CIP being Fully Present for Your Clients

>> Hello again. We previously learned that co-creating a strong coaching relationship is critical for establishing trust and rapport to create a safe environment for your clients. This is the foundation for them to do the important and emotional change work that they've partnered with you to do. Now it's time to take a look at some of the skills and processes involved in fully being there for your clients once that work begins. Much of this involves effective communication which is the ability to focus completely on what a client is and isn't saying. This will help you to understand the meaning of what's said in the context of the clients' desires and to support the clients' self-expression. In this lecture, we'll focus on effective communication skills for when you're on the receiving end of the dialogue. In other words, how to be a great listener. In the first few sessions, you'll want to spend a lot of time listening to and getting to know your client. It's important to take time to really get to know all about this individual and his or her history, desires, challenges, and needs. Your priory role during this time is to listen but this is not a pass of task. Truly getting to know your client involves fully being there for them and giving them your complete attention. To understand how to do this, we'll explore three major competencies, active listening, building presence, and using mindfulness as a tool. Let's get started. As you learned in your Health Coach Training Program, active listening is one of the most if not the most important tools to use as a coach. In the coaching relationship, the coach is there to attend exclusively to the client and the clients' agenda, not to the coaches' agenda. This involves being totally engaged and tuned into what the client is saying. Now I'm going to be honest, this is often easier said than done. As a Health Coach, once you learn a significant amount about health, nutrition, exercise, and what it takes to achieve a healthy lifestyle, you become naturally enthusiastic about sharing what you know. Many of you are coming out of your Health Coach Training Program and you're armed with all of these tools, and you're so excited to share them and educate people. But it's almost like you have to park that aside for a while to hear the clients' concerns, goals, values, and beliefs about what is and is not possible. Your own inner voice may be running a dialogue in your head, so you might find yourself thinking something like, "Are you serious? This person is really not on the right path" or "If she could just realize she needs to stop eating sugar, she wouldn't have this problem." When this voice comes up, you need to ask yourself, "How do I put aside my agenda, what I want for this client and continue to listen to what they want, even when I know for a fact, that's not the best route?" That's hard to do. But this is the conundrum that Health Coaches face in the beginning, and in fact, it will probably continue to come up for you throughout your coaching career. It's almost as if you need a little faith that through active listening, the first step, you're building the trust and rapport that will later allow down the road to switch hats every now and then, to move from coach to consultant and back again. It's not until then that you're client will amenable to truly hearing your expert knowledge. We covered active listening quite a bit in the Health Coach Training Program. But let's do a quick refresher, paying mind to the key points that the NBHWC wants you to be most familiar with. Active listening involves being mindful and attentive, keeping an open mind, demonstrating curiosity without making any assumptions, pacing your communication to suit the client's needs, and what I mean by this is for example if you notice your client's breathing is fast and shallow or your client seems agitated or overwhelmed, you'll want to slow down your coaching pace. Also listening to what's being said and what's not being said, paying attention to and addressing nonverbal cues, and using silence appropriately. Let's focus in on these last few points since they are more nuanced. Active listening goes beyond just listening to the words the client is saying. As a coach, you must also pay close attention to what is not being said, the nonverbal cues. This includes expression, tone, body language, emotions, energy, and relevant behaviors. So this involves paying attention to things like gestures, sighs, frowns and grimaces, smiles and laughter, posture. Like for example do they suddenly lean in, pull away, cross their arms, and also energy. Can you feel into your client's energy? You want to get a sense of the energetic space surrounding the client and the dialogue. And with practice, you can build your intuition and sense the energy in the interest psychic spaces between coach and client. And with practice, this can even be done over the phone. But starting out, these things can be especially hard to do on phone coaching sessions. In these situations, it's helpful to check in regularly and ask, "How are you feeling right now?" or "What's your body feeling or doing at this moment?" As you grow more aware of nonverbal cues, you'll have the ability to read into some of the more hidden material that your client may be holding on to. As it unfolds, encourage your client to have self-compassion. Next, let's talk about what it means to build presence. This may be a new concept for you as it relates to coaching. What does presence mean to you? To help you reflect, think about this. How would you describe the presence of your closest friend? What kind of impact does he or she have on your own capacity to share, relate, and tell you truth? Coaching presence is the ability to be fully conscious and focus all of your attention and awareness on hearing your client both verbally and nonverbally. This allows you to be spontaneous with the client, which involves employing a style that's open, flexible, and confident. Coaching presence also involves, recognizing and acknowledging your client's successes, allowing for silence, holding space, maintaining eye