In today’s guest post coach Peter Tate shares his expertise and thoughts about coaching intuition.
You Can Coach Better if You Give Your Intuition a Toolbox
by Peter Tate
Have you ever found yourself afraid of what is going on during a coaching intervention; you know, when it’s really intense and you feel like you are living on a toxic coctail of adrenaline and intuition?
I used to lie to myself and call it “being in awe of the process”.
Fortunately, for me, experience led to wisdom, and stress led to strategies that helped me mature my own practice sufficiently that I’m pretty certain both client and coach come out unscathed these days.
“If you give people tools, [and they use] their natural ability and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you”
Bill Gates
I discovered the real power of tools in coaching. I know that sounds like it should be obvious, I mean we all know about the “Wheel of Life” exercise. We know how it can bring direction and focus to a coaching session. So we all use it, even if not in that simple format.
Yet sometimes tools like this for me created a terrifying experience. I started calling the wheel of life the “Wheel of Fortune” when my clients somehow applied arbitrary measures to the segments and found an interpretation of the words based on some distant dialect of a long lost language. The problem was simply that using a subjective tool kept me on my back foot unless I had a really good handle on my client’s reference points and frame of mind.
“Facts have a cruel way of substituting themselves for fancies. There is nothing more remorseless, just as there is nothing more helpful, than truth”.
William C. Red Field
What I discovered about the real power of tools in coaching was that when used more objectively, with structured measures and interpretation, I could get to the real heart of the issues; issues that I had previously used my intuition to probe.
And my real discovery was that these tools helped me cope with myself in a coaching session better. I had a better grasp of the client and I was on firm ground enough that my intuition became productive more often. I could genuinely start to be in awe of the process because I could coach with confidence.
“We shall neither fail nor falter; we shall not weaken or tire…give us the tools and we will finish the job.”
Winston Churchill
I love the work of Suzanne Skiffington and Perry Zeus at the Behavioural Coaching Institute and can highly recommend their books. Their work in applying a rigorous basis to coaching tools taught me to consider the same in my own field and has freed me from some of my fear of coaching.
I specialise these days in career coaching and have found that expert knowledge embodied in tools can lead to breakthrough situations occuring for my clients much quicker. For example, theory states that Job Satisfaction is related to Work Vales. So, the tool on work values comes out to play when a client indicates they are dissatisfied with their work. More often than not the client “discovers” what is missing or what they have to compromise in their current job and all of a sudden I am a successful coach.
Remember that most coaching models are inherently a toolkit, but I’d like to encourage you to find specific tools that do the groundwork and provide you with the knowledge you need in your own niche to give you the space and confidence to coach at your best. You won’t regret the effort.
About the Author/Further Resources
Peter Tate is based near Guildford in the UK, enjoying life as a Career Coach and developer of a powerful Career Coaching Toolkit called Career Horizons. Peter runs a career management practice (http://careersupportservices.co.uk) that equips professionals and those just starting out in the world of work to find their own career success. You can find Peter tweeting as @intolife.