Introduction to Prime Space
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Welcome to Prime Space, a Prime Coaching Academy podcast with your host, Elias Kultori.
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Are you ready for a story?
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I have a story to tell you to get started.
Organizing a Live Coaching Event
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A number of years ago...
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I was the co-director of events at ICF New Jersey.
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And we created, my co-director, Lynn Schaber, and I, we created this program, which was a panel of coaches.
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And it was a live event.
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This was way before pandemic.
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It was a live event, a panel of coaches, and we invited the whole chapter to come to this meeting room and...
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It was very well attended, and I don't remember anything that happened in that meeting, except that we had like four or five people in the panel, PCC and MCC coaches, and the room was really full.
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As I said, I don't remember any of the conversation specifically.
Core Competencies in Coaching
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However, I do remember very clearly towards the end of the program, we opened up
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for questions from the audience to the panel.
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And this person, a coach, a member of ICF New Jersey, raised his hand and here's the question that he asked.
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Of all the ICF core competencies, which one is the most important?
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And the panel looked at each other.
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I was facilitating the conversation, by the way.
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But I remember that the panel looked at each other
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And there was a couple of seconds there, what are we going to do with this question?
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And then one of the coaches raised his hand.
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He was an MCC coach, very experienced coach.
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He raised his hand and he said, I'll answer this question.
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And his answer was printed, is printed in my brain.
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I will never forget this answer.
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He said, all ICF core competencies are important.
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But if I had to choose one,
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I would choose presence, maintains presence.
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Because if I'm not truly present, I cannot do anything else.
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And I listened to that and I was like, whoa, aha moment for me, right?
Challenges in Mastering Presence
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And it's interesting because with all of the years that I have of experience being a coach trainer, being a mentor coach, being a coach supervisor, supporting coaches in gaining more skills and growing in their coaching, it's very common that I present the core competencies
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And I can see in the coach's eyes, like, okay, maintains presence, cultivating trust and safety.
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How can I ask more powerful questions?
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What can I do to evoke awareness?
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How can I bring my clients into action?
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What about the coaching agreement?
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And there is a lot of concern about these competencies, which is granted, right?
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We all know that they are very important.
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But we usually kind of overlook these two competencies and maintains presence is one of them.
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And it's fascinating to see as that coach continues to progress and grow and through the years, we all go back to maintains presence and cultivates trust and safety.
Brain's Role in Perception
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It's so fascinating because of that without presence.
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We can't do anything.
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We cannot even be ethical if we are not present.
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Even core competency number one, we can't demonstrate ethics if we are not truly present.
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And the fascinating aspect of that is because it is...
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a competency that we all as human beings have trouble with.
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We all as human beings have trouble in being truly present in the moment.
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And the reason for this is because we have this very active organ that
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in our bodies, inside our heads, that is a very committed organ.
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And that organ, our brains, have two functions.
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One is, of course, make sure that all body functions are working well.
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The brain is the one who is conducting, orchestrating everything that happens in our bodies, which is magnificent.
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And the second thing, the second function of our brain is to think.
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It's to construct.
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It's to absorb all of the information that we have around us and make sense of this world.
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That's the function of the brain.
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And that is wonderful because it protects us, it supports us into growing, it supports us to be alive.
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We are the human beings dominating this planet because of dysfunction of our brain.
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The problem is that usually we identify to these constructs of the brain wholeheartedly.
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And we start believing that everything that our brains are constructing is the absolute truth.
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We begin to identify who we are with the thoughts that is happening in our brains.
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We believe that everything that is happening in our minds is the truth.
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That's the distinction there.
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And that's what causes trouble because sometimes things happen to us decades ago and we made a construct that this is dangerous and then we carry this and it's decades later and we are still carrying that as part of our identity forever and ever.
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The construct that the brain creates can be troubling to us, and it's hard for us to separate.
Mindfulness and Presence
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When we are able to notice that what is happening, the thoughts that are being created by our brains are not necessarily real, are not necessarily the truth, are not necessarily who we are.
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And when we are able to separate that, the thoughts that arise and what is real, we can catch a breath.
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And we can say, oh, maybe that was true a few decades ago.
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Maybe that is not the whole picture.
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Let me be curious about that.
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And you can see how helpful that separation is to the coach in the moment, right?
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Every coach does that.
