Learning Coaching VS BEING a COACH
One begins one’s journey of becoming a coach gathering knowledge, learnings and skills, but what would one day make you a great coach is your way of being.
But, what does this “BEING” even mean?
It includes what a coach does, says and asks during their coaching sessions, but their way of being is even more encompassing, and perhaps also deeper and subtler.
The presence of a great coach seems to have a potent effect.
Have you noticed that just being with a great coach tends to calm you down and invokes ease?
Their presence makes one feel safer. They seem to disarm you into an easeful openness. Their willingness to be vulnerable invites you to be real about your own challenges and take them up with them.
Even a short simple conversation leaves you feeling better. Clearer and more resourceful, occasionally even healed.
You can’t have this effect by just learning to coach. BEING a Coach is about cultivating some inner practices.
1) Letting go
It is about becoming comfortable in letting go of control and spotlight to your client so fully that your role recedes into invisible sidelines.
Perhaps like the presence of a good sports coach in the stadium. Only the player remains aware, drawing comfort, support and energy from them.
Get Amit Sood’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
2) Faith in the universe
Loosening your grip on your own agenda, you put your faith in the universe as the cause of spontaneous growth of all towards their own highest potential. Just like the force of gravity, there is an ever-present force of life that pulls all of us to rise higher towards our highest potential. You sense it and choose to put your trust in it.
3) Love
There is this spontaneous, heartfelt desire for their well-being, that moves you to bring all of your commitment to them. This higher form of love originates in your realization that we all share similar challenges of human existence. In our shared vulnerabilities we are One. It is only Life supporting Life.
4) Curiosity for the deepest self of the client
The deeper, higher self of the client captures, pulls and holds you. In the depths of the soul, the client senses what is best for them. Your coaching is only a passive invitation to the client, to answer the callings of their own highest potential.
5) Appreciation:
Being so appreciative of your client that you let it deeply touch you, and move you. That you let it inspire you to acknowledge them generously, particularly when they are filled with doubt. You are willing to see the inherent goodness that is yet manifesting.
6) Silence:
Your own experiences with silence, the rich rewards of healing and the inner discoveries that it offers, create the conviction that is necessary to create and hold it for your client.
Your deep comfort with silence invites your clients into a quiet stillness in which they may descend deeper into themselves to heal and discover their truest selves.
I feel these are some of the practices that will transform you into a great coach.
You do your inner work on yourself, and it seems to serve others.
“Your Being is your doing”- Leon VanderPol
