Coaching as Gardening
I want to share with you the best explanation I’ve ever read for what coaches actually do (and don’t).
(And believe me, I’ve read a LOT of descriptions of coaching while doing my Masters thesis on it 🤓)
I’ve come back to this piece many times over the years of building my coaching practice and found myself highlighting more and more of the passages - the words are that good and really resonate with me.
The piece was written by Michelle Bauman, a coach who passed away in 2015, in the book she co-authored with fellow coach, Carolyn Freyer-Jones, called “What if this Is the Fun Part?: A book about friendship, coaching, dying, living and using everything for your learning, growth and upliftment.”
Michelle uses gardening as a metaphor for coaching 🌱 and I want to share her words with you, below:
”When I tell people I’m a life coach, they often respond wistfully. “It must be so rewarding to help people,” they say, with a touch of sadness. As if to say, “I wish I could have a career where I got to transform people’s lives.” I always feel a bit disconnected from people’s reaction – it doesn’t quite capture the experience of the work I do. Yes, I find what I do incredibly rewarding and fun and challenging and stimulating. But more than “helping people” …what feels more accurate – is I provide people with the space, tools and possibility for them to help themselves.
Coaching, for me anyway, is about providing the necessary ingredients for people to grow into (or wake up to) who they truly are. It’s less about what I “do” for them – and more about providing the right combination of space, attention, reflection, and tools for them to co-create more of what they want – to stretch into more of what’s possible for them and their lives. Being a coach is like being a gardener. Having experience about what helps plants grow can make a big difference. Being willing to be patient and consistent in providing the best conditions for growth is powerful. Knowing what ground is fertile and ripe for growth – and where the land is fallow and better left unplanted – matters. (You see where this metaphor is going.)
But only a fool would say, “It’s so rewarding to make plants grow” – as a gardener, I am a caretaker of a process. In no way do I mean to diminish the value of skill or experience I bring to my clients. Similarly, I never take for granted how important my love, my acceptance and the quality of my attention is for my clients ability to grown. Truly the way I am with them is like sunshine and water to a plant – necessary for thriving. When my clients, step into a session – they know I care enough about them to tell them what I see as the truth – even if it’s uncomfortable.
It would require a true illusion of grandeur to announce, “I make plants grow.” No matter how skilled we are as gardeners . . . we don’t hold the keys to life. We can’t force a process that is at its core mystical and mysterious and beyond our ability to control. At best, we are able to participate in something bigger than ourselves. And, when we do it well – with skill, experience and love – the results seems to be better than if growth were to occur without our participation in this special way. Coaching is a generative process – it creates value that wouldn’t exist but for these two people coming together for the purpose of creating, growing and expressing.
And so it is for me, as a coach – I experience extreme reverence for the process I’m invited to participate it. I feel humbled and inspired by my client’s courage and determination. I feel driven to keep growing, learning, reading, and exploring my own edge – so that I have more to share with the extraordinary people who walk through my door. I don’t have an over inflated sense of myself as a “helper” – rather I experience awe in the unfolding process of growth. I feel excited and honored to be invited in again and again to witness and be a midwife in what often feels like a birthing process.”
(Huge gratitude to Carolyn Freyer-Jones for granting permission to share Michelle’s beautiful words from your book)