Coaching in action
In their second session together, the award-winning coach Kim Morgan helps her client Liz * confront the limiting beliefs that have held her bound
Session two…
Liz had come to see me to help her decide whether to take voluntary redundancy from her current role. She was a woman of few words, and very matter-of-fact. I knew that in our first session I hadn’t succeeded in following the coaching mantra of ‘meeting your client where they are’ – instead of responding to her energy levels and preferences, I had thrown her straight into an energetic, creative visualisation exercise. So I was determined to let Liz lead the agenda in this next session.
I asked Liz what she wanted to think about during our meeting.
‘I don’t really know,’ she responded. ‘To be honest, I’m scared stiff.’
‘Of what?’ I asked (hoping she wouldn’t reply ‘of this coaching session’!).
‘I’ve realised I am very frightened of change. I have this golden opportunity to take redundancy and have a lump-sum of money and the freedom to change my life, but I don’t think I can do it. I’m just not that sort of person.’
I asked gently, ‘What sort of person are you, then, Liz?’
She stopped to think. ‘I’m steady and reliable. Good old Liz. Keep your head down. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t take risks. Don’t get above your station.’
I noticed that Liz’s language had changed somewhere mid-sentence, here. It was as if she was suddenly talking to herself, not about herself. In my experience as a coach, I have found that this way of speaking often emerges when someone is repeating messages that they have received earlier on in their lives.
‘Whose voice was that, just now, saying “Keep your head down, don’t take risks or rock the boat or get above yourself”?’ I asked.
Liz looked at me like I had lost my mind. ‘My voice of course! Did you think there was someone else in the room?’ she scoffed.
‘Well, in a way, yes, I did think that there was someone else present in the room. A person or people who once gave you all those messages about keeping safe and avoiding change. Did you receive those messages at some point previously in your life, Liz?’ I asked.
Liz looked directly at me. ‘Those words were the soundtrack of my childhood. I can give you a list of them: Better the devil you know. Get a nice steady job and stay there. If you take a risk, you will be out of the frying pan and into the fire. You could be opening a can of worms if you do something new… I could go on and on.’
Limiting
