Power, Presence, and Coaching

Posted on February 10, 2020 by Joseph Domask, One of Thousands of Performance Coaches on Noomii.

Coaching is a gift that is given and received. Coaching is deeply and fundamentally about presence and power — the coach’s presence with his or her client and the client’s presence with the coach in the moment. There is great power in this design.

One thing that coaching clients typically do not hear much about is the coaching training experience that all credentialed coaches must go through. In this entry, I wanted to share a little bit about my own experiences during coaching training from several years ago. All coaches undergo extensive coaching as clients as part of their training (at least those who are trained in accordance withe the International Coaching Federation’s requirements). As coaches in training, participants practice many, many hours of coaching and actively receive many hours of coaching from their peers in one-on-one and in small group formats.

I will never forget those long days in coaching training (in my case, through the Co-Active Training Institute), experiencing such intense highs and lows and watching other participants undergo life changing transformations before our eyes. Tough guys, softies, introverts, extroverts, executives, social workers, Silicon Valley millennials, and career public servants — we had all types of individuals in our coaching cohorts. The transformations typically did not come on day one or even day ten, but they always came at one point or another. Even in front of a group of individuals who were complete strangers just weeks earlier, participants in the program shared some of their deepest fears, anxieties, failures, and insecurities — and often discovering some of them for the first time themselves in front of their new peers.

The triumphs, accomplishments, and strengths of each participant also eventually came out in droves. What a discovery for all of us in the program to — for the first time in our lives in one case after the other — come to uncover and more deeply understand our own strengths, abilities, and contributions. For most of us, we had a good appreciation of many of our strengths and could list them off fairly quickly, but it was those hidden ones that were brought to the surface through peer and 1-on-1 coaching sessions that surprised us and gave us new powers and ultimately new tools that we could unleash. There were tears of joy (and tears of pain) flowing from participants on a daily basis as we each came to new discoveries, new understandings, and new senses of purpose. There was immense power unleashed in those rooms on a regular basis.

Not all coaching relationships will reflect what I described above. Those programs are unique by design, and one-on-one coaching relationship are often established for very different purposes, ranging from on-the-job performance coaching to life/career transition coaching, leadership coaching, personal growth and empowerment coaching, and so on. Tears will not be flowing in every coaching relationships and profound life transformations will not emerge from every coaching relationship, but the deep and persistent presence that a coach provides to his/her client is a powerful act and often does help surface profound transformations.

The coach’s role is to listen, inquire, affirm, challenge, and advocate on the client’s behalf and guide them to identify their own weaknesses, powers, goals, strategies, and action plans. The coach does not steer the client toward any particular solution, strategy, or goal; that is the role of a consultant, advisor, or therapist.

In my own coaching experiences, I have seen some clients undergo positive major life transformations and am confident that coaching played a powerful role in contributing to those outcomes. I have also worked with other clients on narrower goals, including working through new challenges in their work situations, identifying pathways for career growth, and stepping into new leadership roles. I have worked with other clients going through different forms of post traumatic stress and helping them to better understand where they find themselves in that process, where they want to be, and what steps they need to take to move onward with confidence, power, and presence.

What did my clients have to do to help make coaching work for them? Assuming I do my part, my clients have three key responsibilities if they want to make coaching work for them:

1. Commit. Simply put, the client needs to commit to themselves and to the coach to participate in coaching. This involves making time, fitting it in the schedule, making a financial investment, and following through on any additional commitments the client chooses to make during coaching sessions.

2. Show up. Show up for the sessions and be present during that time. Our daily schedules are often unpredictable, demanding, and intense. Success will only come through regularly scheduled meetings (one hour every 2 or 3 weeks is typically sufficient) and meetings in which the client can be fully present without distractions.

3. Be candid, honest, and courageous. The courageous part is relative and different clients will have different thresholds for where they want to be on that spectrum of courageousness. Coaching is by design intended to challenge individuals to take greater ownership of their own circumstances and help catalyze, inspire, and advocate for courageous acts identified by the clients themselves.

Do these commitments sound like something you or friend are ready for at this time? Are there some goals that you have long thought about or long pursued that have yet to come to fruition? What have you done to advance yourself toward those goals and how to you think coaching might help you in those efforts?

Have a coaching experience you care to share? Please let me know, share your story, and what you learned or gained from coaching — as a client or coach.