The 3 Most Transformative Things Coaching Taught Me (Guest Blog by Sarah Fulton)
Editor's Note:Â Sarah Fulton facilitates the Coaching Certification cohorts for Bridges Coaching. She and her husband Jordan live in upstate NY with their 5 children. Her heart for coaching comes out in every area of her life and she helps others grow to their full potential.
I have a confession... I have always been kind of scared to parent teenagers.
Maybe it’s all the horror stories: “Oh, they’re cute now, but just wait until they’re teenagers!”, “They’ll turn into little monsters that you can’t wait to get rid of...”
Have you heard those too?
I knew God had more for me during this season of parenthood.
He wanted to equip me to navigate it well; I just had no idea I’d find powerful tools for parenting in coach training.
My first coaching course was intended for ministry training. I wanted to learn the most effective way to help people navigate transitions and grow quickly -- and it did that!
I still believe that coaching is the most powerful way to lead people.
But I had no i...
Who On Your List? ~ Bridges Coaching Gifting Guide
You’re a person who wants to give meaningful gifts and we want to help!
For the first time ever Bridges is opening up our entire product line for Christmas gifting - who’s on your list?
Pastors, Small Group Leaders, Adult Children, Co-Workers, Aunts and Uncles, Parents and Grandparents?
If you’re like me sometimes it can be hard to find something meaningful to gift. We don’t want to just get something to check someone off our list, we want to give something with real value.Â
Here’s the line-up Bridges is offering:
Traction: This beautifully inspiring workbook uses the same coaching principles from Bridges Life Coach training. Perfect for anyone interested in forward movement: the graduate, the retiree, your small group leader… pretty much anyone who wants to move forward in their faith.Â
$29
Soul Care Personal Retreat: 2020 has been rough on all of us. Know someone who may be feeling empty, overwhelmed, or hurting? Offer the gift of the Soul Care personal retreat so they can fee...
Even If Someone Asks For Advice, The Best Way To Help Them Grow Is Through Coaching
Telling > Teaching > Training > Trusting
That’s the growth paradigm we unpack in Coach Training.
Seems so simple at first glance. It goes like this:
When a child is young we tell them, “You can’t cross the road!”
Then we teach them, “Don’t cross the road without looking - there may be cars coming!”
Training comes next, where we teach them to look both ways and ask them if there are cars coming.
Then comes the day when we trust them and let them ride their bike to a friend’s house on their own and eventually “confidently” give them car keys, etc.
Easy right?
But what about topics where the stakes are much higher.
How does it work with issues like choosing a mate, career choices, financial investments, or even walking out a life of faith?
Often when parents of adult children have questions or concerns they revert back to telling or teaching.
It’s easy to do.
You have such deep concern about your adult children’s lives that you want to chime in and “save” them from poor choice...
8 Ways Bridges Differs From Other Training Courses
Simply put, our Bridges training courses were designed with you -- the trainee -- in mind.Â
Here are 8 ways Bridges courses differ from many, or even most, training courses.
No. 1 -- At Bridges, we take very seriously how we certify our trainees.
All our cohort courses require individual interaction where we are looking for each person’s grasp of the concepts.
No. 2 -- We give personal attention to the trainee.
All of our training is face-to-face, not voice-to-voice. Not sure what that means? Many, maybe even most, coach training or destiny discovery courses meet the credentialing requirement for voice-to-voice through group phone calls.
No dis, but I have been on some of those phone calls and have not had the greatest experience. While technically it is live training, there were almost always too many people on the call to feel individually connected, AND oftentimes the trainer would ask someone to respond and they were not even there or it took a long time for them to respond. ...
5 Fears All Good Leaders Have
We all have them, or at least we should.
Good leaders want to hit the mark. They want to make a difference. They want to be worthy of following. Good leaders want to help others toward achieving clear goals and helping them get there in the best way possible.
That being said – here are five fears all good leaders have.
- Fear of missing the mark.
- Fear of being status quo.
- Fear of leading people in the wrong direction, or maybe just not the best direction.
- Fear of nebulous targets.
- Fear of a floundering pathway.
These healthy “fears” should fuel good leaders toward good leadership!
Yet most of us have probably had experiences where the goals were not inspiring and action steps were not actually clear. Sometimes, it seems we need to go back to a document or email to remember where we were going or what we supposed to be doing.
