The experience of the coach is always different from the experience of the client. It’s not just the client that develops and grows during a coaching session; the coach does as well. As a coach, time with your client is a time for self-reflection and really understanding what it means to be a coach. Join Ina Gjikondi and Bonnie Buckner as they talk to Chrystal Checketts, Paris Perrault, and Rosalind (Roz) Wilson. All three of them have also been through the Ecoe-Co-Leadership Coaching Program which puts a significant focus on the inner development of a coach. Discover what they learned from the program and how it has helped them in their coaching journey. Start fully understanding the coaching experience today!
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The Coaching Experience: Growing Alongside Your Client As A Coach With Chrystal Checketts, Paris Perrault, And Rosalind (Roz) Wilson
This is Ina and Bonnie. With us, we have three guests. Paris Perrault, Roz Wilson, and Chrystal Checketts. All three of them are graduates of our e-Co Leadership Coaching Program. I’d love to give you a moment and introduce each one of them. Roz Wilson is an Executive Leadership and Life Coach who is invested in personal, team, leadership, and community effectiveness. As a proud member of the first cohort of the e-Co Leadership Coaching Program at GW, Roz has gone on to receive the International Coaching Federation, Professional Coaching Credential. Her coaching practice is built on raising self-awareness, empowering choice, and assuring people feel heard, respected, and affirmed.
Chrystal Checketts is the Founder and CEO of Ponderosa Stage Consulting, a firm dedicated to a world where individuals and organizations thrive. Through executive coaching, leadership development, and workplace culture solutions, clients are supported to create stronger alignment and unlock deeper connection to self, others, their work, and the world around them. Finally, Paris Perrault is the Founder and Principal Executive of Leave The Top Open. She provides coaching and strategic planning for individuals and organizations that are seeking transformative exploration for health and well-being, culture shifts for equity and inclusion, and sustainability practices to uplift the human condition.
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Welcome, Roz, Chrystal, and Paris. Bonnie and I feel a sense of coming home being with the three of you here. I would love to talk a bit about this coaching experience from the perspective of the coach and the coach’s development. We have been together for some time through the e-Co Leadership program. The program is focused on the inner development of the coach and supporting the coach in that journey of becoming. I know that to be true for myself. I finished the coaching certification in 2014. I went through New Ventures West. I remember it was a pretty intense year. Hadrian was about one year old at that time.
It was a lot to manage with life and to do this very intensive work, which was not just working with clients, which is a big part of it. I know we’re going to discover or talk more about it here, but it was really about doing my own work. Getting into the quiet spaces when I didn’t want to be quiet, and getting into yoga was the practice I took on in 2014 to learn. The invitation was I had to do it four days a week as a way of bringing the body along when my mind was racing.
It was very challenging for me to slow down. Fast forward, even in finishing that program, I didn’t feel like I was done. When the program is completed, it’s like, “What just happened?” It took me to a different space in my journey where things started opening up. Not everything was all good. I had to attend to a lot of different things. This idea of practice, I can say more, but I wonder if and how any of you associate with that or can speak to your own work as you’ve embarked on a coach-becoming journey.
I would like to jump in. This is Roz. As you were talking, it resonated with me when I started the coaching program, but in some slightly different ways. My kids were already grown and out of the house, so I didn’t have that focus. What focus I did have was I had spent 30-some odd years in the leadership learning space in various corporations and organizations.
The prompting of a good friend who told me, “You’d make a good coach,” which I didn’t quite believe at the time that she told me that, encouraged me to apply for the e-Co Leadership Coach Training Program. I said okay because I’ve always trusted her insight and guidance along my growth. When I applied, I wasn’t sure I’d get in because of some of the questions they ask you.
I was like, “Do I have that? Do I have a vision? Do I have a plan here?” Even starting the program, I realized that I had to set aside a lot of what I based my own credibility on so that I could learn to not only trust myself but trust my clients and even trust my fellow coaches because I didn’t have all the answers. When you’re in the field of leadership learning and facilitating classes, there is this expectation that you know. I’ve worked with engineers and scientists. They want you to have the answer.
As a coach, you need to be able to trust that your clients have the resources and information they need. Maybe you don’t have to answer or solve their problem for them.
