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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

...

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...

Let's continue our study on how Jesus regularly used questions. (He also really liked stories - are you seeing that?)

Here are some of the questions Jesus used when He could have just made statements.

Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath day: to do good or to do evil, to save a life or to destroy it?” Luke 6:9

 

They had no money to pay what they owed, but the banker told both of them they did not have to pay him. Which person will love the banker more?” Luke 7:42

A pair of my personal favorites that we talk more about in coach training:

One time when Jesus was praying alone, his followers were with him, and he asked them, “Who do the people say I am?” Luke 9:18

Then Jesus asked, “But who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ from God.” Luke 9:20

Let's take a closer look at this last example for today. Jesus is talking to the man we know as the rich young...

Core Competency #8: Facilitates Client Growth

Coaching is all about choosing a targeted focus, exploring options, and setting SMART goals to move forward, but it's not always a straight line from here to there.

Good coaching goes under the surface and helps the client with more than simply what to do. A masterful coach assists their client by helping look "under the hood" so to speak. Helping someone understand why they are hesitant or worried or not good at counting the cost can be just as helpful as choosing action steps. Probably even more helpful.

If we can come alongside someone as they probe the depths of who they are, we can provide a safe place to nurture what is lacking, heal where there has been hurt, uncover unhealthy thought patterns and more. 

I've seen this in my own life. When I uncovered my tendency to skip the discerning part of the Working  Genius productivity model  I saw how I had invested so much time, and even money, into projects...

Coaching Core Competency #2: Embodies a Coaching Mindset. 

Coaching is not the only way to approach spiritual development, forward movement, or solution generation, but it may be the best one for many situations. And possibly the most overlooked or misunderstood.

Here are a few ways we talk about it at Bridges Coaching.

1) We define the difference between Coaching and Counseling, Mentoring and Consulting. They all have their place. They all can be healthy. And they all are different.

In a nutshell:

• Counseling is more diagnostic and prescriptive, it helps people deal with their past as it affects their present. Coaching may help people to uncover what has been holding them back, but it is a joint process rather than a professional reading the situation and determining how best to move forward.
• Mentoring is more like apprenticing. It is a passing off of a skill or helping another person experience something common for the caregiver.
• Consulting is bringing in an expert for their...

Coaching, as an industry, is not just a loosey-goosey way of conversational growth. There are specific guidelines called "Competencies" that are the foundation for what coaching entails, both in the secular applications and in Christian arenas.

The gold standard for coaching is the International Coaching Federation (ICF), they set the standards for credentialing worldwide. Bridges Coaching has chosen to align with Christian Coaches Network International (CCNI) which extrapolates all the ICF Coaching Core Competencies sharing how they are Biblical-based and used to forward the kingdom.

At Bridges Coaching we believe coaching makes disciples not dependents and in this coaching competencies series, we will dig into why we feel so strongly about that statement.

The first Core Competency is "Demonstrates Ethical Practice". In know, "Sexy" right? But the truth is that without ethical practice, coaching is just loosey-goosey.

Not everyone who says they are a coach...