Episode 8: WHY: the conclusion of our exploration into Authentic Relating

This episode is the conclusion of a 3-part series exploring Authentic Relating & Coaching with ICF Credentialed Coach Gabe DeRita & Lisa DiMatteo, PCC. In this episode we begin by looking at the WHY. 

• Why would someone want to explore Authentic Relating? 
• What impact might it have in one's life? 

We conclude with a discussion on how Authentic Relating and Coaching share some similar qualities but distinctly different in very important ways.

We'd like you to consider your own reality as you listen. There are references to facts, statistics and quotes in this episode. In this and all our episodes we do not intend to share inaccurate information or neglect to credit original creators for their work. We have done some work to validate some of the obvious data but are human and as such we may miss some things. Please always be your own critical thinker and do your own fact checking. 

#coaching #authenticrelating #authenticity #self #relationships #communication #connection #learning #listening #qualityofattention #values #transformation

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Transcript

Vimla: Hello, and welcome to coaching confidential. A podcast hosted by ICF certified professional coaches, Lisa DiMatteo and myself Vimla Gulabani. In this podcast, we bring you inside a real live unscripted coaching session. And at the end of the coaching session, you also hear from the client about the impact of the coaching.

And you'll hear from the coach about the skills that the coach used. 

Lisa: In episodes six and seven, we shared the what and the how of authentic relating. In this episode, we share the why. Why and when might somebody use authentic relating practices, just a heads up. This conversation is chockfull. We began with situations you might find yourself in that authentic relating could support and you'll hear the tangible and the intangible impact of using authentic relating practices in your life. And we conclude with defining the coactive coaching model and discussing the overlap of authentic relating and coaching. 

Vimla: We pick up where we left you off in the last episode.

Happy listening. 

Lisa: The other thing I'm super curious about, why would somebody do an exercise like this in life? 

Gabe: That's a great question. I, this is, this quote's been coming up so much for me lately. I officiated a wedding a few weeks ago and a quote I used in it was "love is the quality of attention we pay to things."

And so this is training the quality of attention we can pay to our experience and to others, which I think directly influences our capacity to connect to what's happening and to really love what is existing in our world, ourselves and each other. Like if we can really build the capacity. To have like high quality attention and notice what's going on.

Like, it makes so much better choices in the present and like find out what's needed and find out how to, how to be with each other. So not just as a human being, but also as a coach, that's a key skill to be able to know what's going on for your client to be able to self-manage. And self-regulate your own experience, especially when you're having some impact from what they're saying, being able to be with and notice all of that and make choices with it is a superpower. 

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. I, get that. As a coach too. I understand every word you're saying the world that we live in offers so many distractions. Like even right now, I'm managing myself. I hear construction vehicles in the background, like this squirrel, literally outside the window. You know, there's all kinds of things to take my energy away.

My phone's blinking over there. I am going to put it upside down upside down. I think we did have just gotten used to in a way, some of us have gotten used to all these distractions. And what would it be like if we limited our distractions and really, really focused on the moment that we're in. 

Gabe: Yeah. So, and I reflect on that. Yes, of course.

I think the value of this exercise is to meeting reality on its own terms and recognizing that you probably can't limit distractions that effectively because the world is full of them. But what you can do is increase your capacity to control your attention, which is what you're doing when you're practicing your noticing.

So, this is an antidote to that, like, okay. Yeah. Maybe your smart phones always going to be on your desk. The squirrel is always going to be running on the tree branch outside. You can't control that. What you can control is what you notice and how you notice it. 

Lisa: Okay. That's beautiful. And that helps me understand, like real-world application, the potential impact of this means that I can be more present to the people around me.

So, say you have a partner. And your partner is a little bit annoyed because you're always kind of, not quite there. This can help you practice a way to be there now, if you're at work and we all have to sit through a lot of meetings at work, probably more than we ever want to, and we tune out well, if we don't tune out and we're present, what can we notice that will allow us to offer something into the space that's really valuable and maybe increase our visibility or maybe have an impact that gets us to the next place in our career that we want to get to.

Gabe: Sure, or at a minimum, just noticing you tuned out of an important meeting and inviting yourself back. You know, you're like, oh wow, I noticed them thinking about lunch, Nancy's important presentation is happening, I need to check back in. 

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. And I hate to sound shallow. I just want to polarize this a little bit and tune into the why, because some people might be thinking, and I know I've thought this myself, you know, if I don't pay a hundred percent attention, the world is not going to fall down.

Gabe: No. 

