Where have you seen shadows emerge? In your colleagues, family members, teams, leaders, kids, parents, or students?
Whenever I speak with students, they share all their fears and insecurities. How are teachers speaking to that? In the workplace, the impostor syndrome often rears its ugly head. It's a shadow that creates roadblocks at every turn.
Are you up for a new position or promotion and have no idea how you're going to dive in, especially when you're not sure what they saw in you to give you the position in the first place? Are you in the middle of a chaotic world, on a task force, or in an emergency response center or political environment? Do you have to dance in real time, change how you process things that happen at the speed of light, redefine how you interact and work with a team, virtual or in person, and make different choices in your life as a whole?
We have a finite amount of time available to us to coach clients on the fly, in boardrooms, government and political offices, with students, or professionals in the centre of complex challenges in chaotic times. Unlike most coaching sessions, shadow and laser coaching sessions can be a matter of moments in time, where we coach on one thought, one moment that had just unfolded in such a way that when they're coached on it, they not only "get it" but it sticks.
Add to that equation working with client's and team's shadow personalities, and not only do they 'get it' but they embrace it, all aspects of themselves within the context of their worlds as they know it.
Combining evidence with patterns of behavior I can say that 50% of the data I use when Shadow Coaching my clients is what they don't tell me. It's located between their words. I discern what wasn't said, pick up what wasn't evident and become a catalyst so my clients could discover what it was they weren't aware of, in real time. It's all about context.