about questions and thinking.
“Powerful questions don’t contain the answer.”
This idea stayed with me. As well as general thoughts around process questions, short questions, and other insights around how to get people to think about their own stuff. And how we might know that they’re doing good thinking, such as noticing for disfluent speech as a positive sign of that.
And finally, there was much to be gained about presence and how to “just be” in the space.
“They don’t need you to be full of info. They need you to be present.”
It’s a good reminder that I’m not there to teach. And the outcomes they get aren’t always actions. For all of this is bigger than the coaching conversation. The thinker is going to go off and live their life, taking what they’ve gained as part of a bigger process that they’re going through.
I’m simply here to help them with a small but meaningful part of that.
For more about coaching, how it works, and my approach to it, visit my coaching page: What is Coaching?
