The Surprising Truth: Coaching Is Actually Very Simple
If I want to sell you on coaching, I will make it seem like it’s super difficult. And then like a magician (or a con artist) I’ll remove the barriers. I’ll tell you that I’ve got a magical map through the forest. One where all the traps and beasts are marked on it. If you use my map, you’ll be nice and safe.
But this is a lie.
Coaching isn’t complicated. It’s actually very very simple.
This is how coaching works.
First, you become possibility. You don’t talk strategy and offer suggestions. When you sit in front of the client you believe in and embody that anything is possible for them.
You breathe it. You embody it. You express it.
Second, you sit across from someone and you ask them what you want.
And you keep asking them until you can feel you’ve got it. You’ve got a hold of what they really want. Not the strategy, the thing they think they can get, or the thing they think they should want. But the thing they actually want.
Third, you find out what keeps them from getting it. What stops them or how they stop themselves. You explore it until you understand it completely. Until both of you know this thing with the intimacy of your own breath.
That’s it.
Be possibility.
Find out what people want.
Becoming intimate with what’s in the way.
It’s not complicated.
All the tools, questions, and processes are really just designed to help you do that.
Be possibility.
Find out what people want.
Become intimate with the obstacles.
So simple and also quite challenging. The simplicity itself is perhaps the biggest challenge.
That’s why at some point learning more doesn’t help.
The only thing that helps is practice and being.
The practice of keeping it simple.
The practice of being possibility.
The practice of standing for your client no matter how they show up.
Don’t make it complicated so you can avoid the challenge.
Keep it simple, so you can fully embrace it.
Love,
Toku
PS If you are ready to embrace the simplicity and become a master coach, apply for the spring 2021 dojo here.
