Kristina McMullin<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recently, Sync hosted a conversation with a group of Disabled and Neurodivergent coaches in Canada and the UK to explore the nuances and singularities of Disabled coaching, what brings us to coaching, and, and what we harness for ourselves and our communities in coaching relationships. Coaching practices are, inherently, distinct from mentoring, facilitating, training, or therapy, Disabled led coaching, even more distinct. Disabled coaching creates and environment rooted in a conviction of holding time and space for disabled bodies and minds to be supported, maintain their own agency, and create a deeper knowing of the self. When disabled coaches provide this time, space, agency, and self knowing to their communities, they are, in turn, provided with time, space, and agency to become and to know ourselves on a deeper level. Disabled coaching offers a sense of collective liberation from the barriers and difficulties we are faced in an ableist culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Disabled coaching gives us permission to take space, to take time, to take our time. It is a relationship and process that creates generative and even regenerative space for folks to think, to think about their lives, their options, their possibilities, their futures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For disabled folks, we often refer to things as having or taking \u201cCrip time\u201d; Kelly Frisch defines Crip as \u201copening up with desire for the ways that disability disrupts.\u201d Crip time welcomes the way that disabled bodies and minds disrupt normative understandings of time. How long it takes to communicate a thought, how much space it takes to make a decision, the returning we do to a previous time in our lives, the way we cherish opportunities to carve out space for our coaching journeys. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Disabled coaching welcomes it all. Disabled coaching offers a framework to hold space and disrupt time to honour each individual, their needs, their wants, their desires. At the same time, disabled coaching holds time and space for the coach themselves. John Kelly shares \u201cMy coaching practice gives me permission to create space.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The taking, the giving, the permission to take and give, and the receiving of space and time is inherent to Disabled coaching and an integral aspect to its power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Disabled folks are entitled to and worthy of support, coaching is one way for folks to receive it. Disabled coaching does not assume the coach has the sole responsibility of offering support, but has the opportunity to create a container of support for the individual to both be supported and build a practice of and capacity for supporting oneself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coaches who are dedicated to disabled coaching speak of deep listening, attention, kindness, compassion, calmness, and open, inquisitive, questions, as ways to build and form a container of support for folks to look inward and grow out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many disabled coaches offering this support, know first hand what it feels like to not be support and create a practice that resists this norm. By centring the support of disabled folks, disabled coaching becomes a type of activism that makes the world more inclusive, safer, and more joyful, for disabled folks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A key component of disabled coaching is centering agency, agency of the individual receiving the coaching, and the coach themselves. Coaching continually affirms agency by remaining open and flexible to the pathways and choices that are made, by centring <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The goal of disabled coaching is to support people as they discover what they are called for and as they create a life that can maintain and sustain that. Disabled coaching does not enter into a relationship with a set goal or objective, or definition of success, it welcomes the agency of each person to define success for themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The coaching container gives permission for the mind to think and feel, and for the body to express. The thinking, feeling, and expression, build a practice of connecting with our agency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coaching also requires the coach to be in touch with their own agency, Alia notes that asking yourself as a coach, what is my motivation for this, by knowing a motivation, coaches can guide folks to finding that for themselves. The coach becomes empowered to step into their own agency, Alia asks, \u201cWhat kind of coach would I be if I don’t go and follow my dreams?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Disabled coaching is, at all times, a process and relationship that honours our authentic selves. A coaches goal is to use their skills to allow the coached individual to tap into the truest self. To go away with the barriers and oppressions we experience in society, to move away from outdated lessons we have been taught, about ourselves and the world, and <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coaching requires us to be fully present, fully curious, and open to contentment in the answers and directions that we are drawn to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For a lot of disabled folks, coaching is a form of accessible work, it\u2019s something that can be done with our access needs being met, in a community that won\u2019t <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When coaches work with intentionality and curiosity for their community, they build the skills and capacity to be intentional and curious about them selves and their motivations. By creating space for community to become themselves, we find truer versions of ourselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For disabled coaches, the goal is not to get to an externally defined end result or goal, but to support the work and transformation that occurs when we go through the layers of ourself to discover our dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Kristina McMullin Recently, Sync hosted a conversation with a group of Disabled and Neurodivergent coaches in Canada and the UK to explore the nuances and singularities of Disabled coaching, what brings us to coaching, and, and what we harness for ourselves and our communities in coaching relationships. Coaching practices are, inherently, distinct from mentoring, facilitating,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":9707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-post","category-think-sync"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/syncleadership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/syncleadership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/syncleadership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/syncleadership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/syncleadership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/syncleadership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9708,"href":"https:\/\/syncleadership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9703\/revisions\/9708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/syncleadership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/syncleadership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/syncleadership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/syncleadership.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}