3 Coaching Tools for Shifting Out of Problematic Patterns 🌱

In contracting, all coaches (I hope) are encouraging clients to consider their goals. EQ Coaches take the contracting process in coaching further and faster by leveraging the “success factors” from the SEI – effectiveness, relationships, wellbeing and quality of life. Whether you use the SEI or not, you can try out this approach.

Looking at the success factors (aka “Outcomes”), I usually ask: “What are you noticing or curious about?”

Frequently, they identify one of the 4 success factors is lower than they want it to be, and say:

“I know this is important, but I’m not doing it.”

Aha! I often ask them if they’d like to tell me more about that… and the session moves quickly into rich areas for growth. I don’t usually define “Recognizing Patterns,” but instead just ask, “Does that come up often?” and if yes, I name it as a pattern. 

This question opens up a whole terrain around cultural identity, role models, and lived experience. Sometimes clients struggle with a dichotomy between respecting and loving the sources of those patterns – and the patterns not serving them. 

Aha! By tuning into this question, we can then discuss if those sources or influences are really useful now. This often requires care to not demean or diminish the sources while also considering a change. For example, a client recently told me she learned her pattern of self-sacrifice from her grandma, who was a strong and important figure. I said, “Maybe that’s a pattern that was essential for her at that time and place,” and invited the client to consider: “In what ways are you in a different time and place that might call for a change in this pattern?”

Left to themselves, folks seem to focus mostly on the downsides of these problematic patterns. Client: “I am not investing enough in relationships and that’s reducing my influence at work. I know it, but I keep doing it anyway.”

I invite the client to tell me more by sharing an example. Then recap the pattern (using the “When _(stimulus)_, I _(typical reaction)_” template, then extend;

Me: “What I think I heard you say is: When you get stressed, you retreat from others – does that sound right?” After the client confirms, they usually reiterate what they don’t like about that, and I ask: “What are some of the benefits of that pattern? I mean – you must be getting something from retreating – even if it’s just a tiny or short-term benefit?”

The answer is almost always about soothing distress, or being more comfortable.

Aha! Once we have identified the benefits, we can then talk about other ways of getting the desired benefits – with less costs.