Marie: Hello listeners, coaches and leaders around the world thank you so much for listening into the show. Here we are again, Marie Quigley and my lovely business partner Jeanine Bailey, to talk to you about some ways of supporting your client to understand themselves more, create more awareness for themselves, go deeper into their unconscious mind. As we've been listening and working with coaches from a mentoring and supervision perspective to support them to understand how that practice is moving and we've just noticed some wonderful things that coaches are doing and also some gaps, maybe, that we can support people to understand how to support their client to move out of their story into creating new awareness.

Jeanine: Yes, so we thought it would be really useful to share some strategies to support our coaches who are working with clients when they recognize perhaps they're in that head space and perhaps want to be able to create the environment in the session for the client to be able to go deeper and explore what's really going on underneath. So as you said Marie, we've been listening to some coaches recently and I was speaking to one just this week and I was listening to her recording and I could hear how she was able to support her client to go into this beautiful place of exploration where things really slowed down, the tone, the volume it all went softer as the client was starting to really touch on what were emotional things for him. And there was some sort of trigger that I was listening to in this deeper space, where the client went back up into his head space and his speech got quicker and he started to get into the story and started to express himself externally versus owning himself, and what was going on for him. And the coach shared that she was confused at this point, she didn't know where to take it because she also realized she was in her head, as she presumed that her client was also there as well. So she was a little bit confused about how to again support, creating that different space and place where deep discovery can potentially be made. So again we wanted to share some strategies and one of the strategies that I shared with her was and there are many. And this particular example is you know, when you are a coach and you notice yourself that you are in your head, when you notice that you’re caught up and perhaps analyzing and confused, you can share that with your client. You can perhaps say “I'm noticing right now that I'm confused. I'm feeling a bit confused and I'm in my head, what's coming up for you? What are you noticing, client?”. So this is one of the ways we can use ourselves as an instrument in the coaching session to create again new perspectives new awareness.

Marie: Absolutely. And that's called parallel process when potentially what the client is going through, the coach is also experiencing. So it's a wonderful thing to be aware of as you’re, hopefully coaches, listening at level three- not just to what the client is saying but also to what's happening in your own self, to use that as a way of supporting your client, you to be the mirror and supporting your client to have new awareness because of what's happening to you. So a lovely strategy Jeanine.

Jeanine: Yeah. So there's so much more that we can do as a coach. So potentially we could again perhaps reflect back to the client: “I'm noticing that perhaps you are in your head and going around with your story. So what's coming up for you now as you're in that space?”. Or it's picking up a key words that the client shares and getting curious about that word. So there are a couple of other strategies.

Marie: Yeah I'm thinking of the core competency direct communication when you talk about that. It is being clear with the client on what you're noticing. Sometimes not mincing your words but being quite direct. “I notice, client, you are in your head again”. You know, “what can support you to create more awareness for yourself. Is it about telling this story or is it about doing something else?”. So giving client options to recognize "ah there I go again, I'm in my head". It's really not about… we always say meet your client where they are. It's not about moving them anywhere that they don't want to be. But our main purpose of the coaching is to create awareness towards what's holding them back or what are they doing to move towards their goal. So there needs to be some clarity. Are they just talking waffle? Or are they really creating some kind of new awareness for themselves? Usually the biggest awareness comes when we support the client to move inside themselves, into their body. As we share in coach training, 58% percent of communication is with our physiology. So our body is constantly giving us information. And your client may not be aware of that until they move, of their own accord, inside to explore what's going on.

Jeanine: So I love that you've shared that Marie. It is so important to recognize the physiology and what's going on. So from your perspective, what would be a great question to support the coaches to then support their clients to notice what's going on in the body?

Marie: Well first of all coaches, notice what's going on in your body as your in Level 3 and 4 listening. And if you are in your head, as we shared earlier, name it, offer it to the client and get curious about what this relationship is that you've got. Also that direct communication and then saying something like, “so client, for you to get gain more awareness where would be useful for you to go in this conversation?”. And of course, just like I'm hopefully mirroring right now, we can support the client to slow down in the conversation by using our tone of voice, by slowing down how we’re speaking. We've got this beautiful voice called our ‘instrument’ in coaching that we can really impact the client to move into their unconscious mind to support the awareness. Something like that.

Jeanine: Yeah. So by modeling, we are able to really support the client to slow down, so coaches if you notice that you are in your head and you realize that you're there, it's perhaps about just taking a breath for yourself or perhaps asking your client to take a breath with you if they would like to do that, so that you can send to yourself, re ground yourself and then pull yourself to move into that space of slowing down the conversation.

Marie: That's right. So you might say “client, I notice you're going round in circles talking about this story and what would serve you to move out of that story so that you can create a shift for yourself?”. The client will know. The client will always know. And together you can create that.

Jeanine: And another potential strategy that I'm thinking of is that when, again, you notice your client is going around in a story, they’ve come out of that, perhaps, deeper place of exploration and they've pulled themselves back up into their head. You can reflect back perhaps, that's what you noticed that “there was a trigger that took you back up into your head and starting to perhaps circle around the details” and perhaps reflect back or ask the question “is that a strategy? Is that something that you do often or from time to time?”. So again that question can really support the client to think “oh, ok. It's something I do?”.

Marie: Yeah.

Jeanine: To create again conscious awareness of perhaps how a client behaves based on, perhaps, those deeper dives of discovery.

Marie: Yes, Absolutely. Another strategy is to support the client to move, use that body to move into a different space in the room. Even if you don't have a lot of space or if your coaching online- you can ask them to, with their permission of course, simply move their body into a place that allows them to come out of the story. It's amazing when you trust your client and what they will choose to do when you bring the awareness to them, that they are talking the same old story.

Jeanine: Or very simply what's really going on here? What's underneath the story? What's the truth?

Marie: And you can ask some powerful questions, you can say, you know, as you said similar “what's really happening here?”. You can ask “when you believe this story, who does that make you? Who you being when you keep repeating this story? What are you getting out of it?”. And you could get really curious about that, because if it is a strategy of avoidance, then it's turning up the pain on that strategy of avoidance so that they can see why they're doing it. That often helps create a shift as well.

Jeanine: Yes. And I think it's asking those questions after you’ve perhaps reflected back that what you're noticing is that they've come into their head. And perhaps going around in circles. So, asking those powerful questions will be really powerful.

Marie: Yeah. So we trust that was a useful snippet of information for you, coaches. Some strategies to support your clients to get curious and create awareness for themselves about their patterns of coming out of their body and into their head and telling you all of the same old stories.

Jeanine: So we wish you well with trying on these strategies and we look forward to perhaps connecting some time later on. Thank you listeners.