Bringing your authentic self to coaching

I recently reflected on an individual coaching session that I ran, and it made me focus on how important my role was to help an exam candidate to feel safe and comfortable with how they were finding things. 

The candidate told me, "I wasn't sure how to prepare for today, on one hand I wanted to overprepare, show you how organised I was and how ready I felt for the exams. On the other hand, I felt absolutely overwhelmed, rushed, and was secretly hoping you'd contact me to cancel".

I was really grateful that they shared exactly how they felt, the dilemma they were facing as they were juggling work, life and a commitment to sit in August after an unsuccessful attempt. 

It is very common, if not the done thing for us to wear our "work selves" a lot of the time, reassuring everybody around us that we had things in hand, had taken the need to re-sit an exam in our stride, quick to take responsibility as if there was something we had to change or own about being unsuccessful, and launch into whatever the working day sent us. 

In fact, we often tell ourselves that this is indeed the case and there is no room for feeling vulnerable in case it led to us dropping the ball.

When running an individual coaching session, or facilitating a workshop, I know that in order to deliver the most valuable training experience, and get my coaching or workshop attendees from where they currently are to where they need to be, I need to let them find out and sit with where they are.

This often transpires in raw conversations, with emotions including anger, disappointment and sometimes shame. Real emotions that we all feel, but keep to ourselves. But these emotions, if not revealed and understood, with a fair degree of compassion and comfort, and often shared by others in the room, will become impediments to learning and success.

It is always an incredible thing to experience as I notice the unhelpful and distressing emotions budge a bit, then shift into the rest of the coaching session or in the afternoon in the workshop. And that's when the real change begins. Attendees start to write essays they feel confident with, and therefore begin to address the quote using their own unique style. MEQ answers become more succinct, and capture what a candidate would actually do in a clinical scenario, rather than a checklist or a generic answer. 

I also notice a change in my energy and when I am packing up I can feel whether the workshop or coaching session has been a valuable experience, by noticing my mood and energy levels. This practice enables me to implement change if needed but also for me to acknowledge what worked well.

It is a realy privilege to coach and mentor trainees and IMG's - and my workshops and coaching does help because of the ability for the attendees to shift to authenticity and simply say it like it is. it is why I insist on face to face workshops and keep them capped at small numbers. I find the magic is less likely to happen on a Zoom meeting, there is greater distractibility and it is much harder to read the room.

If you'd like to come and learn in such an environment, there are still places available at the Melbourne workshops next week in Melbourne, one day for the CEQ essay exam and one day for the MEQ essay exam, limited to 6 places only. 

Melbourne workshops 4th and 5th July:

 https://www.cpdformulations.com.au/melbourne-workshops-2024