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About Me
- Gary Collins
- Gary Collins (that’s me) is a life coach, licensed clinical psychologist (with a PhD from Purdue University), and professor of leadership and coaching at Psychological Studies Institute. I’ve written a bunch of books, founded and edited "Christian Counseling Today" magazine, and was co-founder and first president of the American Association of Christian Counselors. I am still writing books, am an avid reader, work out most days at a local fitness center, and am determined to be committed as a follower of Jesus. I speak at conferences (frequently overseas), most often concerning the emergent church, coaching and coach training, leadership, and trends in Christian counseling. In addition to personal coaching and consulting on issues relating to leadership and coaching, I have a special interest in the emergent church and in mentoring and learning from next-generation leaders. My wife Julie and I were married in 1964, have two daughters, and live in Northern Illinois. This newsletter usually arises from my reading, student contacts, and opportunities to interact every week with creative and interesting people – including the people who read my newsletter and respond to this blog.
7 comments:
Should Coaches Be Motivators??
Yes, but let me qualify my answer.
Coaches should provide motivation by supporting and encouraging their clients to achieve the goals they are motivated to accomplish. But coaches should never cross the line of telling a client what to do.
Coaching that has been most helpful to me has been characterized by genuine belief in my ability to accomplish my goals.
My coaches have reminded me of goals that I have set, asked about my progress on actions steps, and have spoken words of affirmation about my ability to do whatever it takes to succeed.
Yes. Coaches should be motivators that motivate by believing in their client, helping them to focus on setting goals and breaking them down into achievable action steps.
Once goals and steps are defined, coaches should track with their clients progress; celebrating successes, and supportively troubleshooting obstacles, procrastination or other delays.
Thanks for your newsletter and blog Gary!
Should coaches be motivators?
Absolutely!!
Coaching, be it athletic, business, personal, etc., must have motivational characteristics in order to be effective.
Oftentimes, the confidence of the individual is either lost in the process of achieving or focused on a less effective power. This is good ground for a coach to work with in helping the individual stay on a course towards maximum potential.
In the coaching that my colleagues and I do, empowering church planters through reproductive training, we find plenty of motivation, so much so that we can safely ignore those gifted for other endeavors.
Motivation, however, does not seem necessarily to come with highly-appropriate skills, nor with innate knowledge about methods that will work. Since, motivated workers abound, it is with these that we try to share our experience and expertise:
* Affirming their vision.
* Hearing their reports.
* Listening to their current challenges.
* Assigning short studies that we believe will help.
* Planning with them their next steps.
* Demonstrating and practicing new skills.
* Praying with them for the seekers and believers whom they serve.
All of this has to be done following the instructions of Jesus as recorded in Mt 10, Mk 6, Lk 9 & 10:
* Praying up more workers.
* Sharing authority.
* Introducing imitable methods.
* Planning what will be done and what will be said.
* Focusing on the receptive.
* Boldly asking God to intervene.
* Leaving soon enough.
* Reporting back to our mentors.
Thus, with motivated workers falling out of the trees, our biggest task is to train coaches.
Should coaches be motivators?
Absolutely NOT! People who are motivated are getting the spark plug from an external source and it quickly fades into oblivion.
The people who dare to dream and succeed in biblical proportions are empowered. Being empowered means that you know who you are, what you can and cannot do well, what strengths you can bring to to the table and it is that, which gives people the confidence and passion to move. Nobody can rob an empowered person of their confidence or belief that they can do what God calls them to do. They are limited only by their own beliefs. Being empowered is an inside job. It's up to us as coaches to bring out the best in our clients, support them in defining success, challenge them by asking powerful questions and really hear their heart as well as their head, while always being in their corner. Support and encouragement are part of the package.
In my ten years of coaching and nine years of training coaches, it has been by joy to see this proved out time and time again.
Question: How many highly successful leaders are constantly seeking sources to keep them motivated?
I rest my case.
Thanks for always stirring the soup Gary.
Thank you, everybody! I very much appreciate all of your comments. I was delighted that my "stirring the pot" brought comments ranging from "absolutely" to "absolutely not." We also have the opinion that people need motivation from their coaches if they are to succeed, versus the idea that since we have so many motivated people coming for coaching, they don't don't need to be motivated more.
I wonder if part of this debate relates to differences in what we mean by "motivating people." The motivational quotation in the newsletter is pretty directives. All of us seem to agree, however, that it is not the job of coaches to motivate people by telling them what to do. But when we are walking with people whose paths are unsteady, affirming their decisions, encouraging them to set goals and take action steps, supporting them as they make decisions, or celebrating their successes, aren't we motivating people but in less bombastic ways? The people who have been my best coaches are those who have cheered me on (motivated me) without being "rah, rah" motoivation speakers. Maybe the question is not so much whether we motivate as how we motivate people to make changes and move forward - especially when they hit obstacles, gremlins, and times of discouragement.
This is a comment especially for Judy:
I loved your statement that says, "Thanks for always stirring the soup Gary."
I think we need to do more of this in coaching as the field grows. We need to challenge some of our assumptions and think through some of our beliefs. This can be done in a caustic or cynical way that may bring a few smiles but that does nothing constructive. In contrast, I have a coach friend who urges me to do more of the pot stirring so we can all get involved in sharing our opinions, sharpening our viewpoints and improving our competencies. The soup of coaching will be much better when we work together in cooperative and constructive ways to serve up a better dish to our clients, colleagues, and coaching students.
It all depends on how you define being a motivator. Things that might fall under that category are:
1. encouraging, affirming, supporting
2. helping the person revisit what motivated them in the first place when they lose energy
3. Helping them find a good enough reason to do the hard work of change in an area they are frustrated
4. Naming the persons heart and call
5. Having them leave your appointments more energized about the pursuit of their goal than when they came in
What I think wouldn't fit here for a coach:
1. Using motivational techniques to get the person to work on something you want them to do
2. Creating change that is largely externally motivated (much change starts this way (the pain of circumstances), but for the change to be sustainable the person must find an internal reason to be motivated.
A principle that hasn't been touched on here is that "God is at work in us, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." That means that we often don't have the will (or the motivation) to carry out what we know we need to do, and that therefore God supplies what we are unable to in the change process. This says to me that human beings have a fundamental lack of motivation, at least in some areas, that must be supplied by the Holy Spirit. It also implies that there are things God calls for in our lives that fall outside of the area of our natural, human energy or motivation.
I would have to say that my own life experience tracks with this: for instance, when I am deeply hurt, I know I must forgive to be whole, yet oftentimes the energy or emotion or drive in me that we would often call "motivation" is directed toward vengence and not forgiveness. Thinking out loud here, maybe another thing we as coaches need to do is begin to distinguish between motivation as energy and motivation as will. In this example, my energy is toward what I know I don't want to do, but my will (the gritting my teeth part) moves me toward what I know will produce life (keeping in mind also that I want to explore where the energy for vengence comes from in my life and deal with that!)
I often put this principle of God supplying the will into practice in my life and the lives of my clients by asking God to send the experience or circumstance I need to really get something or get motivated to deal with it.
Tony Stoltzfus
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