One of the expressions that seems to keep cropping up as I research coaching is that coaching puts you ‘back in the driving seat.’ It’s a great phrase that fits with the journey metaphor and cards but I also realised that you could actually make a point of representing it physically. When one of the Lifeways Coaches said that he always sat side-by-side with his clients because he didn’t want to be ‘confrontational’ by sitting in their face, a lightbulb went off. It was obvious that you sat next to them with them on your right because thats how you would be sitting when you are in a car and they are in the driving seat.
Now, I have thought about this recently and if you begin the session sitting that way you actually loose the opportunity to ‘put them back in the driving seat’ cos they already are as it were. It may be an idea to start out in another seating arrangement so that at the point where you begin to make changes you can actually say ‘OK, let’s just put you in the driving seat’ and get them to physically move. This will change their state and mark out the session as taking a new direction. I haven’t tried this myself yet but let me know what you think about structuring a session like this when you’ve tried it out. I’m going to think about how we might go about the first part of creating a map that then sets up for putting them back in the driving seat. I’ll let you know what I come up with and if you have any ideas let me know…
