A Coaching Power Tool Created by Alex Stewart
(Career Coaching, AUSTRALIA)
My Powertool is Clarity vs Confusion and the tree with its roots is my metaphor and symbol for the client gaining insight and clarity through the process of coaching.
I found in my old corporate life that many colleagues were quite confused about what they wanted to do and how to make changes in their lives. Through the 80s and the 90s there was a real and growing desire to make real improvements in the way people managed their working lives with their personal lives. What struck me about myself and others was this sense of intertia and defeatism that was prevelant among many of us around our working conditions. It can take a lot of knocks and sometimes “to hear the right words” from someone you admire, to get you to stop and review the possibilities that are out there for all of us at all stages of life. When you are ready to stop being confused by it all, perhaps you will find a coach that can help you. This is what happened for me. Through someone listening and asking me questions that allowed me to open up, get unstuck and see the possiblities of growth and change, I was able to reach my goal of running the company I was with, properly.
We can see a tree and its roots systems metaphorically from many different and wonderful ways and here I am using the roots as the way out of confusion so the tree can be up in the sun, strong, present and authentic. Root and Branches, the invisible and visible are always connected and while we want to move ahead we need to review this deeper part of us that holds us back and gain some needed clarity.
- Finding the right coach for him/her and with the coach establishing the parametres of the coaching process.
- As the client tells his/her story to the Coach, the clarity begins to surface. The coach listens and asks powerful questions to open up the client’s potential. The coach would begin to coach around the client’s need for clarifying his/her problems and challenges and what he/she wants to commit to achieving. This is where the power tool is most effective. What are the ways to come from confusion into clarity? It’s bound to be the client taking a look at what has held him/her back – beliefs, attitudes and established unworkable habits and the coach helps penetrate this fog with helping to shift perspective allowing the client to gain necessary insight. (The roots start to take on the nutrients from the soil)
- As sessions progress, client and coach partner up more closely and trust deepens the ability of the client to take more risks and set goals that will take /him/her out of old patterns into new ways of being, thinking and eventually doing. The coach is supportive and encouraging helping the client to set manageable goals, giving homework where needed and holding the client to his/her commitments to move ahead. (It is like the nutrients in a tree’s roots system taking the necessary food up into the trunk so the branches can grow and leaves unfurl to the light)
- As there is is greater synergy and clarity the client moves into greater confidence and self-managemnt and the Coach has provided the setting for this to occur through powerful listening and questioning (goals setting), offering options and perspective. (The client is up in the tree!)
- Clarity comes for the client when the goals are being realised.
The client has been able to see how the messes of the past: the unstable/emotive thinking around issues that have kept the client bound up and inactive now turn into a place of seeing and knowing and when finally sitting up on the boughs of the tree looking out at life through the leaves, there is light and hope and a measurable future.