The Design Coaching

A Coaching Model By Francesca Castagnetti, Life Coach, Design Coach, ITALY

The Design Coaching Approach

Premise: Everyone Is a Designer

As a communicator for over 20 years and a designer by heart, with a deep, visceral passion for all things “design” I have noticed that the choices that have generated a bigger impact in my life, for myself, and for those around me, are those which I approached with the mindset of a designer, which – I have learned – can be applied to pretty much everything and produces tangible, more impactful, fulfilling, and targeted results.

But What Does This Exactly Mean?

Design is about creating, with a purpose. It’s about addressing a need that produces a result, being in a positive flow, of ongoing progress and iteration, and approaching every step with mindfulness, with a sense of freedom to experiment, with the drive and the desire to generate an outcome that matters.

And if we think of it we all create, all the time: we create thoughts, our thoughts create the reality around us, the reality around us is the playground in which our life unfolds and in which we act, our actions create other actions to which we respond, on which we reflect, to which we adapt, for which we create new thoughts and so it goes on. Many of us do this without being fully aware, fully conscious, or fully present of the power and the impact that we have.

What if you were? What if you reconnected with the designer within?

What if you could create your choices, not only make choices?

Designing is about generating something that integrates desirability, viability, sustainability, and feasibility while it responds to a fundamental need, that puts people at the heart. Regardless of what the need is, something that is “designed” well generates a better outcome for the designated user and makes an impact. It provides a solution that makes life easier and more enjoyable, certainly for the “target” (the person!) it has been designed for.

I believe that anyone can approach the world like a designer.

I truly believe in this. It stems from the idea that everyone is creative, in their own way and everyone can be mindful, master continuous progress, and take full ownership of the creation of what matters to them.

Creativity isn’t about the ability of drawing, the talent for composing, or the ease with which one can sculpt or sketch. Designing is a way of looking at the world and deeply understanding others and oneself.

It’s in times of small or big change that we need new alternatives, new ideas, new options, new challenges, and new opportunities to test. Change forces us to question fundamental beliefs and existing dynamics that are no longer functional to us, the way they are.

So let me ask you:

• What are you looking at creating for yourself?
• What is it that you would like to design today? What is the impact that you want to create on your life/career/relationship/…?
• What is the fundamental need that is bringing you here today and for which you would design something that makes your life easier, more enjoyable, and more feasible?
• What is it that you would like to challenge and that is no longer working for you the way it is now?

The Design Coaching Model

Design coaching is a non-linear, iterative process that is generated by the coach and the client and enables the client to understand, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to test and experiment. Involving 6 phases—Determine, Explore, Set goals, Insight & Ideation, Growth—it is a practical, pragmatic, insightful way to tackle fundamental questions and reach an ideal outcome that really works for the client, their needs, their values.

The coach, in the flow with the client, will be the thinking partner and will support the client in finding the answers and pursuing the “design” goal.

Fundamentals of Design Coaching:

D – Determine What You Want to Design Through Coaching

Designers actually can change the world for the better by making the complicated simple and finding beauty in truth. Michael Beirut, 79 Short Essays on Design

The design creative process isn’t just about creating per se. It’s about creating with an outcome in mind, that will ultimately be more desirable, viable, sustainable, feasible, and most importantly aligned with the fundamental need that the designer is addressing.

In order to support the client in determining what they want to design, the coach will ask fundamental yet very simple questions, by using the BRIEF tool, which typically addresses the following questions:

• What are the areas of your life you would like to design, shape, and look at?
• What would you like to generate in this space regarding….?
• What is the outcome that you would like to achieve? How would you like the outcome to impact your life/career/relationship?

E – Explore

The designer does not start with some preconceived idea. Rather the idea is the result of careful study, observation…Paul Rand

The exploration process serves to create clarity for the client, by considering multiple possibilities and by all the aspects that come into play. By doing so the coach empowers open thinking for the client and increases the possibility of having a complete spectrum of opportunities and different perspectives. The consideration of different possibilities benefits decision-making.

