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Why??
13 Plays1 year ago
"Why" is the most important question in coaching - but not as you might think...
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Transcript
Introduction and Gratitude
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Welcome to Prime Space, a Prime Coaching Academy podcast with your host, Elias Scultori.
00:00:15
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Hello, my friends.
00:00:16
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Thank you again for being here and for listening to these episodes.
Abundance of Coaching Topics
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I have to confess, I am having a little trouble here.
00:00:27
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What is next?
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What is the next topic that I'm going to address in these episodes?
00:00:32
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And the reason for that is not for shortage of things to talk about.
00:00:37
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On the contrary, there is so much...
00:00:40
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to talk about here and I'm excited to talk to you about all of these concepts.
00:00:44
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Coaching is amazing and wide and broad and beautiful.
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And here I am geeking out about coaching again.
Shift to Science and Skills in Coaching
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But what my concern is like, what is the sequence?
00:00:58
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So from last episode, what we talk about now is
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And I thought that, you know, we have been talking so much about the mindset, the artistry of coaching, the concept of coaching, what is coaching, like all of these philosophical aspects of coaching.
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And I thought that today I was going to address...
The Critical 'Why' in Coaching
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more of the science, more of the skills and talk a little bit about especially the session agreement, which is always a hot topic when we are in coach training.
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And as I was thinking about that, I was going through, you know, I usually have like a jot down some points that I want to address during when I'm recording these podcasts.
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And I said, before we go there, we need to talk about why.
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Before we go to this session agreement, we need to talk about the question why.
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And I have to say, I'm going to make a bold statement here, but I wanted to pay attention to it.
Challenges and Misconceptions of 'Why'
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I sincerely think the more I coach that the most important question is
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for a coach is why.
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And it's not what you initially may think it is.
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Yes, we in coach training, we all learned that why not only coach training in language in general,
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Why is a tricky question, right?
00:02:34
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Why can you can send the signals of judgment to the other person can be a little bit accusatory, can put the person on a defensive.
00:02:49
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Why in coaching, especially some oftentimes bring the clients to focus on past instead of moving them forward.
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There are all of these concepts.
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But that's not what we're going to talk about here today at all.
Context, Trust, and Delivery in Coaching
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And even in coaching, I am a firm believer that sometimes in the middle of a coaching conversation, the best question to ask is why?
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Because in coaching, it all depends, right?
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It depends on contacts, the client, the level of trust and safety that you have with that particular client.
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It depends on the delivery.
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It depends on so many things.
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But let's talk about that another time.
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The reason why I say the why is the most important question for a coach is because we, when we go into coach training...
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We learn all of these rules of coaching.
00:03:47
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We have the core competencies and then the coach trainer is going to say, okay, these are the competencies you need.
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You know, it's important for us to establish a session agreement.
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And it's important for us to use simplified language and succinct and clear language.
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It's important for us to use open-ended questions.
00:04:10
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At the end of the coaching conversation, it's important for us to support the client into designing their action and their movement forward and accountability
Beyond Rules: Understanding and Practice
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and all of that.
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We learn all of this.
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And then we go and, okay, let me try.
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I'm going to do this.
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So let me have a coaching conversation and I'm going to establish a session agreement.
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And my coach trainer told me and I read on the ICF core competencies that this is how you do it.
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And then we go and we learn how to do it.
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And then we practice and we practice and we practice and we practice over and over again.
00:04:47
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And we are there trying to follow the rules.
00:04:51
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And then what happens?
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we become automatons we are simply following the rules we learn that these are the rules to follow and we simply go and we follow them and this is the tricky part of as a coach trainer myself right because if I'm simply passing rules to my students I'm not teaching them to coach I'm teaching them rules
00:05:22
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So that's why I say the why is the most important question for a coach, for themselves.
00:05:30
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So if we go, and this is my encouragement to all of us, if we go into coach training or if we go and we look at the core competencies,
00:05:38
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And even if we are a very skillful and experienced coach with 30, 40 years of experience,
Integrating and Humanizing Competencies
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right?
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And then we see, you know, these competencies and these markers and these bars and all of these lists of coaching.
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And we simply look at them and we take them at face value and we don't ask why.
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Of course, these rules are going to be artificial, right?
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Of course, we are going to go into our relationship and our coaching sessions, and it's going to fall flat because we are simply doing what we were told.
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And it becomes a Simon Says.
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Simon says that you need to establish a coaching agreement, so you go and establish a coaching agreement.
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Simon says that you need to ask open-ended questions.
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You go and you ask open-ended questions.
