Coaching Builds Awareness

A good coach helps us be more aware. They help us discover and refine what we know and what we don’t know so that our improved awareness will lead us to wiser choices and more extraordinary results—if this is what we seek.

If we are content to be on the path of Life As Usual, or Business As Usual, then we probably don’t need, or even want, a coach.

In general, our awareness consists of:

• what we know
• what we know we don’t know
• what we don’t know we don’t know

Our choice of coach then begins with an awareness of what we know we don’t know, and maybe some things we suspect we don’t know we don’t know.

Our coach’s job is to help us breakthrough and expand our knowledge and possibilities, because he/she is outside our perceptual box and can usually see things differently.

For instance, they may have more experience or wisdom in a given area that can benefit us. Or they may not be as limited by assumptions we are holding about “how things really are.”   Also, they may have very different beliefs about what’s possible–or not.

If you are seeking breakthroughs and transformation, it helps that you and your coach adopt the possibility that there are never absolute limits to performance for either an individual or an organization.

Improved awareness helps to inform our own thinking and action that may lead us to greater levels of performance, effectiveness, and satisfaction. Without the information that a coach can provide, we may be less able to achieve the effectiveness we desire.

At the heart of gaining insight and awareness is trust in the coaching relationship. Coaching relationships are true partnerships, and a fluid and dynamic network of these relationships creates highly cohesive, interdependent communication, action, and teamwork.

With one or several coaches, we don’t need to “know it all”; or “protect our image” or “turf.” Multiple coaching relationships and partnerships allow us the freedom to learn, to make mistakes, and to succeed beyond what we may have ever imagined was possible.

In a coaching relationship, the coach and the partner are committed to producing breakthroughs in results. As the learner, we produce the result, but the level and quality of the result is made possible by our coach working with us to increase our awareness and help us to strategize these breakthroughs. Through our continuous communication, our performance is modified, enhanced and improved. And we both celebrate each new breakthrough and learning.