Moving from Judging to Trusting with ICF competencies
This can be achieved if we focus on really listening to the client without having any of our own thoughts leading us to be judgmental. This in turn will help the client built trust with you and assure him/her that you have been focusing on them during on the discussion. Establishing Trust and Intimacy with the client is one of the core ICF competencies that focus on this aspect of building trust. Some of the areas highlighted in this competency is being genuinely interested in the welfare of the client, demonstrate personal integrity, establishing clear agreements and keeping up to your promises, respect for the clients point of view, being supportive of the clients actions, even if it involves risk or the fear of failure.
Some of the questions that might help us to move from judging to trusting:
If the answer to any of these questions is ‘yes’, then it’s time to move to the present moment and try to reframe your thoughts. A lot of our judgments are based on our own beliefs & conditioning and I think we need to dig deeper to find the source and figure out if this is enabling us or not?
Trusting yourself is another great tool to moving away from being judgmental; if we trust ourselves we will tend to do the same with others.
The other ICF competencies that help us to build a trusting relationship are; actively listening to the client, asking powerful questions, having open and direct communication and finally creating awareness in terms of underlying beliefs & emotions that help the client to move forward and take action.
Coaching Application
The approach that helps develop a trusting relationship while coaching is making sure the client feels safe and believes whatever he/she shares will be kept confidential.
The other aspect is believe & trust in yourself, this will reflect in your conversations with the client. Also trust the coaching process and go with the flow. If we do this it will help to focus more on the client then our own agenda or our need to get to the outcome or goal even before the client gets there.
Self-Application
In my opinion it does take a while to trust someone but it takes very little time to lose that trust. My approach towards trusting an individual is to go without any judgment and extend trust, if for any reason the individuals behavior or actions leads you to believe that the person is not trust worthy confront the situation without making any judgments, try to understand the facts before reaching to any conclusion. The idea is make sure with don’t’ judge anyone without understanding the circumstances and knowing all the facts. As easy as it may sound I have experienced that being non-judgmental is one of the most difficult things to do but if practiced regularly we can get better at it.
Most of our judgments are based on our own conditioning and belief systems. It’s very important to understand if our own beliefs are enabling or disabling and let go of the ones that disable us and lead us to judge others.
Self Reflection
- How much do you trust the coaching process versus being obsessed with the outcome or our own agenda?
- Do you really trust the client is resourceful and creative enough to find his/her own solutions?
- Have you ever judged a client based on your own underlying beliefs, if yes, how do you avoid doing this in the future?
- How do you get the client to trust you as a coach?
- How much do you trust yourself as a coach to be able to partner with your clients throughout the coaching relationship?