Back to Work

I would be lying if I didn't admit that this impromptu four day weekend had had its perks - among them, working on coaching stuff (including making a list of possible topics for the blog!) hanging with the cat, taking very slow walks through that forced me to look more closely at things, and, finally, getting Andi back from her reporting trip to Scotland
see andisbigadventure.blogspot.com. Nonetheless, I'm glad to be going back to work.

I feel a bit foolish because, although the addition of Tylenol and Ben-Gay and ice into my regimen has improved my experience of the injury, I don't think my condition has improved empirically. Well, I guess I'll just file today under the question: What's it like to coach clients when you can't concentrate?

Speaking of coaching - my brain is so full of coaching questions and technique from reading and thinking about it this weekend, that I'm worried I'm going to be paralyzed. I've noticed this before, that when I begin reading a lot about coaching methods and process, it results in worry. I think it's because the coaching process unfolds on its own time and in its own way while a book requires an order, and that makes it look like there's a particular way to do things. I know that's not true, but there's no small part of me that wishes, sometimes, that it were true. I wish it were more formulaic and predictable. I don't, of course. But I do, too.

Thinking about these faux-coaching sessions that I'm going to start, for real, this weekend, is what's got me worried. See, I've created this questionairre for people to fill out before what I'm calling the initiation meeting (does that sound too cultish? I'm keeping it for now). It's got 20 "big" questions on it. "What do you most value?" "List three or four formative experiences in your life." Questions that seem so familiar but which I think people rarely sit down and think about deliberately. Questions that we either assume we already know the answers to, or that we assume we'll have time to sit down and consider tomorrow, or the next day.

Perhaps that's the first benefit of coaching: Someone who has come to a point where they are prepared to consider such questions meets someone who is at their best asking them. Hmmmm.

Anyway, some of what's running through my head:

"Why, after someone answered these questions, would they need to talk about the answers? Isn't the work basically done then?"

"How do you go from asking someone these question to coaching them? I mean, what do you expect people to seek out a coach for, really?"

That second question is partly a product of the work I've been doing for the past seven months. My clients didn't actually ask to be coached and, frankly, even after months of coaching, some don't really "get" what it's all about. The big difference with private practice is going to be that people in need are going to seek out my services.

I hope.

Okay, off to work. More on this later, to be sure!