In this phase, the Coach will support the client’s thinking towards the range of possibilities ahead and may leverage the use of metaphors when offered by the client or suggest imagining what shape, form, color, location, feeling, or image may his/her thoughts lean towards. By triggering imaginative thinking, the client surfaces ideas and thoughts that may struggle to arise differently.

The exploration process is a fundamental step in design processes: it gives a wealth of information, data, and experience by putting together the fundamental elements that one has about the product, the issue, and the context; it allows making hypotheses, it promotes optimism, creativity and innovation, it allows to be fully inspired towards possible solutions, run experiments, create something different from what has been done before, don’t be afraid to make mistakes and adjust along the way.

Questions that may be typically asked in this phase are:

• Where are you right now in your life, looking at this goal?
• What are the talents that could serve you in achieving the final outcome?
• What are the must-haves and must-be that are non-negotiable as you move towards your goal?
• What else should we consider as we work towards your goal?
• What does the design process need to align with?
• What is the fundamental need that you are addressing? How does this need to align with….?
• If your goal could be an object, what would it be? Color, size, shape, location, material?
• If your goal could be a person, what would it be? What are the traits of that person?

S – Set Goals and Success Measures

A dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true. Greg S. Reid

Setting a goal gives the client focus and inspiration. The coach will partner with the client in defining the goal of the coaching journey as well as the individual sessions, as being able to measure progress is extremely rewarding and will help the client and coach maintain focus and motivation.

Some of the questions the coach may ask are:

• What makes this so meaningful for you… now?
• What difference does it make?
• What will this goal bring you, and what will it allow you to do?
• What will show you that you achieved what you wanted?
• If nothing is in your way, how would it feel?
• What are the key milestones that you would like to see as we move towards your goal?
• How will you know that you have achieved…?
• What needs to happen in order to…?

The coach may suggest the use of another tool, often used in the design world: the manifesto tool.

Manifesto Tool

A manifesto is a “public” declaration of the position, the ambitions, the intention, the traits, the unique characteristics, the goals, the intentions, and the values of a person, an initiative, or a brand. A manifesto states a set of ideas, opinions, views, and features, but it can also layout a higher ambition or even a plan of action. While it can address any topic, it most often concerns values and purposes that are generally written in a very positive way. Manifestos often mark the adoption of a new vision, approach, program, or genre. 

Writing a manifesto is a powerful way of clarifying intentions, ideas, and goals. It is also the opportunity to inform, add notions, and dive deeper into the meaning of values, beliefs, behaviors, needs, and what is moving or holding the client.

It challenges the way the client looks at his/herself, it may surface limiting beliefs and self-judgment and facilitate the path to reframing perspectives.

The coach will provide a set of questions to facilitate the client in writing their own manifesto and will ask the client to share it once it’s ready during one of the following sessions:

Intent: What is the purpose….? What are you aiming at achieving for…..?

Views: what are your beliefs? What are your values?

Motivation: why are you pursuing…..?

Specific: What do you want to do to achieve….?

Achievability: what makes it in your power to accomplish…?

Measurable: How will you know when you’ve achieved it?

Time-bound: When exactly do you want to accomplish it?

Assets: please choose a photo, a picture, or a quote to complete your manifesto and be prepared to explain what that asset represents for you and why you believe it articulates further your manifesto and completes it by making it more impactful.

I – Insight & Ideation

The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes. Marcel Proust

Insight: this is a crucial phase of the design-coaching model, as it allows us to observe, therefore unlock, what the client is thinking and feeling vs what is she/he saying and doing. Shifting beliefs is always harder than shifting actions.

By staying present and active the coach can capture the different nuances of what the client is bringing to the session, via verbal and nonverbal communication, and by returning the observations the client will gain new insights, with which it will be possible to look further, access deeper emotions and feelings.

