Introducing Meta-Coaching (part 2)
Getting the Core of Coaching Right
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

… continuation from Introducing Meta-Coaching (part 1).
Here is what you have to get right for effective coaching:
(1)   You have to get your Psychology right.
(2)  You have to get your Objective right.
(3)  You have to get the Change right.
(4)  You have to get your Epistemology right.
(5)  You have to get your Conversations right.

First and foremost — You have to get your Psychology right.
Coaching (and not consulting, mentoring, therapy, and training) is based on the psychology of the bright side of human nature— on Self-Actualization Psychology.  Why?  Because coaching is for the psychological healthy.  It is for those ready to embrace change that will disturb the equilibrium of life.  The market and the population for coaching is the well who are ready to be challenged and stretched.  This distinguishes coaching from therapy which is for those who are not psychologically healthy and who need to get out of the past, become okay, and develop the ego-strength to be challenged and stretched for embracing new generative changes.

Second, you have to get your Objective right.
The objective of coaching is to facilitate the processes for unleashing potentials to enable a client to self-actualize.  That’s why a coach is not the content expert, a coach is a process expert.  That’s why a true coach elicits the client’s agenda to find out what the subject and content of the coaching will be able.  A true coach enables the client to set the agenda and facilitates it by co-creating it with the client.  This distinguishes coaching from consulting, training, and mentoring.  In those professions, you are the content expert and you know what the client needs.  Not so in coaching.   In coaching, you do not know what the client needs.  And even the client most often doesn’t know what he or she needs.  That’s why you when you get this objective right, you also get your first and last questions as a coach.  First question: What do you want?   Last question: Did you get it?  By getting the coach’s objective right you also ask about how the client will know when he or she has achieved the desired outcome?  Ah yes, the last question of the well-formed outcome questions, the KPI question about knowing.  And that allows you to ask the measurement question: How will you measure the change?

Third, you have to get the Change right.
In coaching, the change that we facilitate is generative change, not remedial change.  Remedial change is therapeutic change— finding and giving remedies for what’s ailing a person.  That kind of change enables a person to get over the past, come into the present, become okay, and be ready for the future.  Not so in coaching.   In coaching it is all about generative change and this kind of change can occur at numerous levels: behavioral, evolutionary, transformative.  And because it does, this giving us three forms of coaching: performance, developmental, and transformative coaching.  Generative change also involves unlearning because what very often the very knowledge and skills that got a client to where he or she now is will not take them further.  In fact, it might positively prevent the client from developing the new learnings that are needed to move on.   So you coach to the client’s unlearning.  And that’s where the Crucible Model shines the best.

Fourth, you have to get your Epistemology right.
The epistemology of coaching is systemic thinking and responding and it is work systemically with the client’s self-reflexive consciousness.  After all, that’s what coaching is—coaching is systemic and holistic, it is not linear.  Linear thinking sees things only partially as it focuses on parts rather than the whole and it dichotomizes rather than work holistically and simultaneously.  This then leads to short-term superficial solutions that jumps on presenting problems without in-depth probing.  That’s why you use the Matrix model in coaching and the Meta-States model as you work with the client’s self-reflexivity.  (Refer to Meta-Coaching Volume IX: Systemic Coaching.)

Fifth, you have to get your Conversations right.
A coaching conversation is not the ordinary kind of chat that people experience have everyday at the breakfast table, the work cafeteria, and in pubs.  It is not an advice-giving conversation, not a therapeutic conversation, and not storytelling conversation.   It is an intense dialogue for the purpose of discovery and unleashing.  It is an intimate and fierce conversation.  In Meta-Coaching we have identified the seven kinds of Coaching Conversations: clarity, decision, planning, experiencing, change, confrontation, and mediation.

Coaching Facets           Meta-Coaching Models
Psychology                         Self-Actualization Psychology; SA Assessment Scale; SA Matrix; SA Quadrants
Objective                            WFO; Benchmarking; Fierce Conversation; Facilitation
Change                                Axes of Change ; Crucible Model
Epistemology                    Matrix Model — Systemic and Self-Reflexive; Meta-States ; Meta-Programs
Conversation                     NLP Model; 7 Kinds of Conversations

What then is Meta-Coaching?
It is a conversation like none other that gets to the heart of things— the heart of a matter to facilitate generative, transformative change by activating and mobilizing a client’s internal resources thereby empowering the person as we confront his or her highest visions and values to support them making real their inner potentials.
As such, Meta-Coaching is an intense, intimate, and fierce conversation to actualize new possibilities.

Learn more about the benefits of Coaching.