The Learning In Action blog is designed to support
your work and journey as a coach. 

Explore a variety of tidbits and ideas all intended to inform and support you as you champion transformative change in others.

Turning Toward

When the Past Is Bound up With the Present, Coaching vs. Therapy

The Intersection of Psychology and Spirituality

Coach as Instrument: How Much Silence Should There Be?

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The pattern etched in Ted Lasso’s psyche, the domino fall of thoughts, feelings and instincts that are triggered under stress, is the result of the trauma from his father’s suicide. And the echo of that trauma is revealed in his moment-to-moment reactions and behaviors throughout his day-to-day life.

So what? Ted Lasso is a fictional character. What’s the point of analyzing something that’s made up? Well, sometimes, perhaps many times, art imitates life.

When it debuted in August 2020, the Apple TV series, Ted Lasso, provided many of us with some much needed laughter and light amidst the many challenges triggered by the pandemic.

Last week in this newsletter, we started to explore not the leadership of the fictional character, which has been lauded by many.  Instead, we are peering into his WE Intelligence. 

In short, WE Intelligence reflects our ability to be present with our experience and that of others during stressful encounters and do so without protecting...

A couple of weeks ago, my husband suggested that we re-watch the Ted Lasso series. Since then, we’ve been grazing our way back through it, with me laughing, cheering and tearing up all over again. I’m appreciating how, this second time around, I’m able to experience the program more observantly and can see so much more.

Back when the show was “hotter’n noon on the Fourth of July”, much was written about the leadership lessons of Ted Lasso. And there are many. I’m genuinely touched, inspired and enchanted by the warmth, grace, humility and kindness that the character of Ted regularly demonstrates.

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.

What do you know about where you focus as a coach?

You likely have a pretty good idea. You've been trained on what to pay attention to. You've practiced.

What do you know about where you're not focused?

It's a crazy question, right? If we aren't focused on something, we don't see it. So how do we know what we're missing when we are focusing?

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.

As we enter International Coaching Week, I’m reflecting on my journey as a coach. The seed was planted in 1978, but it would take more than 22 years to sprout.

In June 1978, a few short weeks before I’d be heading off to college, my dad suggested we go for a father/daughter lunch. He wanted to talk about my future. Our casual conversation over burgers that day became perhaps the greatest defining moment of my life.   

It went like this:

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

Perhaps the most rewarding affirmation I can receive from a client goes something like, "My life is better because of our work together." My heart sings when I hear that. I'm betting you've heard something similar from some of your clients.

But most of us aren't hired to make our clients' lives better. Most of us work with leaders in organizations that are paying for our coaching with the expectation that their leaders will be more effective in their work as a result. However, when we coaches focus less on how our clients can be more effective in their work and more on how our client is relating to their work, we can do work that is literally life-changing (and, oh BTW, performance-enhancing).

At an intuitive level, we coaches, know that our clients' emotions are an important source of information for them. However, our clients often aren't aware of when they are experiencing their emotions. So, they aren't asking to explore them.

Given that's the case, how can we coaches help our clients uncover something they aren't seeing?

Let's start by looking at what makes this challenging.

How Do We Learn About Emotions?