Birthing New Coaching Skills (by angelica)
Taking the Foundations of Coaching course in October 2022 was an extremely valuable experience for me. I was introduced to this opportunity through the free coaching skills for social change learn & practice sessions, offered through Invoke Coaching. Although I do not identify as a coach, I chose to attend with the mindset that coaching skills would be beneficial to have in my professional toolkit.
Over the 3-week course, I was able to dig deeper into the art of coaching while practicing and honing in on both new and familiar skills. I was introduced to a new framework to organize an array of skills called Meta-Skills. Through this framework, my understanding of what coaching is and how it can be used has expanded immensely. I realized just how applicable coaching is in various areas of my life. I was also pleasantly surprised at how aligned these learnings are with my current endeavour of becoming a doula - a role which resembles a form of coaching as per a definition shared in the course:
Coaching is an allied partnership that uses questions and other skills, to:
Establish safety in a supportive relationship
Create movement towards the coachee’s goals, through the coachee’s experiences, strengths, awareness, and choice
Foster and promote health for both the coach and coachee
Key Learnings & Takeaways
Designed Alliance
I appreciated the community setting whereby the course leads, assistants, and fellow participants supported one another in a dynamic that was co-created. We initiated this through a Designed Alliance at the onset of our time together. This made the opportunities to ‘stretch our skills’ with guided practices all the more effective. It also strengthened the space to share feedback in a way that was well-suited to each person’s uniqueness. Designing alliances at the beginning of a new or existing relationship provides an anchor that can guide individuals through discomfort or challenges when they arise. It also helps to inform how to move forward together. Designed Alliance is a process I have adopted in building my doula practice.
The Phases of Coaching [4C’s] & Powerful Questions
I believe approaching each encounter from a place of curiosity and compassion helps to cultivate a shared understanding and deepen connection. This is invaluable in any relationship - whether it is in a professional context such as coaching, or among friends. The processes that have helped me to articulate techniques to explore this belief areThe Phases [4C’s] of Coaching & Asking Powerful Questions. They can be summarized as follows:
Context [C1] - Create a space to check in with oneself internally as well as externally with whoever you are interacting with
Are you both in a space to engage?
If not, what can help you arrive?
Clarify the intention of this conversation
Compassion [C2] - Connect with their heart, dreams, values, and intentions
Meet them in these points of connection to better understand what truly matters
Curiosity [C3] - Explore the spaces between present and future states of being
Bring in metaphors [I love playing with landscapes!]
Expand current perspectives to reach greater awareness and options to move forward
Commitment [C4] - Encircle this moment in time
Clarify the motivation, practice, and next steps
What does follow-up/ follow-through look like?
Throughout this process we also integrate Powerful Questions by focusing on ‘what’ & ‘how’ questions; these keep responses more exploratory and open-ended, leading one to discover more possibilities available.
The 4C’s and powerful questions are what guided me in a coaching session I offered someone in my personal life. I was amazed by the space that unfolded before us - during and after the session. For me personally, these tools helped me surrender into the natural flow of the conversation; I realized there was nothing for me to ‘fix’ or even ‘help’ with. Instead, with ease I was able to trust in the natural trajectory that this person wanted/ needed to go and my only role was remaining present to accompany them. For them, the session led to movement - literally and figuratively. We used landscapes to explore other perspectives to their current situation. This way of moving between vantage points was a practice that remained beneficial for them to refer back to even after our session had concluded.
Recognizing that each interaction can benefit from some iteration of these 4C’s and integrating the use of powerful questions has helped me be a better communicator in all my interactions. I believe it will also make me a more supportive doula.
Impact
The ripples felt by the impact of this course continue to wash over me as I discover new ways of connecting in both my professional and personal life. I believe awareness is a key to growth. This course offered me an outline of Meta-Skills that I can refer back to. These Meta-Skills have helped me to weave my learnings together; identifying my strengths and how they can support skills I would like to work on.
For example, I was already using Deep Curiosity as a Meta-Skill in many of my relationships. One way of utilizing this is through my ability to shift perspectives and Zoom Out to explore various vantage points. Through this course, I identified wanting to work on the Meta-Skill, Animator and one of its subset skills of Disruption. This particular skill entails interrupting existing storylines. Although disruption as a tactic makes me feel uncomfortable, connecting it back to my strength around Deep Curiosity and its subset skill of Zooming Out, I now explore it with more confidence.
Overall, I loved this course and I am excited to discover how I can braid my experiences into the foundations I continue to strengthen in current and future endeavors.
I invite you to practice a couple of The 4C’s in your conversations. [Context! Compassion! Curiosity! Commitment!] Try to pause before asking a question…are you using what or how questions? Try and frame your question in a way that offers room for curiosity! You might be amazed at how much you can explore within yourself and others.
— angelica (Doula)