I had to set aside the sense that I had answers because I didn’t. I absolutely did not have answers. One of the major things this program gave me was the trust and the confidence that not only would my clients have the resources and information that they needed. I didn’t have to problem-solve for them. I didn’t have to give them the answer. They had it inside. My job was to support and guide them in finding those answers. It’s a long way around to say, “I hear you when you say you had to set aside some of those beliefs that you have about yourself in order to be a coach that serves others.”
Thank you, Roz. That resonated with me as well. It brought up so many feelings about what I was searching for within myself. The things that kept coming up for me in that space and time were, “Am I settling for what already was? Was I satisfied, or was I searching for something?” I knew that my inner self was still searching for something. I also knew that my service to others to feel purposeful within myself was still very high on my list.
I was wanting to have a way of transitioning out of a work environment that no longer suited me in the sense of knowing and recognizing that my pattern and my rhythms were a little different than this corporate 8:00 to 5:00 norm that I had been constantly on that treadmill. I was in there, trying to make waves, moving, and sometimes sensing as if I was not going anywhere, especially in the direction I had hoped that I would go.
Although I thought I was joining the class to learn some skills about sharpening my own tools and working with others, what became evident in the first three weeks was that it was all about being with myself. When I think about it now, it was about sitting in myself with myself. I remember that after our weekends together, there would be 2 to 3 days of reflection and emoting, sometimes sitting and crying, and having this expulsion of all of these things that were rising but flowing out and questioning, thinking I knew myself and there was still more to learn about who I was, and what that means to be authentic in this space to sit with me and be able to take that and serve others.
What I took from that was this entire notion, especially as we went into COVID together, where I had to decide that I wanted to pause and pose. What I mean by that, which is something that I now use with my own clients, is that I needed to be able to have an intentional pause. I needed to be able to pose in that moment of pause and see myself where I was at that time in order to move forward. Also, to capture what that was like, so in my knowing and remembering, I could always go there.
As a coach, you need to be able to intentionally pause and self-reflect in order to move forward.
To speak to some of the practices, I found that I needed to be more intentional with how I rose every morning and decided to sit with myself in myself and how I chose to close out my day in myself and with myself. That has been the guiding principle so far. Everything that you’ve both said has resonated with me in that way.
Sitting with myself in myself, that’s a great way. Chrystal, how does it feel to sit with myself in yourself? You don’t have to answer that, but I wonder.
I will. It is such beautiful imagery that’s evoked when I think about what Paris has shared. There’s building on this practice that you mentioned, Ina, of coming back to our body and our mind. Roz, you shared the knowing and the way that we’ve been seen and how we might have valued some of our own worth in our careers and life in so much of the doing. When I think about sitting with myself within myself, I’d love to share one of the first days of our in-person experience where I heard the e-Co, meaning Expanding Inward to then Connect Outward. I knew that’s what had happened. There was an expansion and an opening within myself. I didn’t have a lot of words for it then.
After the second time we met in person, I remember the feeling very vividly like I had found additional space. I was thinking about our embodiment practices and the introduction we had to that, feeling like I had found extra inches in my spine and this “upliftedness”. When I think of sitting with myself within myself, it’s a journey of discovery, that presence, and a different way of being. I’ll leave it there. I’d love to hear what it is for each of you.
One thing that I want to talk about that I’ve been thinking about a lot is why, both Ina and I, it is very important for coaches to do their own inner work. That is a foundational piece of this program. I’ve been thinking about why that is, hearing the three of you comment on what your journey through the program has been.
There’s been a place of transformation of things I thought about myself before moved. For me, when I think about transformation, it is different from change. The change is, it was sunny, now it’s rainy. I was talking about this with a student of mine in another class I teach. Transformation is harnessing energies that have become stagnant in some pattern and creating a movement to put them into a new place.
As I think about that, there’s a disassembly that has to occur. If I’m starting at a stagnant place, which is what the pattern is, I have to open that out, which means I have to break it apart so that it can reform in a completely new way. That breaking apart is often the barrier to entry for many people because it involves being off-balance. Being off-balance is integral to coming to a new place.
