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To: Whom
it may concern
From: Duncan
Otis
Date: 1/21/99
Subject: Coaching in general and Kim Marshall
as my coach
About
a year ago, January 1998, I began a transition in my life and
work from a full focus on being an international business consultant
to becoming an author. I'd wanted to write for many years and
was beginning to crystallize what it was I wanted to write about.
The change was and is pretty frightening but I'm committed to
it. My coach has been a key ingredient in making the transformation
possible. Coaching is about helping people know who they really
are and manifest that knowledge in their work, play, health, financial
planning, spiritual development, and maybe most importantly, their
relationship to others ... and to themselves. It's a rare and
effective chance to lift eyes that might have been downcast on
habitual tasks and ways of thought, sometimes for decades, and
look up with fresh insight on yourself and the world around you.
Even an average coach can help you greatly. A strong coach can
help you create wonders in yourself and the life you lead. But
the heavy lifting is always done by the client, if the coach is
really coaching. Happily I have a very strong coach, Kim Marshall.
She causes me to lift heavily.
Kim really
LISTENS. Listening in "caps" is different from listening to auditory
utterances that happen to hit the inner eardrum. For whatever
time we have together every week, she listens with her heart and
her mind. My agenda is her agenda. No matter what else is happening
in her world, happy or hard, or both, our conversation and my
welfare is the only topic of thought, feeling, and speech. And
she hears not just the words but the energy level behind them
... and she can hear spirit.
Sometimes
I don't want to have the call because I don't think I have anything
new to discuss, or I'm in a funk, or I'm ashamed because I haven't
done what I told her last time I was determined to do. But I always
call. And on time. And invariably within five minutes I feel myself
taking off like a very heavy jumbo jet lumbering down the tarmac.
By the end of the talk I'm cruising at 36,000 metaphoric feet,
above the clouds, and into the azure blue of a lovely life. How
that happens—and with such regularity—I don't really
know. But it does. And Kim somehow causes it to happen. Some of
my most valuable "sessions" have been on days when I really didn't
think I had anything to talk about.
The key
seems to be the powerful questions she asks ... and then the golden
space she provides me to think about answers ... and then answer
if I can. Or promise to answer after a week or more of thought.
This is not cocktail talk. This isn't even the kind of nitty-gritty
talk you might have with a best friend, sibling, or parent. Somehow
it's more distilled. Almost more pure and in it's purity there's
risk because you're talking about who you really are without any
shields or defenses (if you choose to) and what you really want
to do to lead a more balanced and fulfilling life.
She may
have experiences relevant to what I'm saying. She may have advice
she's burning to dispense. She may have strong views on something
we're talking about. But she refrains from telling me her stories,
giving me her advice, or expressing her close-held views. Because
that isn't coaching.
Instead,
like the best coaches do, she listens calmly and intelligently
and waits for just the right time to pose the powerful question.
If she's not entirely sure that a certain question is exactly
appropriate or relevant to the issue at hand, she'll acknowledge
that uncertainty and put it forth as just a probe, giving me,
the client, full permission to dismiss it completely. But once
spoken, if it really is on target, it goes in deep like an auger
in a diamond mine, and what comes out of the metaphorical hole
can often sparkle very very brightly. But know this: She shows
me the tool and that's the end of her job. I wield it, drill the
hole, and thus and only thus, the diamonds that might emerge are
mine and mine alone. And that's the power of coaching ... especially
the way Kim does it.
Epilogue:
Thanks
to Kim, her intelligence, her professionalism, and her quiver
of very well aimed questions, I've found a joy, balance, and energy
in life in my mid-50s that I never really thought was possible.
She's really good ... and she's helped me to see that I am too.
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