The Teacher and Student
This one principle will change your perspective and make you a more conscious leader
While I was attending the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC) to become a professional coach, we were taught foundation principles we could share with our clients that would help raise their level of consciousness. These principles are kernels of wisdom that iPEC’s founder, Bruce Schneider had learned and applied during his many years as a coach.
There are 15 of these principles that we explored during our coach training, all of which can offer powerful insights during coaching sessions. Here are a few of the principles that resonated most with me:
Life offers neither problems nor challenges, only opportunities.
Each of us is greater and wiser than we appear to be.
Each moment describes who you are and gives you the opportunity to decide if that’s who you want to be.
We are each the product of our own belief system.
Energy attracts like energy.
What’s most intriguing about these principles is that while they seem simple, they each contain profound wisdom. They also invite us to view the world differently because they are so contrary to the typical worldview from which we usually operate.
For example, we often view a situation we don’t like as a problem or a challenge. Viewing it as an opportunity seems contrary to human nature. But if you embrace the opportunity perspective, you’ll see things from a different point of view, and therefore have a completely different (and more positive) experience.
While all 15 of the iPEC foundation principles are powerful, the one that resonated the most with me is this:
Each person we meet is our teacher and student.
I share this principle often with my clients and it always has an extraordinary effect on how they view their situation. It completely changes what they think about their circumstances and moves them into an entirely new perspective.
In fact, I was recently working with a client who was struggling with judging their colleagues and not listening to them. They didn’t want to be arrogant, but they just felt like they didn’t have anything to learn from others, so why listen? So I asked, “What if you viewed every person you meet as your teacher and student?”
This question made the client pause and quietly reflect. They had never considered this concept. We talked about how this principle requires generosity and confidence (being a teacher) and curiosity and humility (being a student). It doesn’t matter who you encounter, whether they’re young or old, rich or poor, educated or uneducated—we can always learn something from every person.
In our next session, the client reported back that they had started abiding by this principle and were amazed at how much better they were listening and what they learned from seeing things from another person’s perspective. They shifted into a space where they truly viewed others as their teacher and what they could learn from them.
How about you?
What if you practiced this principle with everyone with whom you interact? How would that change your perspective? What would you learn? How would you and those around you benefit?
This week, consider what you can learn from others. Become both the teacher and the student.
Work happy. Live happy. BE happy.
Meredith
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The way we work and build teams is rapidly changing. Leaders often feel unprepared to navigate the transition. As a conscious leadership coach, consultant, and communicator, Meredith helps leaders and their teams create new ways of working and relating so they can prepare for the future by consciously co-creating it.
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