What is a Transformational Coach?
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Everyone wants a better life, but few know what that means or how to get there. When dreams fade, energy dissipates, and life seems pointless, individuals search for another way.
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Transformational coaches guide individuals in their search to rediscover their dreams, re-energize their spirits, and identify their true identities – a self-actualizing process that helps people create new futures.
Transformational coaches are active, well-informed partners who work closely with their clients. While they try to see the world through their clients' eyes, they also try to see beyond their clients’ limitations – focusing on unlimited potential. The object is to help individuals transform, becoming more aware of their own motivations, making decisions that take life in positive directions, and finding ways to support new visions of themselves.
What do transformational coaches do?
Important realizations.
Transformational coaches use deep inquiry - a kind of talk therapy - not only to get to know their clients, but to let clients hear themselves tell their own stories. Coaches direct questions that explore a client’s reasoning, increasing awareness of repetitive issues and attitudes.
Transformational coaches understand that the words and images clients use to describe their immediate situations reflect not only their attitudes and perceptions, but also describe the whole context of their lives. Their attitudes are the lenses through which they view and judge the world around them, and their life context is generally associated with a dominant tendency. For instance, people who feel unappreciated have a tendency to feel like victims and see others as predators.
Coaches also listen to what isn't said. They observe where clients stop themselves in their stories, and note the reasons clients give for not being able to move forward. This tells the coach about insecurities, problems of self-worth, and self-sabotaging excuses, such as: “I just don't have time” or “I couldn't exercise because I had a headache.”
As clients begin to see how their attitudes have permeated their lives, they begin to separate themselves from their past, allowing coaches to introduce a primary realization: people are not their stories. The old adage “the map is not the terrain” illustrates the idea that clients are much more than their story lines. In fact, the stories individuals tell about themselves are rarely accurate and never reflect their best moments.
Most often, coaches hear stories filled with harsh self-judgments, poor self-images, suppressed anger, and unexpressed sadness. Coaches must make clients understand that these feelings have seriously affected the clients' abilities to visualize themselves as successes.
At this point, another important realization happens as clients become aware that their attitudes - those lenses through which they see the world – have also affected all their past choices. In turn, those choices have determined their life experiences. Until clients understand that they are responsible for everything that happens in their lives, they can’t move forward.
Coaches know that clients' attitudes are nothing more than habitual ways of looking at their world, and habits can be changed. It's a huge relief and major milestone for clients to realize that with the help of their coaches, new, positive habits will change them and their lives, building a future based on their true wants and needs.
Once coaches feel they understand the nature of their clients' issues, they will redirect the discussion to transformational goals. They remind clients that because the transformational process is focused on the future, their history is no longer relevant. This may seem harsh, but if clients want a different future, they can no longer use past patterns. They must learn to “think differently.”
Thinking differently means more than just having new thoughts. It means becoming aware of every thought and learning how to change it. It means reframing all the negative, unproductive thoughts into positive and energetic possibilities. It is the process of intensive self-editing.
The Personalized Plan
After clients determine their goals, transformational coaches help them structure a comprehensive, personalized plan of action. Normally kept in a notebook and monitored daily, these plans are a series of stepping stones – small objectives – that keep clients moving forward. Coaches use daily, weekly, and monthly assignments, and activities to help clients create new habits.
Clients must stay on task, participating in the activities, reading the books, attending the lectures. Plans might include a yoga class to help with concentration and to address energy levels. Or they might require starting school or volunteering in a particular area of interest. They almost always include dietary and exercise changes to ground the new life at its most fundamental level.
Each new activity is stimulating in its own way, bringing new ideas, new friends, and often new opportunities. These changes bring greater satisfaction to clients' lives, keeping them motivated to change. Life-altering changes are rarely immediate, but result from steady, focused efforts in a specific direction.
Executing the Plan
A coach is a vital touchstone or guide who keeps the client on track and the vision alive. Often the plans introduce changes that are so extensive, they affect the individual’s entire life. They often cause confusion, overwhelming individuals with their intensity. Clients rely on coaches to help them stay balanced and focused.
Other potential problems surface during transformation. Distraction and loss of motivation are common pitfalls that coaches must address. But perhaps the most difficult drawback is a little success. As clients start to experience positive changes, such as a new love interest or a pay raise, they sometimes feel that it's okay to reduce their efforts. A transformational coach must reignite that passion for becoming a better person so clients don't return to prior habits and fall back into their old lives.
And every plan requires an occasional course adjustment. As clients begin to self-actualize, their goals often change. They may find new passions for the arts, or they may suddenly decide to quit their jobs and join the Peace Corps. In all cases, adjustments are fine-tuning that help clients stay focused on becoming their best selves.
In the final analysis, coaches are teachers. The process of coaching is the process of showing clients how to understand themselves – how to know themselves more deeply. Coaches teach clients to listen to themselves, how to recognize and diffuse self-defeating beliefs, and how to enjoy greater levels of awareness as each new, positive step brings new opportunities to grow.
If you desire to help individuals with many of life’s challenges, and appreciate a spiritual focus in the resolution of workplace stressors, family life, career decisions, relationship issues, and personal growth concerns, consider transformational coaching.
Transformational coaches practice in most states with certificates although there are no state licensing requirements. Contact schools for more information on life coaching certificates and associate degree programs before entering the field of transformational coaching.