Coaching: The Gift of Attention

By Dr. Chris Buxton

French philosopher Simone Weil once said, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Sadly, since Weil’s time in the early twentieth century, the generous gift of attention that we so desperately need from one another has only grown rarer. Humans of twenty-first century Western culture are among the most distracted people who have ever lived. Sometimes by choice and sometimes not, we are constantly surrounded by little attention-grabbers incessantly competing for our eyes, ears, and heart.

As a ministry coach and consultant, I entered the Harding University Executive and Workplace Coaching Program to expand my ability to assist church leaders in solving problems and challenges. While I expected good things from the program, I did not expect to be reminded so powerfully that, when done well, coaching is a rich and rare gift given to another person in the form of deeply focused, undivided attention.

There exists immense transformative power between two people as they give and receive deep, undistracted listening. This is true because of how we are designed by our Creator. Our trinitarian God has existed in community from eternity. This means “Community” is one of God’s ontological attributes. Just as God is described through his unlimited power, holiness and love, he is also defined by “three-ness.”

As God’s image-bearers, we humans also carry in our very natures the desire and need for community — to be meaningfully, consistently connected to God and to other people. Therein lies one of the reasons coaching is so effective. As coaches listen deeply, notice subtleties, and ask penetrating questions, the blessing of coaching comes in the form of a lightbulb-moment insight, an action item, or a plan of attack to address a problem or challenge. These, of course, are tremendous gifts!

And sometimes, the central blessing of coaching comes in the form of undiluted, unbroken focus from another of God’s image-bearers: the blessing of being truly heard. This is a thirst-quenching, soul-enriching gift.

Now, to Weil’s point, to call a coaching session purely generous may be too…generous. Coaches, after all, are typically compensated for their work. However, even when compensated, a good coach gives to another person the gift of deeply focused human-to-human attention. It’s the gift of being seen, heard and understood, a gift that is immensely valuable, desperately needed, and exceedingly rare, now more than ever.

Chris Buxton is founder and executive director of ULife, Inc. (www.ulifeconsulting.org), a campus/college ministry consulting and planting organization. Before launching ULife, he spent 22 years leading public university campus ministries in Arkansas. He serves both Harding and Lipscomb universities as an adjunct professor, and at Harding he also leads a campus ministry internship. He holds a graduate certificate in Executive and Workplace Coaching, a Master of Divinity degree, and a doctorate in missional and spiritual formation. He and Monica have been married 27 years, live in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and have a daughter, a son-in-law and a brand-new grandson.

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Coaching: The Gift of Attention

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