The Collaborative Change COACH
By Leslie D. Schultz, ACC, LPC
Co-founder Life Coaching Institute of America, Inc.
The word, concept, collaborative, is hot these days.
It is often used in the coaching profession and professional organizations. Pondering this, I dug in to the meaning behind this powerful and ‘hot’ word. As always, the simplest concept holds great meaning and is not always so simple to arrive at.
Collaboration ~
Two or more people coming together to achieve a desired outcome. Sounds simple – right? Yes…and yet not necessarily so.
In theory most coaches desire a collaborative spirit in their coaching conversations and yet often they might find themselves hearing their own agenda instead of the focus of the client’s identified desire for change. Done, of course, with the best of intentions and yet our agenda may negate the desired collaborative coaching conversation we desire to offer our clients.
Taking collaboration down to its bare bones ~ let’s explore how we may gift a collaborative coaching spirit to our clients.
Discovering tools and what this looks like in exceptional coaching. Dropping our need to fix, dispense advice and rush to a premature outcome that is not lead by the client. This requires a lot from the coach. It requires internal reflection on the part of the coach, and being courageous enough to remove the ‘expert’ hat. In our coach training program, LCIA seeks to provide such tools to evoke the client’s desired change. We are also intentional about identifying coaching conversations where the coach’s agenda becomes a barrier and hinders the collaborative spirit of the coaching conversation.
LCIA is committed to Motivational Interviewing (MI) communication. For those of you familiar with MI, you will hear the SPIRIT of MI throughout our blogs. ♦ Partnership ♦ Acceptance ♦ Compassion ♦ Evocation
