I’m repeatedly having a conversation with coaches at the moment who are shifting their practice from conscious to unconscious incompetence. I just re-read that sentence, and sighed. Years of trying and failing to be able to write academically has left it’s shadow. Let me try again.
I keep having the same conversation with coaches who are getting more experienced and comfortable with their coaching. Better, no?
They express a concern that they aren’t doing ‘proper’ coaching anymore… that they aren’t following the process. Or they are talking over 20% of the time. Or they are sometimes telling instead of asking. And that their sessions are (more impactful) going better than ever.
Here are my thoughts.
When we start coaching someone who has never been coached, the process is there as a tool to get them to learn how to think. Think more, think differently, and not outsource their thinking. The questions are there partly to shut us up so that they can do the thinking.
The silence is there to hold them still so that they have the space to think, a space that they would usually fill with other stuff. Mostly filling up time with email and repeating the same behaviours that are causing them to get stuck… and to shut us up.
As the relationship builds, as we, as coaches, become more adept at knowing when we feel compelled to jump in and ‘help’, as they get used to having to do the work while we gently but firmly hold them still, as they mature in their organisations and have to rely more on strategic rather than operational mindsets, the need for all the coaching ‘rules’ to be followed explicitly softens.
When you are driving somewhere for the first time, you rely on your GPS. You set the destination, you watch it, listening to it telling you to turn here, go straight, the destination is on your left. (I don’t know how people got anywhere before the internet. I imagine they just stayed home.)
When you’ve driven the same route a hundred times, you don’t need the GPS. This is not the same as saying you’ve thrown it out of the moving car and are now driving on the footpath and through people’s living rooms. You have internalised the GPS.
And when you have internalised the map, you can look around. You can be in your body, and in your breathing and relationship, instead of watching the map.
For coaches, this is when the internal switch holding them quiet flicks back on, and they find themselves having a coaching conversation instead of ‘doing proper coaching’.
As a supervisor, I see it as more of a ‘pop the good champagne’ development, rather than one that should cause concern or anxiety.
My advice would be to trust your instincts, enjoy the shift from conscious competence to unconscious competence, keep up your professional development, as as always, go to supervision.
If you are interested, I am running a FREE trial group supervision session in Melbourne on Monday the 8th of August, at the VILLAGE@ NAB, from 9-11am. Numbers are limited, contact me at charity@chairtybecker.com if you are interested in attending.
For more info on this event, or for more information on how Becker Consulting Group can support your coaching practice, go to charitybecker.com