I use a framework for coaching. I call this framework awareness, action, and accomplishment. It might look like this if I were to show it visually.
The basis comes from a coach training I participated in. Other coaches use different words but I use these words with my client because they seem to resonate best with the young people I work with most often. It’s a circle, sort of.
We start by having the client become self-aware. There are a few ways to do this.
- My clients discover their needs and values exercises and then explore the experience of doing the exercise and the words they chose as their needs and values.
- We discuss their processing modalities to figure out their strengths and weaknesses. We discuss where they see strengths and weaknesses showing up for them in practical terms.
- We consider how to use strengths as a workaround for weaknesses.
- We explore their self-care habits and how to build positive ones.
- Some may take a VIA Character Inventory to discover strengths and then explore the results with me.
- We tackle negative self-talk and how to shift beliefs and perspectives.
- We explore dreams and how to actions steps to get to them.
After the client has some awareness, we start to explore action steps. These actions need to be measurable, clear, doable and scheduled for the client. We create these in partnership. My job is to ask thought-provoking questions, be direct with clients when they aren’t being honest with themselves, be encouraging, and provide accountability. While we are creating these action steps, there is still new awareness (I say it was sort of circle, so awareness for a second time) coming up which helps to form the action steps. The hope is that the next step is for the client to follow through on an agreed upon action step. Either way, we circle back to awareness again for the third time. If the client followed through the awareness is often about the experience in doing the action step. Was it rewarding? Hard? Easy? Fun? Challenging? Beneficial? What could make it better? If the client did not follow through, the awareness is about something else. What got in the way of completing the action? Not enough support? Didn’t have the right accountability? Simply forgot? Changes they couldn’t control? Fear? What is in his/her control to help follow through?
The last part is the accomplishment. It is important to celebrate our accomplishments, even the seemingly small ones like making your bed every day for a week. It may seem like something everyone can do but that isn’t always the case. Little battles are often the hardest. For some people, they are so busy they forget to acknowledge the accomplishment because they are already on to the next thing. We should be stopping to take stock of what we did, how we did it and if it had a benefit for us. Then we are back to awareness to explore what is next?
In a future blog, I will explore the gaps that exist for many clients and possible solutions. Some fall into a gap between awareness and actions and some fall into a gap between action and accomplishment.