Coaching Model: The PILLARS

A Coaching Model Created by Laure Makarem
(Youth & Family Coach, LEBANON)

Leaning to Engage, Grow, and Support

Painting the Picture

Growing up, and before I used to leave home every day, my Grandmother used to shake her finger at me and say; “Keep your heart and mind open, and make good choices today”. Her voice still echoes with me every day, at every crossroad, with every step forward, every decision, and every judgment call I reach. She always had great interest in learning about my relationships and surroundings, and she used to ask the most eye-opening questions about how my encounters and everyday happenings used to make me feel and how they used to change me. Time after time, our conversations and storytelling became a source of deep awareness and a drive to seek the best from the world within me and without.

In parallel, as I embarked upon my first venture onto the online world at twelve years of age, I stumbled upon a man of sixty-two. Ethan and I spent countless hours chatting about life and sharing our experiences with the world around us. He was my mentor and guide on the difficulties I faced as a young person growing up with an unconventional family in a broken country. Often, he would recommend books, films, and his favorite music to plant a more positive attitude towards my environment. It was very important to me to share with him my wins, reflect on my challenges, and explore the invaluable resources and opportunities I have within my grasp to grow and improve my life.

At different points throughout my journey, I would pause and express gratitude to all the good people I have crossed path with, and my best friend always made it on top of that list. Omar was there for me since we were only three. He was my listening ear, my punching bag, and my voice of reason. Most importantly, he genuinely understood what it was like to feel trapped your head, unable to express yourself, and being socially crippled in facing the world outside your bubble. We were both stuck  in a school that does not value individuality, nurture creativity, or offer activities that build character or teach skills that cannot be learned from a textbook or a lecture. Being part of that environment for a little less than twenty years, I also learned to observe and understand how regressive reward and punishment systems can shame, traumatize, or at least disorient young people and divert them from making better judgments, more constructive decisions, and the choices to live by more noble values. How, then, do they break free from there cocoons and successfully pursue their happiness and fulfill their dreams?

Here at ICA, I have had the privilege and honor to learn the meaning and craft of transformational coaching hands-on from a truly talented and inspirational peer, who has served as both my coach and role model. Lisa from Lamppost Journeys has shown me how life coaching can help you rediscover your potential and act upon your true intent. She has taught me that listening with your heart and speaking with virtue is a skill that is both rare and essential in helping people move mountains.

This brings us to my interest in youth, family, and educators coaching. It stems from a series of experiences that have shaped my worldview and pushed my resourcefulness and skill beyond their limit.

Introduction to the PILLARS Coaching Model

What is a pillar? And why is it a keyword worth exploring?

Like water, young people take the shapes of their containers. They are influenced by their support systems, family dynamics, school philosophies, work environments, friendships and relationships, and social structures. The media, too, works by reshaping their worldviews, reforming their values, resetting their priorities and standards for achieving a better life, and redefining the racing thoughts in their heads in bed every night. Such are the pillars by which young people carry themselves into the world, and as each pillar shakes or breaks, they will seek to compensate for it by the resources available to them elsewhere.

The role of this model is to offer empowering structures as a constructive alternative resource to young people who are struggling with the following:

In order for people to grow past their struggles and fulfill the potentials of their young years, they can build and support their worlds with the physical, human, and immaterial pillars that they sculpt and shape themselves.

The Model

Coaching conversations are a creative, thought provoking, and rational process. This model is built in a way that, while working through the clients’ agendas, it creates a sense of trust and builds faith in their intuition, judgment, and gut. It is a powerful process in which the clients’ drive to change their lives is pushed beyond its previously perceived limits. And that potential energy is at the heart of this pyramid.

At the top of the pyramid is the clients’ vision: the big picture that unfolds as the coaching conversations lead to the tipping point of the their agendas. It encompasses the big and small questions whose answers the clients seek:

The answers to these questions can be reached through the hearts and minds of the clients as they are the two most essential elements that – if strongly bonded – will help them better perceive their reality, create and implement a plan of action, and hold themselves accountable for their self-development.

The Pillars

Pillar #1: The Parachute

The parachute serves as the clients’ support system. What brings them up and keeps them together in times of hardship, distress, and lack of motivation? Throughout the coaching conversations, clients will be able to reflect on the elements that provide support, constructive criticism, and good energy in their lives, and they will be able to actively maintain a healthy and solid connection to each.

The Parachute includes:

• Sense of self
• Family structure and dynamics
• Friends and relationships
• Lifestyle and routines
• Recreational activities
• Work environment
• Social benevolence
• Positive media

Pillar #2: The Palm

The palm consists of the family members with whom the client is socialized. In the process of coaching young people, touching upon family matters can shed light on the various factors that have made them who they are today. Influences can be both structural and symbolic elements of everyday life and include: family communication and dynamics, parenting philosophies, childhoods and other memories, engagement in family decisions, patterns of conflicts and resolutions, daily routines and activities, as well as the principles of trust, compassion, and understanding. Coaching conversations can help families establish positive environments that encourage learning, growing, and loving.

Pillar #3: The Tree

The tree represents the wealth of learning opportunities and resources available to the client. It is the seed, the sunshine, and the fruit. In practice, I will be working on two levels:

1. With individual clients on identifying, accessing, and maximizing the benefit out of their resources. Those can be human, social, educational, and financial capital, as well as their skills and expertise.
2. With schools and educators in the following areas:

♦ Building a Student-Centered Extra-Curricular Program

• Evaluating the impact of the current activity program, if existent.
• Redesigning the program to support and develop student interests, talents, and skills.
• Reframing the students', parents', and teachers' perspective on the value of recess and 'free' time.

♦ Reforming the School Protocol

• Evaluating the positive and negative impacts of the current reward and punishment system on student behavior, self-development, psychological  well-being, classroom dynamic, and positive application.
• Creating the conditions in which students are able to become self-motivated in a constructive and protective learning and living environment.

♦ Reinforcing Student Engagement and Active Learning

• Creating content that is interactive and that attracts attention and stimulates curiosity.
• Treating students as unique individuals and catering to their various learning styles and needs.

Conclusions

1- Coaching the Clients, not Their Matters

Coaching is a drive that moves people to better understand themselves and get creative with the ways they solve problems and take action. With coaching, young people in particular can learn to invest in themselves and build solid stepping stones that push them towards creating fulfilling and successful futures. Not only will they grow with a sense of crystal clear awareness, they will also be able to make mindful choices with the help and support of their resources and pillars.

2- Coaching the Pillars

For young people to be able to maximize their potentials, they need a healthy support system. This model explores the impacts of family and school structures with which young people are socialized. If these pillars are shaky, coaching can offer them the guidance and tools for them to better perform and promote their values.

3- Coaching Tools

Coaching tools are valuable in defining and understanding people’s values, strengths, learning styles, and personality types. This model is open to benefiting from various tools and is especially reflective of the Wheel of Life in the sense that it tries to find balance and create strong bonds between various elements in young people’s lives.

4- Most importantly…

At the heart of this model and of every successful coaching conversation is trust and compassion.

• Sense of self
• Family structure and dynamics
• Friends and relationships
• Lifestyle and routines
• Recreational activities
• Work environment
• Social benevolence
• Positive media

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