The WISE Coaching Model

A Coaching Model By Daria Daves, Leadership & Life Coach, GERMANY

Emotions in the Workplace: How to Turn Them from Distraction to Success with the WISE Coaching Model

In today’s fast-paced and demanding work environments, have you ever wondered how your feelings impact your work? Well, it turns out, that everyday work with challenges like overtime, heavy workloads, tight deadlines, lots of responsibilities or unhelpful clients, and lack of communication from the manager often leads to emotions like stress, frustration, and anxiety, which can push you into a mode where you’re just surviving, not thriving. Imagine low energy, feeling overwhelmed, and maybe even headaches. It’s a tough spot where motivation and satisfaction drop, decisions become shaky, and negative thoughts take over, coupled with ineffective communication.

However, it doesn’t have to be this way. There’s a solution. The WISE Coaching Model, developed by Daria Maria Daves, a Leadership and Life Coach based in Germany and passionate about Emotional Intelligence, offers a transformative coaching approach to understanding and addressing one’s own or employees’ emotions in a safe and non-judgmental space.

Daria aims to empower clients to discover strategies for dealing with their own or others’ negative emotions in everyday situations, whether at work or in personal relationships. Daria wants to enable clients to turn their workplace into a more positive, productive, and healthier environment achieve their full potential, and be their very best selves even in heated and emotionally challenging situations.

The Birth of the WISE Coaching Model

Daria’s journey into creating the WISE Coaching Model began when she noticed a recurring issue among herself, her colleagues, and her friends. Many were dissatisfied with their jobs or careers and wanted to make changes, but switching jobs or careers entirely was often impractical due to personal or family commitments.

Upon closer examination, it became clear that the specific job roles were not always the primary source of discontent. Instead, it was the persistent negative emotions surrounding the job that drained, frustrated, and disconnected individuals from their full potential.

Daria’s realization led her to extensive research during her 2 years at the International Coach Academy. She found numerous studies highlighting the critical role of emotions in the workplace. Stress, frustration, and anxiety emerged as the top three negative emotions affecting work life.^[1]

The reality is, that people frequently encounter situations that trigger negative emotions. The WISE coaching approach, therefore, emerged as a powerful tool for personal and professional development to become more effective in our roles as employees, managers, leaders, or parents.

The Importance of Understanding and Managing Negative Emotions

Negative emotions are a natural and common aspect of the human experience. Some levels of negative emotions can be beneficial, serving as a warning or motivation.

However, research has shown that excessive or prolonged negative emotions can have a significant impact on both private and professional life including the areas of job performance, success and career development, personal growth, relationships, overall well-being, and life satisfaction as well as behavior.

If we don’t know how to control our negative emotions, we may behave in a negative way that won’t benefit us, or our team, family members, etc. It is essential to proactively recognize and manage negative emotions to foster a positive and productive environment both in private and in professional life.

The WISE Coaching Model also emphasizes the responsibility of both employers and employees in finding and implementing strategies and actions. These actions promote emotional intelligence and resilience and contribute to improved employee engagement, collaboration, and increased productivity and satisfaction.

Therefore, Daria believes in embracing and acknowledging negative emotions in private and in professional life rather than suppressing them, as they hold untapped potential, such as:

1. Powerful Meaning: Negative emotions offer insights into unmet needs or negative They can indicate an imbalanced emotional or mental work or life situation, profoundly affecting one’s feelings.
2. Key to Our Needs: Needs dominate our values, desires, and daily behavior. Our intrinsic motivation is driven by these needs, guiding our choices throughout the day.
3. Guidance in Life and Towards Our Goals: Emotions, along with our needs, act as internal stop-or-go signals. They provide reassurance that what we’re doing is genuinely important to us and that we’re on the right, authentic path.
4. Source of Energy: Emotions are a source of energy; negative emotions drain us, while positive ones energize and invigorate us, affecting all aspects of life and work.
5. Motivation, Action & Behaviour: Emotions play a significant role in motivating or demotivating us toward achieving our goals. We do things to experience specific feelings we want or need.
6. Communication: Clear, effective, and respectful communication of needs results in more positive outcomes and provides choice, freedom, and control.

Overall, understanding and managing negative emotions can reveal potential and positive outcomes.

What Employees, Managers, Leaders, or Parents Can Achieve by Managing Negative Emotions Using the WISE Coaching Model

The WISE Coaching Model is designed to help employees, managers, leaders, and parents deal with emotionally challenging situations and interpersonal dynamics, whether they occur at home or in the workplace. This approach is particularly beneficial for those seeking support in the following areas:

1. Managing Emotions in Heated Situations: It helps individuals find more positive and productive ways to handle their emotions and behavior when faced with emotionally charged situations.
2. Making Decisions with Clarity: In emotionally charged situations, it aids in making calm and clear decisions or finding authentic solutions to complex problems.
3. Enhancing Communication: It assists in improving effective communication, enabling individuals to better fulfill their desires and needs to achieve their goals.

