Walking the Talk

CHRISTIAN COACHING – BUILDING RELATIONSHIP AND FLOW

The flow of an effective coaching relationship is unique. While mentoring flows wisdom and experience passing on a father-like legacy; counseling flows prescriptive advice promoting physician-like healing; and consulting flows direction and expertise fixing a specific flaw akin to a senior design engineer. Coaching draws equals together flowing in a partnership characterized by walking through life challenges until actions are taken and the client's goals are achieved.

The ebb and flow of the coaching relationship is dictated not by a carefully scripted agenda of the counselor or the step by step plan of the consultant. Rather the coaching topic is influenced by the client's state of mind reflected on the coaching model continually centered on Jesus Christ as the foundation. Perhaps on a given coaching day, a powerful reminder needs to be crafted of the vision becoming fuzzy in the demands of everyday life. Another session may bring the need to explore strategy and objectives with the success or failure of initiatives taken. Stepping back and unpacking obstacles could be the unanticipated topic of another coaching day resulting from the brutal confidence damaging effects of a meeting. The topic may need to be a thoughtful examination of awareness of the realities of the present and setting the foundation firm again to build with strategies and actions.

Gary Collin’s book, CHRISTIAN COACHING, presents a comprehensive picture of the relationship. Positive change that is: collaborative not prescriptive; dialogic not sermon focused; positive building up not problem solving taking apart; and life encompassing not component evaluating.
Some of the key underpinnings:
• Listen intuitively
• Demonstrate continuous curiosity
• Promote mutual respect and trust
• Clarify assumptions
• Race alongside toward action oriented goals

The core of the coaching process is asking the question, intuitive listening for clues to progress forward, and walking alongside the client. Continuous curiosity enables pondering values, perspective, context, lifestyle, goals, feelings, and relationships. Continuous curiosity promotes thought provoking questions, active listening, and leaps of intuitive insights. The client is built up through these inquiries focused on goals and dreams enabling clarity and energy to achieve their ministry.

CHRISTIAN COACHING – LEVERAGING POSITIVITY

Consider framing the coaching relationship with a positivity foundation. Positivity transforms and revitalizes the participants’ daily orientation to their own life and lives of others through seeing possibilities in daily trials rather than energy draining self-absorbed negativity.

Pastoral coaching is challenging due to the demands on the clergy from a wide variety of outside and internal influences. These negative stresses need to be transformed through the increase of positivity perspective through the intentional daily gathering of energizing moments. Identify these positive moments intentionally through: observation; stopping to consider the important rather than the urgent; and reflecting to others' possibilities rather than despair or distraction.

Barbara Fredrickson in her book, POSITIVITY, makes the case that positivity can make an enormous difference in life. Dr. Fredrickson presents six facts regarding positivity:
• Feels good
• Changes how the mind works
• Transforms the future
• Puts brakes on negativity
• Obeys a tipping point
• Increases trend toward positivity

The decision to choose positivity is a daily intentional choice. Every day is a unique God given opportunity to live burdened by daily problems or experiencing energy through looking past the grim circumstances to possibilities. Positivity works on our fears and trepidation of life's problems reinforced by negative news allowing us to consider these possibilities rather than dwell on misfortune. This positivity starts to light the dark corners of lives fueling optimism, creativity, and belief. Purposeful daily positivity deflects the bombardment of bad news allowing opportunities to grow and broaden our contributions.

Positivity promotes thinking in strategic terms while creating bigger, better options for positive change. Leveraging the affirmative aspects of the leadership, team, organization, and vision to broaden and build. The ability to see possibilities and where roads traveled through decisions could lead is enhanced when positivity is deployed rather than fault finding and negativity. This broadening and building is fostering one change at a time in a context of the vision. Infectious by nature, positivity flow building momentum for change. The challenge is to ensure positivity enthusiasm for change is not short-lived beaten down by individual agendas and negativity.

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Christian Coaching - Leveraging Appreciative Inquiry

Leveraging Appreciative Inquiry - Valuing Opening Questions

The Appreciative Inquiry (AI) process fundamentally is a force for positive change. This positive change process is fully affirmative, inquiry based, and improvisational. This is contrary to the traditional change model that is problem focused, data driven, and scripted process. The role of the opening question in an inquiry based process is central to the direction traveled by the participants during the change process.

Determination of a positive topic for the coaching conversation is the start of the process. The client dictates the direction of the session not the coach. Since the coach does not have the traditional power of the agenda, the power of the opening series of questions fuels the appreciative inquiry accomplishment. The topic replaces the traditional goal setting process that implies success or failure. Questions explore the client's strengths, past successes, work and personal values, and one or two things he/she longs for more of or different in life. Stages are discovery, dream, design, and destiny focused on the topic. Diana Whitney in her book Appreciative Inquiry presents a compelling case for this process.

The importance of the opening question for the Christian coach may explore where is Christ seen in the immediate situation. Focusing on positive drives further positive outcomes while focusing on the negative creates continued urgency for more negativity. The positive initial questions frame the path taken to work on real concrete problems in a very different method than traditional coaching.

