A client said to me “I’m finally making myself deal with it in an appropriate manner”. As a coach my job is help my clients reach ‘aha’ thoughts and then continue to pressure them to follow through on the ‘aha’. So when a client says they are finally dealing with it I know that the coaching is working.
There are many meanings of pressure as I use it in the paragraph above. These are good things to know if you manage or coach other people. The purpose of the pressure is to keep the coachee [person being managed or coached] from falling back into what’s more comfortable than fulfilling the ‘aha’.
Basic pressure is persistence. You just have to keep at it, day in and day out reminding the coachee of what they have to do or focus on. Maybe you can imagine a tennis coach reminding their coachee over and over again to do something in good form. Without the reminder they might fall back into the more comfortable bad form.
Cajoling is another kind of pressure. This is more like coaxing and gently persuading the coachee to act. The coach usually is looking for innovative ways to work around unconscious resistance the coachee is using.
Sometimes pressure is confrontation. You just have to take on the inertia of the coachee head on and press them to do work on what they committed to wanting to do. Sometimes with clients for whom I’m their marketing coach I have to watch them making their phone calls, otherwise they won’t do it.
I think most coaching is persistence and cajoling.
