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Do U AQ?

Monday, June 18th, 2007 by Maryam Webster

Do you AQ? If not, you might want to. AQ stands for Abundance Quotient and is a system developed by my friend Kim George to e-x-p-a-n-d the potential and possibilites of your life. I loved her newsletter intro of today so much I am reproducing it below as a sterling example of a wonderful Everyday Bliss mindset. Savor this delicious slice of summer savvy and get yourself on over to Kim’s site and sign up for her newsletter and classes today.

The cornerstone of our work with the AQ System is the belief that each of us is born great – born with everything we need, want, and choose to be who we are.

Yet our society is constantly bombarding us with message after message about improving ourselves, fixing our flaws, changing our lives and re-inventing who we are.

As if who we are isn’t good enough.

I think this is a load of crap. This kind of belief – focusing on what is "wrong" and what isn’t working, instead of focusing on what’s naturally great and already working – perpetuates and fuels the billion dollar self-improvement industry.

One of my favorite lines from Coaching Into Greatness is "Dogs get fixed, People don’t get fixed." Is there something about yourself that you see as flawed? A weakness? Something you’ve been struggling to improve for years? Usually, when we negate a part of who we are, we’re also resisting the truth of who we are.

As a society, we’ve got to let go of our fixation with fixing ourselves. Let’s learn to be the Observer. Instead of making things wrong, we learn how to observe what we don’t want and choose what we do. This is engagement. After all, this is doing what we can do.

This is the work of AQ. This month, and every month, we’ve got lots of great resources to help you shift your focus from fixing to choosing. Read on for all the details.

Thank you for being you!

Kim

Connect to the wonderful Kim and the AQ institute here: http://coachingintogreatness.com

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Posted in AQ, Abundance, Bliss, Blogroll, Business, Coachability, Coaching 4 Leaders, Coaching Tips, Cultural Evolution, Inspiration, Wonderful People | Comments Off

Seth Sizes up Coachability

Friday, June 8th, 2007 by Maryam Webster

It’s rare anymore, but I sometimes get potential clients who wonder why I refer them to other coaches when they say “But it’s YOU I really want to work with!”. Sometimes I feel I’m simply not the best coach for them and that what they really need is to be found with another coach I can refer them to. Sometimes people want coaching, but they really aren’t ready for the kind of intensity such a relationship can generate, or are a wee bit too comfortable in their rut to really work at change. Sometimes a different level of expertise or specialty is called for. And then, there are those who are simply “coachability impaired”.

To correct what may be a widespread assumption, coaches are not obliged to help all and sundry. Though many varieties of coaching exist for the wide variety of clients that exist, coaching by its very nature is a profession that demands one’s highest and best performance. To assure that, coaches are choosy and only work with clients that fit our particular skillsets and energetic bandwidth – just like other service providers. You don’t see a lawyer for a heart transplant. Likewise, a C-level executive seeking snappy, fast-paced high performance coaching wouldn’t employ a creativity, academic or ADD coach. For different needs there are different talents and specialties in the coaching world. That extends also to the personality of client being coached, in what we refer to as “coachability”.

To protect our energies and precious time from being wasted, we all have our red velvet ropes and sets of immutable parameters past which folks who aren’t at a certain level, are not permitted. To attempt to coach people who are resistant to change, aren’t ready for a coaching partnership or are not willing to expand their horizons would be an exercise in frustration and futility for both coach and client. Most experienced coaches can size potential clients like this up in a few heartbeats. It only takes a few to drain you dry before you develop such instincts. And in a nod to Bea, it’s not arrogance or snobbery, but self-preservation and conservation of resources at the heart of the golden restraining posts holding up that red velvet rope.

Thanks and a tippo of the “you said it” hat goes to Seth Godin for his Distinctionary entry below, on “What Coachable Means in Real Life”. You go, my brother.

Coachable

A friend is wrestling with his ability to be coached. For the coachable, “Turn right at the light” is seen as a helpful suggestion for someone lost in a strange town… the advice goes in, is considered and then acted upon. For someone wrestling with coaching, though, it’s like surgery. It’s painful, it has side effects and it might lead to a bad reaction.

Coaching happens all the time. Most often, it’s not from a boss or a professional coach. In fact, the best insights and advice usually come from informal or unexpected sources.

In fluid marketing and organization environments, where the world changes rapidly, coachability is a key factor in evolving and succeeding. Not because all advice is good advice. In fact, most advice is lousy advice. No, the reason coachability is so crucial is that without it, you don’t have the emotional maturity to consider whether the advice is good or not. You reject the process out of hand, and end up stuck.

Symptoms of uncoachability:

* Challenging the credentials of the coach
* Announcing that you’re being unfairly singled out
* Pointing out, angrily, that the last few times, the coach was wrong
* Identifying others who have succeeded without ever being coached
* Resisting a path merely because it was one identified by a coach

Years ago, at the great Bolshoi Ballet, auditions for the troupe were conducted among 8 year old girls. That’s because it took ten years to become great. How did the auditions work? The teachers weren’t looking for the best dancers. They were looking for the dancers who took coaching the best. The rest would come with time.

See the original at Seth Godin’s Blog, and Bea’s post on “Topgrading”.