Over the last few decades, people’s understanding of the broad spectrum of sexualities and genders has increased. Many coaches have gone a long way to show allyship to LGBT+ people. 

However, are you still limiting your coaching to the situation you are in? Are you open to allowing the businessperson to bring their full being to the table to find balance and resources from throughout their lives?  How would you respond if a client brought their sexuality or gender identity to the table in an executive coaching conversation?

We will start by exploring your own values, blind spots and redlines and consider how we silently communicate our judgement and unwillingness to be fully open and present in coaching conversations. We will then look at why this can limit clients’ abilities to bring their full personal skillset and resourcefulness to the table, and why this matters. 

We will then consider how best to encourage clients to bring their full selves to the table, fully embodying the principles of unconditional positive regard, in order to allow our clients to become more integrated, balanced, resourceful and successful – whatever the type of coaching we do.

1. Opening your mind to alternative lifestyles, sexualities and genders isn’t just about acceptance – it’s about unlocking resources.
2. To be able to do this, we have to consider our own biases, judgements, blindspots and red lines before we can be open to others’ viewpoints.
3. There are a number of ways we can demonstrate our openness and willingness to non-judgmentally include more of our clients’ resourcefulness in our coaching conversations.