Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Prime Space, a Prime Coaching Academy podcast with your host Elias Scultori Coaches, where does partnership fit into the skill of cultivating trust and safety in our coaching?
Speaker: Coaching is a partnership, right? Does the client have any responsibility in creating an environment of trust? What are we doing as coaches to invite the client to take ownership of trust and safety?
Speaker: Interesting concept, right? You've heard me talk a lot about this vital aspect of cultivating trust and safety with our clients. Trust and safety is, in fact, of one of our core competencies. We are called not simply to be mindful of trust and safety, but to be experts in cultivating trust and safety. It is one of our core skills.
Speaker: And as I said before, that's because we can't have coaching without trust and safety. Actually, we can't have anything without trust and safety.
Speaker: If we don't have trust... Nothing happens in any relationship.
Speaker: I talk about the foundations of this competency in episode 59 of Prime Space of our previous season. The episode is called The Overlooked Competency.
Speaker: In that episode, i focus on the fact that we often get so so concerned, so preoccupied with other coaching skills, questioning, listening, session agreement, that we end up taking for granted our responsibility and the skill we need to develop in building an environment of trust and safety for our clients.
Speaker: So I'd encourage you to go and listen to that episode at some time. I'll put i'll put links to it in this episode's description, okay? However, as I said before, coaching is a partnership.
Speaker: And if so, again, what is the client's role and responsibilities in cultivating trust and safety? What is their part in this facet of coaching?
Speaker: When we talk about the importance of building a safe space, if we pay close attention, it is often framed as being the responsibility of the leader or whoever is in charge at that moment.
Speaker: What am I doing as a leader to create an environment of trust and safety? What are policies and agreements am I putting together to ensure the safety of everyone involved?
Speaker: And rightly so. If we are the professional, we have the responsibility to act and set standards with the intention of putting you know everyone involved at ease.
Speaker: However, we cannot make anyone feel safe. Have you ever thought about that? We can act in a way that invites people or sends them a signal that it is okay to trust.
Speaker: But ultimately, safety is the other person's choice.
Speaker: Have you ever been in a situation where it is absolutely okay for you to feel safe and somehow you don't? Or vice versa, right? You feel safe, everything is fine, but later you realize it was a very dangerous situation.
Speaker: Which means the outside conditions were proper or not for you to feel or not to feel safe, But for whatever reasons, you chose differently.
Speaker: That's why i love going beyond the concept of safe space and entering into the idea of partnering with a client to create a brave space.
Speaker: Have you ever heard of this term, brave space? It's becoming more and more common to talk about brave space. So not simply safe space, but a brave space. This concept of brave space was created by Dr. Brian Arao who, by the way, is an ACC coach, and his partner, Kristi Clemens.
Speaker: A brave space is an intentionally designed environment that encourages honest, challenging dialogue by fostering mutual learning, accountability, and respectful discomfort. I love this definition.
Speaker: Unlike traditional safe spaces focus on comfort, Brave spaces encourage challenge by choice and growth through vulnerability.
Speaker: Whoa. That is so much more aligned with coaching. Brave Space began primarily in the educational setting, but it's now spreading across all arenas. Large organizations are paying top dollars for professionals to come and start training their employees in the concept of Brave Space.
Speaker: And I love that for coaching, especially because Brave Space emphasizes that trust and safety is a responsibility of all involved.
Speaker: It does not only depend on me as a coach, but we are both coach and client creating this environment where we can be transparent, bold, daring,
Speaker: and at the same time, respectful, honoring, caring.
Speaker: That is the proper environment for growth.
Speaker: So here are a couple of characteristics of Brave Space that I think you're going to fall in love with it if you have not heard about it.
Speaker: One of the characteristics that I love is that brave space normalizes discomfort.
Speaker: While safe space usually emphasizes everybody's comfort, everybody needs to be safe, brave space welcomes discomfort.
Speaker: And that's because growth doesn't happen in a comfort zone. So if we are aiming for real growth, real development, new awareness and sustainability of this awareness, we will need to get uncomfortable. The client will need to get uncomfortable.
Speaker: We will need to feel comfortable in being uncomfortable.
Speaker: So first of all, are we as coaches okay with being uncomfortable?
Speaker: How do we respond when coaching gets uncomfortable? Do we rush into making it okay?
Speaker: Or are we okay with being right there on the edge?
Speaker: How is my internal response impacting the client to embrace discomfort so that they can grow?
Speaker: Another characteristic of Brave Space that I love is accountability and ownership.
Speaker: Are we taking too much responsibility for the client's process? Or are we inviting them, allowing them to take ownership of their own lives and situations?
Speaker: to take responsibility for making their own choices. Are we still in the solution-based mode? I have to find answers where I need to create value.
Speaker: And in in the process, we are preventing the client from taking full accountability and and ownership of their lives.
Speaker: Are we inviting them to be brave or out of our own need? Are we occupying the space so much that they don't have room to be brave?
Speaker: How are we inviting our clients to take accountability and ownership?
Speaker: Another point is vulnerability and authenticity. these These are in our core competencies, right? Brave space invites us to be transparent and sincere. That does not mean being rude or disrespectful or unprofessional, but it is a level of openness, masks off, and relating human to human.
Speaker: Our vulnerability and authenticity is an invitation for the client to also be vulnerable and authentic with themselves. It is an invitation for them to also take off their masks and bravely step forward.
Speaker: And one more characteristic I think is so aligned with coaching. Brave space is action-oriented. We are not here simply to explore and feel good.
Speaker: Our clients need to be brave, not only to see things differently, but also to do things differently, to be different. Action takes courage. Action cannot be passive.
Speaker: By bringing our clients into the partnership... To create a brave space, we are also opening the door for movement, change, and transformation.
Speaker: and Isn't this so much more powerful?
Speaker: Yeah, this concept of Brave Space invites us to be brave in our coaching and invites our clients to also be brave in their own exploration and in their own development.
Speaker: That's so much more exciting to me. So that's my invitation for you. To not only cultivate a space of trust and safety, but to be brave ourselves and also to invite our clients to this brave space of coaching.
Speaker: I'm going to finish our episode here today with a poem by Miki Scott Bay Jones. She is Enneagram professional, very much involved with this concept of brave space.
Speaker: And here's how she put it. An invitation to a brave space. Together, will create brave space.
Speaker: because there is no such thing as a safe space. We exist in the real world. We all carry scars and we have all caused wounds.
Speaker: In this space, we seek to turn down the volume of the outside world. We amplify voices that fight to be heard elsewhere.
Speaker: We call each other to more truth and love. We have the right to start somewhere and continue to grow. We have the responsibility to examine what we think we know.
Speaker: We will not be perfect. It will not always be what we wish it to be. But it will be our brave space together.
Speaker: And we will work on it side by side.
Speaker: Thank you for listening and thank you for sharing this episode with other coaches. Please subscribe and let me know what you think ah of what we have discussed here today. I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker: Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time.
