Everyone agrees coaching is about helping you perform better – whether it’s on the job, at home or on a playing field.  You bring the talent, intellect and desire.  The coach brings a process for focusing and releasing them.  We all know this; it’s the mechanical notion of coaching.  Underlying all performance improvement, though, is the notion of whether or not you feel whatever success you achieve is OK.

Growing up, no matter how well I did in school, it wasn’t OK.  My family always expected more, so I was never really OK.  This happens to too many kids, and it continues to happen to too many of us when we become adults.  No performance is ever good enough, never OK.  And while many of us give ourselves permission to be superficially successful, at a deeper level we know we may be good, but we’re not OK.  

Coaches struggle with the OK factor.  Is it part of coaching to deal with it?  (some will, and have, argued it isn’t)  Is the OK Factor the realm of the therapist?  Has my life experience, my training, prepared me for helping my clients deal with their OK factors or should I restrict my efforts to their performance behaviors?  

Because I mentor and consult, my lines are even blurrier.  And I am aware that all my courses in Psychology and my studies since grad school still haven’t given me all the answers.  My friends who are licensed therapists don’t think they have all the answers, either.  So, I don’t know there is any one right way to approach the OK Factor, but I do know that helping someone become stronger with themselves gives them better tools for fighting their demons.