Coach as Instrument:
Empowering Your Journey

As the mother of a film student, I spend a chunk of each family vacation watching notable films from decades passed. This early spring break, alongside Citizen Kane and Dune (the first one), we watched the 2012 documentary, Searching for Sugarman. (Spoiler alert: After reading this, key mysteries of the film will be revealed).

In brief, the film is about the 1990’s search for a musician, little known in his home country, the US, who was, as the movie says, “bigger than Elvis” in South Africa. The musician, Sixto Rodriguez, was a singer-songwriter-philosopher-poet compared with...

For as long as I’ve been coaching (20 years now), I’ve wanted to be a “better” coach. 

In my first few years, I felt I needed to “know” more about coaching. Later, I felt I need more “experience” coaching. Now that I’ve completed many coaching courses and logged thousands of coaching hours, I realize that being a “better” coach means having more access to my Self. 

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve written about the WE Intelligence (or relational intelligence) of the fictional character, Ted Lasso. It’s been so fun that I’ve taken a deep dive on it (as I tend to do) and think I could continue with topic for several more newsletters. However, I’ll be wrapping it up this week to move on to other topics. So, let’s get to the meat.

Ted’s WE-I Pattern

The pattern etched in Ted Lasso’s psyche, the domino fall of thoughts, feelings and..

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of presenting a webinar for the Institute of Coaching entitled “Our Client’s Past Need Not Foretell Their Future: Coaching to our Client’s Patterns and Attachment Styles.”  It was a delightful experience and gave me quite a bit to chew on.

I’ve been talking, writing, and teaching coaches about topics related to patterns and attachments for so long that I’d forgotten how provocative it can be to coaches hearing it for the first time. Because it was a webinar, I couldn’t see the faces of the coaches attending, and I sensed from what was written in the chat, the questions asked, and some feedback I received afterward that there were a fair number of eyebrows raised...

“How much silence should there be when we coach?” “Are we being silent for the sake of being silent?” “What’s the point of silence? Our clients are expecting us to do something, right?” These were questions received from students in a recent class focused on the use of silence in coaching.

Most of us coaches aren’t taught directly about silence. We learn about silence indirectly as a by-product of active listening. And we are taught about silence by its absence. Perhaps when we talk over or interrupt or ask our clients something too quickly. We don’t learn about (and little is written about) silence as a coaching intervention. 

Beneath the motivations, our clients have for getting coaching are their desires to live a meaningful life. As coaches, part of our implicit (if not explicit role) is supporting our clients in being aware of the meaning they are making and to make conscious of the discernment of what “a meaningful life” is for them.

Feelings are how we make meaning. Feelings are what give our lives meaning. 

Yet, as essential as feelings are to our human experience, we aren’t taught about them as children, adults, or (for most of us) even as coaches.

Sometimes, when I’m working with a leader who is frustrated or disappointed or simply perplexed by the performance of their team, I feel like I want to be doing more than one-to-one coaching to help them. Certainly, some of that is reflective of the “wants orientation” of my WE-Q Profile. And some of that is reflective of the fact that our clients are only one part of the equation of their team’s performance. And as a coach who works with the WE-Q Profile, I know I can help the leader I coach unlock a new understanding of their team’s performance, how to improve it and how to relate to them to maintain it. That’s something I couldn’t do through coaching alone.

As humans, we learn where to focus from our earliest relationships and throughout our lives. As coaches, we learn where to focus in our coach training programs. Some of that we learn consciously and cognitively, and some we learn somatically and implicitly. And the two reinforce each other.

In our earliest relationships, we learn where to place our focus (more inward, toward ourselves, or more outward, towards others) to get our needs met and stay safe. This happens neurologically and implicitly at a time for which we have no memory. Sometimes this focus toward self or other is slight, and sometimes it's significant. And because it's implicit, we tend not to be aware of it. (In fact, we'll tend to believe that what we are focused on is all there is!)

What do we need to know as a coach?  

Your answer to that question may depend on the type of coaching you do or how you define coaching. And to me, there’s no “wrong” answer.  

It’s ok for us to coach for different purposes and to define coaching differently. And regardless of the type of coaching we do or, how we define it, there’s value in considering the question.

Most of us coaches think we need to know a lot more than we actually do. Or said in a different way, we think we need to know differently than we actually do.

What does that mean?

Let’s start with a different question altogether. How do we know?

Last weekend, I attended my 45th high school reunion. (Go Chargers, class of ‘78!). Of a graduating class of 525, about 100 classmates attended, ~ 20%. I don't know what's typical, but to me, that seems like a staggeringly high percentage, especially after 45 years. I've been reflecting upon what's drawn people back year after year, how this relates to my experience of coaching, and a strange occurrence at this year's reunion.

I've attended my high school's reunions off and on over the years. (Originally, it was more of an excuse to see my childhood best friend and my family than a desire to connect with my high school chums.) I attended the 10th and later, the 25th, the...

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