Jeanine: Hello and welcome to the next episode of the coaching and leadership podcast with Marie Quigley and myself Jeanine Bailey, welcome wherever you are in the world and Hello Marie in Doha.

Marie: Hello Jeanine in Melbourne.

Jeanine: Just about, about an hour and a half out of Melbourne. Down by the beach but yes it's not too far away. It is a drive that I do quite often when I'm not in isolation.

Marie: Yeah you see I'm from Sheffield in the UK and if I said I'm an hour and a half away from Sheffield that could be London.

Jeanine: Yeah. That's very true. So great to see you Marie, we're online isolating in our respective homes at the moment and we wanted to get together to create, of course, another podcast. And we're in the, I guess, I don’t know if it's the middle of the pandemic… who knows where we are. Who knows how long this will go for, and of course there are different… I guess… I'm not sure what the word is but, growth rates across the world in terms of the pandemic expanding. So I know Australia is doing quite well in terms of containing things and I know it's very different in other places as well. And we thought today what we would do is to create awareness about what is it that coaches can do to support individuals, families, groups and organisations during times like these, these uncertain and challenging times to build resilience, to support creating resilience. So that's our topic for today because we know that is something that we can do as coaches. That is something that we do do as coaches. That's a big part of what we do when working with our clients. And it's something that is very much needed at the moment.

Marie: Absolutely Jeanine. I'm noticing with my coaching clients how people are just wanting to process what's happening for them. So that they're coming to the coaching session not with a goal of a long term future, or even a short term future, but with a goal of trying to get clear about what's happening for them as they are facing what we are right now. So they're sitting in this as we all are. We're sitting in this COVID-19 pandemic and we're all experiencing it in a different way. So how are we experiencing it and what are the ways we can use to choose resilience or even not choose resilience? Choose to be with whatever's coming up, which helps us being resilient actually.

Jeanine: Yeah. So when we're working with our clients, So Marie you're talking about how your clients are wanting to process what's coming up for them in this moment. So perhaps you'd like to share what it is that, you know, how you support your clients to step in to resilience.

Marie: Yeah well I think rather than stepping into anything it's potentially about supporting them to discover what is happening for them right now in the moment. So for example if somebody is coming in feeling angry or frustrated or anxious, especially if they're anxious, they're tending to be looking at the future and having a feeling of a lack of control. So supporting them to figure out what is happening right now in the moment, knowing that right now they're still safe and well, and going through the unpacking of what they're thinking, what they're feeling or how they're being in the world that helps them understand their patterns and when we understand our patterns we can stop doing it. Of course, if we choose to. Or we can keep doing it because it feels like our comfort zone, I'm not sure I'm making sense.

Jeanine: Well you're making sense to me. And so and I'm a coach. However, you are making sense to me. So if you kept going what you would say.

Marie: So I'd rather give you an example, as you know I'm quite practical so it helps me if I give you an example. So I’ve got a client who came to me. She's feeling really anxious uncertain and angry. So instead of saying “OK so where do you want to be with that? Where do you want to go?”, The question is, “so at the end of the session what do you want to have experienced? What you want to walk away with experiencing?”. So the answer to that could be, and I'm just making this up because I'm not giving you an actual answer that woman gave me, but it could be “I want to feel my anxiousness. I want to understand it a little bit better”. And so we would then just get curious using questions like “what is happening for you right now? What are you noticing? What else is happening?”. So it's really in the present questioning, using processing what's happening. So the client can understand maybe somatically in the body where it's happening maybe it's happening in the head, maybe it's a thought process, but the client starts to unpack how they are doing this anxiousness in order to understand that even more.

Jeanine: So as they understand through that questioning of supporting our client to understand what's happening right now and, as you say, to process the feelings, the sensations, the thoughts, the habits, in that ability to get really present and aware again with what's happening in the moment, the client is instead of the words “stepping into”, the client is potentially taking the power away… is allowing themselves to take the power away from whatever it is they were experiencing before.

Marie: Yeah and claim their own power back, Jeanine. So by being with whatever's present, that they're in charge of unpacking it.

Jeanine: Absolutely. They take it to where they want it to go.

Marie: Yeah. So sometimes when we're feeling overwhelmed, anxious, angry it feels like this is happening to us, rather than us choosing to be it. You know “he or she or it is making me angry”. But it's never something else that makes us and it's our response to it. It's never something else that makes us anxious it's our thinking process and our response to the situation that causes that anxiety.

Jeanine: Yeah. And of course that happens in such a quick, you know, second, not even a second that creation of anxiousness or the emotions… a client without that questioning won't understand how they're creating that response and potentially won't even recognize, if they haven't been coached before, that they are choosing, they are unconsciously choosing that emotion or that sensation that they're experiencing. So by supporting our clients to get really present with what is happening and to unpack what is happening, they recognize “I’ve got power”. You know I’m at choice. And by getting present again it loses the hold that feeling has got on the person, so that the client is at choice to be able to choose a different outcome, choose a different way, choose a different way of being that they know is good for them good for others and good for the greater good or not. As you said earlier Marie or not. So a client can create a whole lot of awareness about what they do but they still may choose to go down the old, the old pathway if they want but there's a cost to that.

Marie: Yeah there's no right or wrong. So it's just being allowing them to give themselves permission to be with whatever's coming up and that is the truth for them in that moment. So it's just experiencing that kind of yeah.

Jeanine: So there is no right or wrong which is absolutely correct. I say correct, that sounds like a bit of a misnomer. Is that the word? So there in our world of coaching there is no right or wrong.

Marie: So there is no right or wrong to what the client is experiencing. It just is. So, it is not our role to support them to refrain or to move towards success at this time when people want to process how they're feeling. And we teach this in our diamonds program. Jeanine when we're doing the processing emotions module it's about being with whatever's coming up and allowing the client to experience it and gain awareness from it and just choose it right now to explore.

Jeanine: Yes there is so much power in that there is so much power in supporting your client to do that exploration. And it's how powerful that is, that process. And I think that's something that many coaches perhaps don't realize or take on and I know that this is something that again we teach in our training and I know that some of our clients sorry not clients, participants really get that and they’re very courageous and they and they do just that. They support the client to process what's coming up for them and there’ll potentially be others that perhaps might be concerned about what a client is feeling and may want to come in and perhaps rescue somehow some way and lead. And again it's not about leading it's not about believing we've got to take our client to a place of success as you mentioned Marie. It's really being with the client where they are in the present moment.

Marie: Yeah. So the more we can do that the more resilience the client's going to have because there's going to be ‘aha moments’ when we're allowing the client to give themselves permission to be. There’s as always awareness that comes up. That's the joy.

Jeanine: Yeah absolutely. Again that understanding and that awareness, It really does support the client to take their power back and be able to move forward in the way that they want to. Whatever choice they make. And again going back to what you said earlier there's no wrong or right. The client's choice.

Marie: So coaches we'd love you to start paying attention to what's coming up for you. Sit with yourself. Ask yourself “what is happening for me right now?”. Name those emotions. Allow them to be and get curious as you are processing what's happening for you in the moment and what new awareness you're creating for yourself.

Jeanine: And we'd ask you to do the same with people that you work with. To get curious as to what the client brings to the session and allow them to get a great awareness from your curious questions about again, what the emotions are, naming those emotions, the habits, the thoughts, the sensations and what's going on in the body. And so we trust that you enjoy that process, coaches and we are wishing you all the very best on international coach week and we look forward to catching up with you very soon.

Marie: Have a wonderful week coaches.