Find your Hidden Treasure - The power of Co-Active Coaching

Originally posted: Jan 12, 2017 on LinkedIn

Coaching understood as a Co-Active coaching RELATIONSHIP between Coach and Coachee is the most powerful and gratifying method I have experienced so far to move people to new levels of happiness and success.

Why?

Because it works, it is straightforward and produces INDIVIDUAL, UNIQUE AND REAL RESULTS = VALUE.

It is what many people are looking for:

Find their Hidden Treasure!

The Co-Active Coaching Model = The good Coaching model

Co-Active coaching is chiefly about DISCOVERY, AWARENESS and CHOICE

It is a way of effectively empowering people to find their own answers, encouraging and supporting them on the path as they continue to make important choices.

The underlying principles are:

• Respect
• Openness
• Compassion
• Empathy
• A rigorous commitment to speaking the truth

Regarding the COACHEE the model assumes:

1. Strength and capability as opposed to weakness, helplessness or dependence
2. Deep desire to give the best and achieve potential
3. Every situation has possibilities and people really have the power of choice

There a four cornerstones in the model:

1. PEOPLE are naturally CREATIVE, RESOURCEFUL and WHOLE
2. FOCUS on the WHOLE PERSON (Heart, body, mind and spirit)
3. DANCE in THIS MOMENT (Coach and coachee dance together; they both smoothly adapt to the situation)
4. EVOKE TRANSFORMATION of the coachee. This is the result.

There are three principles at the heart of the model that constitute the deeper motivation behind the coaching for the coachee:

1. Fulfillment: It is the answer or - are the answers - to the question "What is your vision of a really fulfilling life? What would that be? Who would be part of this life? This question takes you much deeper than just asking "What do you want"? And this is not a "One size fits all" menu like set of answers. One of the most valuable things a coach does for a coachee is to help them get clear about that very personal shape of fulfillment.
2. Balance: Balance is fundamental to the quality of life. People are often looking for more balance in their lives. They are looking for being more empowered and less at the mercy of circumstances and other people's expectations and demands. They want to feel that they are choosing their life. Balance is not about making everything even as life per definition is dynamic and ever changing. Keeping the balance is about being aware about what is going on and what decisions to make, saying "yes" to some things and "no" to others in certain situations of the persons life.
3. Process: Process means to help people to be aware where they are in this moment, what their feelings are, what their beliefs or limitations are and to help them to experience, describe and to name it. This drives the individual to an augmented capacity of self awareness, self assessment and self description and finally enables the person to transform into something different, to make a shift and grow into the direction he really wants to move.

And what the Coach brings to the model are the 5 contexts:

1. Listening: Everything in coaching hinges on listening - especially listening with the coachee's plan and purpose in mind. We use three levels of listening. Listening at level 1 (Internal listening) is when our awareness is on ourselves. Listening at level 2 (Focused listening) means that there is a sharp focus on the other person and listening at level 3 (Global listening) is as though coach and coachee were at the center of the universe receiving information from everywhere at once. It includes the action, inaction and interaction. The awareness we use here is sometimes described as "environmental listening". As listening is the entry point for all of the coaching all other 4 contexts depend on listening at level 2 and 3.
2. Intuition: Reading between the lines based on deep listening.
3. Curiosity: REAL interest in understanding EVERYTHING.
4. Forward (Action) and Deepen (Learning): Support and control to assure that the coachee transforms and advances.
5. Self management: Understood as self awareness and self control of the coach. The coach is secondary. The coach disappears. No ego. No advice. No judgements.

This is a huge difference to the so called "Great Coaches" that in fact most of the time teach, tell and advise in mass group meetings. These people are Trainers, Counselors, Consultants or Mentors. They tell people what they should do based on their own experience and receipts or copied form others. "One size fits all". They ignore the knowledge, power and talents that lie in every individual.

I call this inner talent and power of each and every person "The Hidden Treasure". A good coach helps the individual to find his hidden treasure using powerful questions and deep listening but the answers are only given by the individual.

Applying and executing the co-active coaching method delivers results.

Image: My modified representation of the Co-Active Coaching model

You may want to read more in my blog post about the Co-Active Coaching model.

Seeing the measurable results often after only a few sessions with my clients reinforces me in my endeavor to move forward with my recently launched coaching company TopCoach4You.

One of the key differences comparing with great Coaches like Tony Robbins are the unique, exclusive and personalized coaching tools such as CoachingLogbook (c) and Top3Planner(c) we are co-developing and continuously improving closely together with our clients to assure that Coaching results are always achieved and measured, session by session.

We simply help you find Your Hidden Treasure with focus and therefore faster.

The Global Coaching Community we have launched creating groups both here on LinkedIn and facebook are thought to pro-actively and publicly share the coaching method and serve as a meeting point for Coaching professionals and clients to foster the global coaching movement and contribute to the building of global high quality standards of the Coaching profession.

We want Co-Active Coaching become a fundamental method and cornerstone for building strong people with positive values and principles in all kind of organizations and for people of any age.

A little proof: My 8 year old daughter comes every week or so and asks "Papa, can we have a coaching?".

I must say that she read "The 7 habits of happy Kids" written by Sean Covey, son of Stephen R. Covey, author of the best seller "The 7 habits of highly effective people".

We are an important example and our kids see and imitate what we do, so try to be a good example!

Have a great day!

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About Andreas Jaffke: Andreas is a recognized coach, entrepreneur, executive and an expert in Organizational Digital Transformation.

He is Founder and CEO of TopCoach4You. You can follow the company on Linkedin here.

He is a strong believer, practitioner and evangelist of Stephen Covey's "7 habits of highly effective people". Andreas coaches and trains executives and entrepreneurs in his specialties Sales & Marketing and Strategic Business Planning.