The Power of SAYING It...

If you are in love with coaching, it is because you are in love with people. You probably have a natural "Barnabas" in you...a "Son of Encouragement." So it's easy to want to come to the aid of the person sitting in front of you especially when their esteem is low, when they feel cut off from their own sense of personal power, when they can't discern their own worth.

In these situations, being who you are, how you are, it's easy to just tell them; to tell them how unique and gifted they are, to tell them they don't have to be less than others in the room, to show them how they matter.

In coaching we are taught about DIRECT COMMUNICATION, those spaces in a coaching relationship where we share what we are seeing in the situation and with the client, making observations and inferences and sometimes asking powerful questions around those.

But there is an opportunity in coaching that's even more powerful than telling, especially when you are working overtime to help your client's perceptions around themselves shift. The opportunity is one of facilitating your client's own "saying" of the truth of who they are.

Hearing that I am worthy of respect, and saying that out loud myself, are two different things. One will bring about transformation faster and with more significance. And if you are Barnabas, then this will matter to you a lot.

Because that person sitting across from you -  that person matters to you, and what they think about themselves matters to you even more.

Get THEM to say it. And then ask them to explore it. And watch the transformation unfold before your eyes.

​