Engaging Energy
Who is your coach? Where can I find a good coach? Do I need a coach? Why do I need a coach? What is coaching all about, anyway?
No doubt about it, the coaching field has exploded in recent years to provide specialized services in health and fitness, transition, relationships, life purpose, sports performance, small business, groups and organizations, and executives. The coaching arc of specialization now characterizes this field as it has marked the accelerated growth of other industries. Its trajectory in recent years defines specialization, recognizing that there are multiple approaches within the field of coaching that are available to both coaches and those seeking coaching.
During a recent reading of the book, Energy Leadership by Bruce Schneider, founder of the Institute on Professional Excellence on Coaching (iPEC), the reader is invited to reflect on the coaching experience and his/her role in the process of accompanying individuals or groups. While focusing on the importance of the coach’s role in the process of accompaniment, the book fosters an understanding of the vital significance of the individual’s role in his/her energetic engagement.
In this approach to coaching, when an individual has an awareness of his/her own energetic presentation, or more descriptively, “How they are showing up,” they have a greater capacity to shift in the direction of positive presence, to effective decision-making and to action in alignment with their values, purpose, and mission in life. Becoming more reflective about shifts in one’s energy—and the causes of those shifts—invites understanding, compassion, joy and, even, greater “freedom.”
With an awareness of one’s own spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, and environmental “influencers,” one’s sensitivity to the influencers of others substantially improves. Such consciousness releases an individual from getting caught in “the wind of others” or in the particularities of their mental, physical, emotional, or, even, physical circumstance. They are less likely to get caught up in the “drama” of another’s experience, or “jumping into their story.” In this approach, the 7-level continuum supports an individual or group to deepen an awareness of how these levels “show up” or manifest as they occur throughout the day. This awareness “unhooks” them from reactivity and frees them for deliberate responses.
The dynamic of the coach and client relationship is a wonderful gift and engaging in it through the “client-coach” relationship makes it quite generative. The process methodology described in the book is illustrative of the implicate dynamic—the efficacious and powerful effect of energetic awareness and presentation–released through coaching. In that dynamic, we discover a beautiful “meeting place” for deep transformational growth.
