| Hi Simon, Welcome to this weeks Get COACHd on Friday. As professional coaches, we experience the richness of our clients’ lives with them. Conversely, we can also experience the challenges that our clients have. Sometimes, the challenges talk to us too. As a coach, we can be experiencing a parallel process. This is when something that a client brings can be something that we are also experiencing at the same time. With this comes a challenge and something that I often see in supervision conversations. How do you work with this in your sessions? - We need to be on guard and remain in the here and now.
- We can adopt a method to ensure that we stay clean.
- We should increase our awareness of our reaction to the clients’ story/narrative.
- We can build on the process, not on the story.
- We should notice what reactions we are having, and whether this is led by the client, or is being transferred to the client.
- We need to be aware of the bits of the process that belong to us as a coach and the client as part of their storytelling.
I call this compartmentalising our coaching. We focus on the coaching process and not on the content – if that makes sense. By lifting ourselves up out of the detail, we protect the session and allow the client to explore their reactions in a pure way without any lead from coach. Sounds simple, but next time you come across a situation where a parallel process exists – focus on the process with a beautiful awareness of your reactions. I have 2 places available for the coaching development and supervision cohort. Please do look here for more information and for the first step to apply for this. When these places have gone, they are gone and the next cohort is likely to be a September start. Finally – see the link below for Choice Magazine – a fantastic quarterly magazine looking at coaching techniques and news. Use code FRIENDSOFCHOICE10 at the checkout and get an additional 10% off – as a gift from me. Now to todays collection of news and writings from all world coaching! | 
