A Research Paper By Regina Onderka, Change Coach, Life Coach, GERMANY
Coach on Paws (CoPs) – Coaching With All Senses
An interview with myself, about my way and mission
What Do I Want to Speak About?
I like to speak about coaching, learning, and dogs – my personal learnings and how my passion for coaching, nature, learning, and dogs finally came together. And I like to speak about what it can bring to others and how to make coaching an everlasting rich experience.
I like to start with a quote that inspired me to think deeper about Coaching and Learning, what it means to me, and how to enrich the coaching experience in such a way that I get the best out of it for my clients and also develop myself constantly with the ultimate goal to become a different and a really good coach.
Learning has to go under your skin (Gerald Hüther, Neurologist and Theorist)
Let’s Start With This – What Does That Mean to Me?
I am a true believer that the more we allow ourselves to bring in all our senses and emotions while working on our personal topics, the more we create a deeper understanding – we feel it. With this, the change we want to make will become clearer. We open up to new experiences, and we stronger connect head and heart and this either helps to change our perspective or helps to see additional facets of who we are and who we like to be – or both.
This belief became stronger the more I experienced coaching myself – as a client and over the past 20 years working as a coach and HR professional in corporate environments.
This belief also made me become courageous enough to pursue my goal to become an independent professional coach myself.
But I needed to take several rounds over the years to really feel ready for this and along the way, I looked at proven concepts and theories that exist to work out my own idea to take coaching to a different level.
What Was My Starting Point?
Refresh my memory and gain clarity about what coaching is and what coaching is not and see what I want to identify myself with.
The essence of Coaching, defined by the IAC (International Association of Coaching) is:
Coaching is a transformative process for personal and professional awareness, discovery, growth, and the expansion of possibilities.
According to the ICF, Coaching is defined as a
collaborative process and a partnership between the coach and the client in a thought-provoking, creative process, that inspires the client to maximize personal growth and professional potential.
The coaching experience supports the client in working on agreed topics. To come to this, intense reflection about the current situation and the personal topic/challenge, as well as the associated change of behavior, takes place.
Through powerful questions, deep listening, and offering a safe space, coaching opens the door to gaining valuable insights on what actions can be taken, which solutions are worth pursuing, and ultimately what new way of behaving is helpful.
In our coaching sessions, we rely on our ability as a coach to help the client to find answers themselves and also commit to actions/steps our client is willing to take.
This all forms my basis.
Like any modern art or abstract painting we look at, and where we might say `Ì could do this myself`, we have to be aware that the painter understands his craft.
What Is My Fundament?
My coaching fundament is to understand the craft of coaching and apply it. My aim is to nourish and stimulate the client`s thinking process, and create excitement to discover opportunities for personal learning, change, and growth!
Why Is the Link to Learning Important and What Did I Learn From Looking at Learning?
In any coaching session, we ask about the key takeaways for the client – What was most helpful and what did you learn?
I like to repeat my initial quote from Prof. Dr. Gerald Hüther:
Learning has to go under your skin
In a speech he was held in Freiburg (a German city in the South of Germany), he speaks about the fact that if we want to learn something new, letting go, is one important element.
Being a neurologist by profession, all chemical reactions and activities in our brain are part of his working field. He talks about a study his institute did in which they measured brain activity in terms of when our brain builds and forms new connections (learning). To find an answer to that question, they asked a test person to sit in the driver’s seat of a car model and virtually drive a race. After that, they measured the brain activity in terms of new connections and hints that show the test person developed some new learning connections in the brain. What they found was, there was basically very little new brain activity. The (virtual) driver fully concentrated on what he was able to do, using the existing capabilities and skills to drive the race – no new learning.
In a second round, they asked the same person to sit on the passenger seat and another test driver took the lead to drive. In this case, the measured brain activity was very different -lots of new connections/learning took place in the brain.
This created the assumption that to learn, it`s good `to allow yourself to take a seat on the passenger seat` and let go.
What Is Important for Me Working With My Client?
My way of creating awareness for the client on what to change is to help the client to let go of what is already known.
Open up his/her mind to take on board a new experience and stimulate learning.
My aim is to create excitement and passion for the change my client wants – looking at underlying patterns and road blockers is part of it.
What Can I Do to Make Coaching Even More Exciting?
In my own coaching experience as a client, I learned about the power of reflection and good questions. Along my personal journey, my coaches created lots of `moments of truth`, `aha-moments`, and awakening moments and it was fascinating to see how my own path, which seemed so confusing and unclear for me, became clearer over time.
Over the years I also had an opportunity to pursue some very influential development opportunities myself.
One (2002) was in the area of experiential education. This 9 months course, offered by a company called zwerger&raab combines elements of outdoor and indoor experiential education. I learned hard, soft, and meta-skills. I learned the theoretical background of experiential education, how to analyze group processes, and apply practical techniques and methods to accompany processes. Every weekend we spent together in our group took place in nature, which added even more positive impressions.
