Hints from the WBECS 2017 pre-summit meetings: Mark C. Thompson.
Mark C. Thompson, in his pre-summit meeting of last thursday, has given a few hints about the superpowers of the highest paid in the profession of the Coach.
What the highest paid coaches do and are in order to be so?
I must say, this may applies to other professions too. All those where a supporting relationship is built in order to reach a meaningful goal (psychologists, counselors, medical doctors, teachers, etc.).
He mentioned some important characteristics, such as focus, urgency, triangularization management, love.
Being able to focus on the objective the client cares of and which is urgent for him/her, means avoiding the client to feel he/she has too much to do and not to feel the support the coach is giving him or her.
The image below gives the idea of what can be perceived by the client 🙂
Triangularization management relates to the ability to manage the relationship with the client when he or she is not the one who asked for coaching, for which he suggests for instance to utilize some external tools (files, questionaires, etc.) that make the client feel and see that the coach is something else from what he/she needs to work on.
Being able to detect what is actually urgent for the client and how much he/she cares about it means also working on detecting what it is perceived as urgent and what it is actually so, and evaluate what it is worthed working on.
And more: always being able to authentically admire you client for something: being a coach means, besides all, being able to actually see something that has so far been difficult to detect in him/her by other people.
Being Engaged means being working on foresight.
What I mostly apprechiated from Thompson’s speech has been him underliyng something I strongly believe in: the ability and willing to be Engaged (the E of the FUEL model he proposes). Engaging with the client means being able to take the risk with him, seeing and acting as if the relationship with the client will be a long-term relationship.
I believe this is true for our clients too, and for all good relationships: no matter how long we will be seeing someone, he or she enters in our lives, in our experience and memories, and will stay into it, in different forms, forever.