Wading Into the Lake of Emotion: a Metaphor for Coaches

Health and Wellness Coaches seek to serve their clients the best they know how. People have been drawn to do this work because they care about people and want to assist them in their journey to living their best life possible. To do this we bring forward our best utilization of coaching competencies, behavioral change theories, evidence-based practices and methodologies. However, as the authors of Co-active Coaching (https://coactive.com/resources/books/coactive-coaching-4th-edition)  remind us “Sometimes the most important change happens at the internal level and may even be necessary before external change can take place.”

To help that internal shift take place coaches must be competent at working with emotions. The perpetual challenge for most coaches whether they have a mental health background or not, is how to do so and ‘stay in the coach lane’ – within their scope of practice as a coach. For fear of straying out of that lane into the fast-lane of counseling and psychotherapy, many coaches shy away from what I will call wading into the lake of emotions. Let me use that phrase to share with you a simple, yet hopefully helpful metaphor.

The Lake of Emotions

Perhaps you’ve experienced wading into a body of water on a nice summer’s day. A calm lake or pond, a shallow and calm part of the ocean, or even a swimming pool. For our metaphor, let’s consider a lake. As you look out in front of you it is easy to see the bottom of the lake, perhaps sandy, perhaps rocky. The water is clear, and you can start to take a few steps into the shallow water confidently.

Further out into the lake the bottom seems to disappear into darkness. You’re not sure how deep it gets.

As your coaching client begins to wade into such a lake of emotion it seems easy enough to wade in with them, to empathize, to reflect the feelings that are being brought forth. Afterall, it is still shallow and clear. You can see and feel the bottom under your bare feet.

As this process of exploring emotion begins, what is happening for you the coach? Are you able to stride forward with your client as they talk more about what they are aware of, about how they feel? When your client expresses those feelings are you able to stay with them as the lake gets deeper? Are you beginning to wonder how deep your client wants and needs to go?

Perhaps you look back to the shore and want to retreat to solid ground, to dry land. You do so by failing to empathize, by asking questions that get your client ‘up in their head’ and away from their feelings. Instead of helping them to connect with the water they are in, and feel and express their feelings, perhaps we begin to backpedal towards the shore and shift the topic to something less wet and emotional.

The thing to remember is that you and your client are standing on the solid bottom of the lake. That lake bottom is the structure and limitations of coaching. You have an agreement that you and your client share that is a coaching agreement – an agreement to wade into the water, and get wet, but not to start swimming in water so deep that it is over your heads.

Keeping our feet on the lake bottom, staying within coaching structure and methodology we can help our clients to get into water that is deeper and learn from their emotions, to help them clarify their feelings, to name those feelings and express them. We can help them achieve insights and utilize them in their lives to help them to be healthy and grow.

Now, your client may keep taking steps into that deeper water, they may want to dive in and start swimming further out into that lake. Perhaps they start going into detail about past experiences like childhood abuse or neglect.   At this point, are you encouraging them to do so? Are you asking questions that seek to resolve old conflicts and wounds of the past? Are you asking them to relive past traumas for the purpose of resolution? Are you wading into that zone where the lake bottom starts to fall away out of your own curiosity?

Perhaps you and your client are starting to realize that for progress to be truly made the client does need to go beyond the depth of coaching. The thing is, coaches are not trained or qualified to ‘swim’ with our clients in water over our heads. To do so, clients need a counselor, a therapist, a trained mental health professional.

So when you get that feeling that the coaching conversation is starting to drift towards more of a clinical conversation, when that lake bottom seems like it’s beyond where you can place your feet safely, you can always step back and lean into the question of resolution versus relevance. Taking that step back first of all occurs in your own mind – am I seeking to help my client towards resolution or is there a way to tie this back to the relevance of what they are working on achieving in coaching?

An Example

Say your client begins to talk about the loss of a dear friend who recently died. You respond with compassion. They go on to talk about how their loss put them in touch with their own mortality and the importance of reaching out to the friends they have and appreciating them. You pick up on the emotion present and reflect it back to your client. Then they also begin talking about what occurred years ago when their father died and how it affected them and their whole family.

This is where you, the coach, can either inquire more about the death of the father, or, perhaps after empathizing about the client’s loss of their father, summarize and ask the client how the client would like to pursue this topic of loss. If the client wants to talk about how their recent loss has put them in touch with their appreciation of their friends and increasing connection with them, we are stepping back onto solid ground for coaching. If we pursue resolving the unfinished emotional business related to their father’s death years ago, we are wading into water out of our scope of practice and getting into to water where we don’t know the potential depth.

Remember, effective coaches work with emotions, they honor their client’s feelings. We can do so safely as long as we stay within the coaching structure and feel the earth beneath our feet.

Learn more about how to coach with emotions and integrate that into your work with your clients. Check out these previous blogs and keep your feet on that lake bottom!

• The Great Utility of Coaching In The Emotional Realm https://realbalancewellness.wordpress.com/2017/06/07/the-great-utility-of-coaching-in-the-emotional-realm
• Process Coaching: Yes, Coaches “Do Emotions” http://wp.me/pUi2y-dL
• Coaching a Client Through to A Mental Health Referral Using The Stages of Change http://wp.me/pUi2y-lp)
• Emotions, Feelings and Healthy Choices: Coaching for Greater Wellness https://realbalancewellness.wordpress.com/2019/09/10/emotions-feelings-and-healthy-choices-coaching-for-greater-wellness/
• Clarity on Scope of Practice: The What, the How and the Why of Lifestyle Improvement https://realbalancewellness.wordpress.com/2022/02/18/clarity-on-scope-of-practice-the-what-the-how-and-the-why-of-lifestyle-improvement/

Michael Arloski, Ph.D., PCC, NBC-HWC is CEO and Founder of Real Balance Global Wellness – a world leader in health and wellness coach training (https://realbalance.com/). Doctor Arloski is a pioneering architect of the field of health and wellness coaching. He and his company have trained thousands of coaches around the world.

Coaching About Fear: A Wellness Coaching Perspective

One of the biggest barriers to our success in life, or with our Wellness Plan is our fears. What holds us back from making the changes in our lives we know we need to make? How do we coach with someone around their fears while staying within our Scope of Practice? (https://nbhwc.org/scope-of-practice/)

Fears and Consequences

A recent joke goes: “The only people who like change are babies with wet diapers!” Change can be scary stuff. “What will happen IF I do this?” Your client may have some very realistic concerns about the potential consequences of them changing their lifestyle behavior. How will this change affect others in their household, workplace, or friendship circles? What will be the reaction of others? Will it be support or push-back? Will our client face rejection from their friends? Perhaps it is their own self-doubt and low self-efficacy that makes them fearful about trying again and failing. This may show up as ambivalence and a lack of follow through on commitments to Action Steps. When we inquire about what is holding the client back, they may answer “I don’t know.”

COACHING IT UP

When co-creating Action Steps to help your client achieve their wellness goals, ask: “So, what do you think will happen if you go ahead with this action step? What sort of reaction can you already anticipate?” Chances are good that your client already has an idea, or some fears, about how this new shift in their behavior might be received. That’s when you can work together to come up with some pre-emptive strategies for dealing with potential reactions to change.

The other thing to consider, especially if you sense a hesitation to fully commit to an Action Step, is to consider what Stage of Behavioral Change your client is really in. Perhaps they need to Contemplate or Prepare more before launching into Action. One of the best ways to increase the probability of success with an Action Step that involves other people is to prepare for that step by your client having a conversation with the parties involved. Getting their buy-in, their support, for the new behavior can be a godsend. Often more time in the Preparation Stage can alleviate fears.

F.E.A.R. False Evidence Appearing Real

Realistic fear is something we need to pay attention to. Self-preservation is a really good thing! There are times, though, when we are responding to the appearance of something instead of what it really is. Are we responding/reacting to the story we have made up inside our heads about something? Do we have enough information about it? Is the information we have reliable? (a great question in the Age of Disinformation) How things look at first is not always the reality we face.

COACHING IT UP

When our clients describe something that they fear, inquire about it. Instead of just accepting their immediate story about something, help them to get curious about it. What do they actually know about it? Are there gaps in their knowledge? Are they filling in the gaps with assumptions?

Whenever I perceive a possible assumption in my client’s talk, I will ask them “So, how do you know that to be true?”. When it is an assumption the client almost always says “Well, I don’t know it to be true, but I’m afraid it is.” Now you can explore their fears around that issue. What are they afraid of? A more gentle way is to request “So, tell me what it is you are concerned about.” It’s easier to admit concern than to admit fear.

Checking Out What If’s and Living with The Blank

The power of our thoughts is astonishing. Changing our thoughts alone, we can induce changes in our physiology, or I should say, our psychophysiology. This can give the stories we tell ourselves amazing power. Our imagination can run wild and catastrophic thinking can follow, and our bodies along for the ride.

