To the extent to which a coach doesn’t follow a script, all coaching is improvisation. Your client says something. You improvise. Your client reveals something. You improvise. Your client changes direction or shifts gears. You improvise.
But there is a special version of improv that is very like what you might find in an acting class. In an acting class, the instructor might say, “For this exercise, you, Jack, will play an aging boxer, and you, Janet, will play his mistress. The set-up is that he wants one last fight, but you both know that it will cripple him. Okay, go for it!” And the actors improvise.
What’s the coaching analog? The roleplay.
I saw a new client the other day. He had a background as a physical therapist, with decades of experience, and five years of recovery from a sex addiction and a pot addiction. He was investigating whether to become a coach with an addiction specialty.
Like all new and prospective coaches, he was having trouble picturing what sessions might look like, which made him suppose that he would need a lot of training before he could commence coaching.
My reply was, you’ve worked with clients in a certain capacity for decades and know how to work with people. And you understand the recovery process, the language of twelve-step programs, what addicts are facing, and what helps folks enter and maintain recovery. So, why not begin coaching, maybe with free clients at first, and see if maybe you are ready, or very close to ready, to coach? Why not give it a try?
Of course, he hesitated. So, I said. “Let’s role play this for a bit. I’ll be the addict and you’ll be the coach. Ready?”
Just like that. No long preamble about “the nature of role plays” or what we were trying to accomplish. Just a leap into improv.
I began. “I really like pot and I smoke it all the time, which isn’t a problem. The problem is, I’m not getting much work done. I need help getting things done.”
He replied, without having to think about it, “You mean, without changing your relationship to pot?”
“Exactly! I’m fine with the pot. It’s just … maybe I could cut down a little? Maybe that’s the answer?”
Again, he responded without hesitation. “Have you tried cutting down before? How did that work for you?”
“Well, stopping was no problem. I once stopped for a full month. But cutting down … that’s really hard.”
“Why do you think stopping is easier than cutting down?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about that.”
“Let’s take a minute now. Okay? What do you think might be the difference?”
Right there, I stopped the role play. “That’s what a session looks like,” I said.
It took him a moment, and then he replied, “That was very helpful.”
Something that had been completely opaque and mysterious to him—what a coach does in session—became, just like that, perfectly clear.
Role-playing is a tool and a service that most coaches would feel out of reach, something too scary or too difficult to try. Their fear is that they wouldn’t know when to give it a try, how to stop a session to introduce it, what to say in their sudden role, or how and when to stop the roleplay. They would likely say to themselves, “I need a workshop or a training on this before I dare try it.”
That’s understandable. My invitation to you is simply to give it some thought. Picture a session. Your client brings up something—let’s say, an impending meeting with a literary agent, the outcome of which might change the trajectory of her writing career. She says to you, “I just wish I could picture it. I have no idea what she might ask!” And you, the brave you, might reply: “Okay, let’s roleplay that. I’ll be the agent and you be you. Should we give it a try?”
Improv. It’s an art form that makes real use of everything we know and everything we are. Curious?
