Take up the Fully Present Challenge in 2017

How have the first two weeks of 2017 gone?

Have you set your goals for 2017? One goal I am working on is to increase the amount of time I am fully present. I know it is the holy grail for coaches and mentors, but as managers, leaders and colleagues should we not strive for this to be in every conversation?

Being fully present and maintaining full presence takes energy, mindfulness, true listening and curiosity. When all four come together we hit the bulls eye, a very similar feeling to achieving my 10,000 steps a day, even my watch congratulates me!

If you do this, take time to probe and understand the impact. As with all feedback it needs to sit in the context of the session, what went well for the client, the impact for them and the achievement against the goals set at the beginning of the session.

Using Supervision

An approach is to share the session via voice or video recording (with the permission of your client) with your supervisor. Here are a series of questions to help you prepare for the session with your supervisor;

1.    What were your objectives for the session?

2.    When you listen to the recording of your session, where were you most present? To be extremely specific here,
a.    Take a note of the time e.g. 12 minutes into the session
b.    How long did it last for?
c.    What was happening prior to this?
d.    How do you know you were fully present?
e.    What moved you to being fully present?
f.    What moved you out of fully present?

3.    What can you learn from?

4.    When in the session did you achieve a further period of being fully present? Ask yourself the questions 2.a-f

5.    How do the fully present moments compare?

6.    What have you discarded about yourself?

7.    How will you develop your practice as a result?

Let’s make an even greater difference to our clients and practice in 2017. Let me know your hints and tips for being fully present.

#bscsupervision