How do you expand your vision of the world?

How do you take your vision to a higher level? What do you need from a coach if you hope to begin connecting the dots and seeing the bigger picture? Over the past 20 years, I’ve helped my clients develop their intuition and show them connect the dots. This becomes more important as we move along as a society. Serving leaders need to develop the more creative side of their business capabilities. If you want to expand your view of what’s happening around you, you must be willing to work to expand the way you see the possibilities.

I go back do several other of Thomas Leonards’ Coaching Proficiencies to help you expand your possibilities. Today, we discuss ways of expanding your view of the world while beginning to help you connect the dots. When I think of intuition, there are many ways to begin developing it, but it’s not as simple as a three step process and you’re intuitive.  Let’s see if I can help you begin to see the world in a different way today.

When looking to expand one’s perspective, it is critical that you have a complete sense of who you are.   A good coach helps you understand who you are and how you see the world. A coach spends substantial time evaluating your emotional intelligence, helping leaders become more self-aware. We do this because who we are significantly impacts how we see things and what are expectations are.  A good coach can help you see who you are and how you see things.

It’s not enough to know who you are today. It’s critical as a foundation of future growth. However, you must not let your own practicality limit your future possibilities. If a coach spends too much time in the past, you miss the present moment. Good coaching helps you see the possibilities of a new, expanding you. To do this, you must be willing to play a larger game.  The analogy I use with my more analytical clients is we must stop looking into a microscope to see our future. We must use a telescope if we hope to see the many possibilities. We are unlimited in what we can accomplish if we are willing to expand and grow our possibilities.

How can you expand your best efforts moving forward? First, celebrate what you have accomplished. Then when you are feeling your strongest, your coach can ask for a more.  Good coaches help you look into your own future without your own self-limiting expectations.  They provide a place where you can stretch and grow. When expanding a client’s best efforts, it is critical that the coach doesn’t project their own possibilities onto the client. I have several clients who are leading the world in their fields. It would not be a good investment for them to listen to me how they should structure their growth. Expanding a client’s view is something that happens when both partners are looking at the possibilities.  You might consider a kaleidoscope; there are infinite possibilities when you look at your options.  In my role as coach, I prefer to start with a wider view of what might be possible for my client.

Through this expanding process I then help them focus on what might give them the best return on their time invested. Over the years, I have found that by working on between 10-20%, I can provide them significant return on their time and resources. It is critical to understand what is important to the person you’re coaching. Good coaches can help you become more self-directed in working on what you want and not what you need. Thomas Leonard and I would agree that we are the facilitators of change, not the change.  Good coaches understand that the client is still responsible for taking action on what they learn.

Finally, when it comes to intuition we must become better at taking risks on what we learn. You don’t have to take big risks at the start, but you must develop the skills required to understand the risk and opportunity equation. Fear not, next week we help you better understand risk. See you here next Tuesday.