The Third Layer

As an Executive Coach…coaching non-executives as well, you often have to get to a third layer to find out the real issue.

Recently, in a coaching session, a client and I were working our way through his challenge of not being able to move forward in his life and career, placing the past actually in the past and looking toward the future.

The client had spent ten minutes giving this reason and that reason and finally I discovered the real challenge moving forward was not him, it was not his stalled career…it was her.

After a very long awkward silence, from somewhere within a broken heart he said, “He asked me and did not even know me.”

When I asked what was that in reference to, he said, “That was the text I received that changed everything.  I blocked all communication at that point.”

We went on to talk about the “she” and the other “he” as though they were in the room.

The third layer revealed the following.

“She had given him all he needed to know to ask her to marry him. Once given there was nothing more to know, to learn, to discover, even to love.”

My client sat for a moment used a phrase I have only known as a Biblical reference, “It is finished.”, and left our session.

As a coach, I have learned, that if we wait, we will get to the third layer of any challenge and find the door, slightly cracked open, beyond which we seek the answers to life’s questions.