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It doesn't matter how many decades of experience a coach has.
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If there is a brain, if that coach has a brain, the coach is constructing.
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The client is bombarding us with stories, with ideas, with thoughts, with information.
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Of course, we are going to construct.
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That is part of active listening.
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That is the competency of listens actively.
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It's making sense of what the client is saying and truly being there, participating and understanding what the client is saying.
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However, active listening, if we think that way, it's almost like contradictory to maintain presence because active listening is the construct
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It's the understanding.
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It's the making sense of what the client is saying and maintains presence is really that ability to say, okay, this is just a construct.
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Let me be curious about it.
Mindfulness Misconceptions
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I say this because this distinction between thought and reality is
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is actually a science-based practice and it's the science-based practice of mindfulness
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And I know that when I said the word mindfulness, many of you may already have constructs about the word mindfulness because mindfulness has been used in so many different ways, sometimes even overused word.
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And oftentimes, from mindfulness, we think of meditation.
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From meditation, we think we need to be sitting on the pillow for an hour a day.
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And then we think of Eastern philosophies, even Eastern religions.
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And then we start putting all of these barriers around that.
Mindfulness as a Science-Based Practice
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There are many connections there, but mindfulness, we need to be mindful that mindfulness is a science-based practice researched, and the pioneer of this particular practice is Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn from the University of Massachusetts, who has written extensively about this practice of being conscious of what our brains are constructing,
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and what is truly real.
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And there are, if you read about mindfulness, you're going to see the tremendous benefits of mindfulness in so many areas, all areas virtually, of what we do as human beings.
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Burnout, addiction, suicide, team dynamics, productivity, innovation, bias.
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You can see how much this is part of coaching.
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So this is one of the things that mindfulness...
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in this mindfulness research has done is that mindfulness is not something that we turn on or turn off.
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Okay, now I'm gonna have a conversation, I'm gonna turn mindfulness and I'm going to understand the separation of my thoughts and what is real and all of that.
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Mindfulness, it has to be a daily practice.
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It's a muscle that we need to develop.
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It's a practice that for us to understand and be able to have authority over our thoughts.
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That the thoughts, the constructs come to mind and then we have a choice.
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I'm going to believe in that thought or not.
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I'm going to, I am the one who is in charge, not my brain is in charge of my thoughts, but I am the one who is going to decide where I'm going to place my attention, where I'm going to be mindful.
Mindfulness in Coaching Practice
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And that to me is another proof that coaching is not something that we do, that we turn on and turn off.
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Maybe the practice of coaching is something that we turn on and turn off, but the concept of coaching,
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The exercise of the values and what is at the core of coaching is something that we do on a daily basis.
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It's something that we are committed to live by.
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I say all of this to bring this to your attention.
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There is something about mindfulness and mindfulness practice that can truly be of incredible power and impact in us as coaches.
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At Prime Coaching Academy, we have a whole module talking about mindfulness.
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this practice of mindfulness and the impact of the science-based research into the competency of maintain presence.
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And we talk extensively about this aspect of mindfulness and what we can learn from this particular practice.
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So I would encourage you all to pay attention to this.
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It's not something that we need to sit on the pillow.
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That's not what mindfulness is about.
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Mindfulness is just that distinction between my thoughts and what is real and not be completely identified with the thought and simply go along with the thought.
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So I would encourage you every day, once in a while, take a moment to notice how active your brain is right now.
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Can you detach yourself from that activity, from those thoughts, and be here in the now, in the moment?
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If you do that, that second that you do, that is mindfulness practice.
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And I encourage you also to do some research on mindfulness.
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Start with Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn.
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He has written so many books about the practice of mindfulness, and I...
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I would be curious to hear from you what that comes up for you and what you learn from this practice and the practice of you being present to yourself.
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And one of the things that we say in mindfulness practice is we cannot help the other if we are not able to help ourselves.
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We are not going to be able to support our client to distinguish between the stories that they are creating and what is real if we are not able to see the stories that we create for ourselves and what is real.
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And I'm pretty sure that this will be of insight for you and I wonder how much of that is going to impact your presence, your presence to your clients and your presence to yourself.
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Thank you for listening.
Podcast Conclusion
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And don't forget to subscribe.
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Don't forget to click on those stars there and give us a recommendation and share these podcasts with others.
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And I will see you next week, everybody.