In the kickoff episode of ideamix’s “Coaching, Performance, and Wellness” series for 2024, hosts Sam Jayanti and Jamie Kosmar explore the intricate connections between coaching, performance, and wellness. Dispelling myths, they discuss the role of coaching as a proactive thought partnership, akin to a doctor’s visit for your life goals. Through practical examples, they dissect the coaching process, emphasizing its transformative impact on self-awareness, goal setting, and behavior change. Tune in to discover how coaching can unlock your best self, providing a replicable roadmap for continuous personal and professional growth.
Transcript:
Sam Jayanti [00:00:03] Welcome to ideamix, Performance and Wellness, where world leading coaches and scientists explain how their research can help you achieve your personal and professional goals faster. Hi, it’s Sam Jayanti, co-founder and CEO of ideamix coaching. Coaching has played an important role in my life. It’s helped me through my journey to become a powerful leader, mother and wife. ideamix coaches help you increase your self-awareness, improve your problem-solving skills, and evolve your habits to achieve your goals– all things I’m grateful to have learned and done through my own coaching journey. Our easy one minute assessment matches you with an ideamix coach that best fits your needs and values. Each ideamix coach is vetted and experienced, and helps clients map and achieve their wellness, professional and business goals. If you or someone you know could benefit from coaching, visit our website at www.the ideamix.com. We also know that not everyone can invest in coaching right now and that’s why we provide free coaching in our coach shorts episodes. If you think someone you know would benefit from it, please share our podcast with them. Thanks for listening. And see you next time.
Sam Jayanti [00:01:12] Welcome to our first episode in our Coaching, Performance, and Wellness series in 2024. In these episodes, Jamie and I will tackle various topics in coaching, performance and wellness to break them down. To kick us off, we’re going to talk today about the connection between those three topics. We throw those words around a lot and the connections sometimes aren’t always self-evident. To kick us off, we’re going to go through five rapid fire questions. Yes or no answers only allowed. So number one is coaching only remedial?
Jamie Kosmar [00:01:49] No.
Sam Jayanti [00:01:51] Okay. Is coaching the same as therapy?
Jamie Kosmar [00:01:55] No.
Sam Jayanti [00:01:57] Is life coaching the only type of coaching?
Jamie Kosmar [00:02:01] No.
Sam Jayanti [00:02:03] Can I get coaching that will help me in my career?
Jamie Kosmar [00:02:07] Absolutely.
Sam Jayanti [00:02:09] And is coaching just for sports and fitness?
Jamie Kosmar [00:02:13] And no.
Sam Jayanti [00:02:14] Excellent.
Jamie Kosmar [00:02:15] Great. So let’s start by talking about, as you were saying, this connection between performance and wellness and coaching. And let’s talk about what are those ties? How is coaching connected to performance and wellness generally? Big picture.
Sam Jayanti [00:02:34] So I think the three are so closely intertwined in my mind. And maybe the best analogy that comes to my mind to explain this is when any of us thinks about our health and goes to a doctor, we don’t just go to a doctor when we have a problem– we do that too. But we also go to a doctor to get a health check to talk through where we are, what problems we might be experiencing. And the doctor acts as a thought partner to us in helping us both analyze and understand our own goals for ourselves and then creating a road map to get there.
Jamie Kosmar [00:03:18] Mm hmm. So and in medical world, we think of that as preventative medicine. But in the coaching world, how do we think about that? Because it’s not necessarily preventative. We’re not preventing problems, but we are using a coach to do what? In that sense.
Sam Jayanti [00:03:35] I think we’re using a coach as a thought partner to enhance our performance and wellness. Right? So whether that’s our performance in our professional lives, in our personal lives, in our familial relationships. And that ties directly to our mental and physical wellness in terms of our self-esteem, our self-confidence, the closeness and intimacy we feel, and the relationships that are important to us in our lives. And so in a sense, it’s really like a flywheel, right? Because if you’re performing and you feel well and you’re able to get the thought partnership of a coach to do those two things, then you’re really achieving your best self, right? Because you’re achieving your goals. You’re doing it with an advisor as a coach who’s on side, who you can really use to get objective advice and to actually clearly roadmap your pathway to get to the goals you’re trying to achieve.
Jamie Kosmar [00:04:37] And before we dive into the process, actually, why should I work with a coach, for example, or why should someone work with a coach as opposed to talking to a friend?
Sam Jayanti [00:04:48] That’s a great question. I would put it I think the best way I have of putting it is whether it’s your friend, your brother, sister, parent, spouse. Everybody in your life that you know and have a relationship with is a self-interested party. A coach that you develop a relationship with is really an objective outsider. Their job, in a sense, is to be your thought partner and provide that objective advice. And because there’s no other relationship that preexists they’re able to do that. I think it’s hard for friends to do that. I’ve definitely found it’s really hard both for me to do it as a partner to my husband. It’s equally hard, I think, for my husband to do it as a partner to me, because in the back of your mind are always the considerations around the nature of your relationship with that person.
