A Coaching Model Created by Ingrid Kuehtz
(Leadership Coach, GERMANY)
Many people aim to change something in their life e.g. their relationship, emotional stability, career, financial situation, health….
Many people fail in achieving their wish because they are not able to find a good approach which supports them in their change journey.
My coaching model will help in this situation as it provides a step by step way to increase self-awareness, self-decisiveness and self-directed action. More than that the model will lead clients to do self-testing, -reflection and –experience.
Self-Testing, -reflection and –experience are not fundamentally new elements in coaching, however I would like to emphasize on their high importance to implement a change in a sustainable way.
In an easy example, how do we learn a language and keep this skill over time? Only by knowing that we do not know the verbs and grammar, by deciding that we will go to some language classes and do so? Not really, we have to test what we learned, we have to reflect on these learnings and we need to practice, gain experience. After that we start with the next learning chapter and go through the cycle again until we are capable in this language. Unfortunately some are harder to learn than others e.g. German, Arabic and Chinese.
Mental and behavioral changes are most probably by far more complex than just learning a language and some are harder to achieve than others. That is why it does not just need a teacher it needs a coaching to support an individual to be successful.
One of my own believes is that everything in our world follows a certain structure, is it in natural sciences, social sciences, linguistic, philosophy, literature & poems, finance and music. Following this principle a change journey will be successful by giving it an underlying structure.
My coaching model is not only called STRUCTURE but is visualized in the famous Penrose staircase. Step-by-step and restarting if wanted or needed by the client.
The model is empowered by the possibility to ask powerful questions and by active listening moving to the next level, see some examples in the outline below.
Strive:
what is the goal, what does the client want to achieve?
Time:
when should this be achieved?
Reality:
what is the current situation?
Unlock:
which options are there to make the move from A to B?
Change:
take the decided actions and change?
Test:
how does the new/changed situation appears?
Underpin:
stabilize, anchor the change
Reflect:
was what you have achieved what you wanted to have?
Experience:
the change can now be practiced and positive experiences will be made
The repeating line in the song “Sun Structure” by Temples from 2014 expresses very nicely and intensively my belief as an individual and as a coach in being self-aware, taking strong decisions and actions and it has a wonderful poem structure.
Take a path of you, inside the odyssey
Ritualistic signs on the desert sea
Lead the river to the water
Take the fire from the trees