A Coaching Model Created by Chris Schapdick
(Life Coach, UNITED STATES)
Coaching models come in many shapes, sizes and flavors. My goal for my model is simplicity since most of real accomplishment derives from that. “Be all that you can be” is a strong statement and evokes strong emotions. This was the marketing slogan of the US military for over 20 years (1980-2001)
We strive to do and accomplish many things in our lives and play many roles to different people in the process. At the core of all that, there are ourselves, our beliefs, values, outlook on life and the perspectives we hold as true.’BE’ is the basis of this; it is our perception of ourselves. By BE what I mean is the following:
- BE who you are
- BE true to yourself
- BE authentic
- BE bold
- BE what you want to be
That’s not a comprehensive list but representative of the power that the word holds. When faced with all of the pressures that life can send in our direction, many contort and adapt to what others want them to BE. This is really tiring and never feels good since we are not BEing true to ourselves. Sometimes our own goals and desires get lost in the process of pleasing others. It is truly challenging to be happy in that scenario since we’re not adhering to the concepts in the bullets outlined above.
Believe
Execute
Step one should always be that we believe that we can accomplish or do something. Without that success is unlikely to happen. We can be our own worst enemies and our sometimes misguided and self adopted beliefs can skew our perception and vastly impact our ability to execute. We can really only feasibly execute towards a goal once we truly believe for it to be possible. The second step of execution can’t occur without our believing that it can be done.
Although seemingly simple, believing and executing can be very difficult. We may never get to the point of believing. Even if we do, we may never execute. Sometimes its not enough to hold ourselves accountable. Coaching and coaches can assist with these aspects and move people from their current state, to one of believing, and then one where execution towards a desirable goal becomes a reality.
Let’s show this model at work in a real life scenario. Imagine you are a smoker and you want to quit. Do you believe that you can quit? Perhaps you have been smoking for so long and feel that you are too addicted to realistically quit. Your perception is that you don’t believe that you can do it. Is it really not possible for this person to quite smoking? No! It is pretty easy to convince ourselves of such things over time. This is very limiting and would be the first hurdle to overcome. Getting to that point can be accomplished through a variety of ways such as visualization or perhaps some meditation may get you to a point where you believe that you are capable of achieving the goal of smoking cessation.
That moves the person to the execution phase. Again, this may not be straightforward. The person may not want to quit cold turkey. Perhaps there is a way they envision that would work best for them and their personality. This is also something that a coach can be very effective in helping a client seek out. Ultimately though an execution plan and/or timeline will be put in place. Accountability plays a key role in this process and coaches can assist greatly in that capacity as well. A goal shared is a goal more likely to be accomplished.
In conclusion, we all have a vision of who and what we want to be. We just sometimes let things get in the way of that. We put up our own barriers to success that need to be evaluated to see if that’s really how we want to limit ourselves. Once we get past that hurdle, execution is not always easy to map out and keep ourselves accountable to. Coaching is a way to achieve these things and help people reach they goals and potential that they aspire to.