Lisa: Nancy's probably not even going to notice that I'm not paying full attention. And how important is this? Really? And sometimes, sometimes if I play the, the really self-focused role here, it takes a what's in it for me to come back to the space. Not all the time, but sometimes when we can connect to how this relates to a goal that we have in our life or, or something that's really important to us, maybe it's not just important to us, to it's it's important that we're present for our partners because X, Y, Z.

Gabe: Yeah, the what's in it for me. I'm very selfish. I'm self-identified priority number one is me. It's not mutually exclusive with wanting to care for others. And this does matter, in a self-centered way, because you were essentially having the experience. Right, you're the one who's having the attention or the noticing occur within you.

So what do you want that relationship to your experience to be like, do you want it to be a struggle and do you want it to be difficult? And you want to feel like you're fighting your own mind all the time? Or do you want it to feel like something that you experienced ease and control and joy with, right?

It is self-centered to develop quality of attention because you get better at choosing the parts of your experience you focus on, which means you get to have higher quality experience just within and for yourself more often. So, it's self-serving and it serves others because ultimately the only gift we can offer one another is our minds.

It's the only thing we really bring to the table because our mind is what controls our behavior and our behavior dictates our outcomes. So that's really the only thing we're able to offer one another in relationship. And practicing our noticing can really influence the quality of attention. Like I said before that we're able to bring their minds to our own experience and to relationship with others.

Lisa: Okay. Cool. So why someone might do this exercise or all the things we've just said better personal relationships and I don't know, career advancement just to pick two, there's a million things that practicing this could bring you, but those are a couple. 

Gabe: Yeah. And I would say the most important one is the quality of your own daily moment to moment experience.

Lisa: Yeah. 

Gabe: Getting less stuck essentially. Getting stuck less often in something, you know, negative tape loop in the brain. 

Lisa: Beautiful. And may I share a real potential impact. 

Gabe: For sure.

Lisa: If I recognize what's going on in my body, the sensations, I can begin to recognize patterns of sensation and sometimes sensation indicates that we are listening to a voice that is not really helping us in the world in coaching language. We might call that the inner critic or a million other words like that. And I know my inner critic is lies, lies, lies, and it can really take me down. So, if I'm noticing. The sensations like sweaty palm or whatever are present. Oh yeah, that means my inner critics got my brain. So, let me switch the channel here and that way I can come from, a place of self-confidence 

Gabe: yeah.

Lisa: And project something totally different, which might have me seen and heard in a way that's going to be more aligned with where I want to be and where I'm headed than say, coming from this other place. 

Gabe: Yeah, I think that's a really good practical example of how to apply the practice. And that's part of what I use it for in coaching. Part of why I like authentic relating so much, and this is just one tiny practice of many that can kind of bring us back to ourselves. And in a really practical way, there's so much going on in our bodies. There's so much information there that we need to be paying attention to that, if we're just dissociating and checking out from that's when we cannot honor our own boundary. Push ourselves too far and compromise ourselves in a number of different ways. But if we're listening to the body, that's also, for me, in my experience, that's where the intuition comes from. Like, oh, I have a feeling about that and my gut is telling me blank, that's a deeper thing than something coming from my head. It's coming from deeper. And when I'm checked into my body, I'm noticing those things quicker. And I believe the intuition is undervalued in our culture. I'm super rational, pragmatic as well. But I think that there's a lot of information waiting for us in the body and training ourselves to notice our physical sensations also trains us to notice the signals we're getting from intuition. Like just having a feeling about someone or something. If we're noticing that, then we can respond to it. 

Lisa: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, Gabe, and there's a lot of information out there now about mind, body, mind, body connection, intuition being one of the gifts of both the mind and the body, and everybody comes to their intuition from a different place.

And also, I think some of us just think of our bodies as a, as a vehicle, as a tool. 

Gabe: Yeah. Yeah. Alan Watts is another one of my favorite teachers and he talks about most of us having the experience of being this little awareness up in the head kind of like operating a body, like a machine, like we're piloting this, you know, meat bag around, and it's the essential assumption that there is a mind and a body that function as separate things. But that is not my worldview. There is a one unified experience of mind and body. And I think that feels closer to the lived experience I have when I really tap into what's going on. When you try to notice, what's noticing your sensations as a distinct experience, it isn't. If you really get close to it and pay attention your mind, and your body are one unified field of energy that you're experiencing, but we kind of live in this disembodied, tiny place in our heads that makes us feel the illusion of separateness between the two. 

Lisa: And surrendering all the power that lives in the body.