As I think about the coach needing to do their own inner work, a very simple term is when I go hiking. I can’t take a friend hiking on a trail that I’ve never been on and expect to guide them. I did that, we were both lost, and we still had a great time, but there was zero guidance at that time. If I want to take someone and help them on that journey of transformation, I have to know what transformation is for me and what that journey looks like. What gets transformed is always going to be unique to the person, but that journey of transformation is so critical to understand. It comes through experiencing it first, and then through reflection on that experience, being able to speak to it and pinpoint it.
I want to build very quickly on that. When I first got into the coaching journey, not the school necessarily, but the Center at GW had just started to do more of these 360-degree feedbacks intentionally. The participants who went through our leader development programs would do a development plan based on the lessons learned in the 360s. My responsibility at that time was to read their plans and provide feedback.
I remember reading these plans. I’m like, “I have no idea what kind of feedback to give these people,” because I don’t even know who they are, what their vision is, what their goals are and their dreams. I’m just reading off of them. This is where my engagement with coaching started because I, at that time, suggested to our team, “What if I learn a bit more about how to debrief these 360s and meet people one-on-one to get an idea of what they want? Maybe I can give better feedback based on that.”
We did start doing that. It opened up the space. We started hearing from people. I remember this guy who worked with the police at the City of Alexandria. I met with him twice, and he said, “It’s amazing. I feel like now I don’t have to do what I’m doing, but I can empower my police workforce to send the message. When the message comes through them, it’s more credible than coming through me to all the police workforce.”
I’m saying all of this to go back to what Bonnie was saying, that if we can’t do our own work, we can’t bring others on a journey. I wasn’t equipped. This is where, at that time, I said, “I need to get better trained because people are looking to do more of this individual thing.” At that time, I thought it was more of a process, not so much a tool for my personal transformation.
I knew that this was not my space, and I wasn’t prepared. I knew I needed the right skillset to support people. That’s when I stepped into it. The whole journey has taken me to other places and spaces. It made a difference when you go through your form, the transformation. I like how you talked about the stagnant, Bonnie.
It’s energies that are within us that possibly are dormant or have not been activated a certain way because we’re moving from one form to the other. It’s still us. That’s why change seems like, “I don’t want to change me, but I want to be doing better. I want to align parts of myself to something new, to a new space.” Chrystal, you talked about space and spaciousness. That’s what’s coming.
Could I offer one other thing? Almost what everyone has said was this point coming up for me that I think about with each of my clients. Before I work with them, the experience I went through has helped me to stop and say, “What do I, as a coach, need to do, to be, to provide, before I go in with a client?” Once I do that work, then I can go in with the client and be more attuned to what they need at that moment. All my stuff isn’t coming in with them, and I’m now attuned more to the client.
Bonnie, when you spoke about transformation, I wrote it down because I’m a great note-taker. I got to go back and review that later. It really is about that. One of the journeys I’ve been on is stopping that pause. What do I need right now to be able to go in and be able to give the best I can to that client? I wanted to offer that because that kept bubbling up for me as everybody was talking.
Roz, as you speak of that, I think of the word practice. It’s been mentioned a couple of times, and it is ongoing. I find that for myself, at least. To the point of transformation, I think of nature. I think of the seed. Ina, I still have seeds that I received at the very beginning of this journey.
You’re supposed to plant those, Chrystal. Don’t keep them in the packet.
They’re so amazing. There are new ones to plant, which I’m very excited about. They came on a little heart. My morning reading was about growth and how it happens sometimes invisibly. It’s a constant force that we’re all experiencing whether or not we’re conscious of it. One of the points that was made was how there’s a sense of instability about it. I think of that seed breaking open. I think of those patterns being broken, and it can feel like breaking. It’s just a beautiful reminder of this growth that is part of our very nature if we can then step into it and acknowledge it consciously. Certainly, as a coach working with clients, that is a continued practice for me.
Growth happens invisibly. It’s a constant force that everyone experiences, whether or not they’re conscious of it.
Thank you, Chrystal. I want to step back into that part about the transformation that Bonnie was sharing with us. When you were mentioning that Bonnie, what came to mind was the reflection of that feeling of recognizing when that shift began to happen, that sensing, knowing, and self-awareness that there was this breaking down of the pattern or the old, where something was emerging that was new and different, and there’s reconstructing or rebuilding. To that, it was reassuring to know that it’s not a blind transformation. Knowing that even though there are things that are being built, and I’m conscious of the awareness of what is happening, it’s in the sense of knowing that something more is coming.