Good Coach Training will clear up these concerns and alleviate these fears once and for all!
Before understanding the coaching paradigm, it was common...
7 Ways Coaching Promotes God's Plan For Spiritual Growth
So, what EXACTLY is Coaching?
I get this question a lot! Usually whispered under someone’s breath, but I get it - the reason they aren’t sure is that there are a few definitions out there and it’s not clear what’s what.
The word coaching originates with the concept of a stagecoach or a Cinderella-type coach, which takes people from one place to another.
ALL coaching does that –- takes people from one place to another.
Sports coaches take a team from the beginning of the season to the championship.
Consultants take a company from where they are to where they want to go.
Personal Trainers help people move from their current weight to an ideal one.
The big difference is HOW!
All the above may consider themselves coaches and they truly are taking people from one place or space to something new. The difference between this coaching and the kind we are talking about is that they do so by telling people what to do. They are experts and they are in charge of the “prescription” for the ...
How To Take Your Leadership To The Next Level!
What if taking your care to the next level required less of you but was more effective?!
Is that even possible!
Caring for the young requires a lot from the caregiver.
- They need things done for them.
- They have to be taught about expectations.
- They need to practice to get things right.
It can be downright exhausting, but now that my kids are grown I am so proud of them. They feed themselves, tie their own shoes, read on their own etc. In fact my kids have mastered adulting and are having their own families and making an impact on the world! I’m so proud of them.
When they were young it wasn’t always easy, but as we taught them how to do things they grew and became more and more healthfully independent.
Our church family is like this, too.
When people are young in faith they need to have things done for them, be taught about expectations and they need practice to get things right.
As leaders it can be easy to get stuck thinking the people we are caring for are perpetually...
Top Ten Reasons Coaching Works Better Than Telling
Everyone can use the coaching paradigm! Here’s 10 reasons why:
10) You don’t have to know everything for everyone.
Leaders who tell have to know what’s best for every situation and each person in order to be effective. That’s a lot of stuff to know! (And what if you aren’t right?)
9) People love it when you focus on them.
Active listening is highest form of loving someone. When the focus is on the other person there is a lot less pressure on the coach to solve issues. It is way easier to be curious, trust the Holy Spirit and listen than to have to diagnose and prescribe.
8) Relationship trumps regimen every time.
God designed us to be in relationship with Him and others. When we reduce leadership to telling people what to do, we can easily “cookie cutter” people by categorizing them and offering a rules pathway to results rather than connecting relationally to walk through life with them.
7) Anyone can do it.
Tools needed for coaching are a deep trust that the Holy Spirit is ...
Why Hermits Don’t Need Coach Training (And Five Reasons Other People Love It!)
I’m not really sure if this guy is a hermit or not. In fact when I looked for a photo to use I had to search on the word “Lonely” instead of hermit. (I only got crabs when I searched using “hermit”.)
Next I thought I would make a list of stereo typical things people think about hermits but the only universal one I could come up with is they don’t interact with other people much or at all.
So what’s that got to do with coach training?
Let me back up a bit and give you a few reasons people take coach training.
- They want to enhance their leadership skills and help their people grow.
- They heard coaching is Biblical and they want to check it out.
- They want to be better parents, and help their children take ownership for their lives.
- They are looking for tools to build better relational skills.
- They heard coaching helped others in their marriage and with other family relationships.
When marketing people ask me “Who would benefit from coach training?” I pretty much answer by sa...
Just Tell Me What To Do!
Sometimes I just want someone to TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!
Other times I’m on the receiving end of this statement.
Either way it’s a painful moment…
When someone is at that place they feel things like frustration, disconnection, hurt, despair and maybe most of all confusion. Somewhere inside us all we just want to do it right and to know exactly what that means.
If someone will just make “it” clear then we can do “it”. Then one of two things will happen- we will get the results we wanted or we won’t. If the later happens we can then blame the process and likely the person who gave it to us in the first place. If we do get the results we want we can keep going to that person to tell us what to do.
The New Covenant isn’t like this. In the New Covenant the plan is for us to go to God for ourselves and learn to hear from Him. In some ways I like the Old Covenant better where I could just pay someone to go to God and tell me what to do. The rules seemed more clear. The pathway was more de...