Gabe: We're cutting ourselves off from half of our energy, maybe more. But I read once that there's like more nerves in our gut, in our intestines and in our stomach than the reason our brain. 

Lisa: Yeah, well, isn't that where the term gut sense came from or gut feeling came from. 

Gabe: Yeah. 

Lisa: Gabe, in an earlier episode, you shared with us that one of the principles of authentic relating includes the concept of assuming nothing.

Could this be something of a brain hack because, I might miss quote this, but I have heard that our brain is always looking for painting the picture. And so, if we get a few facts, it wants to finish the picture. 

Gabe: Yeah. 

Lisa: There's some trees and it wants to put a, where does the car get parked? And there's a driveway here and I'm gonna put a mailbox and, you know, is this a hack to notice when we're completing the picture where it's not warranted.

Gabe: I don't know if I would use the word hack, but I do think that there's some truth to what you're saying and the idea that the brain is a meaning making machine and it's generating assumptions at a rate that we can never keep pace with because we need to model reality based on assumptions. It comes down to the core of how we create language and culture.

Even listening to me speak, you're using symbols to understand something which are based on kind of like, these abstract meanings that we assigned to things. It's how we relate to reality is based on these systems of meaning and assumption and kind of like you said, painting in the picture and filling in the blank.

So yes, there, there is a part of this practice that kind of gets us better at noticing when we maybe have filled in too many blanks, you know, or like the blanks we're filling in are keeping us from the important part of the truth, or we've wallpapered over something that we need to know with this kind of rosy picture of it that isn't real.

Or a negative picture of it that isn't real, that's more often the case when we're noticing our assumptions, we're typically naming negative things. The brain has a five to one negativity bias because we needed that to evolve. Our ancestors needed to be better at avoiding threats than seeking rewards in order to survive.

So, our brain still has that meaning-making system, baked into how it kind of interprets our world. So, you're right, it is in that sense, it's a brain hack to say like, oh, I'm going to get better at noticing the parts of my assumption or story or experience that aren't necessarily true, that I'm believing in because they're what I've known from before.

Typically, they're based on some previous experience of the last time I trusted this person, I got burned. So, I'm just going to assume that they're jealous and going to betray me. That type of stuff happens all the time. 

Lisa: Yeah. So those were our coaches who listen to this will probably relate this to the inner critic. People who are'nt coaches who are listening a metaphor I like for this is like, we have a lens, a contact lens over our eye that has us see things in a particular light. Like in that example you just gave where, you know, this person has done me wrong before, so my eye now has a film over it that sees this person through that lens and on all the experiences that we have through this lens.

Gabe: Right. And another unfortunate truth that doubles on top of the negativity bias. As we also have a confirmation bias, which means we see the things that we want to see to confirm the belief that we already have, because it's easier to do that than to reinterpret our reality. So, there is like, once something happens and we have a negative experience. Now we look for things to confirm that experience and believe that terrible thing about that person or group of people. And you can see it writ large in our culture so obvious. Everybody has their version of the truth and all the reasons they believe the other side is wrong or totally correct and you can take any piece of data and spin it to fit your worldview.

And that's the confirmation bias at work. We all do it. No matter what side of history you think you're on, you have a confirmation bias that's operating in the way you see the world. And when we name those assumptions and judgements, sometimes we can get a little bit of leverage, a little crack of light under the door, sealing a soft from what might be a bigger truth.

Lisa: Yeah. I want to just. All listeners right now to just pause for a second and to be with what Gabe has just shared, because it is very present in our world right now. And I think we all participate.

Gabe: And it's subconscious, right? It's not like a, I don't want people to be like, oh yeah, I'm such a terrible person for judging others this way. Like, we're all doing it, 

we're wired for it. 

we're wired for it, so having some compassion with it and having the practice to start to work with it is the best solution I've found to starting to shift it. 

Lisa: So once we identify our assumptions, we can then reveal and explore our biases. And I think this is exactly the kind of self-discovery that happens in a coaching session.

So this feels like a good time to transition our conversation over to coaching. And I think Gabe, what you're going to describe next is pulled from the model that we're both practiced in which is called coactive coaching. So, listeners Gabe is going to share with us the five fundamentals that come from coactive coaching.

Gabe: Yeah. And I think the coaching model can be used in so many different contexts, especially something like co-active, which is actually a fairly broad coach toolkit. It's not really discipline specific, which is why I like it so much and why it plays well with authentic relating cause which is also not specific.

It's for all human relationships. Coactive coaching can be for pretty much all coaching relationships as well. You can use it in so many ways. And the way I describe my work is I am a purpose alignment and communication coach. So I with focus on helping people align with their purpose, with their core values, and then go out and actually build on them and relate from them through better communication, through understanding intention and taking clear well-informed action.

