One of the most effective ways (in my experience) to help my clients gain clarity or feeling unstuck is through an exercise called ‘the inner team’.

The inner team refers to all the opinions and voices within you. The believers, the doubters, the fearful, the courageous, the powerful (and more). The exercise helps my clients to better understand how much space the opinion or voice really takes up in them. And often helps them to better understand where it comes from.

Your team makes up your personality

All these voices stand for a team as they basically make up (as a metaphor) your personality.

The exercise is best done by drawing the shape of a person (or their head) on a piece of paper. Just the outline. The next step is to start with a voice and give it the size you think it needs. Then you give it a name, write it down and also write a sentence that this voice or opinion says to you.

Let’s take an example: you are not sure if you want to make a certain decision because you have some doubts.

So you might give this voice a shape that takes up 10% of the available space. So you call it Doubtful Tom and it says “You’re generally bad at making decisions”.

And then you see the whole picture

You do this with every voice or opinion in your head. When you’re done, look at the whole picture and begin to describe what you see or what you’ve learned.

This might include an overall pattern (i.e. negative vs. positive) or the realisation that a negative voice (doubt or fear) isn’t as big as you thought it was. And that the positive ones are taking up more space in you.

In this step it’s important to describe what you see and what you’ve learned. Moreover what you now recognise, as this articulation of thoughts can greatly help you with the outcome and your goal.

This is the part where many people realise what is really stopping them from taking a step or making a decision. And why they may have had doubts or concerns in the first place.

It can be quite enlightening.

In the early days of my coaching career, I was always a sceptic when it came to such methods. Especially those that involved drawing or using pen and paper in addition to writing.

But I’ve come to realise that visual aids can be really powerful tools in coaching. And they can be a great help in solving problems.

So why not give it a try? The best way to approach coaching is with an open mind and an open attitude.

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