What became a big reality piece for me was knowing that I didn’t have to be perfect. I didn’t have to be the expert. I could show up, be vulnerable, be authentic, and be real, knowing that as we step into this space of coaching and working with those we engage with or serve, for them to be able to see and recognize that there’s that sense of vulnerability still, even within myself as coach.
It opens up that whole idea of curiosity and it being okay to ask questions and be the mirror so that they can begin to explore as well. I smile whenever I think about that shift because it’s almost indescribable. It’s so internal. Within, it’s as if there’s a physical shift that is happening, or I’m sensing within my body, knowing that I am moving forward in a different way, a different being, and still growing and learning at the same time.
From a coach’s perspective, the inner work is so important because if I wasn’t able to grasp that that was okay to be in that space, it could be overwhelming. Thinking that the shift and the transformation are happening within, how do I deal with that when I’m working with clients as I’m transforming myself? That sense of knowing that it’s okay to be vulnerable and be me was the space that allowed me to move forward and embrace the e-Co Coaching Model so openly in such a way that has become the love of my life in terms of my work.
At that moment of disassembly, I spend a lot of time thinking about that moment. Ina talked about, “I don’t want to change me, but I also want to be a better me.” When I’m doing the dreamwork, that agentic willful identity that moves someone through a dream and moves us through our days has to yield to a completely new and unknown unvoiced aspect.
Roz talked about, “I had to set aside who I thought I was at this leadership training.” The ability to set aside that identity and that agentic me is in itself such a critical step. It’s really at that moment I think of it as a step, because if I’m standing, I’m balanced. The moment I tip myself forward to take a step forward physically, I’m off-balance.
When I think about the coach’s role of being between those two steps before the second foot lands and brings everything back to balance, bridging that disassembly process and wherever that new emergence, new assembly, or new form comes into being. I’m curious. We’ve been talking about our own personal inner journey. If we can maybe change the focus of the lens, rack focus, and think about the client’s journey and the role of the coach in that moment of letting go of identity, I’d be curious to hear what everybody thinks about that.
Bonnie, I’m curious when you asked that question. Are you saying as we see that shift in the client? Is that right? There’s that step and the movement forward.
I’ll say it in a different way. I’ll go back to how Ina talked about it. I don’t want to change myself, but I want to be a different me. Where is the coach in that process?
It was a good distinction that you made, Roz, because I was also thinking, “Are you imagining what happens in the space, in the moment, or in the journey?” I think you’re talking more broadly in the journey.
I’m talking journey, because it’s a long journey.
It is a bit, “How do I stay tuned in my own knowing and let go of my own knowing? How does that serve the client in their knowing and letting go of their own knowing?”
Maybe, “How do I do that for the client?”
Exactly. It’s a bit of that dance. I noticed, Chrystal, you went forward. I wondered what you wanted to say.
For me, two clients came to mind. I worked with them for the exact same amount of time. I know we’re talking about the coach’s role. When I think about their journey throughout the time we were together, one of them was willing to look inward. She was more willing to be with and to name those aspects that she wanted to be better or to experience differently.
The other, especially at the beginning, kept feeling like coaching was all about performance. Meaning, “Here’s my specific goal.” It’s more of the doing. I love being able to weave in, help, see, and coach an individual through the process of being in the inner work rather than being reflected in the outer. What I found in those experiences as a coach was the power of invitation, in particular for the second, who kept thinking, “This is how I will find the value when I achieve X, Y, Z goal.” It’s very driven.
The longer we spent, before she found herself in the space to go inward, it was a harder transition in that case. There was more of a release. There was a bigger moment of the pattern being broken. I think of that coming back to the role of me as a coach in both of those scenarios. I’m thinking about the power of invitation and the power of holding the space in the container, and then I go back to the trust. Roz, you’ve mentioned, “Can I trust myself? Can I trust the client?” That’s what comes up for me.
In a way, you’re also saying, “Have I created a space that the client can trust being in that place with me?”
