Just Between Coaches -Episode 134
Adaptive Coaching: Embracing Change (Ali Shapiro)
Ali Shapiro: In adaptive change, you’re actually not giving people habits to do habits stacking. We’re going to start taking risks with experiments. And they’re manageable risks, but let’s experiment. Okay, let’s take 15 minutes during the workday. What happens? Let’s start tying your exercise to your productivity. What happens?
Melinda Cohan: Imagine the possibilities when your coaching becomes a catalyst for transformative changes, not just on the surface, but at the very core of your clients’ beings. This isn’t just a podcast episode. It is an invitation to explore an exciting coach – adaptive coaching.
I’m Melinda Cohan, and you’re listening to Just Between Coaches. I run a business called the Coaches Console, and we are proud to have helped tens of thousands of coaches create profitable and thriving businesses. This is a podcast where we answer burning questions that newer coaches would love to ask a more experienced coach. Imagine the possibilities when adaptive coaching becomes a cornerstone in your toolkit, promising not just a shift, but a deep transformation behavior shift in your coaching clients. Are you ready to up your coaching game? Then keep listening.
Today, I’ve invited Ali Shapiro to the show. She’s a holistic nutritionist, integrated health coach. She’s the founder of Truce with Food, where she helps clients release their food fixation and gain life changing freedom. She’s also the host of the top ranked podcast, Insatiable. Welcome, Ali.
Ali: Thank you for having me, Melinda.
Melinda: I am so excited to have you on the show, Ali, and really get into this methodology and this type of coaching. But before we dive in, would you mind sharing just a little bit of your background with our listeners?
Ali: Yeah. So, I have been coaching 17 years now, and I created the Truce with Food methodology out of my own personal journey of really healing my body from cancer. So I had cancer as a teenager at 13, and it really set me on this path. I didn’t understand it at the time, but it really destroyed my gut health. And I didn’t know any of this because I’m the first generation of childhood cancer survivors. But as I started to look at food as medicine instead of food as calories, I was able to heal a lot of the effects of my chemo, which were irritable bowel syndrome, depression, acne, all of these things that were tied to gut health. But there was no language for gut health at the time. This was like 20 years ago.
And so I thought I had found this, like, miraculous field of health coaching. We weren’t even called health coaches at the time. We were called health counselors. But then I realized after about the fourth session, my clients had some of the same eating challenges that I had. We would make these emotional shifts, and that would help their eating or they wouldn’t change and their eating would get worse. And so I didn’t understand what was working, what wasn’t working.
And so I went back to school to really understand what if this falling off track, what if this, you know, quote unquote, failure to change habits was a symptom, just like my irritable bowel syndrome was a symptom, not a diagnosis. So I wanted to get to the root causes. And so I went back to the University of Pennsylvania in Philly and really started to study how do we change? And I learned all the different coaching methodologies. It was interesting to learn all of them because you realize, okay, all these theories are great, but when you hit a real person, there can be a lot of complexity there. The theory doesn’t hold up.
And so my model Truce with Food grew out of my own personal experience to really radically change my relationship to food, help my clients. But then I also have the academic backing of some of this more stubborn change. And so I was doing that for a couple of years, and then I was getting really burnt out because, as you’ve talked about on this show, coaching has now matured as a market. But 15 years ago, you were still trying to convince people, why coaching? Why health coaching? Why me? Like, it was a lot longer of a process.
And so I really wanted to be able to scale, right? You can only be able to help so many people if you’re trading hours for dollars. And so I really spent several years figuring out what is essential to this type of change process for stubborn change. And that’s where Truce with Food really went. And then I created my Truce Coaching Certification to help other practitioners. I have therapists, I have trainers, I have other health coaches, yogis, who after a couple years, they’re realizing, okay, there’s something that’s not happening, that I can’t name what it is. And there are people who are working with stubborn types of change. And so that’s a brief background of my story and where I am today.
