Celebrate With Us!?
Recently I had a dream come true!
Can I share? Bridges Coaching is just about 14 years old now and for at least half that time has employed others besides just me. (Shout out to those of you who have facilitated a peer pair!! I'd list you all but am entirely fearful I would miss someone.) Two colleagues stand out - Sarah Fulton and Michelle Pavasars have been working with me consistently for quite a few years now! Sarah facilitates the Coaching Culture Life Coach Certificaiton cohorts and Michell hosts the Next Level Coaching Training cohorts.
Earlier this year Michelle contacted me and said she was planning a trip East and wondered if we could get togehter. Michelle lives in California - so it is a real treat when I get to see her in person. This trip would be our third time including the day we met in California and one other brief brunch when her family was visiting DC.
Of course I said YES!!
As the time apporached I got a God-idea! What if we invited Sarah, who lives in FLorid...
2 Options Rather Than Coaching
Coaching is actually an alternative word for discipleship. The foundations of coaching call for the person being coached to wisely choose a focus and then make quality action steps to move toward that end. Sounds like using our God-given free will wisely right?
There are two other options for interacting with people.
- We can tell them what to do.
Here are a few things about “telling”. There IS a place for it! When someone is young they need to be told things. You don’t work with a child discussing the values of whether they should make a goal about crossing the road safely - you just tell them, “You have to look both ways before you cross a street.”
When a believer is young, they need to be told/taught things. They need to learn about what it means to walk out your faith, the importance of having a quiet time, how to live in a God-honoring way.
But as they grow, they will come to decisions they NEED to make on their own. If we tell them what to do we are kind of stepping in bet...
The Great Commission IS Coaching?!
Matthew 28:19 is commonly referred to as the Great Commission. You know the verse,
"Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit."
So - what's that got to do with Coaching?
Other versions of that verse say, "Go and make followers of all the people..."
What Disciples and Followers have in common is that they are not stagnant. Followers by definition take steps and the word disciple shares the same root as the word discipline.
Discipleship = forward movement. Being a disciple is not a one-time decision, it's a series of yes's as we connect with God and His pathway for our lives.
It's not easy though. Being a disciple, or follower, means being intentional about discerning and then moving toward whatever God has for us personally. It's hard sometimes.
While forgiveness and salvation are free to us, whatever God wants for our lives moving forward will likely involve a cost. We may need to forg
...Is Coaching What You Think It Is? 4 characteristics of Good Coaching
We've been on a journey delving into the many types of valuable questions to ask each enneagram type. (You can check out our Bridges blog archive for coaching questions for any type.) Good coaching is not simply about choosing the right question there's so much more.
1) Coaching is about the journey represented in the Always Circle*
- There's always going to be stuff.
- God always offers a plan.
- We always make choices.
If we want to be active believers, we need to be growing followers of Jesus. This means there will always be a next step in our journey.
Good Coaching helps us see the next steps.
2) Coaching is NOT about telling people what to do. Life Coaching can have many meanings depending on who you talk to. Bridges Coaching adheres to the definition of coaching set by the International Coaching Federation and Christian Coaches Network International. This type of coaching is built on the pillars of Active Listening and Asking Powerful Questions.
A Good Coach is a thinking...
What Making Disciples Is NOT! And How Coaching Can Help!
Aren't we supposed to just tell people what to do?
There IS a place for telling! Telling comes first. We all tell the children in our lives not to cross the street without looking. We would not let them learn from their own mistakes there. But as they grow we move from telling to teaching.
Telling > Teaching
We teach them how to feed themselves. We teach them to bathe and dress themselves, etc. Eventually, we teach them how to make quality decisions with friendships, future goals, and the like. Then we move to training.
Telling > Teaching > Training
Training looks like explaining how something works and then letting them learn by doing. "Here's how to wash the dishes." And then they get to give it a go. Teaching turns to training in the "doing" phase. "Here's how to manage your money" etc. Then comes trusting.
Telling > Teaching > Training > Trusting
Every parent of an adult child has had to practice this. You launch them off to college or their first home and you wonder if the...
