UAC #2

The second class in this course was held on Wednesday, June 13, 2007. We started the class discussing the different people that Jim recommended for reading in last weeks class: Robert Kegan and Albert Ellis. We moved into discussing Motivational Interviewing and how it plays into coaching. Jim took us through a model called Stages of Change Model. There were 7 stages: Pre-contemplation, Contemplation, Preparing to Take Action, Employ It, Fall of the Wagon, Maintenance (evidently I missed one). As a coach we come into play during the contemplation stage, the client has decided that they want this change in their life and they are looking for someone to help them with it. Motivational Interviewing comes in when they are having ambivalence toward the change that they say they want and we ask questions that lead them to seeing the benefits and drawbacks to what it is they want to change. As we ask these questions they will begin to focus on the reasons to change and therefore they will increase their motivation and decrease their resistance, without us telling them what they should do.

As I think about this concept and how I need to apply it to my own coaching style, I see that I don’t spend enough time weighing the different scenarios in my coaching sessions. I can remember a time when I did do that and would ask what the worst case scenario would be or what it would look like if a situation went a particular direction. I seem to have gotten away from that and want to move back into that more. As mentioned in an earlier blog, I had a couple coaching sessions that I got off the phone feeling less than good about and I have been able to see some techniques I could have tried that may have helped the session go better.