To become a professional coach, we shall understand ourselves in a much more precise way to understand others and support them with what they want to achieve. The main base that offers us this ability is communicating with ourselves correctly and reflecting the outside world through our inside representation. Our input channels from the outer/external world are our senses capturing pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes, smells, and self-talk, to name a few. The visuals including the sight we see and the way others look at us, the auditory that includes the sounds and words we hear and the way people say those words, kinesthetic that expresses our feelings while touching people or surfaces or textures, the olfactory and the smells that are transmitted to us beside the gustatory that gives us the taste of the things we eat, see and effect our tasting sense.
We believe that the map is not the territory, so our internal representation of the outer event isn’t the event itself but our internal reflection of the incident running through our internal process. The event then creates a state combined with psychology referring to our inner emotional state of being sad, happy, confused, positive, etc. hence, we create an attitude that we project as our behavioral perception. While processing the external event coming in through our sensory input channels, it’s filtered because we delete the elements and aspects that we ignored, distort what shifts our experience of sensory and misrepresent the reality, and generalize the information with respect to the number of elements that filter our perception and conclusion.
In order to create a different perspective on our thoughts and expressions or what we would like to share, we shall open up and feel free and comfortable to share whatever we want without any boundaries. It’s the hunger to know and listen to more from our clients. Speaking about anything in a freeway allows us to set a goal on what we want to achieve and focus on what’s needed to reach there. These actions required to achieve our goal must cope with our environment in order to make sure not to harm any other side of our surroundings and keep balance. It’s important to guide our clients on the right track. The activity of reframing our thoughts is the power to ask reasonable, short, and valuable questions to get our clients to think differently and from different perspectives. Hence, when our client(s) struggle from something and can’t enhance their leadership, whether through skills, behavior, or environment, we as coaches shall guide them to the right track to see things from other perspectives. This would drive the client to decide to change a thing that is bothering them or even start something new in their life. Both decisions should be visualized from all corners with all our values and emotions and live the imaginary moment of these steps.
To be more successful in life and in the profession, it’s important to know ourselves and manage our feelings and those of others more than anything else. When it comes to emotions and thinking, it’s the positivity that we should focus on. It will control our decisions and the way we reflect our emotions and our behavior on incidents. Nowadays, we live in a high-tech era and social interaction where people see things and think of them from different perspectives. Enhancing our skills and competencies will help us build a better environment and inspire/influence others through cooperation.
When we think of a better decision, better behavior, and a better-enhanced future, we must observe our current situation 360 degrees providing relevant and to-the-point information. Our input results from our feelings during any certain incident in connection to our values, beliefs, etc., and the feelings of the others at the same place and time. When we evaluate the whole picture and thoughts at once, we shall manage every step taken, and word said or kept in silence to analyze the whole scenario investigating additional or all perspectives that will draw the bottom line of the reflection and ones-controlled feelings, thoughts, and actions.
The ego behavior is a state of mind of being a parent, adult, and/or a child through every discussion or statement we make, referred to as transactional analysis. It’s mainly a one-to-one relationship that helps us understand who we are and how to change our behavior in terms of interactive communication exchange. Hence, it’s not as we frame it like being mean or rude; for example, it’s instead of being along with one of the ego states when speaking as a parent, child, or adult. For example, when we act as a parent, then we are kind of driving a value that contains thoughts, feelings, and behaviors either in a critical way when others are not delivering their communication with values or as nurturing parents who appreciate everything without creating a balance between criticism and appreciation. When we are driven emotionally, we act like a child, either freely raising a voice irrespective of what’s happening at the incident no matter how much parents will push to deliver value, or, as an adopted child where the personality follows the ruled and costumed behavior delivered by the parents. However, when it comes to logic in terms of action, the transaction is framed as an adult.
This is also connected to the previous years of self-development, especially during the early years of age when we architect our life and set the blueprints of it like scenes of a movie to decide on the value, beliefs, religion, education, and style, to name a few. This approach is the so-called “life script,” related to the strokes that we consider in different ways. We expect to be managed and treated as individuals and decide on our life position prejudiced by how we think, feel, act, behave in a situation or another. So, the life we live now is like a game we’re playing through different levels, to which we experience and decide on different rules to win the game at that specific incident.
When we go through different life stages, such as anxiety, fear, happiness, etc., and we feel a need for transformation, then we move through various levels of perception and changes.
In my opinion, the most essential tool that we must work on and enhance continuously is ourselves and coach ourselves for the sake of our clients in the future. The more powerful we are, the more powerful our clients will be transformed; by nature, we should be the best listeners and focused people ever. We trust our guts, and we filter out what we are listening to and download the input that we already know. Besides, we try to understand and look for facts because we cannot accept what we are not waiting to hear. To help our clients, we shall not evolve with a similar experience and listen from within and emphasize similar emotions, rather we must focus much more on the client and see what’s coming next and how can I further emerge and build on what the client is sharing. Its to be comfortable with the unknown and discover what is beyond the situation. The client is the focus of the coach, and that is the golden rule of the play.