Lisa: When you say aligned with their purpose, does that mean their purpose in life? Does that mean their purpose in this moment of their life? What does that mean?

Gabe: I think the scope of that, I leave to the client sometimes it's like, what's the purpose of my organization or my business. How do I bring more fulfillment to my work?

Sometimes it's people who are where I was three years ago, where it's like, I'm ready to burn my life to the ground. I need to figure out what's next. Some people are going through divorces or gender identity transitions. It's really about that moment of transition and recognizing that spiritual inflammation and knowing like what's missing from my life, I need to define and now build in or rather uncover because it's always already there.

That's the beautiful thing about values is like, we don't need to learn them. They're not aspirational. They're already part of our lived experience. We just need to identify them and build intention around them. 

Lisa: Yeah, that's beautiful. So, you're beginning to paint a similarity here. There are ways in which in our life, we could be authentically relating without even realizing it. And there are ways in which we're already doing the thing that our coaching goal is about. 

Gabe: We already are. 

Lisa: We cannot see it. And so we hire a coach that can help us I don't know, turn 13 degrees to the left and maybe see it right. 

Gabe: Right. That's what I say to people is like the reason to focus on values and purpose alignment is because we're already embodying them either in what we're avoiding or what we're choosing. So for me in my life, I already had the values and purpose of service in my life. And it was what was causing me pain because I was avoiding it.

So, it was already there as the negative part of my experience because it wasn't owned and embraced yet. So, whatever the thing is that you want is already part of your life. The trick is identifying how it's showing up. And is it part of the negative experience because it's out of alignment or is it part of what gives you energy and joy? Because it's something you're leaning into. So, values and purpose are never waiting to be discovered. They're always part of our experience in some way. And maybe there is a part of it that's unclear or needs to be discovered or identified. Like, I didn't know what coaching was. So, I needed to discover that, but the deeper purpose and the why for what was important about coaching to me was already part of who I was as a human being, even before I knew air quote, the thing that I needed to do.

Lisa: So, Gabe, similarly, to the way that you presented AR authentic relating what is coaching? 

Gabe: Yeah, so coaching, I think of as a skilled framework of support, to help somebody rediscover their power, help them grow, help them align with the best of who they are to help people make better choices, to bring more awareness and intention and clarity to what they're doing.

And it can be a really joyful process. That's what I think of coaching is particularly attractive is that it can involve this spirit of play and joy. And I think it fills a needed to space in the support professions sitting next to something like therapy. Coaching can involve healing, but therapy has this very healing focused or clinical focus to it that is treating or curing a disorder or a disease.

Whereas coaching focuses on the whole person, which is actually one of the core concepts of coactive that we're not diagnosing something as a specific disorder that needs to be managed. That we're welcoming that part of our experience as part of who we are and integrating it, building on it, getting curious with it, and there can be a sense of playfulness to that that I think people really resonate with.

And I find this a lot with my clients, they don't share with folks that they're working with a therapist, but they love talking about their coach or they're like, oh my God love, like, it's, it's just a different orientation to a similar process of healing and growth. And I think of coaching is particularly well suited to serve people who are more on the growth side of that spectrum or trajectory. Like if there's deep healing and trauma and processing that needs to get done, that might be preliminary work to then working with a coach to expand upon, grow or integrate and start to build positive momentum around things people want in their life. And that doesn't mean that the hard stuff is excluded from coaching, but that there's a moment in somebody's trajectory of transformation where coaching can have a really, really potent impact. And I think it's that inflection point or right before it around, like, okay, cool. I've done some of the healing work I can be with my experience without being overwhelmed by it. Now I can work with it and understand it a little bit more.

And one of the other core concepts of coactive that I think really serves. Is the concept that people are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole you're already whole, you already have everything you need to heal, but I think we need to believe that before we can work with it. 

Lisa: Sure, so comparing that to, as you mentioned, therapy, there is no diagnosis. Diagnosis is you're perfect. You're all right. You're good to go. There's nothing about you that needs fixing. 

Gabe: Right. So, you can say like you don't have anxiety, you're experiencing an anxious state. The you is bigger than the experience you are having. And that's what whole person means. That's what naturally creative, resourceful, and whole is.

And in coaching, we're not pandering to the smaller parts of our experience that feel bigger than they are, you know, like our fear or our regret or our judgment or our doubt. Those are just parts of us. The whole self, the capital S self is bigger than all of those. Because it's experiencing those things.