contact, and actively listening in a supportive and loving manner. As a coach, you can actively build presence by accessing your intuition and trusting your inner knowledge, being open to not knowing the answer and taking risks, seeing that there are many ways to work with a client and choosing what's most effective with that person in that moment... Using humor effectively to create lightness... Shifting perspectives and experimenting with new possibilities for action, confidently working with strong emotions and staying grounded in your own energy, and remaining curious and letting go of judgments or assumptions. On one of your live calls this week, we'll go over some examples of what it sounds like to show up for your clients in this way. For now, remember that having presence above all involves being present. In the world where we have so much information at our fingertips and life moves so quickly, it's second nature for us to multitask. Many of us repeatedly check our phones and emails on autopilot. When this becomes habit sitting still and simply being fully present for another can be difficult. Do you find yourself fighting urges to check notifications or complete small tasks at times when you should be listening? If so, you can build your capacity for presence while coaching by practicing having a single-pointed focus in other areas of your life. It's not possible to be fully present while answering texts, emails or your phone while working with the client. This type of behavior is strongly discouraged first and foremost because it's rude and conveys a lack of respect and attention toward the client. But also when we try to multitask, the brain switches rapidly from one task to another and both get short-changed compared to being able to focus on one person or issue at a time. Your clients deserve the courtesy and the benefit of your full presence. So make an agreement that you both turn off all devices and phones so that you can give your full attention to the limited time you have together. Remember that you can build your capacity for presence with practice. It's not something that you have or you don't, presence is created through intention. By holding this intention and remaining curious and compassionate, you'll grow your presence. There's a great coaching phrase, "Dancing in the Moment." That refers to the deep dive you take with a client when you're in a still, quiet place of active listening. From this place of presence, it almost feels like your dancing with your client in a coordinated rhythm of ideas and breakthroughs. For many coaches and clients, this is a sacred space. For others, it's just plain unique. Once you experience it, you're going to want that kind of quality in all of your relationships. Dancing in the moment means being alert to the nuances, shifts both spoken and unspoken, deeper meanings and motivations, and basically everything that's driving a client to an aha moment of insight and wisdom as the results of a powerful coaching conversation and dynamic rapport. This is professional coaching at its very finest. Now let's bring it all together and talk about mindfulness. Existing mindfully in the here and now and listening actively and non-judgmentally constitutes the very essence of presence. Mindfulness involves adopting a beginner's mind, which means showing up without your assumptions and biases. You learned about this in your Health Coach Training Program. When you approach clients with a beginner's mind, you're listening with innocent curiosity and without judgment. This requires you to be in the moment. Having mindful awareness involves checking in with yourself to scan your own experience. This is known as coach self-management. You want to employ this when you find yourself going to that place where you know what the client needs. Think of this as a regular checkpoint you set up to make sure that you're staying with the client's agenda and not drifting into your own. Here are seven great tips for cultivating mindfulness. One, listen to your own body. It's a resource for staying present. Two, release all judgments and previous assumptions about your client. Three, allow the client to lead the conversation. Resist the urge to lead, just be with your client, even though it may seem to be going nowhere sometimes. He or she might be on the edge of her breakthrough. Four, live moment to moment. Five, focus on your breath. Six, say out loud only those things that hold true. Many possible things to say in the moment may charge through your mind, most of it is probably just noise. Can you let it go? And seven, engage with cultural awareness and sensitivity. Many clients who have been marginalized in some or all areas of their lives, sometimes don't know how to experience being with their own joys, successes, or achievements, they may dismiss or down play them. These clients might be more comfortable with rejection or failure. Ask gentle guiding questions that underscore their need for self-awareness. A mindful dialogue around this may help them see that their underlying needs and basic human rights deserve a full flowering. I encourage you to pick one or a few of these mindfulness tips to try out this week. All right, time to wrap up. So in summary, the coaching relationship requires undivided attention and nurturing in order to truly flourish. As a coach, you're responsible for eliminating distractions and showing up fully for your clients. Your clients should also take responsibility for showing up and being present by silencing their phones and devices. Fully being present for your clients involves active listening, building presence, and using mindfulness as a tool. To prepare for the certifying exam and to deepen your skills in this area, spend time familiarizing yourself with these competencies. If you struggle to be present, mindful or listen with your undivided attention, remember, these skills can be cultivated with practice. If you need support in any of these areas, we're here for you, be sure to ask your questions on the live group calls and participate in the discussion questions in the Facebook group. All right, that's all for this lecture. Bye for now.