"Strength and Ease for Body and Soul."

William Wittmann, M.Ed., LMP
Life Coaching and CranioSacral Therapies

How to Receive the Most From Coaching

The road to enlightenment is often long and difficult, so bring along snacks and a magazine.

Here are some ideas and concepts that will enable you to receive the most from your investment with a coach.

1. You do most of the work, not the coach.

Some clients think the coach has all the answers and can tell or will tell you what to do. Or that the coach will make you do what you "should" do. This doesn't work. How can you be free and powerful if this is happening?

Secondly, the coach doesn't have the answers. Coaching creates an environment where your own genius can show up.

2. It is the coach’s job to ask for more than you think is reasonable -- putting you out of your comfort zone.

If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves. -- Thomas Edison

Shoot for the moon. You can always decline or negotiate. Thomas Edison said he got great results in part because he didn't know making a light bulb was unreasonable. We don't create dependency. Rather, we build on your strengths.

3. It's up to you to ask the coach to coach differently if needed.

There are dozens of ways of addressing problems, and there are dozens of styles of coaching. Suggest changes.

4. The coach’s job is to share what he sees and senses, not to solve your problems.

The coach assumes you are able to handle your own problem. The coach will share wisdom, techniques, tools, solutions, resources to make the matter of solving problems easier and even fun. We don’t create dependency. Rather, we build on your strengths.

5. The coach is not a cattle prod. He is a success partner.

Support is not pushing. If you want to get something done, you will. You may want some help, and you may want some coaching on how to get something accomplished. Ask for coaching. Learning about what supports us to move through difficult changes can be very powerful.

6. The coach works with you as a person, not just a situation or a set of goals.

Goals are important and problems need to be solved, but results occur faster and better when we include all of what makes you a unique creation.

7. Sometimes coaching happens in seconds.

Another way to look at coaching success is to think of sports. The coaching may be a word to an athlete: “You know when you go to the left you telegraph your move and they always stop you. Try this . . .”

The athlete practices the advice for days or weeks, and then in the big game . . . there it is, he goes to the left and sinks the shot. The victory came from one word of advice that took less than thirty seconds to deliver.

In real life a coach may give you a tool for dealing with an angry teen. The payoff may come a year later while you're standing in your kitchen, having a conversation with her. Incidentally, it may have taken the coach thirty years of coaching practice to be able to see the correction and have the skill to communicate it quickly.

8. You may change or abandon your original goal.

Few people really know what they want. The real goals emerge during the coaching process.

9. Sometimes the coach works on strengthening you rather that working on accomplishing some outer goal.

When you have a strong personal foundation, you reach your goals quickly and easily. This takes time, of course, but the benefits last a lifetime. (Ask me about the Questionnaire for Radical Self Care: e-mail: william@vitalarts.net.)

10. The coaching session is not the key aspect of the coaching process.

Having great sessions is useful, but it's not the quality of the sessions that is most important. Coaching sets up an environment for change. This environment travels with you everywhere you go and operates 24 hours a day.

The synergy of both of us putting our hearts and minds together creates a space where stable rapid growth, insight, focus, inspiration, and support can flourish. Inside this space every experience becomes instructive and ultimately makes you whole. It’s like the whole universe conspires to bless you.

For more information on Life Coaching see my brochure.