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  • What has Love got to do with it?
I like this song lyric and it is a question that often comes up in our coaching classes. Do we have to love our clients?

This is of course a deeply philosophical question. But the question is usually because coaches don’t always feel that the people we coach are people they are naturally drawn to or like.

Professionalism says that we need to be able to manage and overcome any feelings about our clients that might get in the way of connecting with them. I would go further and make a distinction between liking someone and loving someone. We don’t always like things people say or do, or what they wear, or their perfume or aftershave. But we can look past our dislikes and see the human being behind them.

One quick method I have found that works well when I have found myself working with a person who is challenging my preferences is to see them in my mind as the baby they obviously once were. I find babies fascinating and wondrous and evoking your client as a baby quickly in the imagination shifts your internal space and often will defuse what has caught you about their adult personas that you are disliking.

We can then have a position as a coach which is that there are some aspects of people that we don’t like but that we can look past those at people in a way that invites us to love them for their humanness. Find your own way to work with this. Not everyone likes babies of course but that's ok. We all have ways of connecting ourselves with human love in our minds. Finding that out for ourselves and then using it positively when working with our clients is useful to both them and us. They will feel the change in your attitude and feeling towards them.

About the Author

Anthony Eldridge-Rogers is a coach, supervisor, trainer and organisational consultant in human wellbeing and coaching. He is known for the Meaning Centered Coaching model, which he created, as well as for being a specialist in holistic, recovery and wellness coaching.

He helps individuals become exceptional coaches through his coaching academy and provides masterclasses for various organisations, including the Association for Coaching, EMCC, Henley Business School, Exeter University, Queen Mary University of London and the University of Wales.

He is the co-author of ‘Parenting the Future’, a seminal book on alternative parenting and co-author of ‘101 Recovery & Wellness Coaching Strategies’, both due to be published in 2024.

He is also a contributor to the WECoach Coaching Tools book series.

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