Mastery Series: The Tipping Point of Mastery in Coaching is... with Jean-Francois Cousin

Hello, my name is Tracy Sinclair and welcome to Coaching in Conversation, the Mastery Series. This series of conversations explores the concept of mastery in coaching. And I have the great pleasure of talking with several ICF Master Certified Coaches from around the world. To understand what mastery really means to them, both as coaching practitioners and also as human beings, we explore many different perspectives and nuances of this topic, and I hope it is of use and interest to you as you continue to navigate your own pathway of development. Hello again, everyone, and welcome to another episode. Hello and welcome to another episode of Coaching in Conversation with myself, Tracy Sinclair, and this time I am joined by a wonderful coach, human being and colleague, Jean Francois Cousin, who is going to talk to us about mastery in coaching. And this episode is part of our mastery series. What can I say about Jean Francois? He is an amazing coach, quite a prolific coach. He has clocked well over 15, 000 hours, I believe, in coaching, possibly more has coached people from all over the world, many teams, and has traveled all over the world as part of his work. He is also a, an author and a public speaker, and I had the wonderful pleasure of working alongside him on the ICF Global Board when, and he was the chair of the ICF Global Board in 2019. I really struggled to think about what to call this episode because there are so many things in this piece, I think, that are fascinating, are interesting and deeply useful around our inquiry on mastery in coaching and indeed probably mastery in any aspect of our lives. But having to land on one title, I have chosen this one, which is the tipping point of mastery in coaching is, I hope you enjoy. JF, I am so happy that we have an opportunity to talk today as we were just chatting before we started our recording. It's been far too long since we had a conversation and I am really excited that you are joining me for an episode of Coaching in Conversation, the Mastery Series. Thanks very much, Tracy. Always a pleasure to chat with you, and I've been missing the opportunities we had when we were both on the International Coaching Federation Global Board, right? Working so hard, and it was much fun as well. I love that time. So thanks for having me today, Tracy. Oh, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. And I know it's sun setting for you where you are in Thailand. Probably closer to the middle of the day for me and I'm sure we're going to have a really nice conversation. This thing called mastery, let's just open up the conversation very broadly to begin with. What does mastery in coaching mean for you? Mastery to me is the embodiment of one's and before coaching, perhaps I can talk about a painting. For example, I was watching recently videos of Pablo Picasso towards the end of his life drawing superb birds or bouquets of flowers with just a few strokes. And what you saw was not a painter. What you saw was was beauty into making. He was Embodying the creation of beautiful painting and when it comes to coaching, I believe masterful coaches do embody coaching and when a client sees a master coach coming in, they sense a loving presence they sense a space where everything is possible, a space that's inspiring, that's safe and that is going to enable them to empower themselves to, to grow and shape their future in a way that's optimal for them and their people and their ecosystem. Yeah, to me, mastery is the embodiment of our craft. Tracy, does this make sense? I was just daydreaming there, almost as you were describing that, JF, and it sounds absolutely wonderful. When you articulate it in that way, who would not want to be in that space, right? It sounded so compelling and Therefore, what is your, from your experience, and you've been working as a coach for many years, and what do you think enables us to create or co create that space? I'd say before a coach reaches mastery, right? There is quite a long process that cannot be bypassed or sidestepped. In fact, I, and when you read the Robert Greene mastery book or you read Malcolm Gladwell's The Outliers book, there is this kind of rule of the 10, 000 hours that enable ultimately someone to reach mastery in their field, I believe. Yeah. There is a lot of truth in that. We've got to follow the steps to gain that kind of inner confidence, inner spaciousness, inner grace. inside of us, right? That will allow us to be as we need to be to create that space. So that path is very classical, when we start learning. To be, become a coach, right? We are hopefully consciously incompetent, and then eventually we become consciously incompetent, right? And then we become consciously competent and eventually unconsciously competent. And that is a prerequisite, I believe, to be masterful. In fact, because if that mastery, as I propose, is the embodiment of coaching, then, of course, the competencies have to be in the person, but forgotten about. So there is absolute presence to not only The person in front of us, our client, right? Also, but to the possibilities that can emerge in fact, right? And so my recommendation to those aspiring coaches, right? These don't ask how can I become an MCC, right? That takes a journey. In fact step by step do all the mistakes, right? And those 10 hours, 10, 000 hours I was talking about, right? Also, Stand for 10, 000 mistakes, right? Yeah. And, Tracy