I was asked what ‘Brokering Opportunities’ is. This sparked an interesting conversation among coaches, old and new and prompted me to re-evaluate what brokering opportunities has meant to me as a coach, individuals I work with and reflect on what brokering opportunities means in practice within the Personal Transition Service.
As always when it comes to coaching, there is no fixed procedure or process, as each coach will find their own way of working, influenced by every individual they work with. From my perspective and experience, I would summarise brokering opportunities as:
A person being offered an opportunity to choose to do or act differently, because they are presented with ‘choice’ that allows them to remove themselves from the confines of their current situation or self-perceived ‘limits’. The choice presents them with an opportunity to access a meaningful experience. The opportunity is entirely associated with the person’s interests, goals and ambitions and the coach has no part in deciding what, when or why that is their chosen ‘meaningful’ experience.
There is nothing ‘typical’ about the opportunities that I have brokered as coach or the choices people make, it is truly about their dreams and aspirations. The one common factor to highlight is that every time a person chooses to participate in what they connect with, an internal process happens, a spark is ignited that reconnects the person to a part of themselves or connects them with what speaks to them as a human.
Asset Coaching works for people because change becomes sustainable and real for someone when the person chooses the changes they want to make. Brokered opportunities result in humans fulfilling their passions because they connected deeply with an experience that reminded them that they are more than their circumstances or how they may feel perceived by broken systems.