With Merci Miglino, MCC
Getting sucked into the story….
Drama and coaching have very little to do with each other. When clients come to a coaching session, they often start with lots of details – about what happened, with who, what she said, she said, and so on.
For example, Jane comes to a coaching session to focus on getting rid of the clutter in her house and packing up an office she no longer needs. She says she is overwhelmed with the tasks and needs a strategy to work this out.
However, when we start exploring and asking questions, we hear emotion and an idea or thought that is getting in the way of the task. So Jane is not stuck on how to make a to do list, or schedule time for this task, or even who she needs to hire to help her. Behind her challenge we hear a reluctance to complete the task because then she faces the reality of being a stay at home MOM vs a working mom and we hear a perspective that says stay at home moms are “frivolous and self absorbed.”
This is where the coaching gets to WHO the client is in the situation versus what is happening.
If we stay with the story, we will likely find a temporary strategy or solution. Instead, coaching can be a process of creating awareness around what is underneath the story, the emotion that is holding the challenge in place or the reason the client brought this to the coaching session – that is – being stuck.