Coaching and The swear jar
{ADD SOMETHING ON THE IMPORTANCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY}
Often our sessions begin with two simple, but crucial questions:
“How are you?” and “What have you been up to?”
I have a tendency to focus on setbacks instead of achievements. In this instance, despite a truly excellent week, a likely sprained ankle took precedence over learning to sail, to tie knots, and mining the rich metaphorical seam that comes with being on water with the wind at your back.
The progress here is resilience as well as knowledge. Yet you wouldn’t know it. The good news is this where the coaching method -- and its gentle persistence -- pays dividends. A good coach uses his or her intuition, and this suggested a gap between the reality and what I was communicating. There are lots of words, and lots of caveats.
In the conversation that followed, another question:
“Do you find yourself to be overly apologetic?”
Oh yes.
Enter Darth
In a previous session we had called out the presence of excuses, or the mindset of ‘not good enough’ by creating an alter-ego (my saboteur). We named him Darth.
Darth’s objective is to disrupt our conversations; to perpetuate my glass-half-empty story. Every time Darth enters the room Shez would call it out.
The result of this is more consideration. More intention. More deliberation. Part of that is more deliberate language. All of which leads to focus, and the absence of noise, which unchecked tends to lead to excuses and a lack of ownership.
So we make a small change here, and then behaviour itself starts to change. A reprogramming is happening. And this has cascading effects.
If Darth was the first activity, the second was the coaching equivalent of the swear jar. Shez suggested that every time I apologise for something that isn’t my fault, then I would give a small sum to Charity. But £1 wouldn’t enough: It needs to be meaningful to drive the right outcome. So we settled on £5.
This is about taking responsibility: For the right things. In my experience as a client, that is often what coaching is about. Shez and I agreed we’d check in regularly, including with any updates to the jar.
But there’s a kicker. It’s the beauty of compounding and creativity. I happen to live with another coach, and when I explained what we were doing he laughed -- in part because he recognised the need for the task -- but then exclaimed:
“I want in on this!”
So now there’s two jars being filled. My tally -- which currently stands at £20 after a week -- and the ‘Me vs. Dave’ tally, with whoever is ‘guilty’ of the most unnecessary apologising paying the difference.
Coaching isn’t just about being guided on a specific, isolatable item, like ‘my job’ or ‘my health’. It’s much, much broader.
And if you trust the process, others join you in the journey. And everyone wins.