And if we can step outside of that experience, if we can be with it, not in it, then we can work from a perspective of whole person instead of just treating a symptom or a small part of our experience. And that's what I love about that work. 

Lisa: Beautiful. So, we have the first two in our list. What Gabe called naturally creative, resourceful, and whole, and that's language specific, took a co-active model of coaching.

Yeah. There is no syndrome in you to be fixed. You're good. The way you are. And that we focus on the whole person and not overly focused on individual parts of our being. What else is there? 

Gabe: Yeah, what else is there? One of my favorites is the idea of dancing in the moment. And this one is really about just staying with the live edge of experience and being with what's here, which ties directly to some of these authentic relating things around welcoming everything and dropping assumptions.

These are tied to dancing in the moment and just staying with the emergent edge of kind of what's moving in somebody tracking that experience with them. Staying in that present shared reality connection and staying really curious with it. Oh, where's this going? I have no idea, but I'm really interested to see where this leads and being with that uncertainty.

And I think that uncertainty carries a lot of discomfort and I notice this a lot with new coaches that there's like, oh, if I don't have the clever thing to say, or the beautiful Ramdas quote, I'm screwing it up. You know, it's sometimes the mystery is in fact always the mystery is where the magic is.

Staying with that dance and not knowing who's leading right now. I don't know. Maybe the client is maybe I am, but just being in that is a really, really beautiful space. It's an intimate space. 

Lisa: Yeah, it is. And I think that occasionally you can find yourself in fear of the intimacy for a moment and want to escape it. And so, for the client, I feel like dancing in the moment, it's like, this is a place to not check out when you would normally check out. Not use the coping mechanisms of your creature comforts, which really is checking out because you've set the space to be with this moment. And then this moment, there may be things that feel challenging and can feel really tempting to check out.

But that's also true, for the coach. And you know, the coach obviously has some ethical guidelines that they bring to the space that make the space safe to be in. But this is where the CO comes from. We don't know, we don't know what's next. We're on the edge. 

Gabe: It's a co-created experience. And this is where revealing experience ties in, right? That willingness to be witnessed and the beauty and the intimacy of that. Dancing in the moment is a co witnessing of what's being experienced. And in a coaching context, it's focused on the client. So, the role of self-management here is that we're not dancing with the coaches experience. We're using the coach’s awareness and attention to dance with the client's experience. Whereas in authentic relating, we might be dancing with each other's experience and there might be kind of a ping pong back and forth of that connection. Whereas it's more of a one-way street in, in the client support context.

Lisa: And just for sanity's sake and we're not literally dancing. Right. And seeing in the moment. 

Gabe: Sometimes we do. 

Lisa: Sometimes we do, cause we don't that as you pointed out, we don't know what is in the next moment. If we're really in the moment, quote, unquote dancing in it, we don't know. And it could include dancing, but this is a term that is used that both Gabe and I are really familiar with.

And those of you who aren't part of this model might be like, wait a minute are they talking about real dancing. We're not necessarily talking about real dancing. And in fact, I just do want to say along the lines of revealing experience, I love that how dance comes in there because you know, that expression dance like no one's watching.

Sometimes it can be really embarrassing to dance in front of other people, but it takes vulnerability. And that's the quality that is shared by both these models, authentic relating, it takes some vulnerability to be sharing experience with other, in a container that is a hundred percent, a hundred percent.

Managed by the two, a hundred percent. And in coaching where there is a hundred percent, a hundred percent because the coach is giving a hundred percent and ideally the client's giving a hundred percent, but the container has a management to it. 

Gabe: Yeah. It's directed in a certain orientation towards the client experience.

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah.

Gabe: Thank you for calling out the jargon by dance in this moment, there's not necessarily physical movement implied, but it's the fluidity of staying with the live edge of the experience and connection. 

Lisa: Yeah, with what is. 

Gabe: Yeah. 

Lisa: Which in real life, there are so many millions of things to take us away.

So, I love to think of coaching as like that real focus moment. I can put my attention simultaneously a hundred places in every other moment of the day, but when I'm coaching, and when I'm being coached, when I'm the client, I'm here, this is it. This is the practice of really being present. 

Gabe: Yup. 

Lisa: And I think this ties in as well to welcoming everything because you mentioned dissociating and that's one of the key ways, we don't welcome everything.

That's one of the easiest ways to slip out of welcoming is to notice when we're tuning out, when we're numbing, when we're kind of dissociating from something, that's the nervous system, reacting to it by shutting down. And there's two polarities in it, they're called posture and collapse posture is like the fight reaction collapse is, the flight reaction and openness is what exists between those polarities.

