Beyond proficiency in the use of moves, mind, spirit and stillness the greatest wisdom a full time professional coach possess is mindful awareness. Awareness creates the space for intuition as to which move to use in which moment, with which client, or perhaps to just sit still and do nothing!
We believe that, inside every talented individual, lies the innate capacity to grow. As coaches, it is our role to facilitate the emergence of what the coachee already knows to be true, enabling them to grow in the direction they choose.
This implies a coach who must be centered and neutral, waiting for the emergence of the challenge. As soon as the challenge or opportunity is presented, it is for the coach to “recall” the appropriate move to stimulate and partner with the coachee’s thought process.
We believe this requires the coach to be attentive on multiple levels:
Firstly be aware of any movement and being mindful of the origin of this movement. Is it being driven within? Is it being driven by the coachee? Is it being driven by a dynamic between the two? Or is it being driven by the “environment”? It is important to be conscious of this in order to be able to offer the most effective, fluent and elegant movement that is, at the same time, in harmony with the objective, desire and cognitive direction the coachee is moving in.
The samurai master is proficient in the use of many tools; mind, spirit, stillness we label these as his moves. To become proficient in the use of these “moves” he has learnt from other masters. This is true for us too. It is important to note that the moves of the coach must be in perpetual growth.
In much the same way as the samurai master might meet the challenge, it is a corner stone of our philosophy that the coach realizes the opportunity, not by simply winning but by ensuring all the energy of the coachee is used to drive the move to be the most effective and elegant it can be. A masterful coaching move lasts way beyond the “dojo” of the coaching space.
‘Dojo’ literally means ‘Place of the Way’ in Japanese, and can be extended metaphorically to include any space of learning and reflection. Indeed it is part of our coaching philosophy to believe that the coachee’s dojo extends well beyond the coaching space and time.
Each of our moves enable us to be more “elegant” in our coaching. In order to give some flavor as to some of the moves we are conscious of using in the last 15 years of practice we are extremely grateful and honored to have had the privilege to learn from these esteemed masters.
- Steve Gilligan – The generative approach to coaching
- Jon Kabat Zinn – Mindfulness, stress reduction and developing coping mechanisms to deal with anxiety, pain and illness
- Robert Dilts – Has had an impact on the neurolinguistic processing and programing that drives human behavior, learning and language.
- David Rock – The basic processes and neurological impact of human performance coaching, The scarf model,
- Joseph Campbell – has had a heavy influence on archetypal theory and particularly the notion of the hero’s journey and associations with religion and mythology
- Sigmund Freud – heavily influences our dialogue on free association and transference, dealing with ego, super ego and understanding underlying mechanisms to repression
- Richard Stozy Heckler – embodying your leadership through mastery
- John Whitmore – On basic coaching processes and philosophy with relation to performance
- Rick Carson – Enabling coaches to get out of their own way
- Sun Tzu – Asian philosophy and strategic thinking and managing conflicts
- Aboodi Shabby – in the area of ontological coaching practices
- David Cooperrider – On appreciative inquiry
- Milton Erickson – Psychology and the influence of hypnotherapy
- Elizabeth Phelps – in the area of insights and reactions of the amygdala
- Dr Grace Change – in the area of Neuro biology, limbic reactions and basic human responses, emotional regulation theory, Managing expectations, labeling, understanding the social brain, how insight is formed and creating favorable environments for insight to happen.
- Dr Evan Gorden – on validation in the coaching process
- Amy Amsten – in the area of brain overloads and evaluations
- Elizabeth Loftus – on the brains capacity to create false memories
- Jane Richards & James Gross – Personality and emotional memory
- Matthew Liebermann – putting words into theory and the neurological impact on coaches, labeling as an emotional regulation tool, Neurological pain of social life
- Kevin Ochsner – In the area of social cognitive neuroscience managing emotions under pressure
- Philippe Goldin – Emotional regulation
- Ethan Kross on self distancing
- Graig Hassard – In the area of mindfulness, wellbeing and performance
- Golnaz Tabibnia – in the area of the neurological processes to understanding others. Status and its impact on brain development and functioning, how the brain manages certainty and autonomy, Neurological evidence on dealing with fairness and cooperation
- Keise Izuma – Monetary rewards and the impact it has on motivation and deeper processing of society.
- Marco Iacoboni – Consequences and dysfunctional outcomes from mirror neurons
- Tania Singer – implications of mirror neurons for empathetic responses
- Jason Mitchell – How the medial prefrontal cortex has an impact on our contribution and judgements to similar and dissimilar others.
- Christine Cox – in the aspect of dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity and how it impacts neurological processing
- Arielle Tambini – on how memories are created, transferred, retained and adjusted.
- Harold Pashler – in the area of attention and its association with performance from a neurological perspective.
- Timothy Wilson – in the area of the brains weakness in predicting outcomes.
This represents those that we can recall who have influenced and shaped our philosophy, but it is not an exhaustive list. Indeed, our greatest influencers and teachers have been our clients. Enter the dojo!
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