when we were on the global board of the ICF together we saw the emergence of the new core competencies of the ICF and we were both very delighted to see the coach embodies a coaching mindset, become a core competency, as well as. Competency number seven, evoke awareness. Right? And those two, why we were so delighted to see them happen, are it's because they are nourishing the coaches presence. And coaches the coaches being right. Tracy does this make sense? I've got so many things swirling in my head here now that you're talking, J. F., but maybe to pick out one or two things. I love the idea of we have to take the steps. iT's not just one leap. And I'm hearing in there something about, this concept of 10, 000 hours. We have to put the work in. And. 10, 000 hours could be 10, 000 mistakes that we're learning from those mistakes. I'm wondering what your thoughts are about what might be some of the other steps. And now you might not be able to speak for other people's journeys, of course, necessarily, but I'm wondering about your journey and the bit. I guess that I'm really interested in is what is beyond the 10, 000 hours? Because to play devil's advocate bad practice is still bad practice, isn't it? So if I don't learn, then I could be doing, I could be making those mistakes 10, 000 times and not actually progress. So there's something more, isn't there, than just the hours? What are your thoughts on that around what helps us to move through that, that evolution of competence? Yeah. One important thing to work on constantly, continuously, I believe for the purpose of developing mastery is self actualization in the sense that Darwin gave to self actualization and he went on to say that self actualizing people experience. More peak performance moments, those moments as positive psychology mentioned also of extraordinary performance effortlessly forgetting about the time that passes, right? Doing some extraordinary things with ease to the perhaps stupid faction of bystanders, right? So that self-actualization work for a coach and for. For anyone, for that matter, is of tremendous importance and value, I believe. And it starts with gaining self awareness about who we are, who we've become, right? And then when we do that work consciously, right? And consciously, right? We see all those sides of us that we love and also all those sides of us that we don't like we may be ashamed of already. Then we have a choice. I'm, who am I going to be out there in the world? Am I going to be the one who only exhibits the parts of him or her he's happy with and hide the other ones? Or am I going to come out as fully authentic? And of course, the second choice is the right one. If you do choice number one, you're only fooling yourself. Others will take you for who you are a fraud, right? And so you've got to make the choice of authenticity based on with full acceptance of who you are, right? And that stage of self acceptance Tracy is. It's extremely important because it triggers and nurtures mindful growth, right? You okay, you've got all those things about you that you don't like, and then you're going to pick a few that perhaps you're going to work on, right? And so they become additional strengths, perhaps, right? And there are others that you say, Oh. Okay. Nobody's perfect, right? I can't do everything. I'll do the best I can. And so that work enables the rise of healthy self-confidence, right? Because you're doing the best you can as an individual, right? Having accepted your whole self with all you like and all you don't and working on the parts that you don't some of them don't like, right? You're doing, yeah. The most risk. Respectable work you can never do. And then, okay, of course you progress and you get that healthier sense of self worth, right? And that enables you to be more authentic in a healthy manner and also humble and vulnerable. And those three attributes are absolutely necessary. In the coach facing her or his clients because it's an invitation for the client to reciprocate and also be their authentic selves display humility, display vulnerability. And then, of course, the conversation is going to be so much richer because there'll be So much more say between two authentic, humble and vulnerable individuals, in fact, right? And so that's a very important work. Now very practical business like Sansa, clients. Buy the coach primarily for the person they buy the person, right? They want to they are savvy enough to know who's authentic and who's not. And you don't want to deceive them by attempting to fool them about who you are when you're not that person. And then they buy a product that is not upholding the. Promises they, they had forged up, right? So that, that self, constant self actualization is extremely important in particular for because they generate that authenticity, humility, and vulnerability that are so important in the being of the coach, right? And how we do that, right? That from reflecting about who we are, right? And there are tools that can help. And and, but we really need to pause regularly and think about who are we becoming, right? And then who do we want to become? So that, that would be something more than just. Doing the hours and learning from practice, right? It's learning about yourself and all that work of self actualization also Has the enormous benefit that we are more in tune with the effort that our own client in coaching sessions in particular are making to better understand