Coaching: permanent learning at its best

Today we are happy to offer you a guest posting from JJLer Sandra Heinzelmann. Sandra is a writer and business coach in Germany, and she writes at Creating a lifetime movie (Feed). Please welcome her with your joyful comments!
~ Rosa Say for Joyful Jubilant Learning

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Coaching for me is a wonderful synonym for the process of permanent, common and mutual learning. Coach and coachee always are both: teacher and student. The effects arising from that base are precious and various.

“What is the very best effect coaching can have?” This question was on my mind when I was professionally trained as a business coach in 2004. A thrilling process was going on then while I was seeking an answer that really satisfied me. Sometimes elder experiences suddenly unfold on a new level. That happened to me. In the early 90ies I worked as a freelance TV journalist and director for Germany’s public broadcast station called ARD. More than ten years later I received a truly inspirational gift. Guess, how? Well, it was very unspectacular: I sat on my stairs and fastened my sneakers when all of a sudden this idea popped up in my head: Dialogue Scripting! A coaching tool was born. More than that, it even was the headstone of a coaching concept. I learned that later.

Many coaches use fairy questions and their magic impacts on their clients. Dialogue Scripting is the “fairy of communication settings”. I derived it from screenplay writing. The idea behind it is that a coachee can influence every single word his counterpart says. Just imagine, millions of people dream of making others say something that they’d like to hear. They keep trying to control others. Dialogue scripting makes this dream come true. Designing his or her desired dialogue word by word provides insights in own needs and responsibilities for a successful communication. This tool works for both coachees and coaches. Therefore it is an appropriate technique for coaching and self-coaching processes. To write down the desired dialogue helps you to find out what you like to hear and how you would like to be treated yourself. As soon as you know that you can change your own communication in order to change the situation and provide what you long for yourself.

This idea of consciously designing the own communication gave birth to the concept of an inner dialogue director. And then the analogy unfolded in all its facets: (Business) life can be seen as a movie that is directed by us. Finally I found my answer to the question: “What is the very best effect coaching can have?” Coaching is successful when the client’s “inner coach” takes over responsibility for his or her issues. In my eyes this inner coach is less abstract in a role you can identify with: the (business) life director.

In detail this means:

1. You choose the plot, the genre and the title of your movie.
2. You write the script and dialogues day by day.
3. You cast the characters.
4. You set the light.
5. You are responsible for the tone.
6. You balance all this at your life movie’s set.
7. Director’s cut is the very essence of all.

Creating a lifetime movie clarifies that this is a real process, one that is going on as long as we live. Becoming the best life director in our own life is a challenge and purpose. For me this is permanent learning and teaching at the same time. The best effect coaching can have is learning and to make its effects last. This is what I call sustainability of coaching and that was what I had looked for while I was trained.

Sandra Heinzelmann
Author of "The 7 Secrets of happy and successful Life Directors - How to benefit from your Powerful Self-Coaching Gifts"