Few ways of thinking can get this process going like the question “What if…?” Your client is worried about an interaction they did not fully understand. Perhaps it was a text or email from someone they do business with or is important in their life. “What if they mean this…? Well, that’s bad, but it’s even worse if they mean this…!” “What if” thinking can set off a full-blow stress response.

COACHING IT UP

When you hear the fears that arise from “What if” types of thinking, ask the client how, and when, they can check it out. Can they contact this other person and ask directly what they meant? Do they have more fears about doing that? How long might it be until they have the opportunity to check it out?

The problem is that we tend to “fill in the blank”. What we fill it in with is usually an assumption. We all know all of the comical and sometimes tragic sayings we have about assumptions! When a client is filling in the blank, we can urge them to “check it out”. Until that is possible, they may have to face the fact that they will have to “live with the blank” until they can verify what is really going on.

Kai Zen and the Amygdala Hijack

Your client has come to the conclusion that a very significant change in their lifestyle has to take place. Perhaps they arrived there through their own exploration, your great coaching, the urging of their treatment team, or a combination of all of these. For your client, this change is not just significant, it is HUGE! They find themselves paralyzed by fear. We might say the prospect of such a profound or daunting change has hijacked a part of their brain. In his book One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen WayI (https://www.amazon.com/Small-Step-Change-Your-Life/dp/076118032X), Psychologist Robert Mauer show us how the part of our brain called the Amygdala, where much of the Stress Response (Fight or Flight) is controlled, is fired up when we encounter the prospect of a huge change. How to get around such paralyzation is “the Kai Zen Way”.

COACHING IT UP

Your client is contemplating what to them is a huge and perhaps daunting task. They may have low self-efficacy when it comes to considering this change in their life. Perhaps their track record of failures stares them in the face. The Kai Zen approach is to avoid the so-called Amygdala Hijack by reducing the size of the task ahead. Instead it is a process of using small steps that do not trigger the Stress Response. It may even require a step so small that it appears irrefutably easy. “Oh, sure! I can to that!” Coaches are very familiar with the “baby steps” approach to success. As we read our client’s reaction to what they are considering we may detect this high level of fear and coach to find a way around it. Instead of the client who has been totally sedentary for years whose goal is to increase activity, immediately attempting to become a runner and shoot for completing a marathon, the task, the Action Step, becomes a commitment to walking for 15 minutes 2-3 times a week…or even less. We start at an easy level and build upon it as we begin to establish a new habit.

Fears Beyond Our Scope of Practice

Coaches can certainly work with most fears that people have. What is beyond the Scope of Practice of the coach are phobic fears, obsessive-compulsive fears, unrealistic or delusional fears. If you suspect that what you are encountering with your client is more in this territory, a referral to a mental health practitioner is in order. Unless you are a licensed mental health practitioner you are not qualified to do psychological screening. You may find that your client needs your help to work through the process of considering such a referral and following through to the completion of the referral. See my blog “Coaching a Client Through To A Mental Health Referral Using The Stages of Change” (https://realbalancewellness.wordpress.com/2017/05/02/coaching-a-client-through-to-a-mental-health-referral-using-the-stages-of-change/)

Michael Arloski, Ph.D., PCC, NBC-HWC is CEO and Founder of Real Balance Global Wellness – a world leader in health and wellness coach training (https://realbalance.com/). Doctor Arloski is a pioneering architect of the field of health and wellness coaching. He and his company have trained thousands of coaches around the world.

Coaching Habits That Can Take Away From Your Effectiveness

The longer we do anything the more we fall into habits. Habits are time savers. They help us avoid making our lives more complex than they need to be. They often are shortcuts that help us to experience less stress and get things done, sometimes quite efficiently. Doing certain things by rote can serve us well. Health and wellness coaches are continuously helping their clients to establish healthy habits that work for their growth and wellness. There are also, of course those lifestyle habits that work against our wellness. Driving home we suddenly find ourselves in the line at the drive-through fast food restaurant. We’re mindlessly scrolling through Facebook and have lost track of time. Some habits work for us, some against us.

Habits can also be the opposite of consciousness. It’s lovely to allow our minds to wander while we brush our teeth, wash dishes, etc. Einstein is reputed to have said that “My best ideas come to me while I’m shaving.” Of course we’ve all dropped into our habitual behaviors and missed noticing things. Habits can dull awareness.

Coaching More Consciously

The longer we coach the more likely we are to slip into habit patterns in our coaching. We may tend to overuse certain phrases, become somewhat rigid in our protocols and coaching structure. The opposite is to coach mindfully. When we are centered, grounded and fully aware in the present moment, we do our best coaching. It’s those times when we don’t miss much. We are listening with all of our senses. We are seeing/hearing patterns in what our client is saying.

By listening to recordings (and watching video recordings) of our coaching we can discover many of our habits that we have fallen into. It might take listening with a colleague, a supervisor, or a mentor to discover the habits that have become so ingrained that they have assumed a cloak of invisibility. Just as we say about self-deception, the problem often is we aren’t aware of when we are actually deceiving ourselves. Just as that essentially defines self-deception, our habits fall into both conscious and unconscious categories.

Coaching Habits To Unhook From

Let’s take an overview of a variety of habits that might show up as we expand our awareness of them.

• Our language
Verbal tics – Saying “Okay”, or some equivalent, quickly after one’s client speaks. While a certain amount of this can show we are tracking with our client, the key is how often are we doing this.
Placeholders – Clients tend to use “placeholders”, saying “you know”, drawing out words, and speaking in ways that keep the “talking stick” in their own hand. Are we doing the same thing?
Fingerprint words – A coach may discover that they have pet words that they use over and over again. Often these words are a bit esoteric and can confuse the client if they are not part of that person’s common usage.
Check out my blog entitled – “Refining Coaching Linguistics: Verbal Tics, Placeholders and Fingerprint Words” – (https://realbalancewellness.wordpress.com/2016/02/05/refining-coaching-linguistics-verbal-tics-placeholders-and-fingerprint-words/).
Phrases that take away client autonomy. Eliminate the phrases: “You ought to”, “I want you to”, “You need to” and “You should” from your coaching vocabulary and you will see a marked improvement in the coaching relationship. This is a habit that can especially show up when we are working on Next Steps (setting Action Steps) with our clients.

• Our process
Following formulas or protocols too rigidly. Coaching with so much structure that we follow steps in what we have come to believe is the right order while missing the evidence from our client that this is not working optimally.
Starting every coaching session with a relaxation/visualization. This can be much appreciated when the client needs this but can be completely out of synch with the client who shows up eager to dive right into things.
Always anything? Certainly we are going to maintain a certain coaching structure that can serve our clients in many ways. However, have we fallen into always making certain requests, asking certain questions, etc.? Do we always have to leave our client with an inquiry? Do we always have to brainstorm? Do we always have to ask for take-aways at the end of a session? Each of these examples can be quite valuable and work very well for many of our sessions, but are such steps by the coach congruent with what is going on in the session at a particular moment? Are we in tune, in synch with our client, or do such actions feel disruptive to the flow of the session. Remember the coaching admonition to “dance in the moment”? Have structure but question routines that start to solidify.
Rescuing and reassuring too early. Let’s say our clients is making contact with some real emotion, or perhaps is struggling a little to find the best word. Instead of patiently giving them the space to connect with their feelings, or to do the work they need to do, we step in and either finish their sentence for them or shift away from the arising emotion. We seek to help them feel better by reassuring them about what they are describing and doing it far too early.
The Free Pass. “Oh, that’s okay.” Of all the ways to collude with our clients the quickly issued free pass on accountability has the most habit potential. See my blog on “12 Ways To Avoid Collusion In The Coaching Relationship”. (https://realbalancewellness.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/12-ways-to-avoid-collusion-in-the-coaching-relationship/).
Rushing to the fix. This can become a habit through slipping back into the default mindset (consultant/clinical) we still have from our previous experience, or from what appears to be expediency. Clients come to us facing many barriers to their progress and it can be easy to launch immediately into problem solving. In fact we can even get in the habit of beginning a coaching session by saying “So! What issues do you want to work on today?”

• Our Methodology and Skill Usage
Coaching without a methodology! Our clients want to improve their lives in certain ways. This involves increased awareness and behavioral change. If our coaching is not based on a solid behavioral change methodology it is unlikely to be productive. Respecting our client’s autonomy does not mean we abandon all structure and have sessions where we, out of habit and routine, explore whatever topics our clients bring up in whatever order they arise.
Allowing some Active Listening Skills to be overused, while others are underused. As you review recordings of client sessions notice what skills you tend to reflexively use. Are we saying “sounds like” again and again? Have we fallen into ruts of asking questions and seldom making requests for clarification (tell me more about…)? Are we consciously selecting which skill to use, or have we fallen into too much routine? Are we remembering to use reflection of feeling and acknowledgement enough?
Question stacking. We ask a question, but before the client responds we add a second, and perhaps even a third question. We may be attempting with our second or third question to further clarify what we are asking. We may be engaging in ‘thinking out loud’. Either way it’s confusing to our client. Have faith in your first question. Listen for an answer. If clarification is needed it will be apparent.
Overreliance on questions. Are we relying on questions to the point where we are not using our Active Listening Skills adequately? Enrich your coaching conversations with more reflections, paraphrasing, acknowledgement, and expressions of empathy.

