Take Off the Blinders! Coaching Based on Perceptual Style
-take-off-the-blinders-coaching-based-on-perceptual-style-400.jpg)
Coaches have the honor and privilege of working with a broad range of clients in a variety of different contexts. Whether the context for that coaching is professional or personal, clients reveal what life is like from their unique perspective.
What might come easily for one client is a constant struggle for another. What feels like an opportunity to one client feels hugely intimidating to another. And the list of differences goes on and on.
These differences are at the heart of why understanding Perceptual Style is so important to effective coaching. When coaches recognize how their clients naturally perceive the world, they can offer guidance that reflects each individual's strengths, motivations, and unique approach to challenges.
Why Understanding Your Client's Perspective Matters
Some clients have developed an awareness of their inner lives. When situations challenge their intuitions, judgments, views, and understanding of reality, they begin asking themselves important questions:
"Why do I respond in this way? Would someone else respond the same way? What is it that makes me different?"
Most clients, however, have never asked themselves those types of questions. They remain relatively unaware of the differences between their own perspectives and those of the people around them.
Whether or not your client has developed this kind of self-reflective awareness, as a coach, you need to recognize and understand their individual perspective in order to be truly effective.
Why?
Because the way your clients naturally perceive the world influences how they communicate, what motivates them, how they approach challenges, and which strategies feel comfortable or uncomfortable.
How Perceptual Style Improves Coaching Effectiveness
Understanding your client's innate Perceptual Style is a critical component of:
- Communicating effectively.
- Creating genuine motivation for change.
- Developing a plan your client will find energizing and exciting rather than overwhelming or dull.
- Overcoming seemingly immovable obstacles to personal or professional fulfillment.
- Helping clients understand themselves and, in the long run, become their own best coach.
Once you understand your client's innate Perceptual Style, you can help identify their natural strengths and abilities, as well as the challenges and recurring setbacks that may be holding them back.
More importantly, you can begin developing coaching strategies that work with your client's natural way of perceiving the world rather than expecting them to approach every situation as you would.
Different Perceptual Styles Require Different Coaching Approaches
Consider two clients who share the same professional goal but approach achieving it very differently.
A client with the Vision Perceptual Style may be inspired by a big-picture goal and jump into the challenge of achieving it with both feet.
This client may feel comfortable working with incomplete information and changing tactics when one approach does not produce the desired results. Exploring possibilities and adapting along the way can be energizing.
A client with the Adjustments Perceptual Style, on the other hand, may need more information before proceeding and feel more comfortable working with a clear plan.
This client may be equally willing to change approaches, but usually after additional information becomes available and often in a more incremental way.
Neither approach is inherently better. Each reflects a different natural way of perceiving situations, evaluating possibilities, and responding to challenges.
A coaching strategy that energizes a Vision client may feel rushed or insufficiently developed to an Adjustments client. Likewise, a carefully structured plan that provides confidence and clarity for an Adjustments client may feel unnecessarily restrictive to someone with the Vision Style.
The goal is not to change how either client naturally perceives the world. It is to help each client use that perspective effectively.
Learn more about the six Perceptual Styles and their natural strengths.
Building on Natural Strengths Rather Than Fighting Against Them
The good news is that each of the six innate Perceptual Styles comes with a vast array of natural talents, skills, and abilities.
Helping clients recognize and use those natural assets, rather than focusing primarily on acquired skills that do not come easily, can help them work through obstacles and overcome challenges in ways that feel more natural and sustainable.
This does not mean acquired skills are unimportant. We all develop abilities through experience, education, and practice. However, when clients build on their natural strengths, they can approach challenges with greater confidence and a stronger sense of personal effectiveness.
Instead of spending all their energy trying to become someone they are not, clients can learn to recognize what they naturally do well and use those abilities to achieve meaningful results.
Why the Right Perceptual Style Assessment Matters
The key to understanding your clients' innate Perceptual Styles is using the right assessment, one specifically developed to reveal how individuals naturally perceive the world.
Rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all coaching model or solely on your own intuition, the Perceptual Style Assessment™ provides a framework for understanding the world as it appears to your clients.
That perspective may be quite different from how the world appears to the person who developed your coaching system, or even to you.
When you understand those differences, you can ask more relevant questions, recognize strengths that might otherwise go unnoticed, and develop approaches that are better aligned with your client's natural abilities.
Discover more about Perceptual Style Theory and how understanding perception can support personal development.
Taking Off Your Own Blinders as a Coach
After all, no matter how great a coach you may be, or how natural the coaching process may feel to you, you have your own innate Perceptual Style, too.
Your Perceptual Style influences what you notice, what you consider important, and which approaches seem most natural or reasonable.
Without recognizing that influence, it is easy to assume that the strategies that work for you should work equally well for everyone else.
But effective coaching requires something more. It requires the willingness to see beyond your own assumptions and understand the world from your client's perspective.
When you recognize and appreciate those differences, you can offer coaching that is truly centered on the individual rather than on a predetermined formula.
Effective coaching is not about teaching clients to see the world as you do. It is about helping them understand their own perspective, recognize their natural strengths, and use those strengths to create meaningful change.
That is what it means to take off the blinders.
Have you encountered clients whose approach to challenges was very different from your own? How did recognizing those differences influence your coaching? We'd love to hear your experiences in the comment section below.
Interested in bringing a deeper understanding of Perceptual Style into your coaching practice? Explore how Perceptual Style can elevate your coaching and help you create a more personalized experience for your clients.
© Vega Behavioral Consulting, Ltd., All Rights Reserved
About Lynda-Ross Vega
Lynda-Ross Vega is a partner at Vega Behavioral Consulting, Ltd. She specializes in helping corporate leaders, entrepreneurs, and individuals with interpersonal communications, team dynamics, personal development, and navigating change. Lynda-Ross is co-creator of Perceptual Style Theory™, a behavioral framework and assessment system that helps people recognize their natural strengths and apply them to their personal and professional lives.
Additional information about Lynda-Ross Vega