Melinda: I love that you go back to the root causes. I love that in all aspects of life, not just fixing the symptoms. That’s like quick results, quick wins, and that’s fine. But I really love, personally, just that. What’s the root cause? Let’s get at that because then, the ripple effect is so amazing. Now, as you mentioned, your focus, it’s on health and nutrition, but your approach, I mean, it’s relevant to all niches. So I want to dive in and let’s talk about adaptive coaching. So, first of all, what is it? If our listeners have not heard of that or aren’t familiar with it, what is adaptive coaching?
Ali: Great question, because I don’t think most people do know what it is. So there are two types of change. There are technical change and adaptive change. So technical change, if I was going to boil it down, is like, you can Google the answer, right? I have a leaky faucet. How do I change this faucet? I want to run a 10K. How do I start changing my habits so that I can get to a 10K? And so the answer we can Google, we already know it. It’s just about following a plan.
In the coaching world, it might be like we give out some worksheets. This is the process. It’s linear, all that kind of stuff. So that’s technical change. And the biggest mistake we make is we confuse adaptive change for technical change, because I think most of us are trying to put the change our clients are seeking into this technical solution. Like, I have the answers. One thing I forgot to say in technical change, that the person leading the change is the expert. So the coach has the answers, the teacher has the answers, and you’re just kind of learning information. I think of it as an education habit challenge versus adaptive challenges are completely different.
For starters, there’s no existing solution. So I think of this as the how. Right? Maybe I want to change my diet, but how do I do that in my life where maybe I have kids, maybe I don’t. Maybe I have a chronic disease, so I don’t have the energy that everybody has, right? Or for my clients, it may be like, why am I turning to food? And the problem or the root cause is usually difficult to identify. It’s easy to deny, it’s easy to resist. So in my case, a lot of my clients were like, I just need a better plan. I just need to learn more about nutrition. I just need to learn more about caregiver burnout, right? It’s like, oh, what is the root here?
And these are also challenges that you don’t fix. There’s no finish line, but you can navigate through them. So, for example, with my clients, ultimately, they’re trying to learn their bodies, and bodies change, right? I had my own truce with food for 15 years, and then I had a baby, and then I went through menopause. My body is completely different. So you’re really teaching clients a skill set, right, of adaptability. And then change requires how we show up in our lives. So it’s less about habit development, but I think of it as more relational, or we have to change how we think of our values.
So, for example, with my clients, if you grew up in the ‘80s or ‘90s or even before, you grew up thinking that health equals thinness, right? So if you value your health, you’re trying to get thin, whereas what clients need to learn to do is that health is a lot more holistic. It doesn’t have to be all about weight. So you have to start valuing health habits outside of if they’re going to help you lose weight or not. Right? It’s like, how do I value my own needs and not just everybody else’s needs, right? So being responsible and caregiving, we have to expand that to include themselves.
Melinda: Are you having to change your values, adapt them, expand them? So it’s like, these have been my core values, but now they don’t serve me in the same way because my situation, my lifestyle, my whatever’s going on is different. And so I have to not just go back to the core values, but I need to expand them. Is that what you’re saying?
Ali: Oh, my God. I love this question, Melinda. It’s both, because what ends up happening, at least in the Truce Coaching Certification model, is you realize that the root issue, we’ve had to exile certain values. We’ve had to not devalue them. So, for example, a lot of people will value being productive. And so they realize, though, you know, that’s causing them to say, I deserve to eat this at night because I’ve been so productive all day.
Melinda: Go me.
Ali: Yeah, go me. Go me. You know, I use the language. It was unsafe not to work hard in their families because they got rewarded grade wise, contributing financially, all that kind of stuff. And so they have to start to discover it themselves, that rest can actually be beneficial. Imperfection, right, can actually be beneficial, what you learn in that. Taking care of your own needs. Right? And this is all stuff that we can know, and that’s almost the last part of adaptive change, is that solutions can’t be taught to.
So we all know we should rest more. We all know we should not aim for perfection. We all know we should put our oxygen masks on first, but we’re not doing it because of these deeper issues that are easy to deny or resist. And so in adaptive change, you’re actually not giving people habits to do habits stacking. We’re going to start taking risks with experiments, and they’re manageable risks, but let’s experiment.