My intent in identifying some of the more common habits we all can fall into is to bring them to awareness and help you to hone your craft as a coach. It helps to haul out what we might call our “coaching whetstone” and sharpen our edge. As I said above, habits dull awareness. They also can have the potential to dull our performance as a coach. Acknowledge your strengths as a coach. Build upon them, then, every once in a while, examine the way you are coaching and see if any of your coaching habits (just like lifestyle habits) are working for you, or against you. Coach on!

Michael Arloski, Ph.D., PCC, NBC-HWC is CEO and Founder of Real Balance Global Wellness – a world leader in health and wellness coach training (https://realbalance.com/). Doctor Arloski is a pioneering architect of the field of health and wellness coaching. He and his company have trained thousands of coaches around the world.

The Growth Mindset vs. The Fixit Mindset in Coaching

“We define mindsets as core assumptions that we have about domains or categories of things that orient us to a particular set of expectations, explanations, and goals. So to put that a little bit more simply, mindsets are ways of viewing reality, that shape, what we expect, what we understand, and what we want to do.” Alia J. Crum, PhD. (https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/mindset-matters-how-embrace-benefits-stress)

As I grew up, I had the mindset that I was not mechanically inclined. Sure, I could do some things, and had served as a third hand for my high school best friend as he fixed up his old Ford with the Thunderbird engine. I, however, thought that my talents lay elsewhere. After college I bought my first ten-speed bicycle and enjoyed riding it immensely. I could change a flat and tighten up my brakes, but still held the belief that I was just not mechanically gifted. Then, in my doctoral program I started riding with a fellow student who had just left his job as a full-time bicycle mechanic. Under his tutelage I slowly opened up to doing more of my own repairs. My mindset started to give way to changing. When I had accomplished the feat of repacking my own wheel bearings, I realized that doing mechanical work was not a “gift” one was blessed with or not, it was a learning process, and the important thing was – I could do it!

The point in telling this story is that our mindsets shape who we are, or rather, who we think we are. And they shape how we coach.

Stanford University Professor and research psychologist, Alia Crum’s work on mindset helps us understand its importance and relevance to our field of wellness coaching.

“Mindsets are core assumptions we make about the things and processes in the world that orient us to a particular set of expectations, explanations, and goals, for example: “aging is an inevitable decline”, “cancer is a catastrophe”, “healthy foods are disgusting and depriving.” The world is complex and uncertain and yet we need to predict what will happen in order to act. Mindsets are our human way of simplifying and understanding a complex reality. The mindsets we adopt are not right/wrong, true/false, but they do have an impact. Mindsets can change our reality by shaping what we pay attention to, how we feel, what we do, and what our bodies prioritize and prepare to do.” (https://www.parulsomani.com/post/mindsets-q-a-with-dr-alia-crum-stanford-psychology)

Check out Dr. Crum’s work on how our mindsets create our own reality and affect our responses to exercise, food and stress. (https://psychology.stanford.edu/people/alia-crum)

The concept of the Growth Mindset vs. the Fixed Mindset was pioneered by a Stanford Colleague of Crum’s: Dr. Carol Dweck. Her work showed us the tremendous effects of the mindset we hold about intelligence. Is your intelligence fixed, or malleable? Here are some thoughts from an excellent blog about Dweck’s work. “Your view of yourself can determine everything. If you believe that your qualities are unchangeable — the fixed mindset — you will want to prove yourself correct over and over rather than learning from your mistakes.” “…as you begin to understand the fixed and growth mindsets, you will see exactly how one thing leads to another— how a belief that your qualities are carved in stone leads to a host of thoughts and actions, and how a belief that your qualities can be cultivated leads to a host of different thoughts and actions, taking you down an entirely different road.” “In fact Dweck takes this stoic approach, writing: “in the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn’t define you. It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from.” “We can still learn from our mistakes. The legendary basketball coach John Wooden says that you’re not a failure until you start to assign blame. That’s when you stop learning from your mistakes – you deny them.”
(https://fs.blog/carol-dweck-mindset/)

Growth Mindset vs. Fixit Mindset in Coaching

Allow me to extrapolate on Dwek’s work and think of the mindset we hold in coaching both towards ourselves and our client. The wellness field is founded on the principles and concepts of people like Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and others who saw people being drawn towards actualizing their potential. This emphasis on personal growth is also foundational to the coaching field. When we work with a client do we see their personal growth as the ultimate goal of coaching, or do we view coaching primarily as problem solving? Growth mindset or ‘fixit’ mindset?

The Growth Mindset in coaching is about possibilities. In coaching we do strategic problems solving, but so much more. We ask “What’s possible? What could be?” We operate on a growth mindset instead of asking “What’s wrong and how can we fix it?”

Remember Alia Crum’s words “mindsets are ways of viewing reality, that shape, what we expect, what we understand, and what we want to do.” When we approach a coaching session as a time when we help our client to work on their ‘issues’, we may be still operating from a clinical mindset, or at least from a consultant mindset, instead of a coaching mindset. Are we always looking for a problem to solve? Many consultants name their business XXXX Solutions, Inc. Are we framing coaching as mostly a solution-finding process? I see books on coaching that hold out the promise of teaching you a method to get to the heart of the problem/issue quickly and effectively. Is that what coaching is all about?

Perhaps our client comes to us to work on managing their stress better. If we take a problem-solving approach to stress management, we are flirting with futility (as well as infinity). With the Fixit Mindset, there will always be a problem to work on, one arising as another is resolved, keeping the client in a continual game of “whack a mole.”

Evoke Transformation

The authors of Co-Active Coaching (a truly foundational book of the field of life coaching) set out four Cornerstones of Coaching to give us a foundation to build on. (https://coactive.com/resources/books/coactive-coaching-4th-edition)
The fourth Cornerstone is EVOKE TRANSFORMATION. We are urged to approach coaching as a growth process, one that results in the person transforming into their best self, living their best life possible. When we coach from a Growth Mindset, we are framing the whole process through that lens. We are coaching for what’s possible, for the actualization of that person’s potential, for what could be.

While we may have a client who simply wants to get more sleep or prevent the onset of a chronic illness. Perhaps a fairly straightforward behavioral process based on sound coaching structure enables them to succeed with just that. Yet, we are serving our client best when we interact with them in such a way that we are honoring their autonomy, holding them to be “naturally creative, resourceful and whole.” (The first of the Cornerstones of Coaching.). Who knows what our client may discover on their coaching journey if we are approaching the coaching process with a whole-person approach and a Growth Mindset.

Part of our challenge is that most of our clients come to us with a Fixit Mindset of their own. They are used to working with consultants that analyze their problem and make recommendations. While that works fine for treatment, it doesn’t really fit what we do in coaching.

Some clients also show up with no discernable ‘problems’. Their health may be just fine, for now. The wise coach will praise the person for their good health and inquire if they have a conscious plan for how to stay that way. So, in effect, prevention itself fits the Growth Mindset better than a Fixit Mindset. As we explain how coaching works and build the coaching alliance, we help our clients to make a mindset shift of their own.

Default to Growth

Mindsets are like default settings. When we have made the shift from a Fixit Mindset to a Growth Mindset it is what we default to, over and over again. Of course, we help our clients to solve problems, to identify and overcome barriers, to do strategic thinking, brainstorming and more. With a Growth Mindset the problems are solved in order for the person to grow, not just as an end unto themselves.

Maslow’s theory of Self-Actualization always maintained that we human beings have a natural, innate drive towards actualizing our potentials. Barriers arise that hold us back and prevent us from moving forward in that actualization process. But when we are able to remove those barriers the growth process takes over and we grow and thrive. Coach with the lofty goal of transformation.

Michael Arloski, Ph.D., PCC, NBC-HWC is CEO and Founder of Real Balance Global Wellness – a world leader in health and wellness coach training (https://realbalance.com/). Doctor Arloski is a pioneering architect of the field of health and wellness coaching. He and his company have trained thousands of coaches around the world.

The Zone of Compassion: More Thoughts on the Heart of Coaching

How do we allow ourselves to enter the zone of compassion, and what holds us back from going there? How do we keep our “coherent sense of self” that Erik Erikson talked about intact when we connect with the ‘other’? (Allow me to use the term ‘other’ to refer to a person or persons, clients, or otherwise throughout this piece.).

I took on the question of Compassionate Detachment in a previous blog “Compassionate Detachment” (https://realbalancewellness.wordpress.com/2022/01/10/compassionate-detachment/) where I shared a portion of Chapter Five from my book Masterful Health & Wellness Coaching: Deepening Your Craft (https://wholeperson.com/store/masterful-health-and-wellness-coaching.html).

