Here’s Elaine’s experience, written shortly after completing her Cohort. What questions and ideas does it raise for you?
“Since joining cohort 3 and practicing using the wheel, I had not actually used it with any of my clients. So, I decided that I would hold the Wheel at the forefront of my mind. During the coaching sessions I held last week and if I felt pulled to bring the Wheel in and introduce it; I would pull up my brave socks and give it a go. Here’s my little story on what happened.
One of my clients was struggling with her motivation. Having been recently promoted, she is finding it hard to feel engaged with her new team and wanted to explore what was going on for her. So suddenly there was a perfect opportunity to introduce and use the Wheel. I found that it was very easy to introduce, and actually using it with someone who was not a coach themselves and who knew nothing about the wheel meant that for some reason I felt even more comfortable just “letting the wheel do the work”.
In the coaching we explored 4 of the segments and the feedback that I got was that the wheel enabled her to think on a much deeper level, connecting her to a metaphor with the pictures that she drew within the segments. We will go back and explore further in another coaching session as it needs some additional time.
I found it was a great tool to enable the bigger picture and deeper questions to emerge quite naturally and allow the coaching to flow where it felt it needed to go. My experience has left me even more curious about where the wheel can help people to explore at a deeper level what is important to them and hence the changes they may want to make.
At the end of the session, I also combined the wheel with a tool I use called colour mirrors and for one of the segments we were able to bring in colour to help her really connect with what was going on. It’s lovely to see how the wheel can be easily combined with other tools in our toolkit!
I’m certainly looking forward to doing some more experimenting and having more of a play with it and I can definitely say it was really helpful for someone feeling demotivated and wanting to explore what that is about.”
Photo courtesy pxfuel