Okay? Let’s take 15 minutes during the workday. What happens? Let’s start tying your exercise to your productivity. What happens? And it’s like, oh. So the client starts to discover for themselves what’s happening. And then in that process, they start to value things that they haven’t valued in their existing values, like discipline, for example. In our culture, the default is control. That’s how you define it. But I say to my clients, what if we evolve it to devotion? So it’s not about control, but when things aren’t in control, how do you stay the course? How do you need to treat yourself?
It’s really a radical form of coaching, because you’re getting people not to value most deeply the same unsustainable systems that are really destroying the planet. I just went through my own process after being postpartum and menopausal at the same time, and I don’t have food issues. But overworking was my last vice. I had this deep story that I had to work really hard to be exceptional, and that’s how I started secure status in the world by being exceptional in my work. I was like, damn, I’m out here railing against unguarded capitalism, but hustle culture is capitalism inside of me. I have to fix that first before I can go out and think I have any constructive ways to help this myself. So it’s actually asking people to start valuing different things.
Melinda: Wow. I love it. I’m going to be very selfish since I have you here. So one of the things I’m personally going through is exactly what you just said. You know, I built Coaches Console. It’s 20 years old this year, and I worked hard. I was riding the edge of workaholic. I knew that that was dangerous. And so all the years, I was really focused on good self-care so that I didn’t overwork, I didn’t get burned out. Overwhelm didn’t take me. But hustle culture, like, work hard, really get focused, and make it happen. Do, do, do.
And now with my other business that I’m starting with Perfect Period, that’s, you know, the universe is saying to me, do not create from doing, create from being. And it is short circuiting my entire thought process and perspective, and I’m having to reframe and reconstruct what it means to be productive. It is not about doing, but it’s how I show up, and it’s the beingness of it. It is so new right now for me, but this is that adaptive change that we’re talking about, completely evolving and redefining how one approaches something that’s been pretty typical in their life.
But that traditional coaching that we all know, you know, it’s about the questioning and listening and all of this, and then it’s about accountability, goals, hitting those goals. There’s structure to it, even there’s a flow with the coaching conversation. But with the adaptive change and the coaching in that, it’s really more about leaning into the curiosity, into the research aspect of it, the willingness instead of the structure. Is that a fair assessment?
Ali: Yeah, and I think you bring up a great point in that you do need a structure. That’s why I created the Truce Coaching Certification. And I’m over generalizing here. But like doctors and midwives, right, in America, doctors are trained to distrust the birth process. Like everything’s a liability. We got to be in control. The minute something goes off the rails, we got to intervene, right? Versus midwives. They trust birth. And I think that’s a metaphor for the change process. They are trained, but they know the structure. They know that there’s flexibility in the structure. They know how to read with their intuition.
And so they always let the woman lead in birth because that’s how you have an empowering birth. And my background is also in adult behavior change, and adults hate their autonomy being taken away. So with adaptive change to kind of come back from all these metaphors, though, you trust the client. And I find that half of the healing is when I’m always like, why does that make sense? Why does that make sense? And the client then comes to you with stuff that they would have never told you because you’re not judging them.
And you have this structure of, this is part of it. And I know how to navigate you through, but you’re leading. What feels next important for you, right? What do you need? And so it empowers clients in such a different way.
Melinda: And it creates a lot more safety when we can have that as the coach, when we bring that profound level of trust in the process, in the structure, in the relationship, in the client, even if they’re a hot mess. Now, one of the things that I share with our students, because we teach them how to be business owners, right? It’s something that they’re brand new at. And so I talk about first you have to emulate before you can innovate. And the power of structure. You’ve got to know the structure like you said.
And so for new business owners, they can’t just jump to doing whatever they want and calling it a business. Like there are some foundational things that you have to know. So for the new coaches that are listening, can they just jump right to adaptive coaching and bringing that into their practice? Do they need to really get some good experience with just that true traditional coaching first to really understand? What is your perspective on that?
Ali: Yeah, that’s such a great question because in my certification I have some clients who were my personal client. Like, they came to me with food challenges and then was like, this was so life changing. I want to help other people, you know, and they’re like, but I don’t have any coaching certification. And I’m like, but you went through the process yourself. And I think if you’ve gone through an adaptive process yourself and you’ve worked with someone, then you start to understand the value and the freedom.
