The UNIFY Coaching Model

A Coaching Model By Dominique Hawkins, Career and Work Wellbeing Coach, UNITED STATES

UNIFY – Five Phases That Create and Lead To Action: Uncovering, Narrowing, Identifying, Flourishing, and Yearning

The UNIFY model utilized holistic exploration to create well-being and was created to help individuals move toward achieving a more integrated self during their careers. One aspect of career and personal well-being comes from knowing one’s purpose and finding meaning and fulfillment in one’s work. It’s important to many individuals to figure out what type of work is most meaningful to them and how to identify their purpose. The challenge is finding a supportive structure to investigate what is needed to help someone move toward their purpose to achieve greater well-being. We’ve all heard the motto, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” While it’s a catchy phrase, the reality is that even when we’re doing tasks we love in support of our purpose, there will be times that our work will still feel like work! Instead, a more accurate statement might be, “Do what you love, and you’ll live a more unified life.”

The UNIFY model guides individuals through five phases that create and lead to action: Uncovering, Narrowing, Identifying, Flourishing, and Yearning. While it can be helpful to work through the model in a step-wise fashion, that is not always necessary. Individuals may have already done some of the t­he work described in one or more phases. For instance, a person may have worked through elements under the “Uncover” phase or have gained insights from aspects of “Narrowing.” In that case, focusing on the other phases may be most helpful. Additionally, all five phases can be explored simultaneously, so long as all five phases are explored as part of the reflective process. Moreover, this is a cyclical model that invites ongoing reflection over the course of one’s career. It is expected that life events and other shifts will bring people back to the five phases over time. It will be helpful to continue to revisit each phase and to use new learnings to make adjustments to one’s career. Doing so will continuously strengthen, create deeper meaning and further support one’s evolving purpose.

How to Use the UNIFY Model

Each phase of the model involves actions that will help the individual explore topics and questions that will lead to a better-integrated self.

Uncovering

Exploring one’s values, beliefs, and identities

Through the process of uncovering an individual will gain greater clarity about the values, beliefs, and identities that comprise the self. We all have values. Many of our deepest-held values have been with us for much of our lives. Our closely held beliefs have been shaped largely by our social, cultural, and familial experiences. These can be conditioned or self-limiting beliefs or the precursors for beliefs we’ve formed over the course of our lives. Traditionally, identity is viewed in the singular. It’s more accurate to think of ourselves as having multiple identities. We share or express some of these identities differently depending on levels of trust and safety, and our environment. Part of your identity is what you do for work, but it’s also your hobbies and interests. Working through the Uncovering phase, a client will identify and explore each of these topics more fully and use several exercises as helpful guides.

Narrowing

Identifying one’s passions, and the activities that cultivate meaning and create fulfillment

The narrowing is a process of identifying one’s passions, the things that bring meaning about in one’s life, and what activities create feelings of fulfillment. Passions might be the same as one’s hobbies and interests, but they also include causes, topics, or issues you might support. Looking back on your life, passions are the things that have been enduring. Typically, we derive personal connection to and meaning from the activities that we’re passionate about. We spent our time doing these things because they may also support us in feeling fulfilled. It’s the passions that we hold that also bring us meaning and create feelings of fulfillment that we’re looking to identify. These types of passions support our well-being and can help us understand our purpose. As a client works through the Narrowing process, they will use exercises and activities to aid in their exploration.

Identifying

Acknowledging our unique skills, abilities, and strengths

We all have unique skills, abilities, and strengths. As human beings, our default neurological wiring focuses on the things we don’t do well and perceived areas of weakness. The reality is that each and every one of us has plenty of examples to the contrary! By focusing on what we do and have done well, we begin the long journey of reprogramming our default circuitry to see and focus on the “good” rather than the “bad” first. By playing to our strengths, the things we do with skill, and our unique abilities, we begin to perceive ourselves as strong, capable, and able to handle anything that comes our way. When the client is ready to work on the “Identifying” phase, they work through activities to identify skills, abilities, and strengths along with the aid of several assessment exercises.

Flourishing

Reflecting on what creates the most joy, makes you feel most alive, and creates the feeling that you’re thriving

When our lives feel aligned, when we experience feelings of integration and do work that brings us joy, we often feel the most alive. Flourishing is a state of well-being. We also experience it when we’re so engrossed in what we are doing that we enter a state of “flow”—deep focus where we become unaware of time and less focused on ourselves and the world around us. We all have a set of individual criteria that coexist together to create a feeling of thriving and flourishing. In flourishing, we feel whole, transcendent, and on top of the world. It feels as if nothing can bring us down, upset our cart, or pull us away from our support and needs. While flourishing is not a permanent state that we can experience all of the time, with awareness of what supports our individual thriving we can ensure better alignment with what matters most in our lives. To explore what creates flourishing for a client, further exercises and reflection are utilized.

Yearning

Understanding what you’d do, what you dream of, and what you’d imagine for yourself

Think of yearning simply as deep longing. We all experience longing in our lives. And, often in our work and careers, we experience a yearning for something else. Maybe something else is a promotion to the desired role to make a great impact in some way. Or that yearning could be to spend our time differently during the day than we currently do. Maybe you have even pictured yourself in a role that is the complete 180 of what you do now. Throughout our lives, we daydream, visualize and imagine very different scenarios for ourselves. What we spend our time yearning for can provide us with a lot of insight about ourselves and can help us uncover the meaningful pieces that can aid in our personal and professional development. When the client is ready to work on the “Yearning” phase, they will use a series of questions and writing reflections to aid in self-discovery.

References

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement With Everyday Life
Morgan Roberts, L. et al. (2005). How to Play to Your Strengths.
Schippers, M.C., et al. (2019). Life Crafting as a Way to Find Purpose and Meaning in Life.
Barry Kaufman, S. (2018). What Does It Mean to Be Self-Actualized in the 21^st