By Jeff Copper, MBA, PCC, PCAC, CPCC, ACG – December 16, 2024
As an ADHD and attention coach, it is my job to bring clarity to my clients by listening to what they are NOT saying (i.e., the unasked questions). I do this by asking questions that lead them through five simple steps designed to take them from stuck to aha. My goal today is to take the mystery out of the coaching process by showing you how my techniques move my clients forward by helping them choose their focus.
My five steps to choosing your focus are:
Step 1: When there’s an issue or problem, look for the obvious solution and apply it. If this works, the problem is solved.
Step 2: When the obvious solution doesn’t work, it means you’re different. It means you have to unlearn your belief of how you think something is supposed to work.
Step 3: Once you unlearn your belief of how you “think” something works, you need to pay attention to how it actually works.
Step 4: After you understand how you actually work, you need to form a new belief of how you work.
Step 5: Finally, you need to look for and apply the new obvious solution (based on the new belief of how you work), which was not so obvious before.
Let’s see these steps in action as we walk through a fun exercise, starting with a definition:
If Webster’s Dictionary defined “coaching” as the art of producing a desired result via a seemingly mysterious means, I imagine most of us would identify with the definition, especially if “means” were defined as a clever, yet crafty maneuver or technique producing a desired result or intended consequence. Of course, “desired result” or “intended consequence” would be defined as something like a belief, perception, or view that accurately reflects reality.
Coaching = Desired results + Means
Means = Desired result/Intended consequence
Desired result/Intended consequence = Accurately reflects reality
Now watch this: Let’s reverse engineer things with one small change. We’ll start by changing the word “accurately” to “inaccurately.” Thus, a belief, perception, or view that inaccurately reflects reality might be the “desired result” or “intended consequence”; however, the result sounds more like an “illusion.”
If we are dealing with an illusion, then a clever, yet crafty maneuver or technique producing an illusion might be means, but it sounds more like a trick. If this is the case, the art of producing a desired illusion via a seemingly mysterious trick is obviously the definition of “magic.” More simply, if we work backwards, it would look like this:
Inaccurately reflects reality = Illusion
Illusion = Trick
Illusion + trick = Magic
So, hocus pocus! Like magic, a definition is radically changed with a small redirect in focus! How? Let’s analyze what happened by walking through my five steps. I began by defining what seemed to be obvious: the definition of coaching (Step 1). I deconstructed the definition by breaking it down into parts (Step 2). Next, I directed your attention to how what I was defining actually worked by substituting the word “inaccurate” for “accurate” (Step 3). From there, I reconstructed what I was actually defining (Step 4). In the end, it was obvious that I was defining “magic,” which, when we started, was not so obvious (Step 5).
Now, let’s PAUSE. Did you feel tricked at “hocus pocus”? It’s okay if you did, because that is what I did. I tricked you. I chose where to direct your attention…. kind of like a magician.
Coaching differs from magic in that you choose if and where to direct your attention. Let’s run through the five steps again; only this time, you will have the power to choose what you focus on. Maybe something new will become obvious that isn’t so obvious right now.
I think we all have biases that influence what we believe and what we pay attention to (i.e., what seems obvious). Let me use the “half a glass of water” metaphor to illustrate: You can choose to believe the glass is half full, or you can choose to believe it is half empty. At the end of the day, at least to me, it is just half a glass of water. Like in the coaching/magician example above, it’s people’s biases (i.e., what they choose to focus on or what they believe) that polarizes them to view my definition as that of either coach or magician.
Before I started writing this post, my gut was telling me to explore the topic of magic as a way to illustrate my steps. At the time, it seemed obvious to me that being a coach and being a magician were as different as different can be. As I began thinking through how I was going to use coaching and magic as a metaphor to illustrate my five steps, I started to pay attention to how both work in the context of my five steps.
During this process, I unlearned the belief that a coach and a magician are radically different when I began paying attention to the fact that both fundamentally do the same thing: They pay attention to what you pay attention to. So, by focusing on how they work, I formed a new belief, and it became obvious they are not that different but remarkably are similar, which was not so obvious before I began. In the end, you may have believed I was defining “coaching” or “magic,” but what I was really doing was defining the process of paying attention to what you pay attention to. In summary, the metaphor was a perfect way to present the power of my steps!
So, now pause once more and notice there is no trick and no hocus pocus! You are free to choose your own focus! I’d like to hear your thoughts on this concept, so please post your comments below. Or, if you want to learn more about my coaching, contact me.