Transformational
Coaching: Reinventi
ng Yourself
By Tony Stoltzfus
Over the years I’ve coached a number of
individuals through the process of completely reinventing themselves. For
instance, one leader’s goal was “to move from being a critical and demanding
boss to one who was approachable, kind and built strong relationships with the
leaders around him.” That’s a real goliath to take on in the latter half of
one’s life! However, over the course of six months he actually succeeded in
altering the fundamental way he related. A feedback process confirmed that to
his peers, he was a different person. How did that happen? And what can we
learn from those stories about how to reinvent ourselves when the time comes to
do it?
Here are four principles of reinventing
yourself that you can use in your own coaching:
1. It
takes a teachable moment.
People don’t just wake up one day and say, “I think I’ll become a totally
different person!” It takes a powerful experience to motivate a person to make
this kind of change. In the example above, it was a feedback process that shook
the leader’s self-perceptions to the core. I’ve seen this kind of change spring
out of being fired from a job, from relational breakdowns, or from
God-generated wilderness seasons (where God removed activity from a person’s
life to force them to deal with their own identity.) As a coach, be alert to
major shaping events, and help your clients leverage them for personal
transformation instead of just surviving them. Our greatest challenges contain the
seeds of our greatest opportunities for personal growth.
2. Keep
coaching by staying action oriented.
I once coached an individual through his desire to “come alive emotionally”
after he had squelched his feelings for years. It would have been easy to go
into counseling mode, seek the roots of the problem and offer inner healing.
Instead, we stuck to a coaching approach by keeping it practical and action
oriented. And it worked! Each week we developed new ways he could live every
day like a person who enjoyed life instead of hiding from it; such as positive
confessions, disciplined stopping to smell the roses, and letting go of a
little money each week instead of hoarding it. As those actions were practiced
as habits, they slowly brought in a new reality in his mind and emotions.
3. Behaviors
change when beliefs are shaken.
What we do always seems reasonable in our own eyes. Our conduct, no matter how
irrational it seems to others, looks reasonable within our own belief systems.
That belief system must first be shaken before change will occur. If a leader
thinks he is really great at facing conflict (even if everyone around him knows
different), no lasting change will occur until that belief is challenged. God
will supply the challenge through life circumstances. As a coach, look for
events that shake a person more than seems called for by what happened. It may
be honest feedback from friend, tasting the consequences of our actions, or
simply seeing that our belief system can’t cut it in real life. We all have unbiblical
beliefs – things like, “I can’t change,” or “I have to keep things under
control,” or “I need to protect myself from getting hurt.” When you see God
putting his finger on an area, don’t settle for merely changing the actions.
Help the leader figure out why he
does what he does, and then evaluate whether that belief is really sound. When
core beliefs change, you’ll see lasting, transformational change in the
person’s actions.
4. Track
progress.
One thing I’ve noticed when people reinvent themselves is that they
consistently lose perspective on their progress. Transformation not only
changes who you are but how you view who you are, and where you are standing
when you look at yourself. For instance, the first step of changing a habit is
becoming aware of what you are doing as you do it. In the first part of the
change process, this growing awareness of falling short makes the client feel
like he or she is going backward, not forward. But awareness itself is
progress! As a coach, part of your job is to not get lost in the moment like
your client. Keep looking back to the starting point and ahead to the goal, and
remind your client regularly how far he or she has come and how the end is
drawing closer. With one client, I did a self-assessment every other month that
put a number on her stress level and the quality of her life. Each time she was
surprised to see that her scores had again gone up and she’d made progress.
Reinventing
yourself is difficult process. A coach’s encouragement and perspective can make
all the difference!
For top-rated
resources for coaching ministry leaders, visit: www.Coach22.com/aboutcoaching.htmll