Dive Deeper

Distinctions are incredibly helpful tools in coaching because they help us to see what’s going on in a useful way.

One we’ve already talked about is empowered vs. disempowered — it helps us to see what kind of relationship they have with something.

You can bring in these distinctions to help them see things through a new lens that might help things get clearer, or help empower them to take action.

A few more useful distinctions:

• Agreements vs. expectations: One is clear and out in the open, the other is hidden, frustrating, can’t usually be met by both parties
• Want to vs. choose to: Wanting gets us stuck in what we don’t have and feeling disempowered, choose to gets us to take action and feels empowering.
• Shoulds vs. musts: A lot of people operate from the stance that they should do things … but it becomes a powerful thing to declare that something must be done. We suddenly tackle something head on instead of avoiding it.
• Responsibility vs. blame: We tend to make others (or ourselves) wrong, which leads to guilt, shame and frustration … but we can also just take responsibility for our impact without feeling blamed, and figure out what needs to be done to clean up the mess.

There are just to start you off — as a coach, you’ll start to learn a list of other distinctions that help you help them to get clear, and to get empowered.

NEXT: Can they make a declaration?