Every person you interact with is likely tapping into a very small fraction of what they are really capable of. Great parents, educators, and leaders know how to inspire the other person to discover and manifest more of their own true potential. This requires coaching rather than telling, giving advice, or directing.
Shirzad Chamine, Positive Intelligence
In any moment, no matter how lost we feel, we can take refuge in presence and love. We need only pause, breathe, and open to the experience of aliveness within us. In that wakeful openness, we come home to the peace and freedom of our natural awareness.
Tara Brach
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
Neale Donald Walsch
The task of the coach is not to provide answers, solutions, or advice. Rather, it is to keep the client engaged, through a series of open-ended questions, that eventually result in her discovering her own deepest questions, values, desires, and solutions.
Ideally, the coach trusts that the client’s inner Sage has great wisdom and is in the best position to provide solutions that fit her unique circumstances, needs, and predilections.
Our Saboteurs have the capacity to hamper our attempts to provide great coaching. In the PQ (Positive Intelligence) Mental Fitness modality, the fear-driven impulses are referred to as Saboteurs. They have the capacity to hijack us before we realize it, leading to impulsive thought patterns and reactions. The most dangerous Saboteurs are the ones who try to convince us that they don’t exist.
On the other hand (and located in the other – the right – brain hemisphere) we have the Sage Powers which are fuelled by loving-kindness and a resounding `Yes!‘ to life. More about the shift from Saboteur to Sage below.
The Judge is the Master Saboteur, the most potent one, which we all have in common. It is often referred to as the Inner Critic and its behaviour can best be described as beating ourselves up (and others) for not living up to expectations we have set.
These expectations – of ourselves and, by extension, others – are those we have absorbed from our caregivers in childhood and subsequently internalized. In the coaching context, the Judge prematurely assumes that the client is not inherently capable of meeting the challenge she is facing. Where this attitude prevails, the driving force is to impose solutions, not to engage in coaching.
The remaining saboteurs, the so-called `accomplice saboteurs´ manifest in different strengths in each of us, depending on our personality the circumstances of our early years. Therefore, each of us has a unique constellation. Let us have a look at how some of the other Saboteurs may – unconsciously – derail our efforts to provide first-class coaching.
The Stickler has such a need for things being done our way that we don’t allow the client to find her own way of assessing her current reality and then moving forward. It will have us insist that our advice is accepted and acted upon. Reciprocal learning, healing, and growth cannot happen when the Stickler is running the show.
The Controller is so focused on controlling the interaction with the client that the coach cannot truly listen. Instead, he is preoccupied with his next move, designed to maintain control of the situation and any resulting outcomes.
The Hyper-Achiever propels us to constantly prove our own brilliance rather than enabling others to shine. In this scenario, we will, as coaches, be unconsciously busy with demonstrating our superiority. Real, meaningful, and fruitful connection cannot ensue in such a hierarchical framework.
The Pleaser will do all it can in its power to get me, as the coach, to ingratiate myself to you. My main aim is that you will leave the session having a high opinion of me. All other factors, including speaking the truth, will become subservient to this aim, thus making the task of providing true coaching impossible.
The Victim, on the other hand, will work towards garnering attention, affection, and acknowledgement from the client. Instead of providing support and encouragement, the coach will latch on to the energy field of the client to remedy his own deficits. This will be to the detriment of both parties.
The Hyper-Rational believes that all emotions are messy, simply getting in the way of solving problems and moving forward. When this Saboteur is activated, the consequence will be a shift away from the gut and heart to the intellect in an effort to solve `problems´. The focus on the rational at the expense of the emotional, the intuitional, and the spiritual leads to impoverished interactions and poor outcomes.
The Avoider will deflect attention from any topics that feel uncomfortable, believing that life is too short to engage in anything that doesn’t feel good. It will be afraid of losing the connection with the client if we risk doing anything that will hurt her feelings.
The Hyper-Vigilant will focus on the dangerous potential of the interaction going wrong, believing that the next disaster is just waiting to happen. This will induce fear in the client rather than providing the support, help, and encouragement required for her to find her own path forward.