A client might face a difficult situation such as enjoying his work but not earning enough to make a living. Traditional coaching would probe his approach to pricing, marketing, time management, and business development to determine key problems. These identified problems would be translated to specific actionable goals to turn the business around or search for alternate employment. Appreciative coaching probes with questions framed in a positive manner leading to growing sense of energy and optimism.

Focus on the positive core in the initial questioning. Phrasing the positive inquiries leverages the appreciative inquiry model. Inquiry into human potential is collaborative acknowledging the relationship between the process of inquiry and stirring action to positive effect.

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Christian Coaching - Today's Rapidly Changing World

Achieving Positive Lasting Change

Achievement of positive lasting change pivots on the realization that transformation is a long term commitment and not a short term fad or passing fancy. Bringing long term devotion to change to the individual or group is cemented by the belief God's Holy Spirit is an important traveler and participant in the transition. Encompassed in this faith enhanced environment identification of attainable goals, measurable successes, course correction, and support systems thrive. Care needs to be taken not to cast planned changes in stone as not to allow the free flowing influence of the Holy Spirit on the on-going transformation over time.

Ministry applications of Christian coaching include coaching pastors, individual church leaders, church boards, congregations through change, and coaching congregations through transitions. During these changes there are predictably several categories of people. Innovators are those who are upfront pushing new ideas and agendas wanting to move forward. These people embrace these new changes and run with them. Acceptors are more skeptical of change searching for more data and time to contemplate the effects of the change. The final group are the resisters who fight the change actively or passively. Resisters serve as the brakes or the drag on change. Each has an important role in the process. Gary Collins in his book Christian Coaching effectively discusses these groups' impact on the change process.

Christian coaching is walking side by side with a person or group of people in an intentional manner open to the powerful direction of the Holy Spirit throughout the journey. Particularly important in the life of the church during transition and uncertainty, coaching is at its most powerful when the vision requires focus or leadership needs to be raised up for His purposes. Like the early church, change is essential for growth but self interest and personal agendas need to give way to focusing on truly building a relationship with God. Christian coaching can facilitate a pastoral change in a congregation without significant momentum in the church in their service to God.

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Christian Coaching Perspective: A Pastor / Coach View

Coach's Role - Reflect Possibilities


Many coaching characteristics and skill sets are transferable from the secular world to the Christian coaching role. A powerful image and tool of coaching is the coach acting as a mirror for the client. The mirror allows the client to see themselves through objective eyes allowing evaluation of the potential impact of their strategy and style on others. The coach can build positive changes acting as a mirror.

Pastoral coaching may present unique problems in acting as a mirror. The pastor has a wide range of roles within a congregation and each member sees a different view of the pastor. An illustration of this can be observed in the comments and behavior of a small home bible group when speaking of the pastor. Everyone in this case was supportive and positive about the pastor. Yet each saw the pastor very differently, some saw his role as a preacher, others as a care giver, some as a theologian, another as an administrator, yet another as a leader, and others as a friend.

The nature of the pastoral role interacting with people having very different perspectives was like many slightly different mirrors. Perhaps Christian coaching is more akin to a prism than a mirror. This prism reflects the challenges of the multitude of hats the pastor wears interacting with a host of other people's expectations. The images presented in the prism are not always clear and can be fast changing with the movement of the situation. Mirroring for the pastor by the coach remains an effective tool for successful coaching through change and awareness. However, the image serves as a reminder that in pastoral coaching , a coach needs to remove self from the equation since their may be no best answer or strategy. Rather allow the work of the Holy Spirit to sort out the many faces of the prism.

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Christian Leadership and Coaching

Transformational Leadership Coaching - Walking and Climbing Alongside

Transformational leadership coaches walk alongside their clients by enabling them to become more effective leaders. During this journey together leaders are equipped through coaching to examine situations and turn them into possibilities. This visioning process is solidified and validated through the trust built between the coach and client. Christian coaching focuses at both the individual and institutional levels to guide and support the clients.

An useful image of a coaching relationship may be that of climbing a long series of ladders of life. Sometimes the ladder has short distances that are clearly defined and feel safe from prior experience. While in others the ladder is steep and the rungs worn or missing. Still other times the ladder rest on unsteady terrain and wobbles as the climb progresses. Finally an unplanned or painful fall might take place and fear permeates the question whether to start anew up the ladder.

As pastors and their congregations climb this ladder of life in pursuit of a God focused life, the coach is there to: steady the ladder in times of uncertainty or fear by providing a firm grip; encourage the next scary step into the unknown through words of encouragement; facilitate the pace of progress up the ladder through the focus on goals and milestones; and assure the promise of reaching the top of the ladder through prayerful teaching.

Consider a coach on the journey. Transformational leadership in the Christian journey needs fellow travelers to come alongside on occasion to provide support, guidance and discipline on the adventure.

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