Hello challenge, dear challenge, beautiful challenge, welcome to my life!
Can you say it to your challenge?
I couldn’t.
But next time I will.
I recently experienced a challenge and felt very stressed about it. It was about a session I conducted in BeCoach Academy.
In BeCoach Academy, we conduct demo coaching sessions where I or my co-founder Elena coach one of our students while the other students are present and observing. When the session is over, we open the session to discussion and ask our students what coach behaviours they observed that worked and that could be done differently.
At the end of the session, I wasn’t happy with my performance. I felt I could not set the session goal for a very long time and the questions I asked did not mean a lot to my client, especially in the beginning. I judged myself and I questioned if I was good enough as a teacher.
After the session is over I meditated and I observed my thoughts as separate entities from mine. I saw that there was this thought of “I have to be a perfect example”, “I have to coach perfectly to be able to teach”. And that made me laugh.
There is no perfection in coaching. It happens in the moment and you can only work in the moment what arises in the partnership. You hold the space for the coachee to think and be. What do we do with what arises? Where do we go from here? How does it connect to who you want to become? These are the questions coach and coachee explore together. During this exploration the coach and coachee communicate with each other, understand each other, partner with each other. In this process there can be friction and misunderstanding that adds to the awareness about what matters to the coachee. Anything that happens in the coaching can be of value if explored.
My being challenged and bringing it back to the partnership in the service of the coachee, my finding various ways of working with the client was the teaching. Me coaching was the teaching. My struggle was the teaching. Because my students struggle too, they will be thinking of their performance, they will be distracted, they will find ways to come back and find ways to work differently with their clients. I can now understand them better when they do observed coaching sessions. And I can show this compassion to them. They can see that you can continue the session even though you work over a part and ask questions a few times in different ways.
I realised that we don’t have to be perfect to be teachers. We can be imperfect and still function, still exist in the middle of the challenge. We can be models to anyone that it is possible to go right through the storm and stand there without hiding, it is possible to walk through the storm and be changed when the storm is over.
What is a challenge you are experiencing? This challenge can be a gift.
It can be a gift of confidence
It gives you the opportunity to feel confident about yourself because you can be with the challenge and you can come through it.
It can be a gift you can give to others
You can share your gift with the others by sharing your learning you had through the challenge with others or making others bear witness to you walking through this storm so they can mirror your posture when they go through the storm themselves.
It can be the gift of compassion
Now you know how it feels to go through the challenge. Next time you meet someone who has this challenge or a similar one, you can be softer, kinder, loving and more compassionate. You can have a deeper connection.
You see the gifts a challenge gives us? How will you approach a challenge next time? How will you share your gift with others?
You yourself are the gift to us all.