Incorporating the WISE Coaching Model into daily life, especially in the workplace, can transform negative emotions into opportunities for personal and professional development. As individuals become more aware of their emotions, thinking, reactions, and needs, individuals will unlock their full potential. This is how they can gain the power to navigate their lives in a more positive and fulfilling direction.

With the support of this transformative coaching approach, employees, managers, and leaders can expect a healthier work environment, improved decision-making, enhanced communication, and greater emotional intelligence and resilience.

Daria MariaDaves’ WISE Coaching Model is evidence of the power of emotions in driving personal and professional success, making it a valuable asset for those committed to personal growth and transformation.

How the WISE Coaching Model Supports Understanding and Managing Negative Emotions

The WISE Coaching Model provides clients with a range of integrated, science-based psychological tools and techniques, including The Energy and Emotions Matrix and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

It is inspired by RazanKilani (MCC), Daria’s esteemed mentor at the International Coach Academy and a passionate advocate for emotional intelligence, coaching literature^[2], as well as psychological theories^[3]such as Positive Psychology, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). However, it is important to note, that the WISE coaching model is not a rigid copy but an adaptation crafted to more effectively meet the unique needs of clients.

Embracing the WISE Coaching Model, clients gain a structured and transformative way to better understand and manage their own or others’ negative emotions. The approach focuses on improving both self-awareness and self-management.

1. Improving Self-Awareness: Self-awareness is about understanding the ‘WHY’ – Why do we experience negative emotions or exhibit certain behaviors in emotionally charged situations? The coaching process enhances the client’s awareness of the internal causes of their problems, including both the problem itself and the individual’s internal triggers. These internal causes, often unconscious, become controllable and manageable with the support of a coach.

The fact, that there are not only external factors such as work, people and relationships, social interactions, health issues, and environmental conditions triggering our emotions but also internal factors impacting us, opens up the possibility to freely choose and control our emotional response and behavior.

2. Improving Self-Management: Self-management focuses on the ‘HOW’- How can we change feelings or behaviors in emotionally charged situations? The coach empowers clients to transform their negative emotions into more positive and productive ones.

The WISE coaching process involves five steps, adapted from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)[4]:

1. Catch: Identify the problem, external triggers, desired goals, negative emotions, energy, thoughts, and unfulfilled needs.
2. Check: Evaluate the impact of internal thinking and feeling on the desired goals.
3. Choose: Select the desired feelings or needs.
4. Change: Shift into more positive emotions, adopt goal-supporting thoughts, or develop more effective strategies to fulfill needs.
5. Commit: Commit to taking action, and supporting your needs and goals.

These steps, when consistently applied, can lead to a transformation empowering individuals to navigate challenging situations more effectively.

Empowering Clients to Use the WISE Model as a self-coaching practice

Self-coaching can be challenging, here are several reasons:

• Changing deep-rooted daily habits, unconscious thoughts, or behaviors that have persisted for years is not easy.
• In emotionally charged situations, individuals often focus on negative aspects or risks, primarily influenced by their emotional brain, rather than their rational brain. These emotional reactions can hinder progress towards their goals.
• Emotions often signal threats against personal values and needs, prompting a defensive Consequently, individuals tend to withdraw and protect themselves from emotionally challenging situations instead of facing them again.

To overcome these challenges and maximize the benefits of self-coaching, individuals can work with a coach using the WISE coaching approach. The coach can offer both, 1:1 sessions and group coaching, applying the WISE Coaching Model to empower clients in mastering their emotions through self-coaching.

The WISE Coaching Model is a practical and structured approach that involves a set of powerful questions and power tools designed to guide clients toward a deeper understanding of their or others’ emotions, needs, and goals. The coach provides a safe and non-judgmental space to address negative emotions and unproductive reactions. This support helps the clients to move into their comfort and performance mode, and transform their own or others’ emotions. This will enable individuals to think clearly and make wise choices, where they can effectively progress towards their desired goals.

The client’s answers and insights act as a foundation for developing a personalized coaching plan. They can choose to work through these questions with a coach or utilize them in self-coaching practices.

Overall, Daria holds the belief that our attention should be redirected towards our negative emotions. She advocates for a greater acceptance of these emotions in our daily lives at home or work and highlights the untapped potential within them. Emotions at work matter. Rather than blaming us for their presence or attempting to suppress them, she emphasizes the importance of acknowledging them. This, in her view, leads to positive effects on both our personal and professional lives.

[1]https://www.quantumworkplace.com/future-of-work/emotions-in-the-workplace-how-to-deal-with-emotions-at-work, (06/2023).
[1]https://www.paylab.com/newsroom/what-are-the-major-stress-factors-causing-employees-to-lose-sleep/50269, (06/2023).
[2]Marcia Reynolds, Coach the Person, Not the Problem, A Guide to Using Reflective Inquiry, (2020-1) and
   Chad Hall, MCC, Coach the Person Not the Problem, A Simple Guide to Coaching for Transformation, (2016).
[3]International Coach Academy: Positive Psychology, Underlying Beliefs, Power Tools, (2022),
  and various tools from Psychology Tools | Deliver Effective Therapy, (06/2023).
[4]What Is Positive CBT? Positive Psychology in Therapy, (06/2023).