Coaching Quote of the Day 5th July 2015
“Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-brake on.”
(Maxwell Maltz)
self-esteem
Is There Such A Thing As Being Too Nice?
Geoff Watts and Kim Morgan has just released their new book “The Coach’s Casebook: Mastering the Twelve Traits That Can Trap You” sharing some of their practical coaching experience and knowledge. In today’s guest post they look at a common trait they’ve seen when coaching:
Is There Such A Thing As Being Too Nice?
by Geoff Watts and Kim Morgan
Do you know anyone you would classify as “too nice for their own good”? Do you know anybody who struggles to say no? How about someone who is constantly worrying about how people might react to something they have done? Perhaps this even describes you?
One of the most common traits we come across in our coaching work is a strong people-pleasing driver – a desire for others to think favourably of us.
Making sure that other people like us increases our chances of fitting in and developing bonds and rapport with others. We are social animals and being part of a group and being liked is key to influencing others and developing relationships. Everyone likes being around someone who makes them feel good! However this trait can easily become a trap. People with a strong people-pleasing trait tend to put other people’s feelings and needs before their own – often to extremes. This can lead to them being taken advantage of and manipulated by others.
Other symptoms of people-pleasing behaviour include:
- Being indecisive.
- Having a knee-jerk ‘Yes’ response to requests.
- Apologising excessively.
- Feeling guilty for other people’s feelings.
Often our people-pleasing trait is embedded at a young age. It could be the result of struggling to attain the love or attention of others as children or having had to take on responsibility for family members at a young age. People pleasing can also be a coping mechanism to combat low self-esteem. People with low self-esteem may hope to play on the principle of reciprocity in order to secure compliments, favours and friendship.
As we have already mentioned, pleasing others is a good thing! Being liked by others is a key factor in being successful and the things we do to please others are usually laudable acts and can make other people feel better, build great relationships and generally, make the world a better place.
However, sometimes we have such an extreme desire to be liked that we define our self-worth as a human being by whether we are liked by those around us, In the case of extreme people-pleasing, we need to be liked by everyone – even those people we don’t like or respect. Often the people pleasing behaviours will not be appreciated by the other person and the people pleaser will then feel rejected and strive even harder to please; or alternatively they will resent the other person for not appreciating their sacrifices.
We strive to ensure our coaching clients know that careful consideration of their impact on other people is a good thing. The objective is to help them retain their thoughtfulness and consideration without becoming a ‘doormat’. There are many reasons for developing people-pleasing behaviours as a way of proceeding through life and of course, as coaches, we approach each client as a unique individual. There is no ‘set’ formula for coaching someone with a people-pleasing trait and we always take time to understand the client’s individual history, beliefs, values and behaviours. Some of the approaches we have used in our work with clients with a people-pleasing trait include:
- Encouraging the client to examine the costs and the benefits of their people-pleasing behaviour. Often, they have come for coaching because they have realised for themselves the cost of this behaviour to their wellbeing, their self-esteem and their precious time.
- Encouraging the client to do something which will only benefit them.
- Working with them to determine some boundaries about what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in themselves and others.
- Asking them to complete an audit of people in their life, looking at those who treat them with dignity and respect and those who take advantage of them.
- Stressing the importance of practicing saying no, without offering excuses. Offering excuses or reasons opens the door for people to negotiate with and this ultimately makes it harder to say ‘No’.
When clients learn to master their people-pleasing trait and bring it into balance they find that:
- their confidence and self-respect increase
- they are taken more seriously
- they have fewer misunderstandings
- they have more time
- they are more likely to get what they want but even if they don’t, they feel better for having asked for it
What techniques do you employ when coaching someone with a strong people-pleasing trait?
About Geoff Watts and Kim Morgan
Geoff Watts and Kim Morgan are authors of The Coach’s Casebook: Mastering the Twelve Traits That Can Trap You [Amazon UK link]/[Amazon.com link] which looks at the most common traits that are both a large part of their clients’ successes but also one of their biggest limiting factors.
Geoff is a qualified personal and business coach and is a regular keynote speaker about coaching, collaboration and change as well as a leading authority on agile development and Scrum. You can find out more about Geoff at his website http://www.inspectandadapt.com
Kim is Managing Director of Barefoot Coaching Ltd (www.barefootcoaching.co.uk) Barefoot Coaching’s Postgraduate Certificate in Business and Personal Coaching is ICF Approved (ACTP). Kim was Coaching Person of the Year 2012 by Coaching at Work Magazine and is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Chester.
Let your body do the talking 1
Coach Charlotte Green shares some of her expertise and knowledge in today’s guest post:
Let your body do the talking
By Charlotte Green, founder of Inner Confidence for Women
I am often asked whether ‘feelings’ and ‘emotions’ are the same or different – are they interchangeable words or do they mean different things?
Feelings and emotions are certainly related concepts and that is why they are often confused and treated as the same thing, and in many cases that works well. But when we, as coaches, are helping clients to really know and understand themselves, it can be really useful to differentiate between the two.
So what is the difference?
Feelings are in the moment. They are what we experience physically within our bodies and through our 5 senses. It’s useful to refer to them as physical feelings. Unlike our emotions, they do not involve the mind. Emotions on the other hand are a mental interpretation of the feelings we are experiencing mixed in with our thoughts.
When asked how they feel, I notice that people respond on one of three levels. Some respond with a thought – “I’ve got so much going on” – others give an emotion – “I’m finding it hard to cope” – or they go inside and describe exactly what their body is telling them – “I feel so tense and exhausted. Everything aches.”
