To accelerate the positive impact of your coaching success, clients of each type can use the coaching experience and their reactions to coaching itself as a guide for their development. This 1st blog in the three-part series offers possibilities for clients in the Head Center of Intelligence, types 5, 6 and 7.

Five clients
Work hard to be aware of and to express your emotions during your coaching meetings. These meetings are ideal for experimenting with new behaviors. It will not feel comfortable at first, but you will get much better at it with practice.

As a subtext to your coaching, consider how you may both overvalue some of your attributes and underrate the skills and talents you possess. Make this one of your coaching goals: a more realistic and objective self-image, as well as a willingness to show more of who you are to others.

It may take time for you to trust your coach, but the process of building this trust can provide valuable insight into the issues you may have related to trusting others, building close relationships, and learning to need or depend on someone else.

Six clients
While it is important to find a coach with whom you feel comfortable discussing your worries and concerns, it is more important to find someone who is extremely practical and action oriented. This will help you to move beyond the “analysis paralysis” that can immobilize you from taking action.

Try to enjoy the coaching experience; you can relax enough to do this if you set your mind to it. Tell yourself this: I can be tense later if I want. Right now, let me just experience what happens.

Notice any tendencies you may have to put your fate, results, and future in the hands of the coach, and make sure you take at least 50 percent of the responsibility for the outcome. This will help you trust your own inner authority and guidance.

Seven clients
Keep all of your scheduled meetings; be on time or, better yet, be early. And if you are late, ask yourself what is really causing the lateness. What are you thinking, feeling or avoiding? Share this with your coach rather than offer rationales and rationalizations for why you are late.

Stay with the coaching process even if you feel like ending it. Should you want to terminate the coaching relationship, discuss this with your coach before you do and be open to what you may discover.

Although this may not sound pleasant, try to thoroughly discuss with the coach the experiences and situations in which you feel fearful, nervous, or sad. This line of discussion will help you to develop more strength in dealing with difficult issues and will provide a more realistic counterbalance to your usual optimism.

Ginger Lapid-Bogda PhD, the author of six best-selling Enneagram-business books, is a speaker, consultant, trainer, and coach. She provides certification programs for professionals around the world who want to bring the Enneagram into organizations with high-impact business applications, and is past-president of the International Enneagram Association. Visit her website: TheEnneagramInBusiness.com. ginger@theenneagraminbusiness.com