During my journey to become ICF Professionally certified coach, I heard this term again and again, which says that in order to be MCC (Master certified coach) one has to transform oneself into an invisible coach. My understanding of invisible coaching is a state when Coachee continues to reflect and reach new state of awareness, without being aware of Coach.

In my opinion, this could happen because of the curious questions of Coach, or because of Coachee being very reflective in nature. In both cases Coach goes in unknown and curious with Coachee.

 During one of the discussions among coaches below two incidents came in light.

 Incident one:

One of my peer coach is a person with multiple talents and two of them are gardening and playing guitar. Guitar is very dear to him and he usually keeps that along side almost all the time, even during gardening. One of these days he was cutting, plotting and planting his Orchids when a little child for about 6-7 years came to him and asked:

Child: Uncle among the two Guitar and Gardening what do you like most?

Coach: {assuming that it is one of those curios questions from children} I like both of them equally.

Child: No, no you get to pick only one, touch your heart and tell me which one do you like most?

Coach: {this set Coach thinking, which one do I really like most} not getting an immediate answer he said, why do you want to know, I told you I like both.

Child: {now actually enacting by touching her own heart} no uncle touch your heart and tell me which one do you like most?

Coach: {now seriously thinking and touching his heart} said, I like Orchid Gardening most.

Till now Coach really did not realize what was his priority in terms of what is more important to him, and child has no idea of what was done.

Incident two:

This is a special incident that involves no verbal conversation. About an year and half back I was standing at a tea stall having tea; I was enjoying delightful taste of ginger tea and watching a dog roaming around looking for something to eat.

From nowhere a little boy (about 8-10 years age) wearing cloths which are torn from different places giving me an indication of his financial health ( Me making a judgement about the boy, oblivious to what he is going to do to me).

This boy takes out some money from his pocket, gives it to shop keeper and purchases biscuits and gives it to dog to eat (does not eat himself), and off he goes.

I saw dog followed him for a while and this got me thinking, What am I really doing? What contribution am I giving?

 After going through the coach training I realize that this boy invoked some of the questions in me which otherwise I would have not asked, and thought this was a powerful coaching done without even speaking.

 Again without boy knowing what he did to me?

We had a discussion among the group to reflect what has happened in these incidents. I wondered if these are some of those Invisible coaching sessions?

 What do you think? Looking forward for response to develop deeper understanding around invisible coaching