Creating Awareness in Christian Coaching

Tim Cosby, President & CCC, Empowerment Coaching Network, Int’l. Tim will be presenting this month’s Core Insight event, Creating Awareness, on Tuesday, August 14, 2018, at 11am ET.  Please join us to learn more!

What is the Foundation of Creating Awareness?

Coaching is built on the belief that the solution is inside the client, but what is the basis for this belief?  This belief is built on an educational principle that people will understand, value, and apply what you help them to discover, not what you tell them.  The very word, “educate” comes from the Latin, “to lead out.” Education is not just about “putting information in,” but rather “pulling responses out.”  Why? Because true learning about a subject has not occurred until the student has understood what it means, why it’s important to them, and what they’re going to do with it.  This is what makes coaching such a powerful approach in helping people grow. They decide what is important, why it’s important to them, and what they’re going to do about it. Coaching is truly an educational process.  But it all happens when new awareness emerges and a new perspective is created. Creating Awareness is actually an educational principle that has been adopted and applied in a new way by Coaching.

What is Different About Creating Awareness in Faith-Based Coaching?

Faith-based Coaching is about the Coach, Client, and Holy Spirit.  It is built on the belief that the solution is not only inside the client, the client is dependent upon the Holy Spirit.  Creating awareness of what the Holy Spirit is saying and doing is at the heart of a Christ-centered coaching process. The coach provides what I often refer to as a safe thinking partner in a supportive, encouraging environment that allows awareness to emerge through the work of the Holy Spirit.  As the Holy Spirit awakens, reveals, and illumines, the client becomes more aware of the solution inside them. Creating awareness in faith-based coaching has a tremendous advantage! It’s not just about the coach and the client. We are joining a dance that’s already in progress between the Holy Spirit and the client, and now our job is to help our clients hear and act upon what they believe God is saying to them.  

The Meta-skill of Creating Awareness

Creating awareness is not a solitary, isolated skill.  Like happiness, contentment, or satisfaction, it’s the outcome of other factors.  It should be the goal of the whole coaching process. Richard Blackaby and Rob Royall, in their book, “Spiritual Leadership Coaching,” use the term “Meta-skill,” and define it as:  “a skill that allows you to leverage other skills.”   (Spiritual Leadership Coaching  Richard Blackaby and Rob Royall)  Creating Awareness could be thought of as a meta-skill.  When a coach is “Creating Awareness,” it means they’re harnessing the collective power of all the core competencies of the coaching process.

Three Perspectives on Creating Awareness

The ICF defines Creating Awareness as “the ability to integrate and accurately evaluate multiple sources of information, and to make interpretations that help the client to gain awareness and thereby achieve agreed-upon results.”  What are the multiple sources of information? Where does that information come from? The coach needs to be able to discern the difference between their own thoughts, the thoughts and insights of the client, and the insights that the Holy Spirit is revealing.  

The coaching competency of Creating Awareness can be looked at from three perspectives:

  1. Coach-Awareness – How do we as coaches, create awareness for ourselves?
  2. Client-Awareness – How do we support our clients in creating awareness for themselves?
  3. Christ-Awareness – How do both coach and client create awareness to notice what the Holy Spirit is revealing?

Join us for a CCNI online module August 14 and discover three essential questions that will help every coach create awareness for themselves, three practical coaching tools to support our clients in creating awareness for themselves, and insights from the online participants on how we can support each other to notice what the Holy Spirit is revealing.  

Have you ever wondered where you are in your development as a coach in creating awareness?  In this one hour module, you will complete a “Creating Awareness Assessment” that will help each coach to identify competency markers where improvement will make the most difference to them and their clients.  You’ll be introduced to some practical tools to help your clients create awareness, and you’ll make some new friends as you interact with coaches around the world. And, in the true spirit of coaching, everyone will come away with at least one action step that will help them become more effective in Creating Awareness.  

Hope you can join us on August 14, 2018!  Check out the CCNI website for more details.  

About the Author:

Tim is the President of Empowerment Coaching Network, Int’l. a coaching, training and consulting company serving non-profits and corporations since 2010. ECN was the first Christian Coaching Training school to be recognized by CCNI in 2013. ECNI provides a range of services from a 2-day Empowerment Coaching Training workshop, to equipping Certified Professional Empowerment Coaches. ENCI formed Real Retention in 2016 as their corporate training arm, assisting companies to retain their key talent through their proprietary Conversational Management Development program. Tim has served as a pastor since 1976 in several churches, and served as Chaplain at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, MI for 10 years. Tim is also Co-Author of Coaching Based Ministry: Transforming Ministry through Empowerment Coaching, Credo House Publishers, 2011. He also coaches leaders in transition through his private coaching practice, Terra Nova. Tim resides in Grand Rapids with his wife of 42 years, Diane, their 4 children, and 8 grandchildren.

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