Coaching Fishbowl 2 Live Session Recording and Follow Up Notes 2023

After the live session, the session recording and follow-up notes will be posted here.

Advanced Practice 2023 Follow-up Notes Session 3 and 4: Wellbeing

Points from our conversation of Wellbeing:

4 Levels of Sophistication in Positive Psychology Coaching:

• Awareness/Understanding of PP topics (research, etc.)
• Ability to apply this knowledge (e.g., interventions, asking better questions, etc.)
• Adapting the information/application for context (e.g., tailoring to suit culture or client)
• Ability to personally use and embody this knowledge

How does the coach’s attitude toward wellbeing affect the client?

• Biases us: influences what we notice, inquire about, or recommend
• A healthier coach is a better coach
• Role modeling: positive affect, health, etc. can be contagious
• Wellbeing, itself, can be the topic of the coaching conversation

Creating a personal wellbeing framework:

• Helps you appreciate the established frameworks created by researchers and interventionists
• Helps you think through the causes, experiences, and effects of wellbeing
• Helps you articulate your own preferences, values, etc.

CVN presented a distinction between coaching for wellbeing and positive health coaching (although a coach could do both):

Session 4: Coaching Fishbowl

In no particular order:

Readiness versus resistance:

• We often speak of client readiness, but we should also consider coach readiness
• “If you insist, they will resist”
• Coach familiarity with frameworks might put them too far ahead of a client and lead to coach’s desire to advise or educate
• When in doubt, ask. Explore the issue with the client

Points of interest from the coaching fishbowl:

• When clients say, “I don’t know.” It can be helpful for the coach to believe that they do know (or have the capacity to find out)
• Listening for themes in what the client says as well as the specifics of their story (e.g., “freedom versus responsibility”)
• Noticing who is working in harder at various moments in the session: coach or client?
• Perhaps there are types of client shifts within a session:Big shifts (radical aha moments or shifts in emotion) that come about from deep questions and bold challenges.Little shifts that come from “planting seeds”, coaching presence, and receiving empathy/compassion
• The introduction to the session: What are you loving? And—by extension—all ways that we might experiment with the introduction to the session before getting into the agenda-setting
• Noticing physicality in the client and in the mirroring (or not) of the coach and client
• “I can only get from the client what I am willing to wager myself….”