And we can only dance. We can only move when we're not in a, in a posture, in a, you know, collapsed. 

Yes, where our system has checked us out to keep us safe. 

Gabe: Right.

Lisa: So, all of these things being naturally creative, resourceful, and whole looking at the whole person, quote, unquote, dancing in the moment being with what is all serve, this last piece that you're presenting, which is called evoking transformation. 

Gabe: Correct. 

Lisa: Can you tell us about that. 

Gabe: All of that is in service of evoking transformation. And I like to tell people that my coaching really only has two parts at the end that are needed to make the process successful it's insight and action, and evoking transformation speaks to both. The insight is some new piece of our experience that's been revealed to us, that's coming into our awareness that we've gained a new perspective on something. And now we may be, have a different choice we can make, or we have some traction here when we didn't before. And now what choices become possible from that new insight? from that new perspective. What commitments can we make? What actions do we take? So, there's the being and the doing represented there in the co-active model, because transformation doesn't necessarily mean tomorrow we're doing, you know, 200 pushups or eating vegan, or, you know, making an extra 10 grand a month. That's not necessarily transformation. Maybe transformation is recognizing that all of our questions are subtle attacks on somebody. Or that there's judgment sneaking into the way that we're relating to our spouse, that those could be transformational insights and they could just lead to an observation. Oh, let me notice this pattern.

Let me notice the impact that this has, let me observe this as a part of my experience. That suddenly isn't calcified as truth. In my reality, now it's something I'm just watching and questioning and seeing if there's something I want to change. And there's a beautiful quote, anything that's not a law of nature is just a belief just a shared belief.

And I think we can evoke a lot of transformation when we're willing to apply that principle to some of the ways we believe things just are. Air quote that's just the way it is. And so, for me, I think evoke transformation can speak to both of those qualities, but the actual doing of the thing, which we need to take action sometimes, but it can also involve that softer curiosity perspective shifting piece.

It's very yin yang. There's the very feminine, intuitive, curious piece around transformation and perspective with our experience. And then there's the masculine action-oriented, focused productive, actual behavior change part of it as well. 

Lisa: Yeah. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. I think that evoke transformation comes down to getting us to the place of, what this has been for the sake of, so we engage a coaching relationship initially for the sake of something, there's something that we're seeking. And so that, that typically becomes the agenda that big a agenda of the coaching relationship. But as you say, the journey is for, insight and action.

And insight is a part of the process that we spend a lot of time on because we don't want to make decisions to DO uninformed by the BE.

Gabe: Yeah, we all have plenty of righteous busy-ness. And I love you brought that for the sake of piece. I read a book by Richard Strozzi- Heckler that I like, he's from the Strozzi Institute, the embodied somatic coaching.

And that's the question at the heart of all those inquiries. What is this for the sake of? In shorter terms, you know, what's my WHY. 

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. I heard another quote from somebody at Strozzi about that same person, and he said that, he often asks, what are you practicing right now? Because what you're practicing is who you're becoming.

And so again, we come back to some of these principles in authentic relating, although they're not coaching, they are related. Owning our experience, what we choose to put our attention to is what we're growing. And so, we want to choose carefully. 

Gabe: That's why I focus on values and purpose alignment, because like I said, what you're practicing is how you're embodying your values.

So, they're already part of your present actions and what you're doing either in the negative or positive polarity of them, they're either something you're avoiding or can't be with or having resistance to or something that's driving you and moving you forward. And I officiated a wedding for two of my best friends.

And one of the quotes from the ceremony that I used was love is the quality of attention we pay to things. And I think that's such a beautiful description of this process. How are we loving ourselves in our own work through the quality of our attention to our experience. 

Lisa: Yeah. So, from that quote, we can say there, there's a lot of love that goes into the coaching process.

And I want to share with listeners that there is an unintended impact when you engage in a coaching relationship. You know, we do know that there is a big A agenda. A thing that brought you there. You know, the time and energy and money you're investing in this coaching is actually for the sake of, and in that path using these principles, you actually end up with so much more.

I say that both as a coach, because I don't want to sound too braggy, but as a client, every single time, I've engaged a coach, the discovery along the way that builds, the for the sake of, there's an opportunity to transform in so many more ways than you intended when you hired the coach. And that is like the extra credit.

Gabe: I see it all the time. And it's part of my intake form. I have like a big discovery call questionnaire that people fill out and at the bottom there's like goals. And I always add the caveat of like, hey you know, this is pointing the ship in the right direction, but I don't want us to assume that this is where we're going to end up something might be revealed along the way.

