Mastery #2

Percieving, Affirming and Expanding the Client's Potential

In Chinese culture, to acknowledge and appreciate a person's strength and potential verbally face to face is not an usual practice.  Thus, most of the Chinese coaches found difficult to express themselves fully for Mastery #2.  Some Chinese coaches may feel very unnatural to complimenting the client's potential and embarass to challenging one's limitation and assumption. 

We had the discussion on the May 13 Chapter meeting on the above issue and learned how to tackle it effortlessly.

We have examine the deeper meaning of each key words of this mastery.

Percieving - acquires the coach to be highly conscious about his/her awareness on the client's strength and potential by being presence fully with multi-sensory attention towards the client.  The coach is not required to purposely or artificially searching for the client's potential.  Instead, his positive believing in the client's true potential, engaged sensing, observing and listening, a non-agenda and clean communication, mindfulness towards the subtle nuances of what the client said will naturally inter-woven a recognition of the client's unspoken potential.

Affirming - it is an important process to make sense and reinforce the client's self-reflection in aware of and truly recognize his/her own potential without doubt.  Clarity empowers the client to look at himself/herself truly and then to take responsibility on his/her own choice to how to use the potential to deal with his/her life.

Expanding - In the 15 Proficiency, "Champion the Client" nicely partnership the "affirming" and "expanding" of the client's potential by asking coaching questions, "What does it mean to you?"  "How does it relate to your life?"

In term of self-coaching, it could be rephased to "Understanding", "Believing" and "Articulating" one's own potential - said Benny Cheung.

If the coach discerns his/her own coaching being on Mastery #2 and be focus on the client than himself/herself,  there should not be any cultural barrier in appreciating and complimenting the client's strength and potential verbally.  Moreover, the coach could fully express his/her sensing about the client without hold back or fear of mistake.

Sometimes the client sees himself/herself not truely with an old belief or simply taking an ungrounding assumption due to various reasons.  This part will be even more interesting and challenging for a coach to tackle.  Tell me what and how will you coach?