Filters and Styles – Awareness

We all see the world through different lenses. The session demonstrated that to us as we were given the opportunity to look at 7 images and choose a word that the image resonated with for us. It was interesting to hear how others viewed the photographs and what came up for each of us. It makes sense that filters and styles fall under awareness. As coaches, we need to be aware of our own filters and styles. We are influenced by our own lived experience that can easily be impacted by our own biases in a coaching session if we not in awareness.

During the session we explored how our mind /brain is very complex and holds a network of our memories which can easily be triggered by touch, taste, smell or feel. Its sometimes just that feeling when you meet someone and your inner self has a sense that “I don’t like this person”, and at the same time you don’t really understand why. It is often because of a stored memory in our subconscious mind that triggered an emotion towards the person based on how the person was showing up or even how they might have smelt.

The brain is in constantly in a mode of DDG ( Deleting – Distorts – Generalize) These are influenced from the way we listen and the way we view the world, our upbringing, schooling, family and friend influence and professional experience.

Delete : It looks at things that are not important and cancels them out to open up space for what might be “more” important to us at that time. In a way this protect us from having too much of information at any one given time. An overwhelm of information can easily distort our ability to think clearly.

Distorts: The change or shift from the original meaning to something else. Its important to understand where our client is speaking from. At times we try to convince ourselves that a situation is good for us by distorting the reality of something that might be painful or harmful towards us. This often happens unconsciously. “We see things are we are, and not as it is.”

Generalize: This is something that happens often because of a limiting belief or assumption that we might have about a certain group of people. South Africa has high number of gender based violence and this led to many movements that spoke to a narrative of all men being violent. We know and understand that this is not true, however it was a generalization due to incidents that were taking place. It is always important to unpack the clients truth, vs the information that might be influencing their thinking and how they receive others in the world.

We can use this to concept with our Coachee’s to work with the awareness of possible blind spots that might have been created through their lived experience.

Communication Styles

What if we knew that the way we communicated could create ease or panic in someone? Trust or distrust – how would we choose to communicate if this thinking was in our awareness as Coaches? Clear, concise and effective communication supports relationship building and trust. This is how we can get our Coachee’s to open up to us and it also speaks to creating psychological safety for our Coachee’s. Effective communication is more than just the ability to speak, it is also about body language and tone of voice. Studies from Albert Mehrabian’s communication model suggests :