Confidence, Coherence, and Continuity - Coach as Enabler

Confidence is a product of success. With success, our confidence grows, enabling us to act with greater focus, efficacy, and intensity. Confidence encourages curiosity and fuels courage. It emboldens thinking and fortifies action. Confidence is a consequence of our intent to become. Frequently, our vision of the future is imprecise. However, we often possess the knowledge, competencies, and capabilities to plan, chart, create, or recalibrate paths to our desired future. Confidence helps us realize our futures. It strengthens our resolve and stimulates momentum, enabling coherence in thought and continuity of action as we press forward toward our future selves and evolving professions.

The American mythologist, writer, and teacher Joseph Campbell wrote, "Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging." Often, the challenges of modern life drive us to search for "deeper powers within ourselves" to conceive, especially when believing in and striving for our visions of the future. At times, our confidence wanes, neither enabling nor sustaining us. It recedes within us, rendering our efforts to move forward near lifeless or lost to memory. Coaches can assist coachees in exploring the role of confidence in their lives. Through this continual exploration, the coaching relationship can benefit from discovering meanings and accessing previously unrecognized energies. Once revealed, these meanings and energies can be employed to build and advance confidence, in turn cultivate coherence and continuity in pursuit of personal and professional visions of the future.

Confidence and Coaching

Coaches can nurture confidence. They enable coachees to create contexts of honesty and authenticity that align desired goals and the capabilities to achieve them. Coaches promote self-reflection, helping coachees acknowledge truths about our talent, potential, and desired future. Coaches explore coachee's belief systems and rationales for decisions, actions, and inactions. They listen intently and intensely to stimulate the coachee's awareness of themes and trends inhibiting progress. The Stoic Philosopher Seneca offers, "It is not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It is because we dare not venture that they are difficult." Performing with confidence promotes consistency. Consider Simon Biles, the American artistic gymnast and holder of ten Olympic and 30 World Championship medals, reminds herself during her pre-performance moments; "Confidence" and "You have this." Perhaps similar to Ms. Biles, individuals need to remind themselves to stand in confidence to create the coherence necessary to perform at their high levels.

Coaches can enable confidence and coherence.

Coherence and Coaching

The great English poet and playwright William Shakespeare, in his early tragedy Titus Andronicus wrote, "It is a wonderful thing to see the similarity of coherence in men's spirits." Coherence is a state of balance in our lives. Achieving coherence and consonance in our personal and professional lives is a continual process of analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating the conditions in which we live and how we make informed decisions associated with achieving desired goals. Psychological coherence is a cornerstone of effective functioning in the world. Generally, psychological coherence refers to an individual's ability to maintain stability and consistency among thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Operationally, psychological coherence, beliefs, values, attitudes, and actions are aligned and synchronized.

Psychologist Steven Stosny writes, "A sense of coherence rises from meaningful interconnections of thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and behavior. The human brain craves coherence. Cognitive biases sculpt our thinking to maintain a tenuous sense of coherence.

The reflective brain must deliberately weave coherence into our daily lives."

Coaches can help coachees explore the structures of their thinking, making informed decisions toward achieving increased coherence in their life and work. In 2002, Dr. Kennon Sheldon introduced the Self-Concordance Model, which theorizes that individuals pursue specific goals because they align with their underlying interests and values rather than because others say they should pursue them. A critical yield of the coaching relationship is cultivating continuity through congruence. Coaching, becoming a coach, and being coached are paths to enabling coherence. Which role or roles will enable conference in your personal and professional lives?

Continuity and Coaching

Success requires confidence and coherent performance over time. The continuity of performance is a critical factor in enabling success. Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter writes, "Strategy must have continuity. It cannot be constantly reinvented." Continuity is an essential variable in strategic, personal, and professional planning. Effective planning requires self-reflection in assessing our capabilities relative to achieving desired results. Without it, visions fade and actions are rendered unproductive. Sir Winston Churchill is reported to have stated, "Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential." If so, partnering with a coach may increase "unlock" your potential and increase continuity of thought and action.

Coaching as Enabler

The Roman essayist and Ambassador Plutarch wrote, "A shortcut to riches is to subtract from one's desires." Our desires, visions, and goals associated with our personal and professional lives are the products of the confidence, coherence, and continuity we develop. Coaches can inform and support coachees in embracing these constructs and facilitating progress toward desired goals.

I look forward to coaching you.