Masterful Health & Wellness Coaching: Deepening Your Craft A New Book by Dr. Michael Arloski, coming in 2020
The profession of health and wellness coaching is fully engaged in a process of transformation. As we grow to be of service to wellness programs, lifestyle medicine practices, employee assistance programs, insurance carriers, disease management companies, and all manner of healthcare providers, around the globe, the demand for greater quality coaching only builds. We are moving from a need for competent coaches to a need for proficient and even masterful coaches.
In 2006 Whole Person Associates published my book, Wellness Coaching For Lasting Lifestyle Change, with an updated version in 2009 and a completely revised and expanded Second Edition in 2014. (https://wholeperson.com/store/wellness-coaching-for-lasting-lifestyle-change.shtml) This ground-breaking book is used as the primary text in many wellness coach training programs and college and university courses and has had a powerful impact around the world. It has even been published in Mandarin! In 2009, Whole Person Associates also published Your Journey To A Healthier Life: Paths of Wellness Guided Journal, Vol. I. (https://wholeperson.com/store/your-journey-to-a-healthier-life.shtml) I wrote this book primarily to be used by wellness coaching clients in either individual or group coaching as a personal workbook/journal through the coaching process. Many coaches have found it to be a valuable coaching guide for both their client and themselves. As much as these books covered, the need to provide a deeper dive into the advanced topics of coaching such as collusion, self-disclosure, etc., and to help coaches truly polish their craft became self-evident.
Real Balance Global Wellness has trained thousands and thousands of wellness coaches around the world. As I delivered many of these trainings, read case studies and listened to hundreds of recordings of coaches in action, I learned so much. I learned what coaches need to learn. I discovered where their challenges were, what skills they tended to underutilize, or overutilize. I saw how they shined and how they struggled. I saw what distinguished the effective coaches from the rest. The more masterful coaches were evident in both their way of being with their clients, and with their knowledge of what to do. As I learned from my students I continued to coach, to teach our certification and our advanced classes, and to mentor, continually accumulating more and more grist for the mill that would become my next book.
Coach training is not a one and done. The best coaches are voracious lifelong learners. In fact, both the ICF (International Coach Federation) and the NBHWC (National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching) include an obligation to continual education and professional development in their codes of ethics. (https://nbhwc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/FINAL-Code-of-Ethics-4_15_19-1.pdf)
Just as psychotherapy has been described (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-20286-000), coaching is both an art and a science. The thing that I believe distinguishes a more masterful coach is that they are an artist practicing a craft. Beyond doing a job, they see their wellness coaching career as the career of a craftsperson. They see their work as a combination of evidence-based science, theory and technique, but also as craft.
“If one really wishes to be master of an art, technical knowledge of it is not enough. One has to transcend technique so that the art becomes an ‘artless art’ growing out of the Unconscious.”
D.T. Suzuki – Introduction to Zen In The Art Of Archery
From Chapter Two of the forthcoming book:
Witnessing the craftsperson in action we see a continuous desire to improve. This is the truly professional waiter/waitress studying the food production and delivery systems, the seating floor plan and the nature of the clientele in the restaurant to calculate their most efficient table delivery routes and provide the best customer service experience. This is the university professor reading about how to teach, not just more about the science of their subject matter. This is the wellness coach spending hours listening to recordings of their own coaching and reviewing where their competencies need improvement. This is about the transformation of competencies into proficiencies and beyond.
Most wellness coach training is aimed at developing competencies. Competency implies an adequate and acceptable level of skill and knowledge. Every client certainly wants his or her coach to be competent. Yet, wouldn’t every client want their coach to be not just competent, but truly proficient or even masterful at his or her craft? How does a coach move up a notch to a level where they are coaching beyond the basics, where they are fluidly implementing what they have learned and can now think on their feet, ‘dance in the moment’, and be creative?
Thoughts To Ponder On The Mastery Path
WHO do I want to be as a coach?
How do I create a default mind of curiosity?
How can my values shape my desire for mastery?
How can I be inspirational?
Masterful Health & Wellness Coaching: Deepening Your Craft will explore advanced topics such as collusion, self-disclosure, motivation, coaching with difficult clients, building self-efficacy, meaning and purpose, coaching effectively with emotions and much deeper looks at major theories of behavior change and how to implement them in the coaching process.
As my new book approaches completion, we expect that publication will take place in early 2020. By subscribing to the Real Balance Newsletter on our website (https://realbalance.com) you can be kept up to date on its release date.
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