Absolutely, but there can be more than the titles, the roles, and the ways that obviously this very successful person had worked so hard for and to be known as and get to the space where there’s the trust and the rapport developed in that space, that finally there was a transition and a shift.
Coaching is more than just the titles or what makes you successful. It’s about inviting your client to a space of trust and rapport, so they can finally find that shift.
Chrystal, I’m so glad that you mentioned 1 or 2 clients in bringing forward that visual or that imagery. As the coach, it’s extremely kinetic. I go back to this idea of what Roz mentioned about clearing ourselves before we go into that space and being grounded, open, and curious so that we’re creating that space for whatever shows up in our Zoom office window on that day or in person with the client.
It’s allowing myself to be in tune or aligned enough with the client’s energy, to be able to sense and recognize that and call that, and bring that forward in this space for not only discussion but for curiosity. It’s in that sense of knowing that there was a different flutter in the eyes or a shift in the body language in response to a question they may have had about themselves and asking about that.
It’s going back to this whole idea of pause and pose. Right at that moment, “Can you share with me what is happening with you in that sense?” when I saw your eyes flutter in reflection, to what you just mentioned. It’s their awareness of sometimes saying, “It’s something, but I don’t know.” There’s that trust that you mentioned of them being able to say that they don’t know, and as the coach in that space, being able to share that it’s okay not to know at that moment, and to hold that space for them as they begin to explore what that knowing might bring forth or might look like later, even after the session has ended.
I could resonate well with what Chrystal and Paris were both saying. Paris, when you talked about the client not knowing, that did raise for me the question of exploring that with them and creating the space and the support so that they can explore that in a way that is helpful for them. Also, if there’s something in there that maybe they don’t want to look at. I’m raising this as a question because I’m always about asking my clients, “Is this something you want to explore?”
It’s wanting to give them the space to say yes or no, and when I have to get more reflective, if it’s something that they say they don’t want to explore. However, maybe it would be something good or helpful for them to explore. It’s balancing that as a coach. That’s going back to, “Who’s the expert here? Are they the expert, or am I the expert?” It’s having that continuous reflection around that space with them.
As a coach, ask your clients if there is something they want to explore and give them the space to say yes or no.
I am constantly looking for ways to ensure that this is a co-creation with the client, that we’re doing this together in partnership, but focused on their agenda and focused on working with them to get the greatest outcome for them as an individual. There’s still a lot of reflection I’m still doing around that. When do you push? When do you pause? Where is that balance there?
That’s exactly where I wanted to build on. I know this comes back to the coach in relation to the client. I also feel the work that we’re doing through a professional coaching path is not just the work of being a coach and serving clients. It’s the work of serving people, being with people, being with humans, and being in society.
It’s establishing or transforming to build into a new way of being and how I am with others, how I hold myself in this curiosity or in trusting spaces. It’s not just with clients. How do I do it with my husband, with my son, or with my friend? How do I do it with others? It goes to this idea of wholeness or into an ecology of wholeness. It’s the conversation we’ve been wanting to explore.
There’s the question that comes to me, whether it’s in the coaching space or not in the coaching space. All of you have talked about it to some extent. If it’s in a coaching space, “How do I make sure that, as a coach, I’m not projecting my own thinking and pushing my own agenda, even though I know very clearly that that’s not what I’m here to do, but it happens? How do I hold myself in that check and balance?”
This goes back full circle to what Paris was saying, “Sitting with myself into myself.” I’m curious. In coaching or beyond coaching spaces, what are those ways that you all have in place to keep yourself in check and balance and notice your own sense of projection? I know, for example, one little thing, and I’m being aware as we are doing this in this show. This is feedback Bonnie has given me.
She gave it to me as technical feedback like, “Don’t lean onto the mic too much because then your voice is going to come too strong. If you go backward, it’s going to keep shifting.” Think of it if we use that as a metaphor. My feedback here is I need to stay centered and not lean too much forward as I’m talking. That’s part of my practice.
I know that when I’ve leaned too much forward, my voice is going to shift in the space. It’s the same with human beings. Let’s use the coaching context. If I lean too forward, I have entered the client’s space. I’m too much in their space. I need to come back to my own. Those are little cues. This is one example, but I wonder what else happens for any of you here.
