Different Meanings for the Same Words

When you hear the word “soft”, what does it conjure up for you?
What words would you use to describe what soft means to you, in your life?
What connotation would you attach to the word soft?

I had an interesting experience a few weeks ago in a coaching session.
My client was describing how concerned he was to change his modus operandi. That he’d always been driven and motivated and fully engaged and hard on himself to achieve strong results. And that he’d lately witnessed himself sometimes being and feeling ‘soft’ and he was, well, truthfully, in a bit of a panic about this shift.

The coaching conversation took the path of uncovering what he really meant by ‘soft’, by my asking him to describe what that word meant to him. He came up with words like “lazy”, “unproductive”, “unfulfilled”. Then he made a categorical statement “ those are the words that everyone comes up with for soft.”

What followed was an interesting discovery that indeed, no, not everyone has this universal impression of what ‘soft’ might mean. That in fact some might see soft as “gentle” or “kind” or “slowed down” or “open to new ideas” or ‘”not rigid”.

Where this particular client landed by the end of our hour together, was a willingness and an interest to recognize that just because he has interpreted ‘soft’ as something negative, it does not necessarily mean that he needs to stay away from becoming soft, but that by changing his perspective on the subject he opens up new possibilities of ways to be- without judgment – his own or from others around him.

The next time I saw this client, he talked about how his shift in perspective on the word “soft” had actually helped him make progress both at work and at home with his partner. The “at home” progress was an added bonus and an example of why we generally coach the ‘whole person’ even if the client is coming for career coaching or executive coaching.