Modeling Vulnerability
Lead with authenticity to inspire your clients to unfurl…
Profound transformation unfolds when coaches and clients show up authentically, embracing vulnerability as the ultimate catalyst for growth. Showing yourself and relating to clients creates human connection and a deep sense of mutual understanding. Here are a few ways coaches can open up in their practice to help clients come further along on their journeys.
Know Your Shadow
Continually exploring your own shadow side, trauma, and adaptive childhood strategies is essential for deepening your capacity to support others. By courageously facing your inner landscape, you cultivate a profound self-awareness and empathy, transforming your own wounds into sources of strength, insight, and wisdom. This ongoing journey not only enriches your personal growth but also enhances your ability to guide clients through their healing processes with authenticity and compassion. Remember, the more intimately you know yourself, the more effectively you can inspire and empower those you serve.
“Someone who has experienced trauma also has gifts to offer all of us – in their depth, their knowledge of our universal vulnerability and their experience of the power of compassion.”
– Sharon Salzberg
Model Authenticity
As a coach, practicing radical self-awareness involves openly sharing your own insights, challenges, learnings, and imperfections. Sincerely sharing your experiences and embodying authenticity fosters deeper levels of openness and trust with clients, encouraging them to be more open and authentic in their own journey. However, there is a skill in finding creative ways to relate your story to that of your client without taking the focus off them and making it about you.
"Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are."
– Brené Brown
Hold Space for Raw Expression
Offer prompts, reflective exercises and creative outlets that invite clients to share their deepest truths, insecurities and aspirations – without fear of judgment. Offer invitations for courageous self-expression that will help unlock their potential for self-discovery.
Examples:
Body Scan and Emotional Mapping
Guide clients through a body scan, asking them to notice where they feel tension, lightness, or other sensations.
Then, invite them to associate these physical sensations with emotions or experiences.
Prompt: "As you scan your body, what sensations arise? Where do you feel them? What emotions or memories do these sensations connect to?”
Compassionate Letter to Self
Encourage clients to write a letter to themselves from the perspective of universal compassion, addressing their insecurities and aspirations.
Prompt: "Imagine the voice of universal compassion (perhaps inspired by Pema Chodron or Eckhart Tolle). Write a letter to yourself from this perspective, addressing your deepest insecurities and celebrating your aspirations."
Sacred Pause Journaling
Offer a journaling exercise where clients write about a challenging situation, then pause to reflect on their initial reaction versus their desired response.
Prompt: "Describe a recent challenging situation. What was your immediate reaction? Now, take a sacred pause. How would you prefer to respond if you had that moment again?"
Shame Resilience Collage
Inspired by Brené Brown's work on shame, guide clients to create a visual collage representing their journey from shame to resilience.
Prompt: "Create a collage that represents your journey from shame to resilience. What images, words, or symbols represent your vulnerabilities? What represents your strength and growth?"
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
– T. S. Eliot
Honor the Messiness of Growth
Celebrate small wins, normalize setbacks, and reframe "failures" as opportunities for self-compassion and resilience. When appropriate, use your own experiences to create a bridge with your client and reveal your humanity. Consider finding powerful quotes about the value of failure that you can share with your clients as reframing mantras they can use in their daily lives.
"Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end."
– Denis Waitley
Want to learn more about the Future of Coaching?
Join us Thursday, July 25 for a live Coaching Jam, where we’ll share our signature heart-expanding breathwork session designed to ground and inspire you. It’s free to join. We hope to see you there.