“Compassionate detachment is respecting our client’s power enough to not rescue them while extending loving compassion to them in the present moment. Simultaneously compassionate detachment is also respecting ourselves enough to not take the client’s challenges on as our own and realizing that to do so serves good purpose for no one.”

I also explored this subject in my blog “The Quandary of Closeness And Compassion in Coaching” (https://realbalancewellness.wordpress.com/2018/08/03/the-quandary-of-closeness-and-compassion-in-coaching/ ). These blogs looked at Compassion Fatigue, at how we can move from Depletion to Replenishment as a way to recover from such fatigue, the mindset needed for compassion, and more.

The more I consider this subject though, the deeper it is. There is almost a myth in our thinking about compassion that some people buy into – that entering the zone of compassion is not safe. The danger is to feel too much, to connect too completely with the feelings of the other. It is a myth because it does not have to be true.

My Own Compassionate Center

When I am feeling secure in myself, grounded in who I am, more centered in my life, physically and emotionally, I am more able to be compassionate. When I am not, does it feel like I have more to protect? Will connecting with the other appear like a threat to what I have left? So, to access my compassion, to enter that Zone of Compassion, one of the best things I can do is be compassionate with myself and regularly engage in self-care.

One thing that can hold us out of that Zone is the fear that the burden of the other will become too much for me to bear. The Zone of Compassion is joining the other person as an ally, not as a co-owner of the burden that person feels. Compassionate detachment allows us to be there with the other without taking on the burden with them.

Judgment Separates Us

Judgment can be a defense to avoid connecting with the feelings that know compassion. When we judge we instantly separate ourselves from the other person. We put distance between ourselves and them. We may shudder at the thought of being in the other’s predicament, in living a life like theirs, and so we pull back.

In health and wellness coaching it is often easy to spot the self-defeating behaviors that work against our client’s health and wellbeing. We then can quickly move to judge the person’s character, values, etc.

Making a distinction is not the same as making a judgment. We can distinguish between the person and the person’s behavior. We can distinguish between high-risk health behaviors and behaviors that enhance one’s health. The key is what do we do with our awareness in making that distinction. How do we communicate that awareness to the other?

Sharing an Observation

Trust your client to work with what you share with them. When we see someone engaging in some sort of self-defeating behavior, we might simply share what we are observing without judgment. “As you told me about your weekend, I noticed that you mentioned passing up opportunities to connect with others three times?” Such a sentence must be said without a tone that implies judgement. Judgement can slip into our conversation in very sneaky ways! Just share the observation and let your client work with it. If they don’t, refrain from pushing. The time may not be right to explore it. Remember, we are their ally, not their inquisitor.

Empathy as a Conduit of Compassion

Expressing empathic understanding allows the other to feel like they are not alone facing their burden. Empathy conducts connection which allows compassion to be felt. When empathy is transmitted well and received well, it is like there is an infusion of energy into the person receiving empathic understanding. They light up! And often lighten up. Empathy turns on a light that allows a person to often gain a new perspective very different from the one they experienced when they felt all alone in the darkness.

Far too often we reach for the fix-it tool instead of first connecting with the other through empathy. We really want to help, and we try to make things better.

“Because the truth is, rarely, can a response make things better. What makes things better is connection.” Brené Brown

A key to compassion is to imagine it like an image of two people together, standing, or sitting, side by side. If the person expressing compassion projects an image of being above the other, ‘helping’ them, the attempt at compassion will come across like sympathy, not empathy. Compassion is shoulder to shoulder, side by side, heart to heart.

Michael Arloski, Ph.D., PCC, NBC-HWC is CEO and Founder of Real Balance Global Wellness – a world leader in health and wellness coach training (https://realbalance.com/). Doctor Arloski is a pioneering architect of the field of health and wellness coaching. He and his company have trained thousands of coaches around the world.

Top Ten Books for Health & Wellness Coaching

Winter is a great time for coaches to rest up, reflect and recharge their energy. It’s a great time to also work on your ongoing professional development and what better way this time of year than to cozy up with a good book!

Many of you are taking your professional development as a health & wellness coach seriously and are preparing to take the certification exam of the National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching (https://nbhwc.org). It is definitely an exam to be taken seriously! Concerted preparation is needed to pass, even for seasoned health & wellness professionals.

Many people find that being part of an Exam Study Group with other coaches can be extremely valuable. Some great resources are the Exam Study Groups offered by Real Balance Global Wellness (Starting Jan. 9, 2023. (https://realbalance.com/study-group-for-the-national-exam-july-2022). These groups are open to anyone preparing for the exam, not just Real Balance alumni. We have been offering these groups for years and they are led by two of our Real Balance faculty: Annalise Evenson and Michelle Lesperance.

Here are the Top Ten Books that Annalise, Michelle and myself would recommend that you include in your exam preparation as well as for your own professional development as a coach.

BOOK IT!

NUMBER ONE: Masterful Health & Wellness Coaching: Deepening Your Craft. Michael Arloski.
(https://wholeperson.com/store/masterful-health-and-wellness-coaching.html)

I’m unabashedly recommending my own book first for one very practical reason – one of the central purposes in writing this book was to put all of the major behavioral change theories for health & wellness coaches preparing for the national exam in one place and show how they apply to coaching.

Appreciative Inquiry – Chapter Four
Positive Psychology – Chapter Four
Self-Determination Theory – Chapter Six
Social Cognitive Theory – Chapter Six
Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change – Chapter Eight
Motivational Interviewing – Chapter Nine

It is also worth noting that all the content regarding The Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change in Chapter Eight was edited for me by Drs. James and Janice Prochaska. In Chapter Nine, all the content regarding Motivational Interviewing was edited by Dr. Adam Aréchiga, a professor of Psychology at Loma Linda University who has taught M.I. courses for years.

Masterful Health & Wellness Coaching will also teach you about: coaching skills at a high level; how to coach clients with health challenges; how to be directive yet remain within the client-centered heart of coaching. It also explores how to use self-disclosure effectively; how to avoid collusion, and many more topics that are relevant to the national exam.

NUMBER TWO: Changing to Thrive by James and Janice Prochaska. (https://jprochaska.com/books/changing-to-thrive-book/)

A thorough understanding of the Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change is foundational for anyone practicing health & wellness coaching. In Changing to Thrive, the Prochaskas draw upon their countless research studies to show the coach how to work with clients at every one of the six stages of change. Especially helpful is the material on how to work with the person in Pre-Contemplation and help them simply move to Contemplation. While the original work on the Stages of Change model was done primarily in clinical settings, in this book the Prochaskas use examples related to challenges that health and wellness coaching clients frequently face. It is critical that coaches learn how to co-create with their clients, action steps that are ‘stage appropriate’. The book also provides coaches with 12 Principals of Progress that can help guide our clients through the stages of change to healthy lifestyle improvement.

NUMBER THREE: Wellness Coaching for Lasting Lifestyle Change, 2ND Ed. Michael Arloski
(https://wholeperson.com/store/wellness-coaching-for-lasting-lifestyle-change.shtml)

Top of the list before Masterful was published, this was the first major book specifically on health & wellness coaching and set much of the foundation for the field. Used as a primary text by many health & wellness coach training programs/schools, this Amazon review by Jennifer Rogers describes its value well. “I am currently utilizing my coaching skills as I start up a health coaching program in a teaching hospital’s primary care setting. I used Dr. Arloski’s original book as my coaching Bible. As I read through his second edition I am just as impressed. He makes wellness attainable to all of us by his deep understanding of behavioral health. The references to other founders in the wellness field and mentions of helpful resources truly makes this book an invaluable resource. He has done all the hard work for us coaches and passed it on to us in this book. Every time I read a new chapter and apply it in the coaching session, myself and the client benefit. This book is a go to guide for all coaches and for anyone who wants to make sustainable lifestyle changes.”

NUMBER FOUR: Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, Third Edition. Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. (https://www.amazon.com/Motivational-Interviewing-Helping-People-Applications/dp/1609182278/ref=sr_1_1?gclid=Cj0KCQiAtbqdBhDvARIsAGYnXBN6cm3WP-VDrrXLL_mRnCB2ScAkiJP1KpaVEoluwBJxerEHV0zpqaQaAqNKEALw_wcB&hvadid=241591702995&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1014517&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=13138936209095786326&hvtargid=kwd-43267252088&hydadcr=15557_10342300&keywords=motivational+interviewing+3rd+edition&qid=1672421889&sr=8-1)

Motivational Interviewing or “MI” is another foundational resource for health & wellness coaches. This 3rd Edition presents the methodology of MI in a thorough but very understandable manner. As Adam Aréchiga put it, MI and coaching do a lot of the same things, they just call it by different names. While Miller and Rollnick come right out in this text and say the names of all of these skills and methods don’t matter, the wise exam taker would be prudent in learning these terms, especially for all the various types of reflections. I also found many hidden gems in this book that can truly enhance the skills of any coach.

