Digging myself out of a coaching hole

There is a well known Buddhist question that asks young monks to consider the question - "What is the sound of one hand clapping". In theory only the Zen master has the wisdom to answer this - but much of the point of the question stems from the process of thinking and reflecting on the question itself.

After coaching someone for the past week and repeatedly ending up frustrated and tearing my hair out - I asked myself the question "How do you help someone get out of a hole when they dont want to?"  And I really don't know. After countless years of being trained, training others and writing about coaching - that one simple question stills leaves me frustrated. Because like the Buddhist question - there is no answer - the journey  to its resolution is the point.

The upside is that this morning I went back to basics and used a few simple rules from the 7Cs of Coaching model:

1. Using the MPH model focus on the micro present and just questioned about now. Pull him forward from the Past and Back from the projected. Once we had the know established we then went to Meta Projected to understand where he wanted to move towards. We could then develop a clear action plan to bridge the gap.
2. Keep focusing on the CHOICE framework and refused to talk about those things that he had no control over
3. Use the Shared Success model and tried to balance out both Inquiry and Advocacy. In avoiding an overly inquiry based degree of understanding what he wanted - I pushed back on how I felt and what impact I felt his behavior had on others. So turned up the advocacy and in many ways directive level of intervention.

I can't lay claim that it was a huge success - but it was far more successful that previous sessions.

The lesson - when the going get tough - then the tough go back to the theory. Theory and practical models are not there to just to sell books and create Gurus - they are there in most cases because they work.

Mick