Enhancing Conversational Awareness in Coaching
Human beings are defined by their conversations. Each interaction, whether with ourselves or with others, shapes our identity. The conversations we engage in influence the quality of our connections, our understanding of the world, and our ability to navigate challenge.
The Breakthrough Conversations approach to coaching draws on the centrality of conversations in human experience as the domain both for exploring what is limiting a person from achieving their goals, and for enacting skilful behaviours that are more likely to realise chosen goals. By examining the nature of conversations, and the embodied emotions underpinning interactions, we support clients to gain the awareness necessary to communicate with enhanced skill.
A simple but powerful frame I have developed for enhancing conversational awareness classifies conversations into three categories – RED, AMBER, and GREEN (RAG) – akin to traffic lights. RED conversations are reactive, driven by emotions like anger and fear. They are characterised by contractions in the body, perhaps in the throat, chest or belly, and commonly drive unskillful behaviours that undermine trust. AMBER conversations are habitual, often occurring on autopilot. They are characterised by habitual and largely unconscious patterns of body sensations, and these states, although often effective in familiar contexts, limit effectiveness in situations requiring reflection. GREEN conversations are those that proceed from conscious choice, based on our capacity for reflective awareness. They are characterised by a sense of ease, flow, or spaciousness in the body, and provide the potential for breakthroughs by allowing conscious choices and by transcending reactive or habitual states.
This RAG classification provides an instantly accessible frame for self observation. In mindfulness training an investigation of embodied emotions is largely undertaken as a solitary, mindful reflection. However, in Breakthrough Conversations, the transformative power of the inquiry is markedly enhanced by turning it into a somewhat guided relational experience. The coach both tracks and choreographs the client’s attention, inviting them to look ever more closely at their embodied experience. They are invited to dwell with those experiences, to breathe with them, and to stay open to what might emerge next.
The profundity of this relational investigation of the client’s experience should not be underestimated. By dwelling with embodied emotions, clients often experience a paradigm shift in their self-relationship. They come to tolerate uncomfortable sensations and witness them dissolving as they meet them with compassion. They experience deep peacefulness and calm as they dwell with sensations of ease and openness and feel buoyed by their sense of presence and resourcefulness. Above all they experience a shift in self-awareness and a realisation that observing one’s emotional state is the foundation for making skilful choices.
On the face of it the RAG classification is a simple and accessible coaching tool. It is intended to be just that. However, using it effectively is not easy. It takes a good deal of self awareness and relational skill on the part of the coach to choreograph the attention of clients in ways that foster transformation. For this reason, the training we offer in Breakthrough Conversations offers coaches the opportunity to be coached themselves using this approach. By having a first-hand experience of the power of a relational investigation of their own embodied sensations and emotions, coaches experience their own personal insights and the translation of these into powerful new behaviours.
They discover that cultivating their own GREEN states resources them to coach with more presence and agility, and so foster more profound change.
Conversational agility lies at the heart of human effectiveness. By enhancing self-awareness amidst the conversational experience, Breakthrough Conversations accelerates profound shifts in presence and communication, for coaches and for their clients.
If you want to learn more about Breakthrough Conversations or experience the power of this approach first-hand, get in touch.