Self-Awareness; The Cure?!
So how would an individual gain self-awareness and freedom from toxic underlying beliefs or perspectives to move forward to achieve happiness? The first step is to be committed to improving oneself and an openness and willingness to move forward. In engaging in the coaching process, the “coachee” commits to be engaged in a self-directed learning process where they have a safe space to unravel, reflect, and gain awareness of their underlying beliefs and the effects on their behaviors. The coach will use certain techniques and ICF competencies to aid the “coachee” to look within and gain knowledge and understanding and awareness about oneself. A greater understanding of the coaching techniques and the coaching process will be discussed further.
The Coaching Process
One important aspect of the coaching process is to first build a rapport of trust with one another where the coachee feels safe and secure which means that the coach provides a safe environment and space for the coachee to communicate. The coach must also be aware of his own blind spots and compensates accordingly. It is important that the coach communicates that everything discussed during the coaching process is confidential. During the beginning of the coaching process the coach should establish a “non-judgmental and open” space. During this time, the client is communicating his reasons for obtaining a coach.
The Coach will have to be clothed in compassion in working with the client. Empathy and compassion is a prerequisite to building a strong rapport with a client. Where there is empathy and compassion, “judgment” cannot come into play. Compassion allows the coach to enter into the client’s world and relate to their issues. In addition, the coach must have a strong and genuine desire to help others (Dunbar, 2010).
While the coachee is presenting their problem or hurdle, the coach is power listening. The coach is listening to what is being said, what is not being said, the manner in which it is said, emotion, lack of emotion, patterns of thinking. During this process, the coach intuitively can discern when to give the client space to process, when to paraphrase, when to hold the client accountable, how to ask sensitive questions, and what types of informational questions or powerful questions to ask. Intuition can be described as the ability to understand or know something immediately, without conscious reasoning (O’Connor and Lages, 2007). During this time, the coach supports the client to be in touch with their authentic values, assist the clients to align their direction and goals with these values and find the values behind the goals The client will gain awareness as to what value is beneficial or toxic to their life. An example is a client who responded to others irrationally at times and wanted to be coached on why things would not “roll off his shoulder”. During the coaching process, he discovered that when he was younger, his peers teased him and made him feel less than and out of place. He stated that he felt like, “he didn’t matter”. When people in both his personal and professional life threatened his ego, he would then react in a very hostile way. The client decided to journal about his emotions and meditates daily. He immediately noticed a difference in his anxiety levels and was able to improve in how he responded to others whenever he felt threatened. He had acknowledged the more he became aware of these beliefs the less he became anxious and felt threatened. Another feature of the coaching process is motivation. Once toxic underlying beliefs are uncovered and the coachee develops self-awareness and moves towards action, motivation towards change is very important. A coach must be a client’s cheerleader and continuously enthuse and ignite the client in moving forward. Motivation can be defined as the inner drive to action (“Dictionary.com,2010”). The coach creates an atmosphere for the client to motivate themselves to change. The old adage, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink” is very true in this instance. During the rapport building phase, the coach learns what and how to create an atmosphere for the client to motivate himself. A good motivator helps the person to believe in himself. Believing in a client’s ability to success will impact their own confidence in their ability.
Conclusion
The coaching process is a powerful process where the client gains self-awareness and in most cases commits to action in a process of transformation to align his beliefs with one’s goals in life to be his best authentic self. Underlying toxic beliefs can affect one’s life tremendously in every facet of his life such as in one’s personal relationships and career. When a client discovers why he responds the way that he does and gets to the root of the issue, it empowers them and shifts their perspective, thus their behaviors in responding to others improve. In most of the cases, clients attributed their “blockages” towards an exterior barrier. For example, clients may blame or attribute their difficulty in moving forward to something outside of themselves. It was discovered during the coaching process and in the research that situations and circumstances serve as a mirror as to what is going on within or inside of the client. The environment “activates” the client’s perceptions and beliefs about the world.