But I think sometimes it takes coaching for a couple years and just getting comfortable in that back and forth and helping people. Usually people come to me with a couple years’ experience and realizing that there’s like, okay, I’m not getting to the root. I’m sensing this and it’s like I’m stuck, you know? So I think adaptive challenge is where the coaching industry is going because it helps people with flexibility, it helps people managing more complexity, and that’s where our world’s going. But it is a completely different approach. So I think you need to study with someone and there’s lots of people who teach it before you can just like dive right into it.
Melinda: Yeah, there’s got to be an understanding the building blocks so that you can then trust yourself when you’re showing up, I find. That’s how I know to trust myself, is that I have a thorough understanding and experience of it. Now you said something interesting that I just want to pick on right now for a second. You use the word stuck. What I find for myself, what I’ve noticed, and I’m only realizing this now as we’re in this conversation, is for a while now, I no longer say I’m stuck and so it’s less about being stuck and it’s about why is this change not happening? It’s just a slight difference and it’s a nuance. Am I making any sense with this distinction?
Ali: This is a great point. In adaptive challenge, the question I always have clients ask is, why does this make sense? Why does this make sense? And in adaptive challenges, what you’re going to do is meet a client’s survivor self. And this is a model that I learned from Sas Petherick, who is an amazing coach herself. It’s the three selves’ model from Professor Franz Rupert. And he talks about there’s a trauma self, a survivor self, and the healthy adult self. Right?
And the healthy adult self is what brings someone to coaching. Right? They have access to imagination, creativity, joint discernment. You can access your needs and emotions. But the survivor self is the one who’s stopping the trauma. So you’re not meeting the person’s trauma. I want to be clear about that. Even though my certification is trauma informed, it’s so that you can recognize if someone is in a trauma and then refer them out, because I don’t think that’s the responsibility of coaching, at least right now. But the survivor self has really rigid defense mechanisms, which is what we think of as the stuckness, and it tends to evolve a loss of connection to your body and your emotions.
And so in my work, you know, a lot of clients turn to food when they’re in that survivor self. And so when we start throwing more tools or as a coach, we think, oh, I need another training. There’s another shiny object out there that’s going to help me, what we’re actually doing on a deep level is saying, we need to fix this. You’re wrong here. Right? Like, let’s reframe our thinking around this instead of like, oh, why does this make sense? Why are you in survival mode right now? And that is where really, you’re hitting the adaptive problem. Right?
In my work with clients, it’s about not feeling like they belong, feeling unattached to the people closest to them in their lives or feeling like this food thing makes them separate. But that’s just the surface. It’s this deeper thing, this sense of I don’t belong. Right? And that’s where we actually. Then, okay, we’re going to work with the survivor self, and most coaches will meet the survivor self. And what we do, and again, I think this is going to change the more we realize our world is so complex and we can’t follow rules and rigidity, but we try to find a new tool. Right?
I kind of joke, and again, I think every tool has its place, but I joke, like, why do we have to tap so much? Right? Like, why are we tapping all the time? And it’s because that survivor self is creating so many of these emotions and so much of this need to soothe. And what we need to do is really, I think, for transformational change is how do we get the survivor self to be in that healthy adult self? How do we help it evolve? And that is what adaptive challenges are really, in my opinion, about.
Melinda: I love that whole, that whole thing right there is just a beautiful description of getting into the intricacies of what we’re doing as a coach with our clients, meeting them where they are and helping them to understand it. And so if I heard you correctly, if, let’s say there’s somebody who, you know, the survivor self-rigid defense mechanisms, they want to change how they eat. I just want to have a clear distinction. How would the traditional coach adapt that client situation? And then you kind of gave us an insight. But recap the adaptive coach approach.
Ali: Yeah. I’ve gone into other health coaching companies and have trained them. And so two things happen. They’re like, yes. One, the client just doesn’t come back. They feel ashamed that they’re stuck. You know, even though you may be a really welcoming coach and all this stuff, they are just so much ashamed because, again, the initial approach was, we’re going to crush these goals. Right? So then what happens is, and this is what other coaches have told me, who do the traditional approach, they’re like, I feel like I have to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Okay, maybe we need to better plan.
