Mentor Coach: Sanjiv Bhatia
31st May 2023
GAP can mean different things to different people.
There’s a gap between an event and our reaction to it — a gap for us to consider whether we’re responding to the event or our conclusion. Viktor E. Frankl called it a ‘space’ – a space (or pause) for us to choose our response.
Between our current and ideal reality, there’s also a gap. It’s the distance between where we are and want to be.
Module 13 training is about the latter.
To make this easy for us, Coach Mel cleverly broke the GAP into:
G: Goals (Anchor) – What do you really want to achieve?
A: Actions (Align) – What must you commit to change?
P: Plans (Accelerate) – How fast do you want to go?
Our role as a coach is to help our clients identify and close the gap. It’s easier said than done, though.
Why? Because there are so many things that could form this gap, for example, according to the lesson notes:
Values: Things and matters that are important to us. However, most of us don’t do what we know. We do what we want.
Beliefs: What we believe. Our beliefs shape our reality, so I was told. But here’s the thing. Many a time, our beliefs are, at best, self-limiting and, at worst, erroneous.
Time: Our resources. How we plan to spend our time is very different from how we spend our time, though.
Values, beliefs and time. In an ideal world, working on what we value and believe the most is natural. But alas, we don’t live in Utopia.
When we experience social pressure and conform to the expectations and norms of others rather than our preferences, we sacrifice our values and beliefs for external rewards or approval.
And to make matters worse, what we think we (or our clients) want may differ from what we really want.
When someone says he wants more of something, what he wants may be less of another thing.
E.g., Mary may say she wants to be healthy. But deep in her, what she really wants is not to be a burden to her family.
So, as a coach, if we do not dig deeper, we may think “staying healthy” is Mary’s gap and hence guide her in that direction. But what if she’s healthy but a financial burden to her family? Have we helped in closing the gap at all?
So, yes. No goal. No gap. No coaching.
But it behoves us to find the real motivation behind our client’s goals.
Ah! Life is tough.
Wait. I just made myself happy by writing the above. There’s a massive market for coaches out there! Why? Everyone I know has a gap or two.
No goal. No gap. No coaching.
The Barking Cat
