We teach our coaching students to coach the person, not the problem, but sometimes they question that concept. “If something’s broken, don’t we have to fix it?” they ask. And with coaching still being relatively new and commonly misunderstood, clients might expect this as well.
As we discussed in an earlier post, “Of course, the problem with this method is that if we’ve solved their problem, we haven’t empowered the person. They’re going to need us again.”
Sure, sometimes someone does need to tackle a problem, but that’s not always the case, especially when someone’s hired a coach. Once they’re at that stage, they’ve tried to fix it; they’ve tried the things they always do.
There’s something else going on. If you just coach the problem, you’ll miss that. And you’re really keeping the client in that spiral of doing something, it doesn’t work, then doing something else, and it still doesn’t work.
Imagine what you see after an earthquake, when there’s all this damage up top: houses toppled over cars, flipped upside down, big, gaping holes in the road. Sure, you want to fix all those things, but what’s really important is what’s going on down below.
The theory of plate tectonics teaches us that the Earth’s surface is divided into several large plates that are in constant motion. The movement of these plates is responsible for various geological phenomena, including earthquakes.
When there’s a problem in someone’s life, coaching the person to make little shifts in their thinking, beliefs, values, and perspective can result in big change—change that lasts.
From Leadership Coaching to Life Coaching in No Time Flat