Monday, January 20, 2014

Optimism and your development as a coach


By Carol Kauffman PhD


What is on your learning curve for your personal and professional development?  As coaches, helping clients connect to a positive vision of the future is a core competency.  How often do we do this for ourselves?  How often do you? Painting a picture of the future can help us create it – that is help craft a future that just isn’t going to naturally happen – but it is more likely to happen if we paint it and look at that painting now and then. And remember; some paintings are crystal clear, nearly photographic, other equally valuable paintings are impressionistic. Make sure you “paint” in your style, not the one you think is correct.


I believe we all need to have an active versus a passive relationship with the future. In practice this means being highly alert to possibilities and having the courage to pounce (hopefully gracefully) when one comes along. When success has been a challenge I often depend on my personal motto:– I’m not in control of my destiny, but I am in control of my probabilities.  Then I judge my success not on the outcome, but on whether or not I tried.