Ready for Change

As I say on the About Me page, one of the things I love about coaching is the sense of possibility it opens up. Questions get asked, new perspectives emerge, doors get opened.

One of the poems in Leading from Within: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Lead captures this:

I dwell in Possibility

I dwell in Possibility -
A fairer House than Prose -
More numerous of Windows -
Superior – for Doors -

Of Chambers as the Cedars -
Impregnable of eye -
And for an everlasting Roof -
The Gambrels of the Sky -

Of Visitors – the fairest -
For Occupation – This -
The spreading wide by narrow Hands
To gather Paradise -

-Emily Dickinson 

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On the weekend, a friend who had just moved to Toronto walked with me to the Allan Gardens (a beautiful escape from Toronto winters). He asked me how Toronto had changed since I moved here.

At first, I couldn’t think of anything. This city is around me everyday, and the changes happen so subtly that they escape my notice, until one day you realize that something has closed down and you don’t even remember what used to be there.

But after initially drawing a blank, the answers started flooding. I could list so many things that have changed about Toronto: the Maple Leaf Gardens closed, and the Skydome became the Rogers Centre. The U of T St. George campus has been revamping itself with light-filled, window-covered buildings interspersed with the old cement blocks that defined it in the twentieth century. The ROM, OCAD, the AGO, the Royal Conservatory of Music – all look substantially different. There’s a new subway line, the Sheppard extension. Buses have bike racks, and the Metropass is transferable. The Drake opened and the Gladstone got revamped, and West Queen West changed forever. When I moved here, I don’t think there was a single sushi restaurant on Bloor between Spadina and Bathurst – now every second storefront is a sushi restaurant (and every third is a yoga studio). Ryerson became a university. The Toronto Public Space Committee changed how young adults thought about participating in their own city. The Toronto Cyclists Union started. There is -almost- a dedicated right-of-way for streetcars on St. Clair, and there is one on Spadina. The Financial Post disappeared, and free daily Metro newspapers sprung up. This Ain’t the Rosedale Library moved to Kensington. Matt Galloway started hosting Here and Now.

I offer all of this to demonstrate something: I knew a lot more about changes in Toronto than I thought I did. But it took someone asking me a question to realize it.

I see echoes of this phenomenon in my work as a coach: I often find that my clients know so much. They know what they want. They know what the next steps are. They know what’s important to them. But unfortunately, no one has ever asked them those questions. No one has ever listened to the answers.

When people are asked, genuinely, what they truly want and what is important to them, and when they are truly listened to, then all of this rich knowledge comes bubbling to the surface. People realize what they already know, who they already are, and who they want to be. 

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The Wheel of Life helps people articulate areas where they would like to see something shift. The wheel can provide a starting point for coaching, and a way to assess progress. Sometimes one area on the wheel serves as a leverage point: directing energy to that area leads to shifts in other areas of your life too. I felt this wheel effect a few weeks ago while working with my own coach.

Inertia was threading through many areas in my life, I told her. I couldn’t get started on one of my work projects, I intended – but never got around to – practicing the piano, and I hadn’t been to a yoga class in a month. I needed to break the inertia.

My coach pointed out that starting movement in one area would lead to ripple effects. She asked me which area I wanted to get moving first, and I chose physical inertia. A half hour later, I had committed to asking a friend to join me twice a week for a morning walk to kickstart my day and get me feeling that my life was in motion.

It was such a small step. It was even an easy step. And it has broken inertia in multiple areas for me. Once I started moving, I basked in the feeling of motion. I got the outside air and sunshine that I had been craving. My feeling of connection and friendship shifted, as I shared conversation twice a week with a good friend. I started arriving home from my morning walks ready to get to work and with the momentum to tackle projects. I started walking every day, and going back to yoga classes and getting back to running started to seem like possibilities again. I even resumed my piano practice, much to my teacher’s relief.

The funny thing is, I had been avoiding exercise and social time because I was worried they would take time away from what I thought I needed to focus on: “getting stuff done”. But once I started moving in one area of my life, I started getting more and more done across all areas. A few weeks after feeling completely stuck, I now have flashes of unstoppability.

Have you checked out your wheel of life lately? Which area would you like to see shift? Where will the leverage point be for you? 

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Manifestos have been cropping up for me lately. I’ve been looking at how the Cluetrain manifesto influenced the formation of Engineers Without Borders Canada, checking out various social media manifestos (here and here), and then my RSS feed delivered Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project post today, with some manifesto selections plus her very own happiness manifesto. Brought me back to my university days, when I completed a life-altering assignment to create a manifesto for a social movement.

In life coaching, we’ll sometimes work with a client to help them develop a personal mission statement, or a life purpose statement. What if we expanded that to developing a personal manifesto? What would your personal manifesto say?

I’m mulling over my own. I know that it starts with something around my commitment to growth and development – my own, and that of other people, including my coaching clients. 

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Every time I talk to someone who has started working with a coach, I feel genuine excitement for them. I feel excited because I know that that person has decided that, for a half hour every week or so, they are committing to checking in on their values. They’re committing to putting aside time to think about their lives, their actions, their dreams, their goals, and to evaluate if what they are doing is in line with their values. They’re saying, “I am so committed to living a fulfilling life that I am setting aside time each week, just for the sake of checking in on my goals and aspirations and values, so that they are always uppermost in my mind and heart.”

It’s a beautiful thing to see, and I honour everyone who makes the commitment. 

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I was explaining my work as a coach to someone this week, and he asked about my relationship with my coaching clients. How do I feel about them?

I thought about it for a minute and then answered with the image that jumped to mind: “I feel like I’m standing on the sidelines, jumping up and down and cheering them on.”

I’m lucky enough to witness my clients’ growth and self-discovery, and to support them in this process. I think about them in between our coaching phone calls, excited about the action they’re taking in their lives and the path of learning they are committing to. 

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“Coaches help people make choices from their vision and their values,” says Henry Kimsey-House, co-founder of the Coaches Training Institute. For more of Kimsey-House’s description of co-active coaching, see the Utne article reprinted here. 

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From an article on Co-Active Coaching (the type of coaching I have trained in through the Coaches Training Institute):

Irwin said that in a “co-active” life coaching session, the relationship is like a partnership. “The client identifies their agenda, and the coach doesn’t give advice or tell them what to do,” she said. “The coach’s role is to help clients access their own answers, mostly through asking questions.”

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From an article by the president of the International Coaching Federation of Vancouver:

“A coach should be [a] trusted role model, advisor, guide and mentor who helps executives shape visions, tap new energies, and generate desired results for individuals as well as their companies.” 

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The American Management Association published a 2008 report on coaching in the workplace. In this report, they highlight best practices for organizations seeking to involve a coach and future predictions for the coaching profession. The report is downloadable and free, available here.

From the foreword:

This study confirms that external and internal coaches have a role in executive leadership development that improves organizations’ productivity and profitability.

On page two of the report, some purposes for coaching are listed: in organizations: leadership development, leadership transitions, retention of high potential employees, performance improvement, assessment of where one’s career will go next; in life coaching: helping clients set and achieve goals outside of their business lives. 

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