Example I
I wanted to start telling the story of our experience by sharing the feelings I brought into this exercise. A few years ago I underwent an experience of coaching through several sessions that left me this taste in the mouth that the coaching as a tool to develop others is not very effective. I have not taken the time to deeply analyze what went wrong but in general if I had to choose to do it again I think I would choose another methodology to foster change. Its objective in general is to assist in building behavioral skills, but in my opinion to really look for a long lasting change you need to give a deeper understanding to the lack of a certain skills, strongly reflect on the variables linked to it as could be the emotions, values and motivations that conduce you towards a behavior different that that one desired. Personally, I enjoy seeking information that allows me to jump beyond the facts, and staying on the behavioral side of the reality limits my passion for inspiration and insight.
Nevertheless, being aware that this wouldn’t be the best attitude to start this new activity, I decided to update my coaching schema and allow this experience reshape it and add new self fulfilling features to it. Therefore, I prepared my self mentally by thinking on the most behavioral skill I would like to be coached on-writing journals- and we started.
We started with me being the first coachee and Hanna being the coach. Hanna would be coached by Ramy afterwards and finally, he would be coached by me.
We started in a very structured manner, trying to follow the sheet we were given with the questions to follow on how to proceed with the coaching.
I begin by answering the questions that we were given in the guide and Hanna explained me that the questions might be firstly asked by her. I decided to ignored the issue, stopped talking and so we continued.
It is curious that I started this way because I would have though I am a person who prefers ambiguity rather than structure. I recognize that the reason behind it could be a defense, a way of protecting myself from a potential vulnerable situation where my emotions could be exposed. This means that despite my rational effort to go beyond my schema my inner self was not very prepared and therefore, needed to build itself with a prior framework of action.
The session continued for 10 or 15 minutes and beyond the actual content of it , through the process Hanna showed an attitude of listening and care. It was like she was trying to make connections to understand and give me back her impressions of my problem. I still don’t know if this was due to the fact that , being such a responsible and organize person, she was capable of monitor the role she was consciously trying to execute or if, being a mom, she was capable to translate into the setting the care and hold she has developed with her children. Maybe it was a combination of both. What I think matters the most is that she allowed me, and I allo...
