Your Route to Empowerment...

"To change how people think, rather than what people do…"

This blog is dedicated to previous / future clients and all those who are on a quest for deeper meaning, purpose, clarity about their lives / futures. If you are on a quest, you are not alone. We're in a complicated world with shifting priorities, needs, and challenges.

As a result, I'm focusing my professional journey (SEE: Maslow & the 80000 Hour Career Journey...) / brainpower / resources to help. There's still a lot of work to do…

This week, I focus on a way toward empowerment...

In the previous blog, I spoke about The Power of a Coach...this week, I want to speak about one of the most important tools GREAT COACHES have in their tool box to EMPOWER...

Before I go there let me share share...

My own professional journey has led me toward a business focused on coaching. My coaching focus is for individuals and groups whose objective(s) are to achieve clarity around life, career, and business all the while achieving optimum performance.  (SEE: How did I get here?)

Since I've launched my practice, I constantly get queries from people seeking help. The varied requests speak to the depth / breath of need out there. Note: Not all coaching requests are in my wheel-house since I am not a licensed psychologist or counselor and since some of the coaching requests require a psychologist and counseling BEFORE any coaching can take place. 

Here are ACTUAL examples I've received in the last week:

• It's been 2 years and I still have not landed in a job. Need help with my resume / cover letters.
• How to date better.
• To determine my goal in life.
• To know if I want my partner or not.
• Improve the relations with my family.
• Looking for a job and a career.
• Improve my team's performance.
• Help integrate my tenured employees with our more recently hired employees.
• Less talking, impulse regulation (work boundaries), the ability to be still, and feel less need to constantly prove myself to others...
• More personal awareness and professional success...
• My daughter is suffering from anxiety and depression. She says she never feels happy. I want to connect her to a life coach...
• Grow my business.
• Want to be in peak physical shape, excellent BMI ratios, interested in both cardio and muscular fitness...
• Need to wade the treacherous waters of office politics while being under the pressure of...
• Advice on what career I should switch to.
• Should I go back to school or not...
• Assertiveness Boundary setting Healing my emotional past Moving forward in my career...
• Be into my own business ...
• Make use of my training as an anesthesiologist while respecting my sensitivity to stress. Seeking employment in which I don't have to be worried about being fired.
• Achieve more from my life. 
• Do different personally and professional to be feel my life is more enriched and meaningful.
• Develop different strategies to help manage my ADD and optimize my relationship, work performance and personal interactions.
• Find a Job in R&D engineering and mechanical engineering companies.
• Stuck for several years trying to figure out a career path or even a job that I can make a living, be happy, and be great.
• Become a coach.
• Facing many issues currently and want an advice from someone other than my family.
• Been on a career path for almost a decade I know is not aligned with my personal goals and happiness. 
• Considering a major career change - but having trouble making a decision and a leap of faith.
• Achieve success in all my relationships, taking off and blossoming of my business and helping humanity by doing a lot of charitable work.
• Get a sense of direction in life. What am I born to do? What is the purpose God put me on this earth.
• Have a coach take me places to fill out applications and drive my car.
• Greater personal confidence with public speaking (scheduled and impromptu speaking) and better networking ability.
• Be a successful businessman.
• Broader view of life.
• Seek thoughts, advice, and assurance on my career and way forward...while logically challenging the direction I am considering or propose otherwise...

So, if you're the type who picks up patterns...you could break the above requests into the following groups:

• Purpose.
• Social.
• Financial.
• Community.
• Physical.

No accident, these categories - essential building blocks to well-being - were identified in the book Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements, by bestselling authors Tom Rath and Jim Harter, Ph.D..

The Road Toward Empowerment

At the core of all coaching requests is a desire to achieve clarity. So how do coaches help clients get to clarity? 

If you have been coached previously, hopefully your experience / outcome was positive AND what it made it positive was the coach's use of questions. If, on the other hand, you've been coached previously and your experience was less than positive, perhaps it was due to the coaches LACK of questions or rather EFFECTIVE questions.

After the initial conversations to assess fit with a coach, and an assessment or two is completed, an approach I and other coaches use is focused on a practice of Appreciative Inquiry. ​In certain cases what feeds the questions is the coach's use of assessments. (SEE: Assessment Summary - Picking Your Scissors)

Appreciative Inquiry

Defined as positively exploring, collectively imagining, collaboratively designing and committing to a path forward. In other words, "To change how people think, rather than what people do…"

Good questions will give you: information; perspective; and eventually control. At the core of Appreciative Inquiry is eliciting "Power Questions". Power questions will:

• Provoke thought/reflection/quest for deeper meaning.
• Open up minds beyond the current position.
• Stimulate: Curiosity; Inspiration; and Motivation.

As noted, Appreciative Inquiry positively PROPELS a person or a team forward. It has four phases AKA 4-D process:
1. Discovery
2. Dream
3. Design
4. Destiny
Below are example questions:

1. Discovery – appreciating – "the best of what is…"
a) What works well now?
b) What has been a high point?
c) What is it you value most about...?
d) What helps you maximize your performance?
e) What’s the best thing about...?
f) What brings life to you / your organization / team?
g) What brings you / your world / people together?
h) Think back through your career. Locate a moment that was a high point, when you felt most effective and engaged. Describe how you felt, and what made the situation possible.

2. Dream – envisioning – "what could be…"
a) What would you want your life / career / organization to look like in one, three, five years time?
b) What is your ideal vision for your life / career / organization?   
c) What would you do if...?
d) Describe your three concrete wishes for the future of your life / career / organization.

3. Design – co–constructing – "what should be…"
a) What are the elements needed to create the vision?
b) What is the best structure to support the vision?
c) What long and short-term goals will bring the vision to life?  (Are these a real stretch?)
d) What is the bridge between what is the best of what is not (Discovery) and what might be (Dream)?

4. Destiny – sustaining – "what will be…"
a) What can you, your team, do to contribute to the vision?
b) How are you going to deliver the design?

For more examples of Appreciative Inquiry questions, here's a great resource:                                                                               https://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/practice/toolsQuestions.cfm

In conclusion, be open to coaching AND by all means, please DON'T try to self-diagnose! Lean in on a coach.

My best to your quest!

Mark
I believe each of us is a gift. I create trusted relationships where individuals, teams and leaders NAME, CLAIM and AIM their gifts to achieve optimum ​performance.

​Interested to Learn About Yourself or Your Team? Mark is a Certified CliftonStrengths Coach, Facet5 and TotalSDI Facilitator and happy to discuss your situation.

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