I am slowly getting more and more classes under my belt, but especially I am getting much more coaching under by belt: I coach at every opportunity I get in class or in the CoP, and I am also doing my peer clients, and my paying clients.
Slowly things are falling into place, or at least into “a” place where I am getting more confidence. I remember one man in one of the classes, quite a while ago, said to me that he always volunteered to coach, when the opportunity came up in class, and he coached me on the issue that I was reticent (i.e. embarrased) to coach “in front” of so many people.
While I did not really like his way of approaching the coaching with me, since I found it a bit mechanically inclined, with one NLP technique after another, and trying to get them all in — or so it seemed to me, he did one thing that was very interesting. He said he had a problem with something, and would I be willing to coach him on it, for a few minutes. I said I would and started to ask him questions… and immediately got so involved in the talk that I forgot about the others.
At the end he said something to the effect that if you just concentrate on the client, on helping him, on being there for him, the rest will fall away.
After that class I started to volunteer to coach at every opportunity. One day, I came across Angela Bird’s class (my first experience with her) where she spoke about different levels of listening. When she said: “listen so hard that you forget you exist”, something seemed to really fall into place for me again.
So, I have found a place where I can go to when I am with a client: the listening place. When I am there, all sorts of intuitions, ideas, and structures start to come into my mind… and I know it’s the other person who is putting them there. At least I can tell when it is so, and when it is probably my mind trying to do it.
The listening place, a place where I connect with what is common between me and the other person.
