How to bring more presence into your coaching

Today I wanted to talk about a rather prevalent, recurring theme; one of which is always brought up when I’m supervising, training and especially when I’m having conversations with newly certified coaches.

The theme is ‘self doubt’ and how it can prevent you from being present with your clients.

In my early days of being a therapist 20 years ago I noticed that I would often feel very stuck in my own head. 🤔

❌Self doubt
❌ fear
❌ worry and anxiety that I wasn’t going to say the right things, or that I wasn’t going to use the right techniques, often filled my thoughts and prevented me from being present with my clients.

The busyness of my thoughts was a barrier to the openness of my own channels of sensory awareness and intuition.

⚠️ I was very much in that headspace of trepidation and anxiety, uncertainty and lacking confidence in my own abilities.

I felt like an imposter. 😩

I know that I am not alone in feeling this way, which is why I want to talk about it in this blog.

The good news is that fast forward 20 years through many hours of coaching practice, thankfully the self doubt very rarely surfaces. If it does, I can very quickly dissolve it and come back to being fully present.

Here are 3 ways that you can bring yourself back to feeling present should you experience the self doubt, inner judgment or feelings of being an imposter

Switch off your internal dialogue

It is often the self-talk that gets in the way of your presence. When you notice that it is there then you can imagine switching the on button to off, or imagine having a remote control that puts it on mute. Once you have quietened down your internal chatter you can bring yourself back into your body and being present in the room with your client.

Clean up your own agenda

As a new coach you might find yourself getting into the story and detail of your clients issue as you might be unconsciously triggered with the similarities to your own life. You will often find that your clients bring things that you might need to do some work on. This is why your own coaching or supervision is important as a new coach. Keeping your own ‘map’ out of the coaching session will enable you to work cleanly with your clients. If you would like to know more about this then take a look at my NLP training courses for more information.

Access your highest potential coaching state

When you’re starting your session, get yourself grounded, get yourself present and get yourself feeling confident and good. When you’re grounding yourself focus on your breathing and begin to bring in that picture of you coaching at your best.

What does that look like? How does that feel inside for you? What let’s you know that you are coaching and leading at your best? What do you see? What do you feel? What do you hear? What do you notice in you, and what do you notice around you when you’re coaching at your best?

Really sense into it, feel that you’re being the best version of you, feel that you’re coaching at your best, clear out your agenda and put aside any of your own stuff.

Remind yourself that you are enough

Aa a coach you are the vehicle and catalyst for your clients’ transformations. You create the conditions for change and how you do that will be modelled by your clients.
In NLP training I teach about having that state of curiosity and of knowing nothing. When the client comes in, you’re not making assumptions or bringing your own map into it . You are working with their map of the world and will be able to do this more effectively when you are present.

So if you have been experiencing self doubt, imposter feelings or worrying that you’re not good enough then being present with your client will support you in turning this down so you can bring your best self to the coaching session.

If you are interested in learning more about NLP then come and join my free
Facebook group here 👇

https://www.facebook.com/groups/unlockpossibilities

Listen to my podcast here 👇

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/unlocking-your-coaching-leadership-potential/id1591462962

Watch the free NLP taster session here 👇

https://sarahfletcher.simplero.com/nlpaugreplay

See you soon
Sarah 🤩