Let’s say you’re coaching someone in the area of spiritual formation. So far he’s had no intentional connection times with God at all. When he visualizes setting aside time to be with God, he’s thinking two hours a day of reflection on scripture. Many times people try to get everything fixed all at once. It’s like saying, “I’m going to run a marathon tomorrow,” when maybe going for a brisk walk for half an hour a day might be good starting point. The problem with overly ambitious goals is that it sets people up for failure. They get discouraged and begin thinking, “I can’t meet my goals. Why even try?”
If you want to set up your clients for success, help them set small, manageable, incremental goals. When they are able to accomplish those goals, they can build on that success to move forward with more traction. Instead of a thorough spring cleaning, encourage them to try 15 minutes a day of cleaning. If they succeed, they can build confidence and grow from there. Better to have small wins than big losses.
“Baby steps” is an apt description for this type of growth. Think of a baby learning to walk. The adults aren’t expecting the baby to start running right away. They are providing a positive, supportive environment to help them take even stumbling, off-balance steps. Failure and falling down are expected. Why not give our clients—and ourselves—that same grace to work up from baby steps to bigger steps?
I coaching I have a saying/philosophy: Set your goals so low that you can’t help but achieve them.
Use the encouragement of small achievements as a step up to the next goal.
I had been mentoring a 26 year old man for a little over a six months before I saw the signs that we was starting to make excuses for why the one hour a week was too much or the material we were going through took too long to complete. I recognized that and tried to make adjustments. The day he told me that we was going to stop meeting I shared with him a way to spend 5 minutes a day in a very basic devotional, write down one take away on a 3×5 card and look at that while he was on the job. He could then look back on those cards in days to come. He later told me that he was finding it hard to find 5 minutes a day and even though he promised to stop in when he had a chance he never has.
My question is how do you help someone to realize five minutes day with God is not a stretch at all? My heart breaks because I was seeing so much progress in his life and now he seems to be back at square one in his walk with God. I understand that we ought to start off slowly and grow people. I also believe that we raise to the level of the expectation that is placed upon us. If this young man put the effort into his job he did his relationship with God he would be fired. (To be fair there are times the same could be said of me.) I would appreciate any feedback.
Five minutes a day is certainly not too much to expect. It sounds like maybe this young man wanted out of the mentoring relationship; perhaps something else is going on in his life right now. One option might be to ask: “It seems like you aren’t really motivated to engage with God right now. Help me understand what’s going on.” Another response might be, “I don’t want to try to force you to do what you don’t want to do. Let me know when you want to engage with God.” Motivation for coaching needs to come from within the client. No coach, no matter how skilled, can put it there.
Thanks for the advice. I will do some searching withing myself to see if I put too much pressure on him. Now that I think about it maybe an on open ended commitment to meet with me was too much pressure for him. I am praying God will use what time we did have together to encourage him to engage with God on his own again.