And I've had so many people like. For example, like they'll hire me to finish their dissertation, ended up building a bus that they move into or something, you know what I mean? The work goes in so many directions that a lot can be revealed along the way. 

Lisa: Yeah. Well, this is the thing. I mean, the power of questioning the things that we believe and focusing on who we are as a whole person and having a guide along the way is huge. And it's so hard to intellectualize it, to explain. It is so much better to just experience it. And, you know, you can get a little taste of coaching in a very short period of time, kind of a mini experience of this.

But I digress. I do want to pause us for a quick second. Gabe, let's wrap up with kind of a compare and contrast summary 

Gabe: Comparing coaching and authentic relating there's a specific directive, outcome-oriented process in coaching that doesn't necessarily exist in AR. In coaching we have a support context that it's for the sake of the client's big A agenda it's for the sake of their goals and the coach's role in that is really to just be present with and facilitate, evoke that transformation for the client.

And it can blend a lot of the practices of authentic relating, right? A lot of the processes and practices there, serve that connection really well. The process of welcoming, the process of assuming nothing, the ownership, the revealing of experience, especially by the client to be able to be witnessed and the honoring self and others, especially for the client honoring what they need.

And for the coach, you know, bringing in some self-management and respecting professional and personal boundaries, they all serve the coaching relationship well. 

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. And can I just back up one more step and say yes to that and in coaching it's about the client, right. And authentic relating it's 100% about both individuals.

Gabe: Yep. The difference between the two is the coaching is a hundred percent client focused, authentic relating is about both people about the connection between the two 

Lisa: Is authentic relating ever more than two people? 

Gabe: Yeah, I facilitate groups of up to 30 I think the largest group I've done is like 200 and some of the exercises are done in dyads or triads.

Some can be done in a big whole group. So, an example is like the noticing game you can do, like putting my attention on blank I notice blank and that can popcorn style around the whole room and people can share impact and reactions together. 

Lisa: So, it can be about the individuals in the group that that could be more than just two people. Is it ever about the system? 

Gabe: Yeah, so one of the pieces I teach and workshops around this as around the, this is actually borrowed from co-active, it's like the levels of attention level one is attention to our experience. Level two is attention to other's experience. And level three is attention to the context and broader container.

And we can be drawing data from any of those areas to inform our choices in relationship in any moment. 

Lisa: Yeah, ok beautiful. Another thing I want to point out as a compare and contrast is that in the coaching relationship, one person is professionally trained at a thing. The other is not, or they may be, but they're not coming to the conversation with that identity.

Gabe: No, and they're not holding that responsibility, whereas in authentic relating both parties, hold the responsibility for the practice equally. Whereas in a coaching relationship, that responsibility is held primarily by the coach for facilitating the interaction with the client. And the client is a copilot. I always invite my clients to co-design every interaction we have, because I wanted to feel more like a peer relationship than a professional relationship.

But the deeper context is I'm holding more than they are more responsibility for the process, so to speak. And so a coach can use authentic relating in service of a client. If you're practicing authentic, relating as a human being, it's equally in service of you and the person that you're relating with.

Beautiful. What else is there? Yeah, I think it all ties back to this big piece of intention. In relationship and skill, you know, cause like I believe that even if you're not a professional coach, some of the ways of being that show up in coaching are really useful in relationships. Like how beautiful would it be if we all related to each other as naturally creative, resourceful, and whole, like, what if we gave everybody that much credit in our lives?

So, I don't want to create the idea that the tools of coaching are only useful in a coaching container. I think they're bigger than that. I think they can serve as a blueprint for relations. And coming back to our theme around intention, it's like, how do you want to build the relationship that you're in?

What is your big agenda? What is it for the sake of what is your, why? Those questions that show up in service of a client can be equally useful in service of a relationship and in service of what you want from that relationship. So I don't want to kind of create like a closed door there and kind of isolate coaching from the rest of what we're talking about.

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. I really appreciate that. And you're making me think of a time I was teaching coaching skills. So, coach training to a bunch of leaders in a large organization in the United States. And there was a three-day training, at the beginning of the first and second day, I looked out into the room and saw eyeballs rolling back into their head, and I thought, oh God, they just think that this is the flavor of the day and how am I going to help them see this? And when is that moment going to happen? And I remember sometime middle of the second day, somebody in the room spoke up and said, wait a minute, I can use some of this with my wife. I could pull a skill from here, I'm not going to coach my teenage daughter, but I imagine if I bring this particular skill into the conversation with my teenage daughter, you might actually hear each other better. And oh my God, boom, you know. This is about my life, not just about my career. 

