Boost Confidence and Be Your Own Role Model with this Fun Coaching Exercise
How has Coaching Impacted Your Life?: A Study
Do you consciously have a role model? If not, who inspires you? Who do you admire and look up to?
Well, whether it’s someone’s image, energy, communication or leadership skills, the way they make life seem so easy and uncomplicated, or something else – if you can see it, you can learn to do it! In fact, did you know we can’t recognize in others what we don’t already have within ourselves? That means those skills or qualities just need consciously developing (or letting out).
This simple coaching exercise will help your clients move closer to embodying the personal qualities they admire in others, and boost their confidence as they realise they already have the seed for those qualities within themselves.
Let’s begin!
STEP 1: Ask “Who are your Top 3 Role Models?”, “Who do you admire?”, “Who impresses you?”
NOTE: They can be real or in your imagination, someone you know or don’t, in a film or book, alive or dead!
- ______________________
- ______________________
- ______________________
STEP 2: Ask, “Who has been most influential in your life over the last year, both personally and in your career?”
Personally ______________________
In your career ______________________
STEP 3: Consider and write down, what about them has impacted you? What do you most admire about your role models above and why? What can you learn from them?
STEP 4: Now list the qualities that you would like to emulate or have for yourself.
STEP 5: Write out five ways you could begin to bring some of those qualities into your everyday life.
NOTE: How could you adapt what your role models do to fit you and your life? How could you take that quality and embody it more in your life?
- ______________________
- ______________________
- ______________________
- ______________________
- ______________________
STEP 6: To wrap up, what one specific action will you choose to move forwards with? ______________________
When to use this coaching exercise: While you can do this exercise as part of a coaching session, it makes great individual homework – and a fabulous workshop, teleseminar or group coaching exercise. Adapt and use in workshops for life, career, youth, executive and leadership coaching as well as stress management and confidence-boosting workshops.
How to use this exercise in a workshop: Use step one as a group warm-up – get people to shout out names. Steps two and three work well when done individually, for maximum introspection. Step four is great for discussion in groups of three to four people. Then put people into pairs for step five. You can wrap up using step six and ask all workshop attendees to share one specific action they will move forwards with.
Follow-on action: Reading books, memoirs, autobiographies or watching/listening to podcasts, radio, films and documentaries about the people we admire gives us plenty of ideas and inspiration.
Finally, for a quick confidence boost, next time you notice yourself admiring others say to yourself, “The fact that I’m noticing this means I can do it too” then ask yourself, “What could I do to demonstrate that quality more in my life?”
Emma-Louise Elsey (Canada)
Emma-Louise Elsey has been coaching for more than 10 years and is founder of The Coaching Tools Company and Life Coach on the Go. Originally a project and relationship manager for Fortune 500 companies, she discovered coaching in 2003 and hasn't looked back.
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“If you can see it, you can learn to do it!” – Had never thought about it that way! Another great article and useful tool, many thanks, you have a new follower 🙂 As suggested, this would make a great ice-breaker / intro session for a group session.
Dear Tony,
So glad you like the article! We usually use the “what you see in others is in you” in a negative way. “We judge others by our own standards” gets said in a snippy tone… Or we’re told to hold up the mirror and see where the “negative” quality we see in someone else resides in ourselves.
However, this also works in a positive sense! Hence this tool/exercise. We can only recognize in others what we either have already – or have the capacity for – in ourselves!
Thank-you for taking the time to comment. I really appreciate it!
Warmly, Emma-Louise