Core qualities are attributes that form part of your essence (core) as a person. They become part of your identity, the qualities you use to define who you are or what your strong points are.

Qualities are not skills. Qualities come from inside and skills are acquired from the outside. Skills can be learned; qualities are developed.

The more you discover about yourself in terms of your core qualities, the better you will be able to understand others and perform the role of coach or facilitator. Knowing what needs to be done is only half the story, you then need to do it your way. This comes from an awareness of your own specific core qualities. The more insight you have of your own qualities, and those of others, the easier it will be to integrate manager and leader behaviours into your own personality.

The problem is that qualities can be perceived as inadequacies. For example, 'helpfulness' in one context can be perceived as 'interference' in another. You can have too much of a good thing. Someone considered to be too flexible can be perceived as inconsistent. Someone who is too careful risks being labelled as timid. When there is too much of a quality it can be seen as a pitfall.

When people present their pitfalls others fail to see the quality that they are dispaying too much of. In the example above, someone who appears aloof may just be being too reflective. A coach looks for the opposite of the pitfall as a way of working on the underlying quality. As a result, reflecting with empathy reduces the aloofness. Care must be taken not to be too empathetic as this may be percerceived as sentimenmtal by the coachee and consequently be rejected as a quality they would not want to be associated with.

Because we use qualities to define ourselves they get a grip on our identity to the point of stopping us seeing that we are anything else than what we think we are. People who value themselves being reflective find it difficult to accept that they could appear aloof - they are just being reflective.

I draw on Process Work. This model was developed by Arnold Mendell in the late 1990's, where he differentiated 'consensus reality' perceived through everyday awareness and 'sensient reality', the world of emotions, projections and fantasies. Qualities form part of our sensient reality, lying beneath the threshold of awareness. Working with them can be very therapeutic and have profound healing effects.

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