coaching in groups

Recently I've been having fun coaching groups.

These small groups are people who work together and want to understand more about a topic but don't want a typical workshop with input and handouts and the like. They believe, and I agree, that in most cases if you get the right people together and ask the right questions someone will come up with an answer they've never considered before and it will help someone else in the group.

So I use the same model for these workshops as I do for indivual coaching sessions; first we agree on the issue and exactly what we want to know more about. I try to formulate this into a question to ask or a problem to solve.

The next stage is for everyone to consider what they have tried in terms of this question/ problem and what seems to be inhibiting their progress. I don't ask why they haven't tried these things before as that can make people feel defensive but i do ask what needs to be moved out of the way to allow for change.

Then we begin to use various exercises and techniques to create new solutions or answers, some huge , some tiny, some completely unreasonable and some very useful. The coaching here is to help people free up their ideas and not hold back "just in case its not a good idea" All ideas are good here.

and then comes the tough part. From all of the suggestions, which ones seem most helpful and from that short list which ones will the group go away to put into practice. The coaching jargon is "agreed actions" but sometimes i call this the "so what" stage.

For me this is a very exciting part of these workshops as people choose to put ideas into practice and elave inspired to make changes. Its what coaching is all about really and I love it.

Do we al lhave too much ?

Many of my coaching clients have too much something .....too much work ..... too much to do ..... too much stuff ..... and yet find it hard to let any of this go.

Today I'm having a look round my life to see where there is too much of anything with a view to reducing what ever it is so I have just about enough and no more.

I don't think we need too much food in the cupboard or too many DVD's on the shelf. We don't need to spend too much time looking for new exciting things to buy on the internet or to acculmulate too much in our homes and we definietly don't need too uch in our diaries. In fact I suspect many of us would be happier if we had less ... less to worry about, less to do, less to dust !

So a coaching question today might be; if you could only keep half of whatever it is you describe as "too much" what would your life be like and how can you get one step closer to that life today?

make space for the little idea

Coaching this morning I was reminded how often little ideas become buried in our thinking "stuff". We declutter our offices or the kitchen table and then remember how lovely the room looked before we piled it high with this and that. Even putting plates and cups into some sort of order releases space in our kitchen and we can enjoy that.

The same applies to thinking. We recognise that money worries must be addressed or that we need to give more time to those close to us but sometimes underneath all of that there's a little idea which could change the way we live.

Your little idea might be how much you miss a hobby you used to love or the memory that you always wanted to have a dog or to keep chickens or learn to drive a bus.

Just allowing one of these little ideas to see the light of day can help us to feel more connected to life, more energised even if that's all we do, just recognise the thought enjoy it and get on with the day.

What little idea is buried below all your "stuff" today ?