NUMBER FIVE: Coaching Psychology Manual. Moore, M., Jackson, E., & Tschannen-Moran, B.
(https://www.amazon.com/Coaching-Psychology-Lippincott-Williams-Wilkins/dp/0781772621)

Another foundational book of the field, Coaching Psychology Manual is an easy read that is very comprehensive. A great blend of theory, tools and practical application. A must for exam preparation.

NUMBER SIX: Co-Active Coaching: The Proven Framework for Transformative Conversations at Work and in Life, 4th Ed.. Kimsey-House, H., Kimsey-House, K., Sandahl, P., Whitworth,L., Phillips, A. (https://www.amazon.com/Co-Active-Coaching-audiobook/dp/B07LGF815Q/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1ARJZ1WP9DA0Y&keywords=co-active+coaching+4th+edition&qid=1672423077&s=books&sprefix=Co-Active+Coaching%2Cstripbooks%2C212&sr=1-1)

One of, if not the best, books ever on coaching foundational principals and coaching skills. The authors were among the initial pioneers of the life coaching field and the founders of Coaches Training Institute. Deepen your understanding of the skills used across all types of coaching.

NUMBER SEVEN: Becoming a Professional Life Coach: Lessons from the Institute of Life Coach Training. Williams, Patrick and Menendez, Diane. (https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393708363)

Tied with Co-Active Coaching for just about the best book on coaching skills, presence, etc. Becoming a Professional Life Coach provides you with a rich understanding of coaching mindset and methods. Numerous scenarios and dialogues give the coach a real feel for how to implement these principals. Joy and creativity in coaching come through in this book urging coaches to stretch and grow.  3rd edition just out.

NUMBER EIGHT: Your Journey To A Healthier Life: Paths of Wellness Guided Journal, Vol. 1, 2nd Ed. Michael Arloski (https://wholeperson.com/store/your-journey-to-a-healthier-life.shtml)

This journal lays out the whole Wellness Mapping 360 Methodology for lifestyle improvement for clients to use either with a coach, or if they are quite self-directed, on their own. As such it becomes a very useful workbook for the coach to understand coaching methodology and understand how lifestyle behavioral change can happen effectively. Numerous tools included.

NUMBER NINE: How to Be a Health Coach: An Integrative Wellness Approach Third Edition. Meg Jordan. (https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Health-Coach-Integrative/dp/B09XJGVDHQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=16JWJUA2ODES3&keywords=how+to+be+a+health+coach+meg+jordan&qid=1672681245&s=books&sprefix=Meg+Jordan%2Cstripbooks%2C151&sr=1-1)

A great resource from one of the great wellness pioneers, and my comrade in being a founding member of the NBHWC, Meg Jordan. To quote from the book’s own review “The new 3rd edition of this highly valued and popular textbook offers updated behavior change models, theories and essential healthy lifestyle information with the biometric data coaches need to know. Also included: comprehensive, actionable lessons for the key competencies needed for the NBHWC exam; new guidelines for group coaching, a vastly improved index; coaching templates for doing intake sessions, initial meetings, ongoing sessions, motivational interviewing, and for closing the coaching relationship; client agreement forms; and several types of Wellness Wheels for use with clients.”

NUMBER TEN: Professional Coaching Competencies: The Complete Guide. Goldvarg, D., Mathews, P., and Perel, N. (https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Coaching-Competencies-Complete-Guide/dp/1532376820)

A comprehensive, hands-on guide to understanding and applying the International Coaching Federation (https://coachingfederation.org/) professional coaching competencies to your coaching. Michelle found this book very helpful when she studied for the ICF Exam.

Honorable Mentions

There are so many honorable mentions that they deserve a blog post of their own, some to include that Annalise and Michelle recommended would be:

Nurse Coaching: Integrative Approaches for Health and Wellbeing by Dossey, Luck and Schaub.
Atomic Habits by James Clear
One Small Step Can Change Your Life, The Kaizen Way by Robert Maurer.
Thrive by Martin Seligman
Taming Your Gremlin by Rick Carson
Fierce Self-Compassion by Kristen Neff
Tiny Habits by B J Fogg
Coaching Questions: A Coach’s Guide to Powerful Asking Skills by Tony Stoltzfus
Change Your questions Change Your Life by Marilee Adams

Some other wellness favorites:

The Blue Zones, Dan Buettner
The Wellness Workbook, Jack Travis & Regina Ryan
The Open Heart Companion, Maggie Lichtenberg
The Craving Mind, Judson Brewer
Raw Coping Power, Joel Bennet
The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, Tony Schwartz
The Spectrum: A Scientifically Proven Program to Feel Better, Live Longer, Lose Weight, and Gain Health by Dean Ornish

On Buying Books

To save considerable money buying these books, look to book brokers that draw from hundreds of independent used bookstores. I often buy from https://www.abebooks.com

So there you have it! Kick off the New Year with cozy cup of your favorite wellness beverage and a good book!

Michael Arloski, Ph.D., PCC, NBC-HWC is CEO and Founder of Real Balance Global Wellness – a world leader in health and wellness coach training (https://realbalance.com/). Doctor Arloski is a pioneering architect of the field of health and wellness coaching. He and his company have trained thousands of coaches around the world.

More Creative Health & Wellness Coaching

A stimulating conversation with a colleague launched me on an exploration of how we can allow ourselves to be more creative in the coaching work we do. A mark of a more masterful coach that I’ve always observed is their ability to be creative in the moment in ways that enhanced the coaching process. Watching them work, I would see inventive experiments emerge that were not just tricks from an old reliable bag, but fresh adventures for the client to try out. What allows a coach to come up with something new that fits the moment and catalyzes the client’s growth? Creativity has relevance to health and wellness coaching in a number of ways.

Creativity and Wellness

Connecting with our own creative energy can actually enhance our health. An article in Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2018/07/25/heres-how-creativity-actually-improves-your-health/?sh=239e16fd13a6) “Here’s How Creativity Actually Improves Your Health” shows at least five ways how it does. From increasing happiness, reducing dementia, boosting our immune system, and making us smarter to improving our mental health, creativity can play a vital role in our health and wellness.

Creative Self-Expression and Mental Health

“Creative self-expression is taking an idea and bringing it to life. A way to assert one’s creativity is through art, dance, songs, paintings, music, writing, and many other similar arts. The need to express oneself is believed to be important for mental health. When you suppress yourself, you’re harming no one else but your own self.” (https://goodmenproject.com/mental-health-awareness/how-creative-self-expression-may-help-maintain-mental-health/) As we engage in a creative process it helps focus our minds. Instead of the multi-tasking temptations of our over-stimulated world, we experience the flow of the present moment as we focus on only one thing. The above article also describes how creative self-expression can help to overcome trauma and reduce depression. It also addresses how it can help to increase self-esteem.

Years ago, I coached a client who knew that the more he engaged in creative self-expression, the more centered, grounded, and effective he would be in his business as a busy insurance agency owner. My coaching with this very self-directed person was mostly about helping him stay on track and accountable to himself with his pottery, photography, and writing. The more he expressed himself this way, the more confident and self-assured he was in his business.

Creativity Coaching

A special niche in the life coaching world is that of Creativity Coaching. There is even a Creativity Coaching Association to help coaches who work helping their clients to tap more into the creative process. “Creativity Coaches are similar to life coaches but focus more specifically on your creative work. Creativity Coaches help you to develop your artistic and humanistic talents. Creativity Coaches have helped thousands of artists, writers, inventors, entrepreneurs and other creative souls to accomplish their dreams.” (https://www.creativitycoachingassociation.com)

Creativity in the Coaching Process

There are two aspects of creativity in the coaching process. One is helping our clients to reconnect with their own creativity and the other is the use of creativity by the coach.

In a short, but excellent article, (https://coachingfederation.org/blog/creativity-in-coaching) Nour Azhari contends that the ICF definition of coaching – “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential” implies that a key role is played by creativity. She shows how this can help clients break unhealthy patterns of behavior. “With the help of a coach, clients can embrace their creativity and envision a desired future state in which they’ve let go of their unwanted patterns. Consequently, they can start to feel more aligned with achievement. In other words, the unconscious mind viscerally believes that the change has already happened, which leads to the development of more self-serving thoughts and behaviors. This shift in the thought-emotion-behavior triad becomes the foundation for change, providing the motivation to move from where they currently are to where they want to be.”

The author goes on to show how creativity can also help clients to identify alternative strategies for existing problems. I recently did this with a client by simply helping them break out of a stuck pattern of thinking where they felt like their business development was going nowhere. By using metaphor to shift perspective from how far she had to go to be successful to how far she had come already, she was able to see a much more optimistic way forward.

The Creative Coach

Azhari outlines how at least three processes can be used by the coach to enhance client access to their creativity.