themselves, right? And what they're going through, right? And that work demystifies those parts we don't like about ourselves or we're ashamed of, right? And so we drop judgment, right? And that also creates more safety in the space that we co create with the client because they feel it, right? And then they will not be afraid to bring to the conversation those parts of themselves that they don't like or they are ashamed of tracing. Yeah, that would be one, one, one other thing I'm thinking of that can help on the path to becoming masterful tracing. I'm really struck by a couple of things there, JF. One is what you were describing about this. Constant exploration for self awareness, both of us as the practitioner and our client, that this is a process around growth. I'm mindful of, the definition of coaching. And if we go back to competencies to competency eight, where it talks about facilitating growth, that is ultimately the point of coaching, isn't it? The point of coaching is not simply to get an action plan at the end. It's an action plan that is born from is informed by insight and growth to take us forwards, which I think sometimes is an important point that gets missed. That coaching is about forward movement in terms of growth and not just action steps as it were, even though they're very important. So I love this idea of growth that you're bringing in. And also that you were describing there that A key part of this work is our own ongoing self awareness with the dark side as well as the light side. But, and I really, one of the things that Is coming up for me is that having worked and working continuously with many coaches, training them, mentoring, supervising in, in my capacity, in my work, many coaches are so focused on what do they need to learn to do with someone else. rather than the work that perhaps they could do with themselves. And I, I think this is perhaps one of the paradoxes. I don't know how this lands with you, that the paradox here is when we first start learning to coach, we are told just how client centered it is, how it's all about the client. We have to be client focused. And yet the paradox is Yes, and it's also about us because we are part of that dynamic and therefore the... The journey of mastery is one where we are working on ourselves as well as trying to be in service of other people. Is that's what I'm picking up and I know I'm interpreting it in my words, but how is that landing for you? Absolutely spot on. Thanks, Tracy. I think you, you were much more concise than I was. That's one of my, the things I've got to work on, but I'm keeping saving, right? The conceiving. I love the way you describe this. Tough one and yeah, and there is also a tipping point I believe in our journey to mastery. And that tipping point is about surrendering to coaching, which is a natural step You are to become coaching, right? You surrender to coaching. It's one good day. You decide you truly trust Coaching. You truly trust the process, right? It's gonna work, right? You don't have to work so much. You mostly have to be there, be inspiring in your love for the potential of the coachee and in your service to the emergence of that potential, right? Just you come up and you trust the process will work. It always does, right? Except of course, if we would doubt that it's going to work and then we would be in our head asking ourselves, what's the best next question to ask? And I'm doing, am I doing a good job here? Which is absolutely terrible, right? You, we're not the one who has. To do a good job, right? The client has to do a fantastic job, right? They are the superhero, not us. We are in a very humble profession Tracy. We are backstage operators, right? Enablers of self empowerment by the client. So they achieve. Great progress, right? And so that's the rendering, right? One day happens to, to us all, right? For some good reasons and then we just let go. We are just present and with some stillness inside that comes from that new acquired newly acquired belief that Coaching works, right? So there is no, no need to be anxious. We are still inside. We are loving of the potential growth that will happen in the client. And we are also fearlessly challenging, right? To do in service of accelerating that growth, right? Really, in essence, coaching is a growth accelerator process, right? Yeah. So there is this surrendering, right? And I, it happened to me quite long time ago because I'm a little bit old, right? When I was mentored for my MCC in the I dunno, early 2010, right? And my co my mentor really told me, I'm so in the doing of coaching, why don't I just stop? Doing and be, and then assess what unfolds, right? So I gambled I just did that. I stopped doing, and it worked much better. Tracy, that's how the most celebrated orchestra conductors in the world. are in fact they all start their career being macro managing, trying to coerce the musicians to produce that music that they have in their mind, that is in their books, the best way to play the symphony, right? And those are best ones in the profession, right? One they just surrender, right? Enable their musicians to take accountability for the co creation of beauty, right? That's a story of Herbert von Karajan that I tell quite often. And... And then, yeah, let's surrender to the process and then automatically the client takes accountability to to lead to take the lead and do the very best work they can on themselves and on their future. Does this make sense, Tracy? Oh, absolutely. And