A river runs through it

There was once a time and a place, and in that time and in that place, a young woman approached her older, craggier mentor. If it helps, let’s imagine the mentor lived in a cave on a mountainside. He may even have had a white beard.

“I don’t know what to do,” the woman immediately blurted out. “I like the idea of working as a coach but I don’t think I’m good enough.” There could well have been a tear or two in the corner of her eyes.

The mentor had hoped she was bringing news of the outside world and maybe some coffee to share, but hey ho, mentoring can have its downsides too.

“What makes you think you’re not good enough?”, tried the mentor cautiously.

It was as if a dam had broken. Out poured words like ‘imposter’ and ‘incompetence’ and ‘inexperience’ and a whole host of other perceived gaps on her side before she finally finished with, “And it carries so much responsibility to the client. They’ve put all their trust in me. What if I let them down?”

The woman swatted away a fly in despair and sat down in a confused heap. There was a moment of silence, and then she added quietly, “And I want to make sure I’m doing the right thing. I’m not worried about how tough it’ll be or all the effort I’ll have to put in, but this is going to take time and energy away from my beautiful children. It’s got to be worth that sacrifice.”

The mentor looked from the woman to the mountains all around his retreat, and he tried his utmost not to sigh. He wondered yet again at how it’s usually the best who wrestle with such lack of self-belief, while the less aware sail straight into things without a glance to either side. He brought his focus back to the here and now. “What do you need from me?”, he asked softly.

And so the two had a conversation as challenging as any in coaching. For coaching is indeed challenging. It shakes us to the core of our beliefs and values and assumptions. It rattles our cage of expectations and plans and identities. And as coaches, in our anticipated journey from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence, we celebrate the intervening stages of conscious incompetence and competence, while fully acknowledging that unconscious competence is usually but a goal somewhere over there on the horizon. To dance in the moment as coaching requires, we need to be always mindful of how the flow and learning are two-way. As such they are rarely if ever unconscious.

The woman and her mentor unpicked her doubts and her fears and where they came from. And they also discussed her motivation for being a coach to see where it fit going forward. For doing something always means we’re not doing something else. Working out what we’re saying no to helps us understand the value of what we’re saying yes to. This may sound simple and self-evident, yet the mentor often found the self-evident to be anything other than simple. 

Limiting beliefs largely determine our attitude to change and our readiness for it. In the REALM model of purpose and self-awareness, the Loose element – as in limber and ready – explores these and what it will take to ‘kiss ourselves’ over the edge from the known into the unknown of a new way forward.

In order to change the world, you have to get your head together first

Jimi Hendrix

And did the young woman live happily ever after? We don’t know and we can’t say. But we can say she proved to be a damn good coach, because she already was.

As for the mentor, if you’re concerned, he struggled on in his search for a good coffee in the Highlands.

 

Eid Mubarak.

 Julian

I help people lead their own way forward

Learn more at https://orangecairns.com