And all of a sudden, you’re in fixing mode. Because what also happens, I should say, since this is Just Between Coaches, is our survival self will often get entangled with the client’s survival self. So, you know, if you were someone who had to be, like, the good, responsible girl, you know, you’re just like, oh, my God, now I’m responsible for this client’s stuck this. And so I’m going to use my own survival strategies. And so it gets really messy. So that’s what tends to happen in the traditional model.
Melinda: Yeah. And I would say with that traditional model, when you said they’re in fixing mode, it’s like, okay, I would imagine myself talking with the client. What’s the plan you want to commit to? What are some of the actions you can take? What will you do differently this time? Like, that would be some of the conversations I would have with them, and then they would identify it, list out the homework and the action items. I said, okay, we’ll meet next week and see how it went. And it’s like, it’s that kind of experience. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just an approach to a situation. And then the adaptive coaching takes us through that scenario.
Ali: Yeah. And so if I have a client who comes in and again, the relationship and the positioning is already, like, clear that, you know, it doesn’t mean that my clients don’t have goals. But the way that we’ve set up the goals is, you know, I want to find non-food ways to reward myself. Right? I want to make exercise about joy and pleasure, not losing weight. So we’re already focusing on how they’re showing up. And, you know, it takes a little bit longer. So if they come in and they’re like, you know, I really over ate yesterday, I’m like, all right, so why does that make sense?
And they know, because we’ve worked together, that it’s not maybe just what happened right before they ate. And I take them through a process rooted in the evidence-based framework of immunity to change, which is a huge adaptive process. So then I would say what story was active, and a story is what feels at risk. What felt hard. And some of the risks clients turn to in their survival self is I felt like I failed. I felt like I was going to be rejected. Right? And so much of, I think, in the adaptive is bringing in more feminine approach to coaching, which is the witnessing and the attunement.
Melinda: I love that.
Ali: And then it’s like, okay, now that we know what’s happening, how are you trying to protect yourself. And in adaptive challenges, according to the Truce Coaching Model is that you’re attuned to what other people might have wanted and needed. And so it’s like, what do you need? What do you need now? Do you need to go back and have a different conversation with the person that you were afraid of? Do you need to get more information that you really weren’t rejected? If you feel like you failed, well, okay. Part of what we’re doing is redefining the values of success.
So it’s like, what did you learn from that? What do you want to do moving forward? Do you want to take a break? Everything is their autonomy and their wisdom and their intuition is honored, but I just have the questions. And again, I’m like the midwife, but I’m focused on how to support them with the questions and the understanding and help, often organizing for them what happened? Because even if you’re first starting an adaptive change process, clients aren’t used to being like, oh, my God, my food is because I felt worried about this email that I sent to someone at 10:00 a.m. that I said the wrong thing, you know?
So I find that having the structure to mirror them. So this is what happened, and this is why is, like, that safety. That’s that safety piece. So now I can look constructively at what happened rather than feeling in shame, because if I’m in shame or guilt, I can’t actually own maybe what happened. What would I need to do next? Cause I’m too much hearing it like, criticism, I’m too much hearing it. It’s about me as a failure, for example, versus. Wait a second. That makes sense. You learned. What do you want to do next? So that you can learn from the mistake rather than making it about you and putting you in shame.
Melinda: So how do you support your clients as they’re going through this process? Is there a story or an example from your own experience with your clients that you can share about this?
Ali: Totally. So, a lot of my clients, they feel guilty or ashamed if they fall off a plan because they think it’s not going to work and I’m going to fail. So one of my clients who was, you know, identifies as a recovering perfectionist. She was a yoga teacher. She had taken a couple other health coaching certifications. But when you go through the Truce Coaching Certification, you have to go through the process yourself with the goal. Some people bring up business goals. And hers was, she wanted to start teaching yoga because she loved it, but also because it’s a great place to meet potential clients. Right?
And so what we had her do was, okay, what is the first step? Because it’s really about managing risk, right? And we do small, manageable risks because everything isn’t ready for a big risk. Right? So for her, I was like, what’s the first step? Okay, I got to teach a class. And so she went, and she was like, three people came. I forgot the moves. She was like, it was basically a disaster because I was so nervous. But I said, okay, but what we have to measure now, because you’re a beginner, right? In the beginning, we’re measuring did you show up? That’s the risk right now, is just in showing up.
