As coaches, there are so many tools that we use to help clients get results. Hundreds of coaching models, scores of psychometric questionnaires, and fancy names for the most common of emotions and thoughts that people experience in their day to day life. These are very useful – they give both the coach and the client the feeling of doing something. Of moving forward. Of speeding up. It feels comfortable as the coach feels like their training is being put to use. And we keep coming up with newer names for the same stuff recombined in a different way – new systems of coaching and proprietary methodologies. And in the whole pursuit, instead of opening up the field of possibility that this life offers, we create these containers for our clients to fit into.

For a professional coach, the need to use frameworks such as coaching models and personality assessments, comes from the inability to handle the inherent uncertainty that human beings bring to the table. It is because we are not ready to handle all that a person brings to a coaching conversation, that we take the assistance of fitting them into a personality framework. It is because we are not competent enough to handle the limitless possibility that a deep coaching conversation can unfold, that we are drawn to implement a coaching tool or leadership model to assure a positive movement in a known direction. This is a game played in the shallow waters of Transactional Coaching. The rules of this game are meant to keep the coach safe and secure. Coaches playing this game define their niche and often find themselves trusting that the coaching process works. Its methods are easy to teach, relatively easy to learn for the coach, and gives some results for the average clients, and that’s why most coaches play in this arena.

There is a different game called Transformative Coaching. This is not taught in your usual coaching school. This does not have methodologies, tools, techniques and frameworks. The coaches who play in the deep waters of transformative coaching do not look at you as a young leader or a high potential or as a senior executive. They look at you as a human being leading a life with all the challenges and opportunities that come with it, where your work just happens to be a part of the human experience. And they help you realise this untapped potential that comes with being a human. They often don’t feel the need to define a niche, not because they do not have an area of expertise, but because their expertise spreads across all areas. 

The impact they make is not simply at the superficial level of what you happen to do at a particular point in your life, but at the more fundamental level of your state-of-mind and state-of-being. It is always the being that expresses itself in the doing. We are not human doings. We are human beings who do stuff. Transformative coaching requires a very high level of self-awareness on the part of the coach – not just awareness about the contents of their ego-mind and its behaviours, which is a result of conditioning. It requires awareness about the subtler workings of mind and the real self, which is the source of our continuous identity, as pure consciousness behind the mind – what is sometimes known as self-realization.

This coaching is based on insights into the fundamental workings of human beings and human life. It is not based on arbitrary guidelines. It is guided by first principles – universal truths found at the intersection of psychology, spirituality and philosophy. It doesn’t ask the coach to trust that the coaching will work, instead it asks the coach to develop deep insight and grounding. Do you have trust in gravity? It seems like an absurd question. Gravity just is, and we know how it works. We don’t need to have trust in gravity because we know it works without exception – that it is a fundamental principle of physics in this universe, and that it is the same whether you want to build a space shuttle or whether you just don’t want to hurt yourself by jumping off a building. Similarly, transformative coaches do not trust in the process of coaching. They don’t need to, because they have developed mastery over these principles underpinning the human potential.

This coaching does not speed you up – instead, it deliberately slows you down. It has you look at what’s really happening. It helps see that you are creating your own reality every moment of your life, even when you do not know it. You wake up from who you think you are, to who you really are. You see that you do not need to put in the effort of changing things out there in your life. You will realise that there is no effort required for change. But what about speeding up and results? Results becomes effortless because they become a natural expression of your being. You realise you are faster than ever before, because you finally understand how this whole thing that you call your ‘life’ works, and how this mechanism that you call your mind and your body are equipped to navigate it effectively. You realise that you are constant in these changing circumstances, and see how you are the source of all your experience.

This requires fearless coaching. This requires the coach to have already woken up to who they really are, beyond who they think they are. This alone gives you a complete paradigm shift in how you approach life. And since every individual area such as leadership or business or emotional intelligence or relationships is simply a part of life, this alone is life changing.