Integrate!

I sometimes say to people. "I am not a therapist. I do not want to be a therapist. I do not believe that people who work with me are broken." The result of working with me (one to one or in a class) is frequently that people feel better. We don't get there by focusing on what is wrong. This can be hard for people to understand. Like me, they learned to believe that focusing on what works is okay for academics, but not good enough for the "real" world. In the "real" world, people have problems that cause them real suffering. What kind of person would ignore those problems to focus on what works? It sounds a little like a case where the rich get richer, doesn't it? It is. The more we assume that we have the strengths, skills and resources to live satisfying lives, the more we live satisfying lives. The more we assume that we will become happy after our problems are solved, the more problems we find that need solving. Problems are like the Hydra -...

I recently attended a workshop where the leader (an internationally acclaimed psychologist) often applied research on therapy to the practice of coaching. For instance, if it is true that therapy should be evaluated after 3 sessions and declines dramatically in effectiveness after 10 sessions, then that same metric will be true of coaching. The implication is that coaching, like therapy, is about returning people to a condition where they are capable of managing their lives without assistance. Is that what coaching does?  It's certainly true that coaching is often about solving problems and good coaches often enjoy solving a problem quickly and effectively.  However, from another point of view, if coaches wanted to solve problems they should a) solve their own and b) stop hanging out with top performers who also like solving problems. It may be true that elite athletes, actors and musicians require coaching throughout their careers because they are somehow constitutionally i...

Here's something that you might have encountered: training in coaching or therapy that puts you through an emotional wringer.  Often, people that take courses that produce this effect end up saying good things about the course and much less good things about themselves. I'd like to think of this as a hint.  Don't let people mess with your head if they are not going to clean up after themselves. Twice this weekend, I ended up in conversations about people who had taken training that they said was terrific but which clearly wasn't making them feel more able to function in the way that they wanted to function.  This is possibly a good marketing technique since it clearly has the potential to make people pay still more dollars to follow up the original training with more (terrific?) training so that they might finally be able to put the skills they are learning to work.  It's not as clear that there is value for the client. Sometimes I make my clients and students u...