Here is a table to show examples of the 3 levels:
[table width=”600″ colwidth=”75|175|75|275″ colalign=”centre|left|left|left|”]
,,,,
Level 1:,’no one will help me’,Thought ,An idea or opinion produced by thinking / a mental picture – imagined and contemplated in the mind influenced by life experiences
Level 2:,’I feel anxious’,emotion,A combination of thoughts and physical feelings – an interpretation
Level 3:,’My shoulders feel really tense and my stomach is in knots’,feeling,Physical experiences within the body and information received through one of the bodies 5 senses (touch/ taste/ smell/ sound/ sight)
[/table]
So, which level do we want to be working with?
We are a holistic system and need information from each of the 3 levels to be fully resourceful and yet, in the western society we overemphasise the importance of the mind. This means that thoughts can dominate and hijack the system resulting in stress and overwhelm.
By paying attention to all the messages we receive from our thoughts, emotions and feelings we maintain a balanced and informed system, each giving us feedback that helps us be safe as well as to develop and grow. Imbalance occurs when one level dominates or hijacks another or we shut one down. There is no hero or villain in this situation – each part of the emotional system is equally valid and essential and deserves attention.
EXAMPLE – Inviting client to connect to themselves at a deeper level
Here is an excerpt from a recent coaching session (I have client’s permission to share this) where I was inviting my client to connect to themselves more deeply. They move down through all three levels shown in the table above. For those of you who use NLP, this can be a great tool for accessing positive states to anchor.
Coach: How are you feeling today?
Client: I’ve had a good day (thought)
Coach: I know you said that you have had a difficult few weeks so that’s really good to hear. How are you feeling?
Client: I’m happy (emotion)
Coach: How do you know you are happy?
Client: work went OK, got time with my partner tonight and looking forward to getting together with friends tomorrow (thoughts)
Coach: they sound like a lot of good reasons (thoughts) why you might feel happy. Let’s go inside more and find out how you experience that within your body. How does your body let you know it’s happy? What do you notice about your body right now? How do you feel?
Client: I feel a bit tingly all over and I have a big smile on my face (feelings)
Coach: Just sit with that feeling for a moment. You can turn up the volume if you want …
Client: (smiling) Wow! I feel lovely. My breathing has really slowed down and deepened. I feel really calm and relaxed.
How to apply this to your coaching
- Introduce the emotional system to your clients and encourage them to check in with themselves regularly throughout the day:
- Simply ask yourself “how do I feel right now”
- Then notice at which level you answer
- Practice moving up and down the levels, particularly going down if you tend to start from thoughts
- Moving from thoughts to emotions “how am I feeling right now”
- Moving from emotions to thoughts “what am I thinking about right now”
- Moving from emotions to feelings “what am I physically feeling in my body”
- As a coach, remember to walk your talk and check your own emotional system is flowing and that all 3 areas have your attention. It will improve your intuitive abilities to coach and help you build rapport with your clients.
- You can shift physical feelings simply by being present with your breath (mindfulness) so this is a very effective method of managing stress. Give your breath your full attention – it takes practice but in my experience the calm comes quickly and feels really good.
Although I have been a coach since 2006, I have specialised in working with women for the last 4 years, and more recently with young adults, both of which are hugely rewarding. In my experience, developing a complete emotional language has been a massively influential part of my client’s successful transformations.
Women in particular, who are often so tuned into and committed to the wellbeing of other people’s emotions, have found that having the permission and skills to tune into themselves has enabled them to break free of limiting behaviours, thoughts and habits and be able to create a much more balanced and satisfying life.
I hope you and your clients enjoy exploring your emotional systems.
About Charlotte Green
Charlotte founded Inner Confidence for Women in 2006 after a fascinating corporate career managing an international training team for a global electronic publisher where she and her team ran workshops within Universities and Government organisations across Europe, Middle East and Africa. Although she gained invaluable experience and skills from the corporate world, her real passion lay within personal development.
Inner Confidence for Women specialises in self confidence, self esteem and emotional wellbeing for women and young people. Charlotte is incredibly passionate about her work and reaches her clients through running courses, workshops and through 121 coaching.
Charlotte was inspired to focus on working with women after the birth of her daughter in 2010. “Being around so many women who put their own needs to the bottom of the pile while they made sure everyone else was OK really spoke to me. I love helping women find themselves again, or for the first time. It is a joy to encourage women to raise their self esteem and self confidence so they can embrace their lives”
As a professional trainer as well as a coach, Charlotte is able to reach a wider audience creating and delivering workshops to inspire young adult carers in Suffolk. “When an 18 year stays behind after the workshop to tell me excitedly about how they used the new tools and techniques to improve a situation that normally spirals out of control, it is one of the most rewarding feelings in the world”.
Charlotte believes that unexpressed emotions are like a drunk relative at a wedding – they corner you and won’t leave you alone! As an accredited Peer Support Network trainer she co-runs courses on behalf of a local Mind charity, Suffolk Mind, helping people to learn how to notice, accept, express and understand their own emotions so they can increase their confidence and wellbeing.
Charlotte is passionate about helping people to believe in themselves “when you believe in yourself, anything is possible”
Find out more, get in touch, like, follow, tweet (!) …
Twitter : @ICforWomen
Blog: http://innerconfidenceforwomen.wordpress.com/
Website : www.innerconfidenceforwomen.co.uk
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Innerconfidenceforwomen
Coaching Quote of the Day 7th March 2012
“The practice of self-responsibility is one of the pillars of self-esteem.”
(Nathaniel Branden)