About coaching and being coached
International Coaching Federation
John Whitmore, Coaching for Performance
Commonly known from the world of sports, coaching means assisting and carrying an athlete to achieve their best performance.
Harvard educationalist and tennis expert Timothy Gallwey, author of The Inner Game of Tennis and The Inner Game of Work, challenged traditional sports instruction by claiming that a coach’s role was to help a player remove or reduce the internal obstacles to their performance in order to release an unexpected natural ability without the need for much technical input from the coach.
This ultimately became the principle idea behind individual and team coaching both in the business world and in the personal life.
Coaching assists a client to bridge the gap between where they are now, to where they would like to be far more effectively than if they worked alone.
A coach achieves this by:
- Helping to raise the awareness of a client with powerful questioning techniques so they can get clear on what they truly desire and who they are at their core
- Assisting them to create practical, step-by-step action plans to reach their goals
- Providing on-going support through any changes or obstacles a client may encounter
- Providing a client with tools, techniques and strategies to create lasting change and success
The coach need not be an expert in their clients’ field of work but must posses the necessary skills and the knowledge of the techniques and methods used in coaching.
In coaching you—the client—are the expert. Your coach’s role is to ask powerful questions, act as a sounding board, provide objective assessment and observations, listen fully and actively, challenge your blind spots, and foster shifts in thinking that reveal fresh perspectives.
Coaching focuses on your present and your future! Past experiences are used only to understand the now and to help move forward!
In coaching the focus is on you not the problem itself!
A coaching relationship assumes no judgement from the coach and no shame for the client! It’s a confidential, safe and trusting environment that helps the client develop.
Mentoring
Mentoring is when a senior colleague, seen as more knowledgeable and worldly wise gives advice and provides a role model. Mentoring involves wide ranging discussions that may not be limited to the work context. A mentor is a sponsor with great professional experience in their client’s field of work. Both mentoring and coaching are concerned mainly with achievements in the present and the future.
Counseling
Counseling is working with a client who feels uncomfortable, or dissatisfied with their life. They are seeking guidance and advice. A counselor works remedially on a client’s problem.
Therapy
Therapy is working with the client who seeks relief from psychological or physical symptoms. The client wants emotional healing and relief from mental pain. Therapy deals with the client’s mental health. Coaching deals with the client’s mental growth. The client’s motive for entering therapy or counseling is usually to get away from pain or discomfort, rather than moving towards desired goals. Coaching is not remedial, it is generative. Both therapy and counseling are more likely to involve understanding and working with past experience than coaching.
Training
Training is the process of getting knowledge skills or abilities by study, experience or teaching. The trainer by definition is the expert, and the training course is likely to be targeted on specific skills for immediate results. Training is also likely to be one to many rather than one to one.
Consultancy
A consultant provides expertise and solves business problems, or develops a business as a whole. A consultant deals with the overall organization or specific parts of it and not individuals within it. Consultants only indirectly affect individuals.
Teaching
Teaching passes knowledge from teacher to student. The teacher knows something the student does not. The opposite is true in coaching. The client is the expert and the client has the answers, not the coach.
The benefits of coaching are as wide-ranging as the individuals involved.
Coaching clients usually report positive coaching impacts including:
- Improved communication skills
- Increased self-esteem/self-confidence
- Increased productivity
- Optimized individual/team work performance
- Improved work/life balance
- Increased well-being
- Improved business management strategies
- Expanded professional career opportunities
- Accelerated on-boarding into a new professional role
The Benefits of Coaching in Organizations:
- Empowers individuals and encourages them to take responsibility
- Increases employee and staff engagement
- Improves individual performance
- Helps identify and develop high potential employees
- Helps identify both organizational and individual strengths and development opportunities
- Helps to motivate and empower individuals to excel
- Demonstrates organizational commitment to human resource development
If you want to take advantage of an opportunity or challenge, feel “stuck” on the path to achieving your goals, or simply believe there’s something more to discover in your personal or professional life, partnering with a professional coach could benefit you.
Examples where I can help as a coach:
⇒When you don’t know your goal
You have the A but don’t know the B and have no plan on going forward. We will find together a numerous possibility and the one that better suits you.
⇒ When you know where you want to go, but don’t know how to get there
- Which road to take?
- What decisions you have to make?
- What is your optimal pace? What is too slow, what is too fast?
⇒ When you know your goal, you know how to get there but need support on the way
- You stop doing the things that matter to you
- You lose faith in your goal
- You feel a lack in motivation
- You think the gaps are too deep, obstacles are too big
The most successful coaching partnerships begin with a client who has a clear idea of what they want to accomplish and is open to collaboration and new perspectives.
As a coaching client, your role is to:
- Create the coaching agenda based on personally meaningful goals
- Make your best to define your goals based on the SMART goal concept:
- Assume full responsibility for your own decisions and actions
- Use the coaching process to promote possibility thinking and fresh perspectives
- Engage big-picture thinking and problem-solving skills
- Take the tools, concepts, models and principles provided by your coach and engage in effective forward actions
Working with me you’ll find the simple navigation concept we use when we go on road:
A Where are we now → B where do we want to go → and how can we get there.
How many times did you plan a trip and upon arrival realize it’s not where you wanted to be? Defining the right goals in our life can be just as hard as planning the ideal vacation. Just as a good navigation system will guide you to the nearest parking place of your favorite hotel, working with me in coaching can get you to the exact place you need to be.
We often plan our trip but encounter different obstacles on the way. Like having a branch fall down in the middle of the street. Your navigation system will find a new route for you not loosing site of the purposed destination. I can do the exact same thing through coaching for your life or business goals. You can also discover other possibilities as well, like getting out of your car and remove the branch also assessing if you have the means to do that.
Working with me expect to be challenged. Only by getting out of your comfort zone, real and lasting change can happen. This might seem scary for most of us, but actually it doesn’t have to be that way. For me this means a place of vision and creativity, where you are safe to question all your beliefs, rules you live your life by and see a whole new perspective of how things could be.
I make sure to provide you the space to do that without any judgement, without any shame, where you can explore the endless possibilities you come up with during our sessions.
I use powerful questions and act as a mirror so you can have clarity. Sometimes we’ll get serious but we will also play on occasions as playing is still one of the most powerful tools to see our reality in a different perspective.
In case you would like to know more about me or my coaching methods, please contact me and I’ll be happy to answer all your questions.
Due to unfortunate situation caused by the Covi-19 coaching sessions for the time being can only take place on an online interface.