6 Reasons NOT To Consider Coach Training
Humor me for this blog? [Warning: it's tongue-in-cheek.]
Here are 6 reasons you should NOT learn more about the coaching paradigm.
1) You are helping people move forward on their own already. When they come to you, you always know what they should do and you just tell them. (If only they would listen.)
2) You have plenty of time to listen to people's stuff. In fact, you enjoy hearing the same things from people over and over.
3) You love being the "go-to" person. When people need you to make plans for how they should move forward it makes you feel great! Plus, you probably know better than them what they should do with their lives anyway right?
4) You are more educated than they are. It goes without saying that whoever has the most education knows best what should happen next.
5) You are more experienced. They can learn from their own mistakes, or you can tell them how things went for you.
6) You feel responsible for their well-being. You want to make things better for the peopl...
It's Not Just About Action Steps (but coaching helps with those too)
Good Coaching is about much more than simply achieving SMART goals by making successful Action Steps. It's about transformation.
In this final blog trending with StoryBrand, let's dig into the concept of taking someone from their natural self to their supernatural self. Donald Miller uses the word "transformation". For us that could mean taking someone from feeling stuck to forward movement, or from being lost to having focus.
Helping people to recognize the mindsets that have held them back can change everything! (Watch for an upcoming series on coaching each enneagram number!)
If we can "see" what has been holding us back we can begin to remove that mental obstacle and move forward. And likely, whatever has been holding us back has affected more than just the one area of our lives. Freedom affects every area of our life.
Let me give a personal, and kind of vulnerable, example.
Each of us has an internal DNA just like we have an external one. Our external DNA gives us our hair ...
The Many Faces Of Failure...
What first comes to your mind when you think of failure?
Here are some initial ideas: unkind words, poor behavior, missed deadlines, and loss of trust.
Perhaps some lesser-recognized failures could be: unreceived forgiveness, unrealized potential, procrastination, and stagnation.
My heart is heavy just thinking of categories. There is so much pain and loss in this world.
But take heart friends, there is NOTHING God cannot redeem. He truly wants to meet us right where we are and walk with us toward our best next step.
We are in good company. Let's take a look at a few Biblical characters who walked through some difficult situations, failures even, and moved on to redeemed situations.
Moses took matters into his own hands and tried to become who God wanted him to be his own way. He was too early and he was out of line. He even murdered a man. And yet, he allowed God to process his heart and he was still asked to be the deliverer God had planned for him to be - in God's timing and...
It's All About The Timing Orientation (N & S in Myers-Briggs)
People are so different! God designed us that way :) Learning to discern how we were designed and how others differ can be one of the most valuable insights we can have personally. (You can learn more in our Destiny by Design course!)
Our focus today is the N and S orientation in Myers-Briggs. What does the N and S stand for? I'm so glad you asked.
N = Intuitive (since they already used "I" for Introversion they chose "N" for Intuitive.)
S = Sensor
Here are the definitions.
Intuitives are future-oriented. They think about what could be. Sometimes they live in a world of what could be, or even what should be. They are often dreaming or thinking of how things should change to move things toward a preferred norm. Intuitives may have a more difficult time living in the present, being content with things as they are, or sometimes even celebrating incremental change. They usually live in the future more than the present and want to implement change through innovation.
Sensors are pr...
4 Reasons I Don't Really Like Coaching...
Bet you didn't ever think I would have a list of reasons titled "Why I don't really like coaching?"
(And why God has better plans than me.)
Here is the honest truth.
1) I would rather have someone tell me what to do. It's hard work having to discern on my own. It would just be easier to have a go-to person who would talk out loud to me and give me step-by-step instructions.
(Turns out God wants a personal relationship with me and for me to have a growing adult relationship with HIm.)
2) I want to be that person for others all the time. I want to tell them what I think. I often feel people are being too risky, or taking too long to move forward, or not counting all the costs... a dozen things. It would be way easier to just share my brilliance than to help them discern the next steps God is guiding them toward.
(But what if? What if their risk tolerance is higher than mine because God made them that way and He IS guiding them toward that choice? What if I am being impatient with t...