Final chat with coachee Claudia

This week Claudia opted for the second form of conversation. She spoke with her aunt who she says is normally a great listener and is quite helpful when Claudia needs guidance. In past conversations Claudia has expressed difficulty with practicing presence and good listening and this week was no different. She said that her aunt thought it was strange because Claudia was "too quiet" as she was trying to focus on listening deeply. I advised her to take a different approach to listening and not to take it so literally. Listening is only generative and helpful if you are engaged with the conversation, so I suggested that she contribute more next time instead of only listening and not speaking. Also, she said that they spoke about nothing in particular, just "general stuff". This kind of exercise would be more useful with a conversation around a specific topic or idea. It is difficult to engage with a conversation if the topic and focus are constantly changing and not allowing for deeper analytic and generative growth.

Claudia agreed and said that in the future she thought this type of conversation would go better if she asked more questions and was more active in the conversation.

Coaching "Call" with Sara

This week I was unable to speak with Sara during our scheduled time so we communicated through email. She was very understanding and accommodating. I told her about my experience with option 2, a conversation with an old friend of mine. Sara is always a great listener and asks the questions that often make me shift my focus and reevaluate my thoughts. At first I was explaining the many differences between my friend and myself because she is always the empathic listener and never talks about herself or her own experiences. But Sara asked a simple question "What qualities do you think you share with Anastasia?". Instead of focusing on our differences I started to think about the similarities we share in our conversation styles and come to realize that we weren't all that different...a nice little change on my perspective.

I went on to tell her that my conversation felt a little strained at first but there came a time when the empathic listening was far more organic and automatic at which point she asked some pertinent questions about how my conversation related to Kantor's model and made me consider how and why this change came about. 

Sara has been a fantastic coach and always did a great job of providing a neutral perspective that offered guidance in times of confusion as well as praise for my hard work. These exercises were instrumental in helping me grow internally and adopt the methods we have learned about in to my every day conversations.