I had some things rising just hearing about that, hearing Roz’s question, and this idea of it being comfortable for the client and wanting to create that space of trust so that the curiosity can emerge. I like the image that you presented about the microphone, Ina. For me, there are two that I use myself constantly.
One is I am the mirror to the client. At the same time, in my own sensing, I have to be able to see myself in my own mirror as I’m reflecting back to them. That mirror is there for myself, but also as the mirror to the client. It’s having that sense of transparency somehow, in between, to recognize when I ask a question of curiosity. Can I be the disruptor in the pattern when I look at what they’re sharing as a pattern or imagery?
Not in the sense of judging, but in the sense of questioning and asking in the curiosity sense of, “What is that that we see together? What is that that I’m witnessing for you?” At the same time, recognizing, from the very beginning of the journey and my own coaching learning, “How do I maintain that balance, be centered, and not so emotional or caught with the client’s story?” As you mentioned, it’s pulling back from the mic, but for me, it’s about, “Am I clear in the mirror to them? Does it feel like them when they’re sensing what’s coming back from me to them?”
There’s one tiny thing here because I know there are more others who want to share. I’m very curious. I love the mirror image. As you think of yourself as a mirror, you’re live, and you’re in a session with the client. How does that literally go for you? How do you know that you’re the mirror for the client at that moment? How do you know you’re not doing that? What is it that you do?
There’s a sensing in the body. When I know that I am totally reflective, it’s that energy connection of aligning with not only their body language but also recognizing they’re leaning in to see more. It’s almost like this. If, all of a sudden, the reflection is, “I didn’t see that right there,” that gives me the energy and the space of knowing I’m centered and reflecting back.
What happens for me when I know I’m a little off-centered and getting caught perhaps in my own is this burning or this rising. It’s a sense of warmth that’s happening from within my core where I’m no longer centered in that space and time of being present. I’m out of the fishbowl. I’m out of their mirror. I’m on my own. In that split second, I have to be able to recognize, and I do. I’ve got to pull back.
That’s the body again. Isn’t it interesting? It’s the body. I wonder, Chrystal, Roz, Bonnie, what else happens there for you?
It’s definitely in my body. I can say it in two different ways. When I am a reflecting mirror because I feel that as well, I am translucent. If I’m about me, I’m opaque, everything’s filled in. One of the things that I teach in our program and have done myself for over twenty years is an exercise of being able to step in someone else’s shoes, and then step back into myself.
Having done that for so long, there’s a great distinction for me of, “I know you are here. X marks the spot.” I know when I’m in myself, and I know how to step out of myself. When I’m in a session, it’s almost as if there’s myself, and then there’s this observer that’s just a step aside. Everything’s translucent, but there’s an observer.
That observer can move. It can step into the shoes of the other. It can look above, below, or around and catch different perspectives. It’s mobile. That’s not present if it becomes about me, which is not opaque. There’s a constriction because it’s associated with a want. If I’m just reflecting someone, there’s no want. If I start to want, as in I get invested in, “Why don’t they see this?” or whatever thought might come into my mind that takes me out of that reflective space, that want is constricted physically.
What about you, Roz?
It’s in my body. When I’m out of myself, my heart beats really fast. I hear my heart pounding inside my chest. That’s because, as Bonnie mentioned, “I want you to get this. I want you to see this.” That is my cue that I need to take a breath, take a pause, stop a moment, and reconnect with my client because I have stepped out of connection with them. I am now connecting with myself.
That is my signal that I need to now reconnect with my client. I was interested when Bonnie talked about being translucent. I don’t know if I would describe when I feel fully in connection with my client, but I have no experience of myself. I’m simply there with that client. I am very conscious of them, their non-verbals, words, speech patterns, and movements. I just have that experience of being fully in connection with them.
I also want to mention that although we’re focusing on the patterns and disruptions, it’s also amazing what that energy can feel like when the client, all of a sudden, has this burst of, “I’ve never seen this in this way before.” They’re verbal about it. They’re excited about it. Their energy is going in that direction of, “I have some thinking and some feeling to do.”
We’re feeling that warmth as well because we’re in the mirror, and the light is exchanging there. That’s as powerful and important to recognize as well. Even as a coach, I still want to maintain this sense of being translucent or transparent, even in their joy as I can express and recognize that, but not caught up in the sense of what they’re doing in their own joy because it’s their journey.
