Helping our customer to get to know himself

Knowing oneself is more complex than many people think, self-criticism and the ability to perceive oneself without any dissuasive factors that alienate us from reality, are rare skills. That said, in many occasions we need other people to help us in the cognitive process of understanding what are the elements that characterize us and the potentialities that lie within us. For a coach, it is very important that his clients learn to know themselves, as this facilitates the process of personal development and optimizes considerably the possible results to be achieved through the successive coaching sessions.

During the development of the following guide we will be addressing some of the elements related to the importance of helping our client to know him/herself, in order to facilitate the process of personal development.

Why is it important that our client learns to know himself/herself?

A great number of the problems that the coach deals with his client have their origin in perception problems. The client is often not able to find the distinctive elements of his personality, those that give him a certain innate advantage and allow him to relate to different complex situations more easily. We all have strengths and weaknesses in our personality.

Some are better at relating socially, others have superior abilities to acquire certain knowledge, and so on. Regardless of the person, we all have elements of value that we can perfect and enhance to use them to our advantage. A skill that is not worked on is a waste of talent, no matter how good you are at doing something, in the end discipline trumps talent. If you can't identify your strengths, you won't be able to work to enhance them and your weaknesses will end up taking precedence over you.

The coach can see what the client cannot see.

The people we interact with can more easily notice our personality traits than we can ourselves. This happens because we are used to being what we are, we do not notice our abilities, so when we see someone who is worse than us at something, we tend to simply think that that person is not good at it, instead of asking ourselves if we are better than average at it.

The coach, as an element external to the client, can use his knowledge to show which are the elements that stand out in his client, in this way he will be able to point them out to him in order to guide his behavior to learn how to enhance them and use them in his favor. We spend a lot of effort to acquire new skills that contribute to our personal development, when our first task should be to enhance our innate skills.

Help the client to identify his weaknesses.

Obviously, the cognitive process is not limited to identifying the potentials of each person, but it has an opposite edge of great value, the weaknesses. When we are able to identify our weaknesses, it is less likely that they can be used against us. Personal development is aimed at enhancing strengths and shielding weaknesses. If we work with dedication on our weaknesses, we will be able to prevent the damage they can cause us and prepare for them to have as little effect as possible.

It helps your client to learn to know himself from the weak and strong points of his person, this is undoubtedly a process that involves the practice of self-criticism and the correct mentalization towards the desire for self-improvement. Through coaching sessions, you will have the necessary space to work on these aspects from the active and conscious involvement of the client.