Coaching can create ripple effect to humanity
By Atip Muangsuwan
Dalai Lama once said, “Just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into water, the actions of individuals can have far-reaching effects.”
There was an executive doctor who happened to be my coaching client. I had been coaching her for 3 sessions. Just in the beginning of the 4th session, she shared with me that… she brought the coaching skills and techniques that I used to coach her for the past 3 sessions to coach her patients also. And the coaching worked so well that she wanted to share the story with me!
She elaborated that she applied my coaching skills and techniques to some of her patients while she was with her patients in the examination room in a hospital.
There was an outstanding case that she wanted to share with me. There was a patient coming to see her to seek a medical help on her illness. This patient told my doctor coachee that she had been to several hospitals and been treated by several doctors before, but her illness wasn’t gone yet. She still suffered from the insomnia, stress and severe headache very often.
So, my doctor coachee suddenly thought of the coaching skills and techniques that she had learned from me thru our coaching sessions. Then, she tried applying them to this patient while they were in the examination room together.
After she applied the coaching to this patient for just a few sessions, the insomnia, stress and severe headache of this patient were gone completely without the doctor prescribing any medicine to her.
So, I asked my doctor coachee why this patient could recover from her illness without any medication. My doctor coachee said, “Because I applied the “deep listening”, reflection and powerful questions skills that you’ve taught me to this patient. Especially the deep listening, it was the big help to this patient!
My own insight from this story is that… “Not only does my coaching impact the doctor herself, but my coaching also creates a ripple effect to the doctor’s patients.”
“I alone cannot change the world, but I can drop a stone into the waters and create many ripples.”