We are complex. One minute we are riding the wave of some exciting project with focus and productivity, only to find that hyperdrive is taking over the way we are relating to our loved ones – with less than great results! We have the answers to one thing and can be flummoxed by the next. How do we work with these things in ourselves and other people?

As a mediator, I was trained to focus on the issues and, hopefully, get to the underlying needs. It was never my job to take the person’s side – and this approach is great at helping people with interpersonal challenges. As I develop as a coach, I learn more and more that if we help the person get clear, they find their way with the issue. Because as mediators, we find ourselves working on both sides, we can never really get “on side” with our clients the way we can when we are coaching.

The practices of both definitely have gifts for each discipline. For example, learning to detach from the outcome in mediation definitely informs my coaching. Looking for ways to support the person can also help mediations move forward too. In my journey as a coach, I find these two things invaluable as a practice.

So it leaves me with a question – as a coach, am I coaching the person or the situation?

Now, of course, I coach the person. They are the one that showed up and brought the issue – and they are fundamentally the experts on their situation. Done well, coaching the person means we are both going to be learning about how they see the situation and what they have or haven’t tried or thought about regarding the issue. As a coach, I often try to make the person I am coaching feel more “resourced” and bring that resourcefulness to their situation. By resourced, I mean helping them identify with their potential, their empowering self-beliefs, their perception of reality, and their support network. As a client feels more “resourced,” the way they address the situation changes, and their options change with it. Sometimes the client has a breakthrough in the session just from seeing themselves differently in relation to the issue.

However, what does it mean to actually be coaching the person? What material are we working with? And if we are not therapists, do we really know what we are doing? Besides, WHO are you coaching anyway? Do you really know, or are you just meeting the “coachee” persona, the one who shows up to be supported or challenged?

And as many of you know, there is often a “presenting issue” and the “real issue.”

If we focus too much on coaching the person, do we risk becoming therapeutic in our approach? One of the things that makes coaching so accessible is that we coach people on a particular subject. The upside of being issue-focused is there is usually some kind of tangible measure of success – did they get that job? Have that conversation? Make that decision? By being issue-focused, the coach and coachee are free from trying to pin down the “landscape of personality.”

It really is both. When coaching we are working with the relationship between the coachee and their issue. Our progress is measured with regard to the issue, but the development comes from the coaches themselves.

But I am curious, what do you focus on, the issue or the person? Why? And is there a better question?