Evolutionary Coaching

The importance of the Vertical in coaching

Clients seek change in their lives and businesses seek growth through change. True change can only happen once a person is able to access a deeper level of their lives. When we remain on the surface level of life we are floating on the ever changing field of life, rather like bobbing up and down like a cork on the ocean waves. Some people have referred to this as being a “football to circumstances” in which we are kicked around by whatever is occurring in our environment, unable to create a permanent state of stability or clear direction for change.

 

The experience that we inevitably have to live with in this situation is one of frustration, anxiety, fatigue (as we work to little affect), and a feeling of impermanence. At this level it would be true to say that “life is a struggle”.

 

A paradox is often experienced in which he or she has an inner prompting that life doesn’t have to be like that. A businessman or executive, after the negotiations and pressures of the day, may often feel that a better balance between and work and family life could be sought, yet at the same time how does one reach beyond the ever clambering demands of the day to change this experience of life?

 

Traditionally, coaching was thought of as the coach helping a client define a set of goals, discussing the actions required to realise those goals, and meeting for a period of time to encourage and support the execution of those actions. My coaching model emphasises accessing a deeper level of life to empower change. This is what I refer to as “vertical coaching”. It is often said that human beings today only use 5 to 10 per cent of their mental potential, indicating that there is a reservoir of intelligence within that is untapped. This coaching model recognises that every individual is a being of profound and powerful life-force.

 

 

Vertical coaching creates Amazing Change

The model for my coaching involves a process of vision, direction, and evolution. This process in turn leads to transformation change to a state of life comprising of greater understanding, compassion, and consciousness. It is a step change to greater light and awareness.  

 

A central tenet of coaching is the importance of empowering the coachee. The client must not become dependent on his coach. A coach is more of a partner and a sounding board who is there to listen, and through feedback is able to lead the coachee to discover her own strengths and capacity for change. Herein lays the gift that a coach can bring to her clients.

 

Lets se how these three concepts are played out in coaching both for life and executive development:

 

Strategy	Life – Individual	Business Executive
VISION	Finding your life’s purpose Awareness of our purpose, our mission or our destiny	Defining a Future
DIRECTION	Accessing the “Inner Compass” A process of: Life change, enthusiasm, defining what you want, manifestation	§         Enrolling peers and employees into that future §         Employees being able to describe the executives’ vision for the company §         Assigning goals that lay the path to the realisation of the vision
EVOLUTION	Success, Peace , Joy, Light-Hearted	Team alignment, Business growth, Success

 

In both cases coaching is helping access deeper levels of change and thereby directly empowering change to happen according to a desired outcome and direction.

 

Promise = the Future

My business coach, Bob Benninghofen has created a stunning definition for leadership. He says it is “Defining a future, and enrolling others into that future”. He goes on to say that in defining a future you are making a declaration that is in itself “directional” in nature. A declaration, he says, is a promise. It is a promise of what I want to accomplish. The wording of my promise is important because the boldness of the promise does two things: it helps to call me into action, and it also calls me forth to make that future happen. Here lies a subtle distinction.  The promise is a commitment that will bring that future into a reality. It creates the impetuous for action on two levels: individual effort and a response from the world around us.

 

Thereby the power of change rests in the hands of the individual (or company) giving YOU the power of creation. It is the coach’s role to work with strategy to help the direction to get the client to that future.

The strategy is separate from the promise. A strategy describes the associated things that need to occur, or the actual outcomes, to reach the vision. Bob recommends a strategy coaching tool to work backwards from the defined future so list a sequence of things that need to happen, or milestones on the way. You can even plot those milestones on a graph where x is the vertical axis listing milestones and y is the time axis. Imagine seeing a graph with your life’s mission calling you forth!

 

Bob’s web site has a wealth of information. (www.choiceawareness.com).

 

The Inner Compass

I worked more on these concepts in a recent peer coaching session with Sasha Weiss who lives in Israel. We worked on the concept of the “Inner Compass” and how the coach can help her client get in touch with their own inner guide to become ultimately your own pilot in life.

 

By coaching the client on a process of life purpose, one can find that there are certain goals that inspire and motivate more than others, and there are those actions that meet with less resistance or obstacles. I believe that at a deeper level in all of us there are agreements, impressions and memories that surface as thoughts, choices and emotions. How can we know that a course of action is right for us, and not an outcome prompted by a negative experience or memory? Sasha and I considered the concept of the experience of light in the heart, or an experience of being “light-hearted”. This can be described as a feeling of “inner-warmth” or a feeling of correctness. It may also be what Deepak Chopra calls “happiness-without-reason”.

 

Through feedback the coach can encourage the client to sense those actions and goals which rest more with a sense of being in harmony with the inner being. When one’s thoughts and actions overlay the evolutionary impulse of the inner being then one is living in alignment with one’s life purpose.  This brings light to consciousness, or a greater awareness of what brings fulfilment to life, whether in relationships, career, or spiritual practice. Increased awareness brings greater understanding. As we notice a more frictionless flow in our lives by being aware of light in the heart, we may also notice the flow of life is not restricted to ourselves in our small physical bodies, but something much larger. Now we are aware of evolution of the cosmos or the universe. Medicine men and women in indigenous societies consider people who are in alignment with the natural flow of the universe to be “full of power/medicine”. Being “in our medicine” is to bring our power into the world and to use the healing power of Mother Nature.

 

My daughter attends the Michael Hall School in Sussex, which is based on the educational philosophy of Rudolph Steiner. I found this quotation from Rudolph Steiner which very fully expresses the importance of accessing the “vertical” in coaching and creating a step change in life:

 

“Destiny is the result of two factors, which grow together in the life of a human being. One streams outward from the inner depths of the soul; the other comes to meet man from the world around him”.