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Our job as coach trainers and our job as coaches is to look at these competencies and use the coaching mindset.
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Let's be curious about them.
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Why?
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Why is it that we, the ICF, say that best practices is at the beginning of a coach conversation to establish a session agreement?
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And in establishing a session agreement, it's important to not only know the topic, but support the client into arriving at expected outcome, measures of success, important, all of these things that we learn.
00:07:18
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Why?
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And the reason why why is so important is because the moment that we know what is behind these competencies, they are no longer rules.
00:07:34
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The moment that we understand why, what makes this so important, what makes this effective,
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There must be a reason why all of these coaches from around the world came together and created these competencies and said that these are the points.
00:07:49
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There must be a reason why behind that.
00:07:52
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So if we become curious and we go deeper,
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and we try to experiment with them, and we try to understand what is happening here, what is the essence here, what is the meaning behind these competencies, then these rules are no longer rules for us to follow.
00:08:13
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They become part of who we are.
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They become a part of how we show up.
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Of course I'm going to establish a session agreement.
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Of course I'm going to ask open-ended questions.
00:08:29
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Of course I'm not going to be there with my client and start giving advice.
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Of course I'm going to do this because now I understand what is behind what these lists are telling us to do.
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That is the artistry of coaching.
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That is when we go from automatons and simply saying, doing the things that we learned.
00:08:59
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This is the list.
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You establish a session agreement.
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Okay, question number one, question number two, question number three, question number four.
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And then we go and we ask question number one, two, three, and four to the client.
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And the client is like looking at us with deer in the head like, why in the world are you asking this question?
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It doesn't make sense because in the context, right?
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pre-established questions are not going to work.
00:09:28
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But if I understand what is the meaning behind these competencies, then I'm going to be present to my client and I'm going to bring not question number one, two, and three, but I'm going to bring the essence of what these questions are about, what this competency is about.
00:09:48
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And I'm going to be able to humanly apply the concepts of these competencies to what is truly happening in the moment with my client.
00:10:00
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So it's not that I'm going to abandon the rules, but it's that I am going to have a deeper understanding of them.
Balanced Understanding of Rules
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And I say this for a couple of reasons.
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One, sometimes I see even highly experienced coaches letting go of the competencies because they look at the competencies and like these competencies just at face value, they don't apply to my clients.
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Or sometimes I see new coaches trying to be so specific about marker number one, marker number two, and all of this, and it becomes this tight.
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I am an assessor for the ISF.
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I've been an assessor for the ISF many years now.
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And not uncommon for me to get a recording to assess from the ICF.
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And I look at the recording and I say, okay, check, check, check, check.
00:11:00
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And I check all of the markers for that session.
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But when I take a step back and I listen to it, yes, the questions are there.
00:11:09
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The markers were somewhat achieved, right?
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But it's stale.
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It's not alive.
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It's rehearsed almost.
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There is no humanity and no contact to that.
00:11:28
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That's not what we are aiming for.
00:11:31
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That's not the purpose of these competencies.
00:11:34
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That's not the purpose of these markers.
00:11:37
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So that's why I, before I go into other episodes that I will address some of the science of coaching and some of these concepts, I wanted to have this conversation with you about this crucial aspect of coach training.
00:11:55
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For all of us, I don't care if you're going for your ACC, if you already have your ACC or PCC or MCC.
00:12:03
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I don't care if you have 30, 40, 50, 100 years of experience in coaching.
00:12:10
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Why?
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Why in the moment that we are in front of our clients, why am I asking that question?
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Why am I in silence now?
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Why am I speaking right now?
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Why have I decided to now offer this particular observation?
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Why is it that the ICF is recommending me to do this and this and that?
00:12:42
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The moment that we have this level of exploration within what we do and what coaching truly is, then we become not simply repetition, repetition,
00:12:59
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repeating what assembly line type of coaching, but we are there really truly connecting with our clients and utilizing whatever tools there are necessary for the transformative process that is happening in front of us, in our coaches, in our clients.
Reflection and Closing Remarks
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So just a couple of thoughts for you here.
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Keep that question all the time in your mind as you continue with this reflective practice.
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Why?
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I hope this is helpful and I hope that this is a good reflection for you.
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I will come back next week with more episodes, more food for thoughts related to coaching.
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Please don't forget to subscribe.
00:13:58
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00:14:00
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Send me your comments.
00:14:02
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00:14:04
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Perhaps some questions that you might have.
00:14:06
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We recommend it to other coaches and other people that you know.
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It's wonderful to have you here.
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And I hope you enjoy your day.
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And I will talk to you next time.
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Take care, everybody.