The Restless will become impatient with the slow pace at which the client proceeds. It will not allow us to stay sufficiently focused on the process at hand, fearing that we may miss out on something more exciting elsewhere. It will not allow the coach to bring the necessary sense of calm to the engagement and he will tend to drift off in the imagination. This lack of presence will make coaching impossible.
As a coach, I can ask myself how my saboteurs prevent me from being a true coach and cause me to tell, direct, or advise in many situations where coaching would be more beneficial and effective. It is also true that when the coach is caught up in Saboteur energies, these will spill over to the client, with detrimental effect. This is called saboteur contagion.
Sage contagion is the preferable option.
As we can see from the examples above, true coaching will be made difficult, if not impossible, when the coach has not done the inner work of becoming mentally fit and has failed to engage in the preparation necessary to move into Sage, thus minimizing the probability of a saboteur hijacking during the session.
What does this inner work look like? How do we shift to Sage? PQ is a simple approach which focusses on training a total of three muscles. Firstly, the Saboteur Interceptor will enable us to identify saboteurs as they become activated and, by engaging empathically with them, disempowering them, thus turning down the volume of their voices.
The second muscle to be trained is the Mind Command muscle. Here, we engage in a wide variety of sensory and imagination-based exercises which allow us to bring our awareness to the present moment. Over time, this gets easier, so that we can begin to intercept the saboteurs in real time.
These exercises are best done in short bouts, spread out throughout the day. Referred to as `PQ Reps´, they can be done by bringing a high degree of awareness to everyday situations such as washing our hands, walking, breathing, meditating, or even eating.
My current practice amounts to roughly 100 minutes per day. I have increased my practice from an initial 12 minutes per day, the standard amount when we are first introduced to PQ practice, as I was in January 2022. The well-organized and easy-to-use Mental Fitness Studio available on the PQ App makes practice interesting, easy, and fun.
When, having done PQ Reps, we are grounded in the here and now, we can more easily consciously switch to Sage. The Sage Perspective states that every circumstance can be turned into a gift and opportunity.
When we develop a willingness to engage the Sage Powers in the context of the Sage Perspective, new possibilities, governed by awareness rather than impulsiveness, arise. The five Sage Powers are as follows: Empathize, Explore, Innovate, Navigate, and Activate.
By adopting the Sage Perspective and cultivating the Sage Powers, we can respond to each saboteur attack by consciously shifting to Sage and using one or more of the Sage Powers to find novel, gracious, salubrious ways of responding to whatever stimuli are at play.
By way of example, we may choose to begin with Explore, to figure out, in the spirit of blameless discernment, what is going on. This may be followed by Empathize, generating empathy for self, others, or circumstances – which will head off the old destructive patterns of the Judge. Navigate helps us arrive at responses aligned with our deepest values, Innovate is the practice of doing new things or old things in new ways, and Activate is the shift from discerning observation to action, once the ground has been sufficiently prepared. Sometimes one Sage Power is sufficient to handle a challenge.
Old reactive patterns are thus replaced by fresh approaches over time. We now have our mind working for us rather than being directed by our fear-driven impulses. The more we practice, the wider the gap between stimulus (Saboteur Hijacking) and response (Sage) grows. This gap is the key to liberation and emotional balance.
Patience is a product of Mental Fitness. It takes patience to be an effective coach. Giving direction and advice is generally faster in the short term. But would I rather impatiently give my client a fish in each of a hundred encounters, or would I prefer to invest my time and energy to patiently help her discover how capable she is of catching her fish herself?
It is my belief that coaching is a good profession for people who are genuinely devoted to making a difference in the lives of others. As coaches we can best master the three key skills of deep listening, asking pertinent questions, and creating safety and trust by engaging in the daily practice of cultivating our Sage. This then becomes a practice for life. This is the reason PQ Mental Fitness has now become so important in my life and work.
By practicing Mental Fitness, we can help our clients discover more and more of their own potential and greatness while modelling a practice which, like physical fitness, has benefits for each of us, as individuals, in our families, organizations, communities, and for all of humanity.
