There is no greater question to ask oneself than the essential question: Who am I? Exploring this question is a key role of a transformational coach.

It’s true, many people who come for coaching have no interest in exploring this question, of revealing the core of their being. But our world is full of seekers who desire an answer to this question, the ones who have chosen a path that takes them into the depth of their being so that they may reveal more of the truth of their existence, and their purpose and place in life. 

Have you ever coached a person who has a burning desire to realize the essential nature of their existence? Who is ready to know more of ‘who I am’ than the average person on the street? 

If you haven’t, I can tell you it is a coaching experience like no other. And it requires of you, the coach, the willingness to let go of much of what you have been taught your role is. 

When you are coaching a person who is already asking themselves the most powerful question an individual can ask, when they are already on a journey of self-understanding that transcends the limitations of the egoic mind, what questions can you ask that are more powerful than what your client is already asking themselves? The one simple question ‘Who am I?’ carries a powerful vibration that has the capacity to dissolve the layers of false self-perception that have made a home in the mind. It not only helps us to discover the greater part of who we are, but it also helps us to see who we are not.

The Limitation of Powerful Questions

As a transformational coach you must learn to let go of certain roles, such as ‘asking powerful questions,’ which you have been taught coaches must do. Yes, you will still ask questions, but the questions have no need to be powerful. All your questions must do is help the person orient their mind to the essential questions they are already asking themselves.

On the path of self-realization people will get stuck. They will say, “I don’t know who I am! I feel lost, alone, unsure, confused, and I don’t like this feeling one bit.” Here is something else you must let go of: the need to solve people’s problems. Yes, us coaches have that need, because that’s what coaches are supposed to help do, right? 

So what happens when the stuck-ness and confusion and lack of clarity that naturally and frequently arises on the path of revealing Who I Am is actually not a ‘problem to be solved’? When the dysfunction is perfectly functional? What then is your role when it’s not to ask powerful questions (though you may still ask questions) or to help people solve their problems (because it’s not really a problem at all)?

What then is your role as a transformational coach?

Part of me wants to give you an answer (that’s the coach that wants to help you with your challenges). Another part of me just wants to invite you to sit with that question and let it percolate for a while (that’s the part that wants to simply hold space for you to go within and reach your own conclusion). 

I’m going to let the latter lead this one, because now we are circling the answer to the core question I am posing to you: What is your role as a coach when your client is already asking themselves the most powerful question there is to ask (Who am I?), and whatever turmoil they are experiencing on the path to discovery of that Truth is not a problem to be solved, but perfectly functional in every way? 

What then is your role, coach?