The philosophy of this company is to look at human beings holistically and give space to all facets and senses to allow for growth. Thinking, feeling, and acting need to be stimulated equally. Our body, brain, and soul need to be taken care of to rethink old habits and patterns and learn new things.
They use a quote from Thomas Mann, saying that
experiential teaching always finds its way to your heart
– and that resonated very well with me.
The other one was a coaching certification focused on systemic coaching (ComTeam AG, Germany. This 2-year certification course (2007) helped me to understand what systemic coaching means. It means to coach the individual client or team with the system in mind — exploring the part in the whole, and the whole in the part—so as to unlock the potential and performance of both.
What Did I Take Away From This?
These two experiences were extremely valuable for me, as from then on I was fascinated by the power of experiential education and systemic coaching in combination.
Taking all I learned so far and what I`m still learning, my coaching platter will be a healthy one: look at the human being as a whole, encompassing the whole system, and bring in all senses and facets to nourish personal change.
Coach on Paws (CoPs)
So, Now – Where Do the Dogs Come Into Play?
I will integrate dogs into coaching sessions and I will call it Coach on Paws (CoPs).
I enjoy coaching, I love dogs and I love being in nature. And I have the privilege to live in the countryside now, with 3 dogs (and 3 cats).
Whilst following my own coaching classes, my dogs joined me. Knowing how much they help me learn new things about myself every day, I started to do my own research to see what I could do with this passion.
There are many ways to get help from pets in therapy, through psychodrama, and also in coaching processes.
I found and joined a coaching class in which I learned to coach and use a dog as a co-coach. Michaela Knabe, the founder of a company called `coachdogs` offers this way of coaching successfully for 16 years.
I was fascinated to see how directly and immediately dogs mirror our behavior.
In various sessions, I worked out my drivers and motivators, my values and beliefs, and my strengths. Each session was enriched by a coaching round together with a dog acting as a co-coach.
During those interventions, I was reflecting on my personal coaching topic while doing an exercise with the dog. It was eye-opening how much more input I got from the dog. The learning happened in a playful way, and the reflecting questions afterward brought out so much more insights. It was truly amazing what is possible.
No wonder this experience encouraged me to build on my purpose and experiment with a combination of coaching and experiential learning to create long-lasting and deep awareness following my intention and intuition for what might work to help clients make their change happen.
What Will My Concept Entail and What Will Be New and Unique?
My CoPs (in the sense of protecting and taking care of you) will be there `in person`.
In 1:1 and also group coaching settings we will work out the individual or group topic.
Through specific interventions with your CoP, we will detect the underlying patterns, the road blockers, and the solutions. We will step into values, beliefs, and strengths and we will do this by letting in all our feelings.
This coaching can become life-changing as you will put yourself out of your comfort zone. You will communicate with a dog and the dog with you (in her/his own way).
You have every permission to `fail` – your CoP will always show sympathy, love, and forgiveness.
Everything that happens happens in a safe environment, your CoP is completely non-judgmental and positive.
Experiencing the power of non-verbal communication will be very insightful.
It is and it should be a positive, joyful even playful experience. Remember when we were kids and the joy of playing helped us to learn so much?
We will also learn about our own patience, presence, focus, and the importance of rituals. We know that learning new behaviors has to do with practice. Repetition is needed and your CoP will mirror your behavior and help you to adapt your behavior and course correctly.
The intuition of dogs is impressive – they sense if you are fully there or only halfway.
The good thing is – it`s all voluntary. I personally believe that only if we feel the change and we want to change we will also find a way to make it happen.
Your CoP will encourage you and will be by your side.
The cuddling of a dog and or the sheer presence of a dog while reflecting and speaking about your topic is an additional benefit. From research, we know that cuddling a pet stimulates our hormone system positively. It will help us to become calmer and that allows to distress. We all know that a positive and relaxed environment is crucial to think and feel better.
It will also help to open up any topic that is related to what you want to discuss. The setting will allow for creative thinking – it comes naturally.
This coaching experience is learning and it will go under your skin.
What’s Next?
Gaining experience with my coaching approach is key. Becoming an expert in using dogs for coaching sessions is clearly my own expectation.
But, my ambition is also to explore opportunities to involve my CoPs in online sessions more actively.
I know that virtual psychodrama is possible – why not find many more ways to get help from my dogs?
They brought me here – they will bring me further!!!
References
Gerald Hüther, Interview – Lernen muss unter die Haut gehen (Learning has to go under the skin)
Coaching Definition IAC – International Association of Coaching
ICF Coaching Definition in Wikipedia
zwerger&raab – experiential learning
ComTeam AG, Systemisches Coaching
Michaela Knabe, Coachdogs