Recently, I received a call from Saloni who was new in her job place and was experiencing a lack of confidence while making presentations in the online meetings. She was wondering whether confidence-building coaching could help her.
After having an initial conversation over the phone, we scheduled an online consultation session.
Confidence Building Coaching – Complete Session Flow
Initial Consultation or pre-therapy session:
Saloni: So, Mansi, I will try to explain the whole situation to you in detail here.
I have recently started working for this company and due to the covid situation I have received the training online and I have been working from home since I joined. This is my first job and I am really excited about all the progress I can make for myself as well as my company.
Whenever I have a new or creative idea I reach out to my supervisor and she has been supportive of the same, although recently since the last two times she asked me to pitch it directly to the superiors in a virtual meeting. I had all the resources ready for the same, but I did not feel confident enough to go ahead and present it. I fumbled a lot in the meeting and my manager had to explain some parts of it.
Although my ideas were appreciated and accepted, I feel if I had been more confident I could have given a better presentation and gotten better results in the end.
After hearing Saloni’s challenges, I began by psycho-educating Saloni about the core concepts behind the process I follow. I suggested Cognitive Hypnotic Coaching (which is an eclectic approach to Coaching) for working with confidence building. Then I walked her through the pre-coaching process.
After helping her understand the therapy process, I added that in her case, once we have defined the current problem and outcome clearly, I will help her –
- Defining the Existing problem clearly
- Defining the expected outcome from the sessions clearly and in observable terms
- Identifying the thoughts or emotions that she has before presentations or while preparing for them
- Making a list of all the places or events where she would like to feel confident
- Restructuring the thoughts and beliefs along with reconditioning associated emotions
Session 1: Defining Challenge and Desired Outcome
The first session of confidence-building coaching focused on helping Saloni define her current situation, desired outcome, and expected future.
I started the first session by asking Saloni to summarize the challenges she wanted to overcome through coaching in her own words.
Saloni: I am feeling hesitant in exploring my potential in the company that I am working in and this is making me worried because I want to learn all that I can from the place and public speaking is a major part of my job, so being under confident in it is making me worried.
I then asked Saloni to reframe her problem statement using the following format:
I feel …………… about …………… when ……………
Saloni:
I feel overwhelmed and scared about workplace potential when I am making a presentation online in front of all the superiors
I asked Saloni to read the statement a couple of times and tell me what was the desired outcome that she wanted to achieve at the end of these sessions in the format:
I wish ……………………….
Saloni: I wish to be able to confidently present my ideas and creativity in the company in front of all my superiors.
Mansi: Can you describe the dream future that you would love to work towards?
Saloni: I would love to see a future where I am communicating my ideas without any hesitation in the meeting. I see myself sitting in front of the camera confidently looking at the screen.
Mansi: When you say confidently, what is it exactly that is happening in front of you that makes you realise you are being confident?
Saloni: My shoulders are broad, my head held high, I have a smile on my face, and I can see my supervisor smiling at me. My hands are moving as I explain the idea and the tone of my voice is at a perfect pitch…..
For the home assignment, I asked Saloni to add more details to the sensory-specific future in terms of how it would look and what were the other changes that she would notice around her.
Session 2: Preparing the Primary Task List and Action Plan
We began the next session, by reviewing what we did in the last session. I asked her about her last week, and she mentioned while writing the future as her assignment she was already feeling more confident than before and felt there was a lot she could do about it.
After going through her home assignment, I asked her if there were any new things she thought she would be able to try that would help her reach her goal. She mentioned there were a few things she could change or start working on, one of which was researching and finding evidence to back her ideas.
With the first step identified, we started working on a more detailed task list that will help her develop and showcase her confidence effectively.
I asked her what feelings/emotions would help her get through most of these tasks more naturally.
While she felt there would be different feelings for different tasks, the two feelings that according to her would help her with multiple tasks were “Relaxation and Confidence”
I asked her for a past event where she had felt relaxed and confident, and also asked her to make a list of 3 events in the future where she would like to feel confident and relaxed.
Once she had identified the past and the future events, I did the NLP Anchoring Process*1 with her.
At the end of the session, Saloni mentioned she felt really great and thought she could reach this state quite easily and already feels it is gonna help her.
There was an observable calmness on her face.
*For the coming week, she selected 3 tasks from her task list that she wanted to focus on. I asked her to also take out a few minutes during the week and check if she can add more tasks to the list we had created during the session.
Session 3: Creating a detailed Task List
When Saloni came for the next session, she said she was happy with how the last week had gone. As she was able to find proof to back her ideas she was feeling more confident and excited about the ideas.
She was also able to add more tasks to the task list. She mentioned, “I feel these tasks will make me more prepared and will help me for my further personal growth as well.”
Since some of the tasks were broad and not specific enough, I asked her the meta-model questions*2 to chunk down each task into tiny bits.
Next, we explored various hindrances that may stop her from working towards those tasks and also created a weekly schedule to help Saloni do the tasks in a timely and effective manner.
I asked her to pick up 3 new tasks to work on for that week, which she was 100% committed to consistently doing in that week.
Session 4: Working with Tasks with difficulty
In the next session, Saloni mentioned she was able to work on 2 of her tasks but she faced some difficulty while doing one of the tasks.
She mentioned she saw the reminder but there were some thoughts that led her to feel scared after which she kept postponing it for later until she forgot about it.
I asked Saloni what was the specific time when she mostly felt scared, I asked her specific triggers, her thoughts and at the end, I asked her to tell me:
- Desired Thought
- Desired Emotions
Once she listed down her desired thoughts and emotions, I worked with thought restructuring*3.
She mentioned that the new restructured thought made her feel confident (i.e., her desired emotion) and was in complete sync with her plan of action. She mentioned this restructured thought made her more connected to the plan of action and reinforced that she was working on her task list.
I then used the emotional anchoring process*3 to help Saloni develop confidence for being able to take the meetings in the future and also for other events in her future where she wanted to feel confident.
Session 5: Closure
In this session, we reviewed the last week and Saloni mentioned she was feeling really confident and had already taken up 2 new ideas to her superiors and was able to present with the confidence she was looking for.
She mentioned there were other parts of her new workplace where she thought she needed improvement, but also mentioned that she felt capable and skilled to take up all the responsibilities.
I taught her self-hypnosis for any future concerns.
My Observation:
A client might come with a problem about a certain emotion; but as they form the action plan, they notice how when simple things are done differently can have an effect on their emotions and make things easier for them.
References for techniques used
- NLP Anchoring Process
- Meta Model
- Thought restructuring
The concepts and techniques discussed during this case study are based on the topics covered during the Cognitive Hypnotic Coaching® Diploma and the Cognitive Hypnotic Psychotherapy® Diploma Program.