1. Establish psychological safety. When we provide those Rogerian Facilitative Conditions of Coaching – empathy, warmth, genuiness and unconditional positive regard – our clients can engage in creative and innovative thinking safe from judgment.
2. Guide clients into a state of mindfulness. I like to define mindfulness simply as “noticing without judgment”. Again, from Azhari’s blog “It has been found to help develop many of the skills that support greater creativity including decreased fear of judgment, better working memory, more empathy and open-mindedness, and the ability to respond instead of reacting impulsively to difficult situations. Guiding your client into mindful states through meditations, relaxation exercises, or visualizations will help them foster the skills they need to enhance their creative abilities.”
3. Tap into our creativity. “In order to master the art of coaching and answer the question, ‘what will be most useful for my client at this particular moment?’, the coach needs to access their own creativity.  A competent coach is flexible and innovative in their approach, responding spontaneously to the client’s needs without any attachments to what ‘generally works.’ In fact, coaches directly inspire their clients to push their boundaries solely by modeling this creative behavior.” (https://coachingfederation.org/blog/creativity-in-coaching)

Connecting With Our Own Creativity – What Helps and Hinders

Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, and The Right to Write, (https://juliacameronlive.com) says that “When a creative artist is fatigued it is often from too much inflow, not too much outflow.” Think about that. When you are hit with so much input from so many sources throughout your day, what do you experience? Anxiety, overwhelm, worry, or perhaps we just call it stress. Not exactly the scenario for the rise of creativity.

When I wrote Wellness Coaching for Lasting Lifestyle Change and Masterful Health & Wellness Coaching: Deepening Your Craft, (https://wholeperson.com/cgi-wholeperson/sb/productsearch.cgi?storeid=*101fd218a90764414afb) what helped the most were the writing retreats that I took. Camping or going to friend’s cabin in the Rocky Mountains allowed me to get away from email, the internet, and the chores of daily life. I would mix in writing with breaks where hiking and trout fishing allowed my mind to not just rest, but to subconsciously continue to work while I meditated through walking and working a fly line back and forth. Contiguous time emersed in the writing process allowed me to conceptualize those books in ways that an hour here or there would never permit. My wife Deborah calls it turning down the volume when we can away from the noise of life. Perhaps getting away from the ‘noise’ allows us to really hear what is going on.

Structure and Creativity

“Structure is your friend. Don’t make it your master.”
Michael Arloski

Reducing input helps free up our creativity, so does having a helpful balance with our use of structure in the coaching process. Structure provides the framework that we build on with our clients. Having a real coaching methodology enables a productive process with a beginning, a middle and an end. Clients take stock of their wellness, get clear about what they want – their Well Life Vision, and create a Wellness Plan to get there. The key is for coaches to uniquely adapt coaching structure in each session, and overall, to our individual client and what is happening in the moment. (Dancing In The Moment: Awareness of The Coaching Process/Interaction https://realbalancewellness.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/dancing-in-the-moment-awareness-of-the-coaching-processinteraction-2) (Dancing In The Moment: Three Keys To Thinking On Your Feet During The Coaching Process https://realbalancewellness.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/dancing-in-the-moment-three-keys-to-thinking-on-your-feet-during-the-coaching-process)
When coaches fall into using scripts, protocols, or formats that they rigidly adhere to creativity is seldom given a chance to emerge. It’s letting go of that attachment to coaching routine that opens new possibilities.

The Creative Stretch

Allowing ourselves to be creative as we coach is rewarding to both us and our clients. It keeps the coaching alive, fresh, and fun. When we decide to let our creativity materialize it comes down to a decision about risk. Is this creative experiment a ‘stretch’ or a ‘risk’? We want to stay in the ‘stretch zone’ and help our clients decide if something is entering their ‘risk zone’. We enter this territory first of all, by asking their permission for what we propose. We may suggest that our client try on a new perspective, play with metaphor, engage in a visualization process, tell a story, or use any number of creative ideas. We stay within our scope of practice as a coach and help our clients to grow.

“Creativity occurs in the moment, and in the moment we are timeless.”

“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.”

Both quotes by Julia Cameron

Michael Arloski, Ph.D., PCC, NBC-HWC is CEO and Founder of Real Balance Global Wellness – a world leader in health and wellness coach training. (www.realbalance.com). Doctor Arloski is a pioneering architect of the field of health and wellness coaching. He and his company have trained thousands of coaches around the world.

The Coaching Conversation: Facilitating Versus Contributing

Coach training often talks about the importance of the ‘Coaching Conversation’. What is it exactly and how is it very different from a Social Conversation?

Coach Patrick Williams (https://drpatwilliams.com) describes the Coaching Conversation as:

Coaching is a conversation where the client gets to say what they have not said, think what they have not thought, and even dream out loud with a committed listener…That is when magic may occur.

Facilitating versus Contributing

As coaching students begin to practice coaching, they sometimes come to a place in the dialogue with their client where they have no idea how to contribute to the conversation. A silence ensues and shortly becomes awkward. The coach may attempt to rescue the conversation by throwing out the best question they can come up with in the moment.

These awkward silences rarely come up in our social conversations. When we sit with a friend at a coffee or tea shop and converse, we both share and contribute to the conversation. A person thinks “How can I add to the conversation? Can I inquire more about what the other person is saying? Do I have a similar experience that I can share? Perhaps this is where I want to share my opinion about this topic.” The conversation develops and hopefully becomes richer as both parties contribute.

Coaching conversations are different. Instead of contributing to the conversation, our job is to facilitate the conversation. We facilitate the client’s own work, their exploration, their clarification, their focus, their decision making, etc. What we contribute is our expertise at facilitation, growth facilitation.

The coach has the dual task of deeply listening to our client and considering how we can facilitate the client’s processing. Sometimes it is about giving evidence to the client that we are, in fact listening and comprehending what the client is saying. Paraphrasing, reflecting and summarizing what the client is saying show that we are listening and helps the client to stay focused or helps them focus better.

The facilitative coach is asking themselves: “How can I help my client to reflect upon their thinking/emotions/behavior? How can I help them to explore more, to question, to examine? How can I infect them with curiosity about themselves?”

The Intention of our Contributions

Even the best facilitative coach does make contributions to the Coaching Conversation but their intention in doing so is to facilitate their client’s work. We are not merely acting as a sounding board who mirrors our client’s speech. We share observations. We suggest tools to use. We offer valid resources. We share self-disclosures in an effective and coach-like way. (Self-Disclosure in Coaching – When Sharing Helps and Hinders https://realbalancewellness.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/self-disclosure-in-coaching-when-sharing-helps-and-hinders/). In other words, there are many times when we coaches are being directive but doing so in a Client-Centered way. (Client-Centered Directiveness: An Oxymoron That Works – Part One https://realbalancewellness.wordpress.com/2016/09/13/client-centered-directiveness-an-oxymoron-that-works-part-one) (Client-Centered Directiveness: An Oxymoron That Works – Part Two: Adapting To Your Client https://realbalancewellness.wordpress.com/2016/10/12/client-centered-directiveness-an-oxymoron-that-works-part-two-adapting-to-your-client )

Reporting Versus Exploring

Another way we facilitate the Coaching Conversation is to help re-direct our client back to the process of exploration when they are, instead, merely reporting what they have been doing. After we listen to our client’s reports about how they managed to carry out their committed action steps from our last appointment the key is to shift to helping them to learn from their experience. When we let our client go on and on detailing everything they ate, every step they took carrying out a commitment it often leads to little insight or progress. Our client knows what they did. They are not exploring new territory, and instead are taking us for another walk around their neighborhood, or worse, a trip down a rabbit hole.

Client: So, I got in my four walks last week.

Coach: Excellent! Tell me about those walks.

Client: Well, I had an errand to run in town, so I drove down Elizabeth Avenue and parked in city parking garage there. Then I walked from there to the post office where I bought some stamps. Then I cut across Midland Park to the bike path and…

Coach: Excuse me. That’s great that you’re combining your errands with getting your steps in. Tell me more about what you saw as you went through the park and along the bike path.

Client: You know, I’m really glad I took that route. It was a beautiful day, not too hot, and there were so many flowers in bloom in the park. It was lovely. And the bike path wasn’t too busy so I could watch some of the ducks swimming about on the creek that the path goes along.

Coach: Wow! So, you not only got your movement in, but you also had such an enjoyable experience doing it. You slowed down and noticed so many things you could enjoy that made getting out on a walk more fun!

Sometimes we have to assert that the Coaching Conversation is a two-way conversation. We don’t want to teach our clients that coaching is only about “You Talk and I Listen”. We actively participate in the conversation (with our facilitative intention). That may, at times, mean respectfully interrupting our clients to nudge them away from becoming mired in details and redirecting them to, in this case, notice some of the benefits of experience that feed intrinsic motivation. We want our client to recall their experience and profit from doing so. What did they notice and experience that was positive and would make doing the behavior again more appealing? That nudge may also take the form of asking them of the relevance what they have been saying has to their goals or wellness plan. To do so the coach has to hold the bigger picture in mind.

