OTcoach - Coaching Approach in OT

I am currently developing a workshop about the Coaching Approach in OT and Jen Gash in an amazing OTcoach and has a great web site, has kindly shared some of her resources.  She and I are part of International SIG Group.  Anyone is welcome. 

This narrative from one of her slides:

• Staying with the client, “whole” listening, giving time to think, asking intuitive questions
• Allow their process to unfold and their wisdom to be unlocked 
• Using tools to explore and align values, beliefs and goals

I have just read the Kawa Model and have adapted it for a Wellbeing and Mindfulness Green Coaching 6 week programme in adult education that I started on 23.02.12.  It was only when I allowed myself to adapt this model for the 'well', I guess you could say and specific to Wellbeing and Mindfulness that I am really understanding how much the coaching approach sits so well with OT.

It is a perfect match because these 3 points although of course they are part of enabling skills, as is coaching and OT.  The last point really resonates with me.  I love meaningful and purposeful activity, I get that, however what I have noticed on occasions is that sometimes this is much more than ADL's, functional stuff, roles, and often through asking coaching type questions a persons values, beliefs and goals in life have been revealed not only to the Therapist but also to the client.  Once you tap into this, the flow of life so to speak then we can really engage the client, not that you cannot engage the client anyway with our OT skills, it just that the coaching approach is such that it elicits the whole therapeutic relationship much more quickly, resulting in the client being heard and hearing themselves.

I have been surprised the amount of times I have approached a client (I work 2 days as week in neuro rehab) with so what do you enjoy doing and not even talking about the deficit, impairment yet and the client sometimes comes up with that.  I then ask such obvious questions, like so what do you need to do to be able to do that and this is when options and possibilities start to open up.  Of course as an OT I have ALL THE ANSWERS!!!  I can make great rehab plans, implement a structure and suggest what next, for sustainable on going rehab without me being around,this is not going to last very long.  People are really quite creative and ingenious too.  Almost all of the time this seems to support the client with going to places that they do not want to go to because they are being guided by their values and therefore often their strengths.

I am learning even for myself that when I connect to values more and think about my life flow, it helps me to do the things I don't really want to do.  I am really valuing so much the 'marrying of' OT and coaching skills and feel really blessed to have also discovered the Kawa Model. 

"How do you go from where you are to where you want to be?  I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life.  You have to have a dream a goal and you have to be willing to work for it."  Jim Valvano

I really believe that the dream/goals is driven by our values and once we tap into what really matters, a person can achieve anything.