It’s wanting them to have that full whole experience of sensing and that curiosity about what has happened to them. It’s at that point in time where being silent as the coach to allow them to celebrate and be present in that space with them, I find joy in my own way as the coach in that space, too. I’m watching them feel all of that, and then resettle back down into themselves in sharing what just happened to them.
It is wonderful. I think about the power of voice that has come up from what I’ve heard in our conversation. It’s certainly one that I see as a way to keep myself in balance as well. I get a sense for myself, whether it’s in a coaching session or other relationships and conversations if my voice is connected to my diaphragm, or if it’s just neck and above if I’m speaking more from my head.
I honestly can almost hear that for myself in my own voice. What I find when I think of reflection or being a mirror, there’s a sense of stillness. That is the way I describe it for me before going into a coaching session. Certainly, being connected to my body, my breath, and those different impulses of how the energy is even moving within me.
If it is I’m leaning forward and towards or if it is that I am leaning back, it’s being connected and present. That presence is key as well for me. It is something to hold both that space for yourself as an individual and the client. I remember one of my mentor coaches and the faculty. He listened to one of my earlier recordings and said, “Are you enjoying this? Do you realize it’s about you as much as it is a client?” I thought, “What in the world?” I wondered earlier on if it was for me to show up as this blank page.
What I’ve learned, and I’m still learning and practicing, is how to be fully there and transparent. We know that we’re meeting our client, and we’re co-creating the space and the relationship. If it is that we’re asking a client to show up fully, what is it for me to show up fully as a coach? What is it for me to keep that energy in that container for that time or session? I’ll leave it there.
That’s a great place to leave it because I’m sure the five of us can continue this conversation and talk about the different aspects. I love the question, Chrystal, that you pose, “How am I showing up fully?” and to even stay with that question because it’s a lot to hold in a coaching space of being present to ourselves as coaches, as human beings, being present to the client, moving the client, and supporting to move the client forward. There are a lot of moving pieces.
Dr. Penny Potter, in her dissertation, talks about the different elements or the different things that the coach is doing in the session. There are 5 or 6 different things that they’re paying attention to, just like we spoke, like attention to their own self and noticing the client’s inner dynamics and outer dynamics. Having and holding the space to move the conversation forward is a lot.
At the same time, it’s taking it beyond even the coaching context to put this question out there, “How am I bringing forth my full humanity in any conversation and any setting? How am I being present for myself, but present for others that I engage with in my relationships and the world?” Maybe that’s a good place to leave this conversation.
Even for the people reading, pose that question to yourself. Maybe take a few minutes and examine different relationships in your life to ask that question. Where are you leaning more toward? Where are you not leaning as much? Where are you being translucent? We’ve given you different languages and different ways in which we somehow experience being with another human. How are you showing up fully as a human? Thank you, Roz, Paris, and Chrystal. Bonnie, we’re next to the next one. Thank you.
Thank you.
Important Links
- e-Co Leadership Coaching
- Roz Wilson
- Chrystal Checketts
- Paris Perrault
- New Ventures West
- https://www.ChrystalChecketts.com/about
About Paris Perrault
Paris Perrault is the founder and Principal Executive of Leave The Top Open, LLC. She provides coaching and strategic planning for individuals and organizations seeking: transformative exploration for health and well-being, culture shifts for equity and inclusion, and sustainability practices to uplift the human condition
About Chrystal Checketts
Chrystal Checketts is the Founder and CEO of Ponderosa Stage Consulting, a firm dedicated to a world where individuals and organizations thrive. Through executive coaching, leadership development, and workplace culture solutions, clients are supported to create stronger alignment and unlock deeper connection to self, others, their work, and the world around them.”
About Rosalind (Roz) Wilson
Rosalind (Roz) Wilson is an executive, leadership, and life coach who is invested in personal, team, leadership, and community effectiveness. As a proud member of the first cohort of The George Washington e-Co Leadership Coach Training Program, Roz has gone on to receive the International Coach Federation, Professional Coaching Credential (PCC). Her coaching practice is built on raising self-awareness, empowering choice and assuring people feel heard, respected, and affirmed.