Where does it hurt?

The first time I fell after I left the hospital, I found myself in the emergency room at Stanford. Trying to lie still on a gurney in the hallway waiting for my doctor to come out of the operating room (and waiting for the vicodin to kick in), various interns would come by and check me out.
Blood pressure, check, temperature, check, x-ray waiting to be developed, check, pulse/ox -check. All the usual suspects were reviewed. Then each intern would poke at my leg- "Does it hurt here?" "What about here?" "Does it feel like a burn or an ache?" They stared at my leg and poked around and came to various conclusions about what was wrong. One intern, however, stood out from the crowd. He asked me how the accident happened, what was I doing at the time, what position was I in when I was on the floor, etc. He asked the big picture questions to conclude that I didn't fall because I was weak or dizzy and I didn't hurt my hip because of how I landed and that I did twist my knee because of how I fell on the prosthesis. He got the right answers from asking the right questions and at the end of our talk, I felt like he knew me and the how to diagnose without even reading my chart.

I am reminded of that scenario as I take a Master Coaching Class. It is easy to ask a client "what do you want to walk away with from this session" but during the course of the conversation you will find out that that is not really what they want. Let's look at an example. In the old days a client would come in with a particular problem, say a single woman in her late forties who hasn't saved enough for her retirement and knows she has to get a higher return with riskier investments in order to retire by 65. Most financial advisors would review her portfolio and give her suggestions on a new asset allocation to meet her needs. But is that where the "hurt" is? No. A Master Coach would go into what does her ideal retirement look like and what it means to her and what is she willing to do to get to her goals and what would her portfolio look like if she could attain her ideal retirement. Get the idea? Most Financial Advisors don't take the time to get to the bottom of what people really want nor do they have the skills to help discover what they want.

In the above example, the client's fear of not having enough at retirement needs to be addressed before any changes in her portfolio. Without addressing that, the client will continue to want to "tweak" her portfolio because her real needs have never been addressed. We call it Coaching the Essence.

Coaching Question- What "hurt" do you have that keeps you from being prosperous?