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Energising your coachng clients.

One interesting and important thing that I learned in my early days of coaching arose as a by product of the coaching process itself. It came out of one of my early coaching relationships with a Chief Housing Officer employed by a Local Authority who I shared an interest with in playing squash. His job consisted of round after round of relatively tedious meetings with his boss the Leader of the Council, or of his peers or reporting management team. He would spend much of our first couple of coaching sessions bemoaning this state of affairs and discussing options about how to make them more interesting, action orientated and decisive. We also discussed whether or not he needed to be at all of these meetings, about how to structure the meetings that he was responsible for leading in a more effective way.and about how he could influence the Council system to make more effective use of his time and energy.
This led us on to discuss how he energised himself in other areas of his life and about whether and how any of this learning could be transferred to his work situation. He was an active badminton and squash player and he explained to me that a good game of squash was just the activity that he needed to energise him and to allow him to work through the stresses and tensions of the job.
So began a series of squash matches usually after but sometimes before our coaching sessions. This had the effect of providing a break and diversion for him from his interminable round of meetings, the chance to vent his feelings on the ball, the court and on me, whilst at the same time as giving us both some much needed strenuous and healthy exercise, in a reasonably short period of time.
Ideal benefits all round – but with the added bonus that this diversionary activity gave us both the mental space to look at things differently, through the process of not consciously concentrating on any obvious issues, difficulties or decisions that we were faced with. Even when engaged on another completely different, apparently all consuming activity like squash, the mind is still working actively but sub-consciously on those things that we are faced with. After such activity I and some of my coachees have found clarity where confusion existed, decisions which were not apparent before and confidence to act where non existed before.
The brain seems to be able to process this information even though we are not aware that it is doing so and often it seems to put these confusing factors into some clearer perspective.
I therefore learned by chance about the benefits of engaging with some of my coachees in other energising activities such as golf, football, tennis, walking, frisbee - to the benefit of all concerned.