So then it was like, okay, next time you’re going to go, what do you want to improve on? You did that first time, so now you know you can do it. You know? And she’s like, it’s not easy. I still have these. We call them protectors, right? Other people call them a critic, but the critic is trying to prevent you from taking imperfect action. So we call them protectors to not look, you know, perfect. So she’s like, okay, I took my next class, and she’s like, only two people showed up. And she was making that mean that that third person hated her class. Because if we have a perfectionist perception, it’s like a house of mirrors. You keep making meaning repetitively about your imperfection.
So I said, okay, wait a second. We don’t know that. You’re falling back on this story that you have about rejection if you’re not perfect. And so let’s just put that there. You’re focusing on what you need here, and you need to keep getting practice to do this so that you can eventually feel in your flow. And this was an example of saying, let’s take your value of yoga off the map and bring it to yourself as a teacher who’s just starting out. So she’s still doing it. She’s like, it gets less uncomfortable each time. But we’ve changed what she’s measuring and we’ve taught her how to what does she need to pay attention to versus fall back on her story that’s making everything mean that if she’s not perfect, she’s been rejected. Is that clear?
Melinda: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Super helpful. Now, we could take this in a lot of different directions, but before we wrap up our conversation, is there anything that I missed that you’re itching to share with our listeners before we wrap up?
Ali: I just think coaches need to know this is where coaching, I think, is going. I think it’s really where the market’s headed, and it matches how unpredictable and flexible our clients need to learn to be versus rigid, sticking to our plans. So I just want coaches to get out ahead of that because clients need us in this crazy world.
Melinda: Yeah, that’s what we’re here for. So let’s summarize some of the things that we talked about today. I love how you took us into the two different types of change, technical change and adaptive change, and really understanding the distinction between both of those. I think as coaches, the better understanding we can have about that, the better we can approach our clients and meeting them where they are. Because sometimes coaching can be as, I don’t want to say simple, but it can just be technical change. That’s all that’s needed, and just go with that. So knowing those two different types of changes, I love how we led with that. And when you shared the biggest mistake is when we confuse adaptive change with technical. That’s what we really have to watch out for.
As we get into adaptive change, it’s really about, as the coach being curious, being in that research mode. And you gave us the most awesome question, why does this make sense? Like, that should be a question in every coach’s back pocket, why does this make sense? And you talked to us about the survival self and got into the nuance of what’s happening inside the coaching conversation with the client and just were able to describe that beautifully and gave us a distinction. If you approach a situation from traditional coaching, what does that look like? What’s that experience like?
If you do it from adaptive, what’s that like? I love really how you talked about this framework being a big part of the evolution of coaching. I actually agree with that. I think we’re just a few years out of that pandemic thing that we experienced, but I think we are just now beginning to experience the ripple effect that it had on all of us. And as coaches, that’s what we’re here for, to help people navigate that. Ali, do you have any parting words for our listeners?
Ali: I think coaching’s magical and I just want people to feel more confident to take more risks in their coaching practice.
Melinda: Awesome. Thank you for listening to this episode of Just Between Coaches and also a giant thank you to Ali for this incredible conversation. You can find out more about her at alishapiro.com. That’s Ali A-L-I Shapiro S-H-A-P-I-R-O dot com. In the show notes, you’ll find a link to her website, and you’ll find a link to her free monthly Change Agent Disruption Hour, where she will help you navigate different coaching questions. You’ll also find links to our podcast and other amazing resources. Ali, thank you so much for coming to the show.
Ali: Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
Melinda: I’m Melinda Cohan and you’ve been listening to Just Between Coaches. Just Between Coaches is part of the Mirasee FM podcast network, which also includes such shows as Course Lab and To Lead is Human. To catch the great episodes on Just Between Coaches, please follow us on Mirasee FM’s YouTube channel or your favorite podcast player. And if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a comment or a starred review. It is the best way to help us get these ideas to more people. Thank you and we’ll see you next time.