Coaching World Issue 11: August 2014 | Page 25

When you incorporate AI into your coaching toolbox, you see your clients as resourceful and capable, and you encourage those attributes. Asking your clients to focus on positive stories with the intent of learning what worked in the past encourages even more of this behavior. Incorporating AI in your coaching practice changes the way you connect with others. It can help pull the client out of the problem state and create a physiology that encourages new thinking. Coaches who use AI guide their clients toward the future, while accessing and building upon the best of their past. The advantage of an AI-based approach when coaching is that the questions lead the clients to experience a positive frame of mind. It is from this place/state that the client is able to develop new possibilities. The language used by both the coach and the client has an impact on the client’s reality and potential for future changes. When the client is in an unresourceful frame of mind, she often can’t see the possibilities available to her. When this occurs, the simple act of changing physiology through different postures, storytelling or visualizations allows the client to see her situation more favorably and opens her up to more possibilities. With AI, you can do a whole lot more than just solve the problem. AI is not like problem-solving, where you look for what is wrong and try to fix it. Instead, you focus on the outcome in a way that promotes learning and discovery. The AI process is not a sugar-coated pep talk, bu Ё