Jamie Kosmar [00:05:50] And the future of that relationship as well. Actually, it reminds me of a personal story that I have where I had a friend who came to me seeking advice around a problem that she was having. And ultimately, while I pride myself on being direct and honest because I’m thinking long-term about what happens if there’s one outcome to this problem versus another outcome, if I advise and speak about it in one way down the road, it could impact our friendship.
Sam Jayanti [00:06:23] Yes.
Jamie Kosmar [00:06:24] And so to your point about having advice from friends, as friends, we want to be as open, as honest as possible, but we always have an interest as well. Right. And whatever where we’re advising. On the contrary, I will say that one of the things that I’ve always heard our coaches on ideamix talk about is this fact that they are a servant leader, so they are really there to have the best outcome for you, right, without that level of self-interest. And that’s what being a servant leader actually is.
Sam Jayanti [00:06:57] Yeah. That term is so interesting because it’s entered a lot of organizational behavior and performance and management and leadership discussions. And I think we understand what it means in that context. But I think it’s so applicable to coaching because the coach really is acting as a servant leader for each client, as an individual or a team. If they’re working with a group of people to help both achieve the goals of that individual or team, but equally to really serve their interests very directly. Right. I think that’s where the individualization of coaching is very different from any other learning or development methodology that you could access.
Jamie Kosmar [00:07:52] Yeah, absolutely. Cool. So, shall we dive into sort of coaching and the different steps that somebody would go through if they work with a coach?
Sam Jayanti [00:08:04] Yeah. Because I think so many people have a question on what coaching actually is, like, what does it constitute? What does it mean in terms of the process that you go through in working with a coach?
Jamie Kosmar [00:08:15] Mm hmm. Yeah. So, you know, we’ll start with the first step that you and I have been talking about, which is really this evaluative step. And really, that step looks at three things. Do you want to talk about the three things that we contemplate in that step.
Sam Jayanti [00:08:33] Actually. So I’m going to address two and then you should address the third. But I think, you know, first, where are you today? Right? And second, where are you trying to get to? And the third?
Jamie Kosmar [00:08:47] And then the third is looking at all the forces that influence your thinking around what you think you want or what you think, where you think you’re going. So, that’s your internal dialog or inner critic, as which is often said, as well as the external forces. The messaging that you get from your social circles, your family, your friends, that tells you these are the things I should, should have and want in my life.
Sam Jayanti [00:09:18] Yeah, absolutely. And I want to go back to the doctor analogy here, because it’s it’s, I think, a really good illustration. When we go to the doctor, the doctor asks you a series of questions about exactly where you are today. Right. How are you feeling? What would you want to improve? What problems are you having? And when you articulate those goals and how you’re feeling today, they also then ask you where you’re trying to get to, right? And then they begin asking you a series of questions about the circumstances of your life. What are the external forces that surround you? Do you have time to get enough sleep? Do you get enough exercise? Do you eat healthy enough of a diet? So there’s so many elements where they’re acting as a thought partner to you in much the same way that a coach does, I think, for an individual.
Jamie Kosmar [00:10:16] And particularly at that first stage where people are trying to think through sort of that sort of introspection period of who am I, what do I want, where, where am I going? Yeah. And then we move to the second phase. Once you sort of have done that identification process, then we move into sort of this clarification phase where the coach really weighs in and helps somebody identify what their goals really are. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Sam Jayanti [00:10:48] Yeah, I sort of… A recent example comes to mind. Some months ago I tore my ACL and I went to the doctor and the discussion we had was really what caused me to be very introspective because obviously I wanted my ACL to heal and my knee to be better. But the doctor asked me a series of questions which oriented around what were my goals in terms of the activity level I wanted to have. Was I going to be fine not skiing again? Did I want to get on the tennis court again and play competitively? And those goals were incredibly important because the treatment plan that we then put together in terms of the physio, whether I required surgery or not and so on, was all dictated by those goals that I had articulated.
Jamie Kosmar [00:11:41] Yes. And so very much in that way a coach comes in and will help you figure out what steps and what questions to ask so that you can analyze where you want to go. And which leads us then to the third step, which is the roadmap step.
Sam Jayanti [00:12:04] So I think the roadmap is probably the single most important thing. You know, there’s been so much research and literature on this around goal setting and then goal achievement, right? And lots of people are great at setting goals. What they’re less good at, especially when they’re big goals, like I want to become the CEO of my company or I want to start a new business, those are big goals and it’s really a necessity to take those big goals and break them down into a series of smaller goals, which then results in a roadmap, right? Like, what are you going to do first, second, third, etc.. And that process, I think a coach is particularly and uniquely trained to take someone through.
Jamie Kosmar [00:12:53] And really, I think it’s dissecting big goals into smaller incremental steps to then create the behavior change. And it reminds me of a story of a friend of mine who worked for a big corporation. They had a huge workshop. First there was a hybrid set up where they had a workshop and then they had one individual or maybe two individual sessions with a coach. And my friend working in this big organization said.
Sam Jayanti [00:13:23] What was the workshop topic?
Jamie Kosmar [00:13:25] That I don’t remember.
Sam Jayanti [00:13:27] But it was around empowered communication or something along those lines, right?