Gabe: And that's why I created that invitation for the listeners at the beginning to imagine how this applies to what's already going on in your world.

Where does some of this fit in? What context is this already happening in or would be useful for? And the same with the it the principles of coaching. Where would it serve to, to have some of this show up, you know, knowing your intention matters and the skill that you're bringing to your connection really matters in the outcomes that you're having.

Lisa: Beautiful. Is there anything that you want to share with the listeners about you coaching, authentic relating, or how to get in touch? 

Gabe: Yeah, I'd love anybody. Who's curious to learn more about this work to reach out whether they're interested in this for themselves or as a coach and how to apply it in their practice. You can get in touch with me on my website, effectiveconnection.com. I use Instagram a lot too, I'm at fun Gabe with two ends of FUNNGABE. And yeah, again, anybody who's really curious about this work. There are some great communities out there that are practicing it. I facilitate for a community called authrev.org or the connection Institute.

There’re two communities out there. If you just want to try this stuff and practice it with people, I would recommend going on there and checking out their community where you can just jump into these practices with a group of people and play with it. And if anybody wants to speak with me, even if it's just a curiosity about this work. I love having conversations about it as I hope you can tell. And so, the first 45 minute conversation we have no strings attached is always just open door with me. And you can book that on my website. 

Lisa: Wonderful Gabe. Thank you so much. I have appreciated as a human and a coach being led through this time with you. 

Gabe: I'm really glad you invited me to this Lisa. 

Vimla: Wow, Lisa, that was a lot. The conversation about evoke transformation was very insightful. And those two words describe coaching and what happens inside the coaching conversation. And I'd also like to admit that occasionally for me, as the coach, also, the evoke transformation happens. So, in a coaching session, the coach is also transformed, sometimes. 

Lisa: Yes, this is so true and so interesting. Isn't it? 

Vimla: Yeah. 

Lisa: I'm curious Vimla what was the impact on you as a listener to this particular installment? 

Vimla: In this conversation, there was a moment where Gabe talked about the values being present in not. The satisfying parts of our lives are where, the values are being honored and the dissatisfying parts of our life are where the values are dishonored.

That made a huge impact to me. And I have to say, I am in the process of examining the dishonored values in my life and you know what? I might get coached on them. 

Lisa: It sounds like a good idea. Any other takeaways? 

Vimla: I'm going to take away the quote love is the quality of attention you bring to your relationships. And I set an intention, I am going to bring more attention to my relationships. What stands out to you? 

Lisa: Well, it's funny that you mentioned that quote because that really stood out to me and still does actually, I think as a coach, I'll speak as a coach first, I hear clients fall in love with themselves and their lives, all over again, as they bring a higher quality of attention.

I also think in the fast-paced lives we live, it's far too easy to cut off that quality of attention or to cheat on it, if you will. As we attempt to do all the things. So to me, that quote feels like a nice mantra for me to bring me back on track when I'm running past all the good stuff. 

Vimla: Wow. Yeah. All right, let's move on to completing this episode so we can talk about the next one. 

Lisa: So for everybody who listens we, we hope that this particular episode, episode eight in our three episode series ties together our entire conversation on authentic relating. We intended to give you a sense of what it's about and because we're originally a podcast about coaching, we included some nuggets about coaching and the places where coaching and authentic relating share some space or cross over. One thing that's worth noting however, is the authentic relating games that we aired, in our series, were edited for the podcast and for learning purposes. So, if you find yourself in the future playing some authentic relating games or experimenting, it's very likely that your real-time experience is going to be different, not just because you're going to bring different content to the space, but because you're going to have a real and present a hopefully unedited experience.

So we hope you got something good out of listening and bonus points. If you learn something about yourself while listening. 

Vimla: Yeah. And if you're willing to share with us about yourself or about what you learned about your experiences, if you try the authentic relating games, then please we would love to hear from you. You can reach us at www.yourvitalself.com/coachingconfidential. 

Lisa: And before we close, I want to thank Gabe for sharing his expertise in authentic relating, in coaching and particularly in that first episode, sharing the story of him. So thanks Gabe and Vimla, what is the next episode coming up about?

Vimla: So coming up in episode nine, we will return to a regular format. Where our listeners will be a fly on the wall for a real live unscripted coaching session. And the client's topic is resilience in this pandemic world. 

Lisa: Okay. I'm just going to say that one more time, because it feels so timely resilience in this pandemic world.

Can't wait to hear it.