Holding The Big Picture

The coach has another simultaneous challenge, that of being a great listener whose coaching presence is focused on the present moment while at the same time holding the perspective of how what is happening in that moment fits into the bigger picture of the coaching process. While we are right here, right now with our client, listening intently to not only what they are saying but how they are saying it, we have to also be putting what is being said in the context of the coaching work we are doing with our client.

In the back of our minds, we are considering: How many sessions have we already had? How does this relate to what the client has told me before? How is it relevant to their Wellness Plan? Is this congruent with what they have told me about their values and what they wanted to accomplish in coaching? Somehow, we combine this broader context with the present moment. Not easy for us to do, but when we are able to do this, it provides structure and perhaps perspective for our client that can be valuable.

The Safe Container

Another distinction between the Coaching Conversation and the Social Conversation is the sanctity of ‘where’ it takes place. Providing the Facilitative Conditions of Coaching (The Facilitative Conditions of Coaching: The Essence of the Coaching Relationship https://realbalancewellness.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/the-facilitative-conditions-of-coaching-the-essence-of-the-coaching-relationship) : empathic understanding, unconditional positive regard and authenticity and genuiness combined with a professional level of confidentiality allows the client to feel safe, heard and understood. Knowing that they are speaking with an ally who has their best interests at heart, trust builds, and the client feels like they can say whatever they need to say and not be judged. This is what makes the Coaching Conversation special.

As we get more comfortable with our role as conversation facilitator, the Coaching Conversation becomes easier, lighter, and often more fun. Knowing that we are not responsible for ‘fixing’ our client, that they are responsible for their own choices in life and lifestyle, we can relax into being that ally who assists our client in accomplishing what they want to accomplish, that ally that, hopefully, assists them in living their best life possible.

Michael Arloski, Ph.D., PCC, NBC-HWC is CEO and Founder of Real Balance Global Wellness – a world leader in health and wellness coach training. (www.realbalance.com). Doctor Arloski is a pioneering architect of the field of health and wellness coaching. He and his company have trained thousands of coaches around the world.

Busting Out of Precontemplation: TTM and Wellness Coaching

James and Janice Prochaska were kind enough to edit the section of my new book Masterful Health & Wellness Coaching: Deepening Your Craft https://wholeperson.com/store/masterful-health-and-wellness-coaching.html that conveys how coaches can make use of their model for behavioral change – The Transtheoretical Model. I am deeply grateful to them for this. While many coaches are familiar with their work on the “Stages of Change” model, there is still much to be learned about how to apply it, especially when we look at the first stage of change – Precontemplation.

Here is a small section of the chapter from my book that addresses this coaching challenge.

The Precontemplation Stage

Imagine that your client has come to you as a referral from their physician or is there because of an employee wellness program incentive that will save them 20% on their health insurance premium. They are not enthused to see you and, despite some serious medical conditions, are not optimistic about coaching helping them to accomplish better health –something they have struggled with for years. They reluctantly tell a story of repeated failure attempts at weight loss, smoking cessation, etc. They would rather not even be talking about trying again to make changes happen. They know that their lifestyle habits are working against their health, but they have no confidence that another wellness program will help, or that they, themselves, would be successful at it.

They have not given up entirely. They do walk their dog every day and have joined friends in participating in a hiking group that gets out every other weekend. They are worried about the effect that secondhand smoke may have on their grandchildren whom they watch two days a week and are seeking more information about using nicotine patches as part of a tobacco cessation program. Yet, they believe that there is no way to change their eating habits and don’t even want to discuss this. They have made many attempts at dieting with the classic ‘yo-yo’ effect of weight loss followed by immediate regaining of those pounds. In TTM terms we could help our client to realize that they are in the Action Stage with becoming more active, and in the Preparation Stage with smoking cessation. When it comes to improving their diet as part of a weight loss effort however, they are entrenched in Pre-contemplation.

This illustration shows us that every client is a person with a complex set of attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and experiences. Sometimes our clients are full of contradictions and paradoxes. Sometimes they are angry, frustrated, sad, dejected, or experiencing any combination of emotions. As we apply TTM theory we must remember that this theory aknowledges this complexity and as we help our clients to become aware of where they are at with the process of change, we must do so with compassion and sensitivity as well. This is especially true with Pre-contemplation.

A common misunderstanding about this stage is the belief that individuals don’t want to change. Rather, in Pre-contemplation individuals do not have the intention to change. “There is a big difference between wanting and intending (Prochaska J. a., 2016).”

“People in precontemplation are often labeled as being uncooperative, resistant, unmotivated, or not ready for behavior change programs. However, our research showed us that it was the health professionals who were not ready for the precontemplators.” (Prochaska J. a., 2016)

What is really going on for the precontemplator? As I heard a speaker at a lifestyle medicine conference put it, “the dream of better health goes to sleep”. The person may have reached a point in life where they stop evaluating how they have been living. Their self-efficacy is usually very low when it comes to changing a particular behavior, or a group of behaviors that might be necessary for improved health and wellbeing. What often gets in the way is what the Prochaskas have identified as ‘The Three D’s’.

The Three D’s of Precontemplation

1. Don’t know how: This is characterized by a lack of awareness or understanding of how the behavior change may benefit the individual or a lack of awareness of how not improving their lifestyle may bring them harm. The person may benefit from some healthy-living education. The Prochaskas make the point that education is not intended to result in Action. It is intended to move someone into Contemplation. The client may also not know what to do to begin a process of change. Their attempts at change in the past may have been lacking any real plan, support, or accountability.

2. Demoralization: Often our clients are stuck in uncertainty about their ability to change or they fear failure. This frequently arises from repeated attempts to change which have resulted in failure. They may identify causal attributions or reasons why they can’t change. (Not having enough willpower, not having the right genes, low self-efficacy based on repeated failure.). Our client is so discouraged that they don’t even want to consider taking on another attempt at change.

3. Defending: Sometimes our clients feel criticized by people in their lives about the way they are living an unhealthy lifestyle. Their tendency may be to defend or protect their current risky behavior. Defensive behavior is in fact most often a way of protecting independence or autonomy. They may do this by:

a. Turning inward: blaming themselves and/or retreating inward. We may see them withdrawing interpersonally and dis-attending (tuning out). They may internalize their blame, which leads to lower self-esteem and yet more demoralization.

b. Turning outward: blaming others, outward circumstances, etc. We may see them projecting the blame onto others. “My family won’t change the way they eat, so, how can I?” They may displace their own frustration by being angrier and more critical of others.

c. Coaches often hear their clients explaining away risky behaviors. They may rationalize why it is okay for them to maintain the status quo. We sometimes hear intellectualizing, using facts and data to justify bad habits. Everyone seems to know some person who lived to a ripe old age and reveled in exhibiting all of the health-risk behaviors they could.

One of the causal attributions that coaches frequently hear from the client in Precontemplation is that they lack motivation. As we saw in Chapter Six, our clients often have plenty of sources of motivation, but have been lacking the “vehicle” – the behavioral change methodology, the structure that coaching can provide – to put that motivation to work. They have usually participated in action-oriented programs that urged them to start making huge changes in their lives quite suddenly.

The beauty of the TTM approach is that it honors where the person is and helps them gradually progress to where action and success can happen. The Prochaskas direct us to provide hope for our clients. Having a behavioral change ally and the support of that coaching alliance combined with a solid behavioral change process can offer so much more hope than simply trying again to change as our client has before.

By honoring client autonomy, we can avoid bringing out defensiveness in our clients. The last thing a client wants to hear is someone telling them that they are living their lives in the wrong way. There is a story behind every behavior. Our client may have any number of Social and Environmental Determinants of Health that make lifestyle improvement very challenging. The key is to help our client frame these factors as just that – challenges ‒ and offer our coaching alliance as a way to co-create strategies to deal with them.

Perhaps another strategy to consider for reducing defensiveness is to move away from the health-risk reduction approach to wellness. Instead focus on building healthy behaviors that the client is attracted to. Help them build on their strengths and engage in experiments that will result in easily achieved success at behavior change. Help them to examine their own belief systems and get in touch with positive sources of motivation.

Masterful Moment

When the more masterful coach hears justifications coming from their client, they are alerted to reflect on how they have been coaching with this person. Have they been saying anything to bring out a defensive posture? Have they been pushing their own agenda of reducing health risks too hard? Are they becoming too directive and not co-creating the conversation with their client?

Creating Forward Momentum – From Precontemplation to Contemplation

In Precontemplation our client most likely considers lifestyle improvement ever so briefly, then dismisses it.  How do we get our client not to jump into swift action, but to merely give change serious consideration, to contemplate it?  TTM offers three primary methods to help coaches tackle this imposing challenge: raising the pros while reducing the cons of change; dramatic relief; and consciousness raising.

