I identified an interesting pattern while I provided individual coaching to numerous people from different organizations, from executives of the largest companies of Ecuador to employees of micro and small enterprises. I found a common element of fear in most of these individuals: the distrust in oneself and the people around them. Distrust is a two-face coin, on one side is fear related to their insecurities that manifest inwards: fear of public speaking, of asking for help, of making mistakes, of saying no, of setting limits to colleagues and sharing personal issues with others. On the other side of the coin is the adverse consequences of these insecurities outwards: the distrust and resentment stored-up that explodes in anger in the most unexpected moments.
The beauty of this process is the recognition that these individuals receiving coaching sincerely want to create change in their lives. By being able to talk about their distrust, fear, anger, and to challenge their beliefs and paradigms, people begin to identify new goals and courses of action that allow them to feel more confident about themselves, increase their self-esteem, generate empathy with their environment, greater collaboration and ultimately greater efficiency within the organization.
A traditional coaching process is usually purely cognitive and pure dialogue, allowing the coachee to realize what he wants to change and to establish a plan of action to achieve these changes. However, this style of coaching is limited because the knowledge is not taken deeper to a physical, emotional and energetic experience of trusting, communicating and setting limits. For this reason, I find it essential to invite people during the coaching session to live this body-emotional-energetic experience of making important decisions that change their lives. Imagining, feeling, acting out and living the experience of what you want to achieve before undertaking it, highly strengthens the possibility of doing so. There are several very concrete and effective tools, as Primal Dance and dispositions to movement, that we use in coaching to meet these objectives. They have been developed in Latin America by coaching schools such as the School of Transpersonal and Integral Psychology and The Newfield Network (www.transpersonals.com / www.newfield.com).
Finally, it is important to emphasize the impact of fear in most of our organizations. It is often disguised behind behaviors associated with control, excessive risk prevention, authoritarian supervision and silent obedience, ultimately, the underlying cause of these is fear.
Fear in organizations impedes:
- Creativity
- The joy of working
- Collaboration between partners
- Commitment to the organization
- Personal initiative and proactivity, among others.
If our organizations want to take full advantage of all the potential of its employees, then the invitation is to face their hidden fears facilitating employees access to personal development processes, such as coaching, that integrate cognitive, emotional, physical and energetic tools.