I noticed a shift in my career life the other week when I began to think of using questions to help guide Jennifer through the project. The old me would have dictated the requirements and asked “have any questions?”. I also sent her a presentation deck of a similar project from a different team as a guide instead of sending her one of my own. Your immediate reaction could be “so what” or “that’s not very efficient”, but that’s exactly the shift.
I realized that coaching is about holding space, and creating the space for someone else to troubleshoot, find their way, and grow personally. It sounds very intuitive that you can’t just give someone the answers. But for the first time, it finally dawned upon me to intentionally not give the answers, but instead coach.
It was also helpful that I’ve recently been listening to the “audiobook” version of HBR’s Coaching Employees https://store.hbr.org/product/hbr-guide-to-coaching-employees/13990.
I see a lot of parallels with coaching in one’s career, and teaching yoga. It’s not really about “telling” a student or client “what” or “how” they should feel or perceive. It’s about guiding the student to experience for themselves. You’ll always hear that each body is different, and that “what could work for one may not work for another”. While true, there’s still a concrete body of questions that you can ask that will work across different people and enable them to discover themselves what they seek to find.
I’ve had several yoga, meditation, and life coaches throughout the year. My psychic coach recently shared a quote by Richard Back that I think captures the essence well “Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers”.
We’re really just reminding each other what we already know. There’s something special here in passing along the lessons, and learnings we’ve all experiences to the next person or generation that seeks answers.
I’ve been blessed by some great career mentors that allowed the space for me to grow, problem solve, and discover. I’m happy to have noticed that the opportunity also exists for me to do the same.
Thank you to Mukund, Toni, Scout, Judy, Jill, Lisa, Steve, Wyatt, and all of the others.
As Toni closes her yoga class, “thank you to all of our teachers, including the one true teacher within all of us”.
om bolo shri sat guru bhagavan ki jai