Jamie Kosmar [00:13:34] Yeah. And so my friend, when she met with the coach said that, you know, people who speak first and speak the loudest are the ones that are heard. And I can’t do that. So I do not my voice is not heard in these meetings. So how do I make sure that I’m seen and I’m heard? And the coach then proceeds to delve into, well, why is it that you don’t speak out at meetings? And her thinking around this was. Well, because I think it’s rude to speak up and talk when other people are talking. But again, those are the people who are getting heard. And so the coach gave her a very practical exercise. She said, okay, this week, I want you to interrupt as many people as possible so that you make sure that your voice is heard in these meetings. And she did. She did that. And it was it was I think for her, it was actually a very empowering and freeing exercise to go through, to have somebody tell her it’s okay to do something that in your mind and the way that you frame it feels rude. But it is okay in this environment, in this situation, it is okay if your goal is to be seen and heard in your organization.
Sam Jayanti [00:14:51] It’s a total rewiring and kind of reframing, right? That the coach really helped your friend do around her mindset on how to participate in these meetings with the group because if you come at it from that perspective, you’ve really got to shift your thinking, and lots of people can shift their thinking, but do they shift their behavior? And this was such a practical tool for her to actually begin to develop the muscle memory around how to change.
Jamie Kosmar [00:15:19] Yes. Yes. And oftentimes, even when we know that doing something different will get us what we want. Also, we need that permission. And that’s what a coach oftentimes does, is gives us that permission to say it’s okay to do this, to behave in this way that feels completely unnatural to you. And I think it really helped her in her group to feel like, okay, I can do this.
Sam Jayanti [00:15:48] Yeah. I think, so we see this in so much of the work that we do where ideamix coaches work with both individuals and teams in companies with individuals on their own. There’s this question often when you get to the end of whatever time of working with a coach of what comes next, right? And I think that takes us straight into step four, which is this idea of, okay, so you make a change, like your friend goes through the exercise of teaching herself how to interrupt more and get comfortable with that. But how do you now turn that behavior into a natural state for yourself and really begin to do it preternaturally? So you don’t have to think about it, but you just do it. And that’s an interesting piece of the coaching endeavor.
Jamie Kosmar [00:16:42] Yeah. Well, I think it’s very interesting to think about the fact that, for example and we’ll go back to the case of my friend, that you have to practice something like speaking up in meetings and interrupting people that you’re like that. That’s what’s interesting, I think about the practice of behavior change is doing it, being uncomfortable, but feeling like it’s okay to do it because somebody has told you that it’s okay to behave in this way. And then you do it. I mean, just like with anything in life, whether it’s like you’re practicing a sport or, you know, learning music or whatever it is, you do it enough and it becomes natural for you.
Sam Jayanti [00:17:23] Yeah.
Jamie Kosmar [00:17:23] Which brings us to our last step. And I think that the important thing about the step is not just thinking about it in terms of, well, okay, I did this. I had this goal. It was broken down in these behavioral change steps for me. But now, you know, I can take that model and apply it elsewhere with other things that I want to do and talk a little bit about how like a coach, like how coaching helps you do that.
Sam Jayanti [00:17:55] I think, you know, one of the things that coaching does is really help us build self-awareness, right? And I think that the system and the methodology that coaching uses, which you just talked about, right, this idea of understanding and assessing where you are and what you’re trying to get to, going through the analysis and gaining some clarity from that exercise in introspection, road mapping and practicing a new behavior and then consolidating that behavioral change. That methodology is incredibly powerful and it’s actually something that any of us can apply to pretty much any problem that we come across or any goal that we’re focused on trying to achieve and embedding that in ourselves to be empowered to use that as a problem-solving approach. That’s super powerful.
Jamie Kosmar [00:18:52] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there’s two sides of this. Number one is that once you start working with a coach, it’s not like a forever exercise. Because you do learn practical skills that you can then take and are replicable to other goals and areas of your life. Now, that’s not to say that you won’t ever have to, you know, call back another coach maybe to help you with some of the questions and the increments, but at least you have the process down. And so it could be, you know, you start you work with a coach for 3 to 6 months, but then maybe you meet with them once a year just to come back in and help you.
Sam Jayanti [00:19:27] It’s a health check. Yeah, exactly. In the same way you go back to the doctor to just check in and make sure that your knee’s good still.
Jamie Kosmar [00:19:34] Yeah. The annual checkup. Right. The coaching checkup. And so the really the last step, though, is sort of making whatever behavior change, making behavior change like second nature, right? This idea that if you’ve had the model laid out for you, you’ve done it once you understand the process and you can actually apply it again and again to other things in your life or other goals that you may want to achieve in your life.
Sam Jayanti [00:20:02] Totally. That’s, I think it for today in terms of covering this topic. We look forward to bringing you a lot of additional interesting topics and research and coaching methodologies, as well as conversations with coaches, conversations with researchers and scientists on all topics, coaching, performance and wellness. Thanks for joining us today.
Narrator [00:20:30] Thanks for listening. Please subscribe wherever you listen and leave us a review. Find your ideal coach at www.theideamix.com. Special thanks to our producer Martin Milewski and singer-songwriter Doug Allen.