we hear this term, don't we? So often trust the process. And yet what the way you have described this, JF, I feel so much more brings that to life. And I'm really, thank you so much for sharing that piece, because I know that, for many people, including myself, this concept of mastery can be It can be somewhat intangible. It can be somewhat elusive. Because we like to be in our heads, don't we? We like to think our way through things. We like to have clarity of answers to questions. And this is an elusive concept. I often think about this as a little bit like a feather. That if you try to grab the feather, it... It just drifts away. It's very hard to grab a feather out of the air, isn't it? Whereas if you trust the process, the feather might land. That's how I think of it. You just described that so well. And maybe just a little curiosity here that I'm interested in, if you could share is you said, if we don't trust the process, what can happen is we are in our head. Yeah, and we're thinking, oh, what question shall I ask next? If we're going to embody coaching, embody mastery, if we're not in our head, where are we? Yeah, that's a question. I love it. We, we have to function with I like to say we've got to light up the whole Christmas tree from the top to the middle. To the guts at the bottom, right? And we've got to light up or enable the time to lit up light up their whole Christmas tree, the head, the heart, the guts, before we get into great coaching work, right? And which means we've got to expand our awareness. To our whole body, right? Sense listen to our heart, our guts, right? And and or allow them at least if we don't listen to them because we so listen to the client to, to to send us message that that we will take in, right? And listen to the mind to the heart and the guts of the clients, in fact, and the more I progress in my practice Tracy the more. I see the listening to the energy of the client, right? And also being receptive to any message our own energy may send to our conscious conscience as critically important. I was Speaking at WBEX, that yearly free conference that's organized in June this year on the topic of yeah, work with energy. Energy never lies, right? That's a kind of a proverb, right? We can fake our emotions. Of course we can fake what what we say, right? But we cannot. Fake our energy, right? So energy is one of the very best friends of coaches, right? If we are sensitive to the energy of the client, we are in, we connected to their true self, right? And I will take you and tell you an anecdote that I found Really amazing. And Tracy in that WBEX short talk in June, I had coached a Mexican lady speaking Spanish to me to demonstrate that even though I don't understand Spanish by focusing on her emotions and body language and energy, most of all I could ask question in English that she understood. She was also an English speaker, right? But she was answering in Spanish and the session went well. So then I was invited to a conference in Mexico and they did a master class pre conference. And then I invited someone in the audience to be coached by me. And we would play the game. I would coach in English and they would answer to me in Spanish so that we can the audience can see what happens. So what kind of transformation. happens along the conversation in the coachee, right? When the coach is reduced to only working with non verbal signals, right? So there is this lady volunteering from Argentina. She sits in front of me. We do the session. I could sense that it was super transformative. And at the end of the session, Tracy, I invite her to stand up, right? To face the audience with me and Go into debrief, right? And then I ask her, Okay, could you please share about what happened? And then she looks at me with kind of blank eyes obviously not understanding my very simple question. So I was a bit destabilized, and then one of her friends in the first row raises her hand and tells me She doesn't understand English. So there we had this session where she did not understand a word of what I had said, Tracy, right? And I didn't know, right? Because she was responding so well, right? So she was responding. I'm responding to the intention that my body, my energy manifested to her, and that my words were conveying but not the words since she did not understand that she did fantastic work. So this I think is really an important Endeavor for code for us all coaches, right? To develop our ability to sense the energy of the client. And we don't need to wait to prepare for the MCC credential. We can start that very soon in our development as coaches, right? And and then that is also related to the, to embodying. Coaching, right? In a way, right? Because yeah, that makes sense, Tracy. As always, I'm very long winded and I really need you to clarify and simplify what Oh, honestly I don't want to interject. What a beautiful story, JF. That's so inspiring and, truly magical, really, and really does. Highlight a couple of things for me. One is at that level of mastery is to work as you're describing energetically with someone and to trust the energy exchange and the intuition. that we are noticing within ourselves based on what we're sensing is a beautiful, that's what a beautiful story and I'm so excited that you have shared that. And what it also highlights me that I think is worth pointing out that for those. Coaches who are at the earlier part of their learning journey. Isn't this also another beautiful example of