The First Principle of Progress: Increasing Pros to Move from Precontemplation to Contemplation

Why would anyone begin to change when the reasons against such an endeavor outweigh the perceived benefits that might result?  How do we do so without a campaign of persuasion (which most likely will not work)?   Have you ever tried to convince someone to be well?  Clearly the pros of changing must outweigh the cons, but how do we help our clients to discover this?  This is where considerable coaching skill is required.

At the start of Precontemplation the cons are high, and the pros are low.  This is how our client perceives themselves and their situation.  As we begin coaching, we start with an open phase of exploration and encourage the client to engage in a process of self-assessment.  By not rushing to set up goals and action steps we avoid pushing the client beyond their stage of readiness.  The more coach and client explore together the more apparent the stage of change emerges for each behavior that is being considered for change.  The Precontemplation Stage shows up in our client’s language.  We hear our client make the case for why they believe they cannot change a particular behavior and/or do not want to.  The list of cons is recited sometimes with a sense of helplessness, sometimes defensively.  This part of the client’s story needs to be met with compassionate understanding, but not collusion.  That is, the coach can empathize but not agree with the client that change is so terribly difficult.  Reframing it as a challenge can be important here.

The coach proceeds in the coaching conversation not with the goal of stimulating the client into action, but simply to get them thinking – to weigh the pros and cons.  We can do so by:

1. Offering education. The Prochaskas do this by providing clients with extensive lists of the benefits of various lifestyle improvements.  The wellness coach may offer other resources or help the client to find more information on their own and make those efforts part of the coaching process.
2. Challenging assumptions. James Prochaska is fond of saying that people too often underestimate the benefits and overestimate the costs of change.  If our client appears to be operating on an assumption about what would be involved in making changes, it’s a perfect time to call out the assumption.  Again, a great line for the coach is “So, how do you know that to be true?”  This can build into a powerful coaching conversation about re-evaluating their pros and cons.
3. Engaging in Decisional Balance.  In the context of coaching, this would be a coaching conversation exploring with our client the pros and cons of change.  We can help our client to list the advantages and benefits of change that they are aware of.  We can help them list the ways in which change may lead to disadvantages or penalties in their life.  The Prochaskas were able to develop brief assessments of six to eight questions to help with this process (Prochaska J. a., 2016).  As they researched decisional balance they came to an important realization.  “Although we didn’t realize it for some time, we were also discovering that making the decision to change one’s behavior for improved health was nowhere near as rational and empirical as we had assumed.  Nor was it nearly as conscious.” (Prochaska J. a., 2016)

 Prochaska, James, and Prochaska, Janice (2016). Changing to Thrive: using the stages of change to overcome the top threats to your health and happiness. Center City, MN: Hazelden Publishing. https://jprochaska.com/books/changing-to-thrive-book/  

Find much more about how to coach someone from Precontemplation to Contemplation in Chapter Eight of Masterful Health & Wellness Coaching: Deepening Your Craft, by Dr. Michael Arloski https://wholeperson.com/store/masterful-health-and-wellness-coaching.html.

Michael Arloski, Ph.D., PCC, NBC-HWC is CEO and Founder of Real Balance Global Wellness – a world leader in health and wellness coach training.  (www.realbalance.com). Doctor Arloski is a pioneering architect of the field of health and wellness coaching. He and his company have trained thousands of coaches around the world.

Health & Wellness Coaching via ZOOM: Tips for Better Sessions

Most coaching has always been done remotely, primarily via telephone. Nowadays coaches and clients hold many, if not most, of their sessions via some form of video conferencing platform. Zoom, GoTo Meeting and many other apps and services allow us to coach clients all around the globe. What fun it can be to have clients on several continents, and perhaps others just across town, yet see them “live”.

Reviewing video session of coaches and their clients in action has led me to some interesting observations. There are definitely some ways in which coaches must be very conscious about how they are conducting such sessions. Here are some tips for how to Zoom it up and still do your best coaching.

Coaching Presence

• Look at the camera

While telephonic coaching sessions allow you to look at your notes, let your eyes wander, etc., you have to treat a video session like an in-person meeting. Would you ask a question with your head turned down and to the side in-person? Remember your client is (or may be) looking to the screen and is naturally seeking eye contact just like in all other visual human interactions. Look at where your camera lens is located on your device, not on the eyes of your client on the screen. The bigger the device – like a desktop computer – the more the gap between the two. Even when your client is looking all over the place, keep your coaching presence as “live and in-person” as possible.

• Be aware of your surroundings.

No, this is not a street safety warning, it’s about the background of your coaching setting. Your client wants a professional coach, not someone coaching in their bedroom with an unkempt bed visible behind the coach. Now, of course coaches long ago discovered that working from home is a great way to hold down costs. If you don’t have a room that is either suitably neutral or professional looking you have a few options. 1) Go with a background screen (lots available online). 2) Use a virtual background. Virtual backgrounds however have some drawbacks visually. If you move a bit, the back of you head may go into that science fiction warp speed look. You’ve all seen this before and know how distracting it can be.  3) Convert an area of your dwelling into a proper looking space for your video sessions.

• Dress the part

Maybe somewhere in between!

Dress like a pro. Dress for success. Business casual will do fine. Ditch the tee-shirt. Why is this important? Like your “office” surroundings, appearances convey a sense of competence and reliability, which combined with compassion are the three building blocks of trust. You want your clients to be able to trust you with personal and sensitive information. They may be struggling with lifestyle improvement goals that are vital to their health, wellbeing, or even their survival. Think of it this way. If you would like to get referrals from medical professionals, would you like them to see you conducting a session that had a “super-informal” look? It is all part of your Coaching Presence.

• Anticipate potential disturbances

Dealing with interruptions isn’t easy. Working at home can easily collide with other members of the household, both two-legged and four-legged. While most clients are quite understanding and forgiving of the occasional interruption, you’ll want to do your best to keep your “office” boundaries in force. When such things become more than rare/occasional, clients can lose faith in your professionalism.

Let There Be Light!

Back-lit coaches lose their visual advantage for conveying coaching presence.  Light needs to be in front of you illuminating your smiling face well. Harsh, glaring lights will wear you out if you have a few sessions back to back. You don’t have to invest in hundreds of dollars of studio lighting; however, you do need to project an image that is quite adequately illuminated. Warm toned lights convey a more relaxed and, well, warm image.
Request the same of your client. Kindly let them know that your ability to see them well can aid you in your coaching. It’s certainly is easier to pick up on visual changes in expression when you can see a person’s face adequately.

To Zoom or Not to Zoom

• The wandering camera

Not all of the responsibility for a great coaching session via video conferencing falls on the shoulders of the coach. A client may be doing sessions with you on their phone’s video as they continually walk all around their apartment, holding the phone at all angles, moving it very frequently. I can remember working with a mentee of mine where we were both fighting vertigo as we attempted to watch such a video recording! As the client continued moving, they kept distracting themselves and not being very present in the coaching conversation. When the coach requested that they continue their coaching via phone only – with no video, the effectiveness of their coaching actually improved. Both client and coach could concentrate better.

The Visual Aspect of Nonverbal Communication

A coach’s listening skills depend upon keen observation. We are constantly scanning all that we hear and see. While we can pick up on all of the nuances of vocal communication over a phone (volume, tone, rapidity, pitch, shifts), the video allows us to augment that with the visual cues we are able to see and observe. While the client’s camera is usually showing us only upper body and facial imagery, this helps our observation tremendously. Here are a couple of tips for working with this.

• Shifts

Observing any shifts in nonverbal behavior is key. Is there a change in expression or posture as the topic shifts?

• Patterns

Are there any repetitive patterns in the visual nonverbal behavior and are such patterns related to anything in the content of the session?

• Congruence

Is there congruence or incongruence between what the client is saying, and the emotion being conveyed nonverbally? For example, a client who smiles again and again when they speak of a painful subject.

• Take your observations and either share them or store them

Sharing observations is a true coaching skill. The key is to share observable behavior, not your interpretations. Simply feed your observation back to your client with a phrase such as “Are you aware that…” or “Are you aware of…”. You can also ask permission to share an observation. Storing observations may be the choice you make depending upon the usefulness of sharing it in the moment or saving it for later. You may want to stow it away in what I call your “listening day pack” and bring it out when you have noticed a repetition or pattern of the same behavior.

Video conferencing platforms have enhanced our ability to both reach more clients (globally!) and have visual advantages that telephonic coaching can’t provide. Let it work to make your coaching better than ever.

Michael Arloski, Ph.D., PCC, NBC-HWC is CEO and Founder of Real Balance Global Wellness – a world leader in health and wellness coach training.  (www.realbalance.com). Doctor Arloski is a pioneering architect of the field of health and wellness coaching. He and his company have trained thousands of coaches around the world.  His latest book is Masterful Health & Wellness Coaching: Deepening Your Craft. https://wholeperson.com/store/masterful-health-and-wellness-coaching.html