Continue & Begin™ Fast Coaching creates confidence and motivation through inner recognition of achievement and the celebration of success.
We encourage the coachee to ‘wallow’ unashamedly in feel-good and enhanced ego before considering how their future personal performance could become ‘even better’ through a small number of ‘BeginTo’ changes of behaviour.
Instrumental in this process is the identification of a series of Continue To behaviours in which the coachee has already proven competence. If anyone can do something once, they can do it again. They already have the internal technology and personal strategies to repeat their ‘excellence’.
The challenge, for some coachees, is reluctance to allow themselves the temerity of self-congratulation. Many individuals have internal software programmes, honed over decades, which prevent personal applause and congratulation. There is a self-imposed resistance to personal praise born of a fear of appearing arrogant. In many societies self-deprecation has its own charm and value – except when it gets in the way of self-image and self-worth.
In Continue & Begin™ Fast Coaching we seek out evidence of personal success and build up a ‘Yes Set’ (blog coming soon on the origins of Yes Sets) of achievements to help the coachee acknowledge their existing, perhaps previously unrecognised, patterns of success.
When a coachee gets stuck, and “Can’t think of anything else” that’s where a well-timed Nudge will move her towards evidence of competence already identified by the Fast Coach. This can take a number of forms, including language patterns which focus attention on known competences. Experienced Continue & Begin™ Fast Coaches will use analogue marking and non-verbal indicators as additional tools in their influencing arsenal (more on these in future blogs).
Typical verbal Nudges are:
“How did you get on with…”
“XXX is an important part of what you do. How did that go?”
“I noticed you…”
“Tell me about…”
“Think back to the training course on XXX… What were you able to implement?”
“What is our operating procedure/standard process for XXX? And how did you do?”
When it comes to Begin To behaviours Nudging is equally valuable in helping the coachee (apparently) self-identify key and significant opportunities to develop; specifically significant development opportunities, not just a trivial change. We only have a few Begin To opportunities to work with, so let’s make sure they are worthwhile activities.
Nudging is a very cool tool!