how we don't need to know all of the detail either, because not only was your example there language free in a way, in terms of understanding, it was also content free. linguistically, verbally, it was content free, totally. And so I just wanted to highlight that point as well of what an extreme example of content free and yet so rich with content. in terms of energy, intuition, non verbal signals. So thank you. That was a lovely story to hear. I will remember that forever. It was so much more than I expected, right? I expected just the audience to learn that. Wow. Indeed. Yeah. Wow. I've got to do more work on the energy with my clients. But no, it was like, Oh my God. Yeah, I got the bigger gift than the gift I was made to offer, right? Yeah, and I guess what I want to maybe underscore there, JF, is something that you said earlier about us also being authentic and vulnerable, because You put yourself as the practitioner in a vulnerable position there, not knowing what she was saying, her then not knowing what you were saying, and yet you trusted, you surrendered. It's an ultimate example of everything that you're describing coming to bear, isn't it? And, as always, I think we could talk for ages on this, but we're probably starting to come, maybe, to the end of our time for now. I'd love to invite you to maybe share one more thing. In what you've described so far, I feel as though you have shared with anyone listening, JF many examples and gifts of how we can work on ourselves, on an ongoing basis, but also how we can and how we need to prepare ourselves to access that authentic place within ourselves and be vulnerable before we connect with our clients. What else, before we pause, would you like to share with our listeners? If we've got coaches out there listening that are thinking, wow what can I do to get on this path or to keep going on this path for me? What would you offer them? Yeah then perhaps something really fundamental and that ties with something you just said, right? Tracy, when you were referring to young coach coaches who are destabilized because they do not understand the client's words perhaps, right? Or what the client, the clients are saying with their language, right? And I would say. Hey, it's not part of the job description of coaching to understand the words of the client. And for that matter, actually to understand the client, right? The work is to enable client to, amongst other things, understand a bit more about themselves. So my message is it's. a delusional pursuit anyway, to try and understand what clients say and what they mean, because even them cannot fully understand themselves. They come to just understand a little bit more of the client, of themselves, sorry. And and so the advice is. Just put aside that that really inappropriate aspiration to understand the client. It's very detrimental in fact, right? And consider that as a coach, fundamentally you, your job description is To enable the client to empower themselves to grow, in fact, in the way that best serve an ideal future for themselves, in fact, right? And that ties we with embodiment, right? Because when you embody coaching, in essence, you are a trigger that can enable that self-empowerment by the client, right? And what, whether or not you understand what the client says is so very secondary, in fact, right? Tune in to the energy, the emotions and all of the communication and non verbal mostly of the client, right? And make sure yeah, you, you always enable that self empowerment by the client to do their best work, right? Yeah, wow. As I'm reflecting on what we've discussed, JF I'm really mindful of how much of what you have described is beyond the exchange of words. There seems to be quite a pattern here in our conversation today that we've focused or you have shared so many elements of coaching that are non lingual, that, that are beyond the exchange of words, which, which for a profession that on the surface of it seems to be about the exchange of words. What a, what an amazing doorway this opens up for us to work at so many. different levels. Thank you so much for sharing. It's been an absolute pleasure. I'm almost, reluctant for us to pause this because There would be so many other wonderful things to talk about, but maybe we can have a part two or something at some point. I'd love that if you're willing. And thanks. Thanks indeed. Yeah. Tracy, and thanks for making this happen. Thanks also for your invaluable podcast and I salute all the. Very hard work. All the discipline that you put in, Tracy, when you could just go to the beautiful countryside around your beautiful place, right? And, no. No. Okay. You offer all those hours of your time to our profession and you make such a difference. So thank you for your generosity, Tracy. Thanks. Also for the inspiration you offer day in day out to us. All right. Thank you, Gracie. Thank you, J. F. It's lovely to speak to you, and we'll catch up again soon. Absolutely, and likewise. You have been listening to Coaching in Conversation, the Mastery Series, a podcast that takes a look at mastery in coaching, what it is, what that means, how do we nurture or cultivate it, and many other interesting questions. You can hear more about coaching education and development at tracysinclair. com and follow us on social media. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating and a review and also share it with your network to help us expand our reach. Thank you for listening and see you next time.