Questions that may be used in this phase are:

• Where are you standing with this topic right now?
• What feelings are coming up?
• What are your thoughts regarding this topic now?
• What is in the way?

Ideation: this phase is also the moment in which the client can generate ideas and may become more creative, which is key to moving forward towards the goal of the session, and of course the goal of the coaching journey.

The coach supports the client in reframing perspectives, and sharing observations, insights, and feelings, in order to partner with the client in acknowledging new learnings.

Some of the questions that may be asked are:

• In which other way could you expand your thinking about yourself?
• In which other way could you imagine and define the situation?
• What feelings are coming up if you imagine….?
• What would you like to experiment/test/do differently….? How would that make you feel? What would this allow you to achieve/create….?
• What are the opportunities here?
• What if…?

G – Growth

Most growth happens as a result of many small steps. The key is to keep taking them. Thomas O’Donnell

The coach encourages and supports the client to acknowledge, become more aware, pay attention to words and thoughts, and welcome challenges (and failures)as a means to grow, learn, create, and design.

Through a deeper understanding of what moves the client, and how thoughts and words are aligned to the goal the client is ready to move and start designing: now comes the time to create, by defining a plan, making commitments, following up with actions, to acknowledge progress, and growth.

Some of the questions that may arise are:

• What are you learning now about yourself?
• How do you want to use this learning in what you are looking at creating now?
• What are the next steps to make this happen? What is the first thing that you will do? What else?
• When are you starting?
• What could you do for this in the next 24 hours?
• What could get into your way?

In this phase, the Coach may suggest to the client to take a look again at the Manifesto and challenge him/her to rewrite it to reflect the new perception of his/herself and how this will serve the purpose of achieving the life-design goal.

N– Nurture

When we’re confident, we’re focused on the present rather than worried about the future, and that makes it much easier to see how to turn obstacles into opportunities, weaknesses into advantages, and setbacks into breakthroughs. Dan Sullivan

As the client accesses the inner designer and is newly equipped to see, redefine or create his/her new reality and perspective, with optimism, confidence, and consciousness, in alignment with their values and new beliefs, the coach celebrates the client’s progress and encourages the client to come up with ways of celebrating the accomplishments and learnings.

In this phase the coach partners with the client to design and create the best methods of accountability.

Questions that may be asked in this phase are:

• What would you like to acknowledge to yourself?
• What have you created for yourself?
• What could support you in….?
• What supporting structure will you put in place to make sure…?
• How committed are you?

As the client begins to clearly see the new reality and perspective, he/she can create, the client channels their newfound power to design their new reality. This is when the client can accomplish the goal and truly drive towards it, this is when the client is a designer of his/her own world.

The coach in this phase will challenge the client to think of barriers, by leveraging the mindset of a designer, meaning with optimism and with the awareness that possible setbacks and failures are temporary and are a means to continuous improvement.

I would like to conclude with a meaningful quote by Achille Castiglioni:

If you are not curious, forget it.

Achille Castiglioni is one of the most renowned architects, designers, and university professors of the last century, who introduced some of the most iconic products that are currently and permanently exhibited in the most reputable Design Museums across the globe. Castiglioni loved paradoxes because of the new perception and wisdom they engendered. Highly experimental, divergent, ironic, and curious about life, he often would re-interpret everyday objects in an unexpected context, with curiosity and playfulness, free from any attachment towards the obvious, careless of external criticism and conventional point of view from industry critics.

This made him a forerunner of what we call a “shift of perspectives” and, in my opinion, embodies the quintessence of coaching: with unparalleled belief in himself, enormous faith in his ideas, and trust in his own intuitions, he gave voice to his personal talents and exploited his uniqueness throughout his entire life, being an extraordinary and memorable creator of his own kind.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achille_Castiglioni
Beyond “Design Thinking”–  Ricardo Sosa, Design and Creative Technologies, Auckland University of Technology
Design Thinking as a Mindset – U.Lab – Dr. Jochen Schweitzer
Positive psychology: An introduction –Martin Seligman