What Is Coaching? Professional Coaching is a professional partnership between a qualified coach and an individual that supports the achievement of extraordinary results, based on goals set by the individual. Through the process of coaching, individuals focus on the skills and actions needed to successfully produce their personally relevant results.
Coaching is all about YOU and the actions you take -- you choose the focus of conversation, while your coach listens and contributes observations and questions as well as offers concepts and principles that can assist in generating possibilities and identifying actions. Through the coaching process the clarity that is needed to support the most effective actions is achieved. Coaching accelerates your progress by providing greater focus and awareness of possibilities leading to more effective choices. Coaching concentrates on where individuals are now and what they are willing to do to get where they want to be in the future.
How is coaching distinct from other service professions? Therapy—Coaching can be distinguished from therapy in a number of ways. First, coaching is a profession that supports personal and professional growth and development based on individual-initiated change in pursuit of specific actionable outcomes. These outcomes are linked to personal or professional success. Coaching is forward moving and future focused. Therapy, on the other hand, deals with healing pain, dysfunction and conflict within an individual or a relationship between two or more individuals. The focus is often on resolving difficulties arising from the past which hamper an individual's emotional functioning in the present, improving overall psychological functioning, and dealing with present life and work circumstances in more emotionally healthy ways.
Consulting—Consultants may be retained by individuals or organizations for the purpose of accessing specialized expertise. While consulting approaches vary widely, there is often an assumption that the consultant diagnoses problems and prescribes and sometimes implements solutions. In general, the assumption with coaching is that individuals are capable of generating their own solutions, with the coach supplying supportive, discovery-based approaches and frameworks.
Mentoring—Mentoring, which can be thought of as guiding from one’s own experience or sharing of experience in a specific area of industry or career development, is sometimes confused with coaching. Although some coaches provide mentoring as part of their coaching, such as in mentor coaching new coaches, coaches are not typically mentors to those they coach.
Training—Training programs are based on the acquisition of certain learning objectives as set out by the trainer or instructor. Training also assumes a linear learning path which coincides with an established curriculum. Coaching is less linear without a set curriculum plan.
Athletic Development—Though sports metaphors are often used, professional coaching is different from the traditional sports coach. The athletic coach is often seen as an expert who guides and directs the behavior of individuals or teams based on his or her greater experience and knowledge. Professional coaches possess these qualities, but it is the experience and knowledge of the individual or team that determines the direction. Additionally, professional coaching, unlike athletic development, does not focus on behaviors that are being executed poorly or incorrectly. Instead, the focus is on identifying opportunity for development based on individual strengths and capabilities.
What are some benefits of coaching? Individuals who engage in a coaching relationship can expect: To experience fresh perspectives on personal challenges and opportunities
Enhanced thinking and decision making skills
Enhanced interpersonal effectiveness
Increased confidence in carrying out their chosen work and life roles
Enhanced personal effectiveness
Achievement of personally relevant goals
What are some typical reasons someone might work with a coach? There are many reasons that an individual or team might choose to work with a coach, including but not limited to the following: There is a gap in knowledge, skills, confidence, or resources
There is a desire to accelerate results
There is a need for a course correction in work or life due to a setback
There is a lack of clarity, and there are choices to be made
The individual is extremely successful, and success has started to become problematic
Work and life are out of balance, and this is creating unwanted consequences
The individual desires work and life to be simpler, less complicated
There is a need and a desire to better organized and more self-managing
How can I determine if coaching is right for me? Coaching is a partnership; ask yourself if you find it valuable to collaborate, to have another viewpoint and to be asked to consider new perspectives. Also, ask yourself if you are ready to devote the time and the energy to making real changes in your work or life. If the answer to these questions is yes, then coaching may be a beneficial way for you to grow and develop.
To be successful, coaching asks certain things of you, all of which begin with intention: Focus—on yourself, the tough questions, the hard truths--and your success
Observation—the behaviors and communications of others
Listening—to your intuition, assumptions, judgments, and to the way you sound when you speak
Self discipline—to challenge existing attitudes, beliefs and behaviors and to develop new ones which better serve your goals
Style—leveraging personal strengths and overcoming limitations in order to develop a winning style
Decisive actions—however uncomfortable, and in spite of personal insecurities, in order to reach for the extraordinary Compassion—for yourself as you experiment with new behaviors, experiences setbacks—and for others as they do the same
Humor—committing to not take yourself so seriously, using humor to lighten and brighten any situation
Personal control—maintaining composure in the face of disappointment and unmet expectations, avoiding emotional reactivity
Courage—to reach for more than before, to engage in continual self examination, to overcome internal and external obstacles
How is coaching delivered?What does the process look like? The Coaching Process—Coaching typically begins with a personal interview (either face-to-face or by teleconference call) to assess the individual’s current opportunities and challenges, define the scope of the relationship, identify priorities for action, and establish specific desired outcomes. Subsequent coaching sessions may be conducted in person or over the telephone, with each session lasting a previously established length of time. Between scheduled coaching sessions, the individual may be asked to complete specific actions that support the achievement of one’s personally prioritized goals. The coach may provide additional resources in the form of relevant articles, checklists, assessments, or models, to support the individual’s thinking and actions. The duration of the coaching relationship varies depending on the individual’s personal needs and preferences. Contact me for a more specific description of In Tandem's coaching process.
Concepts, models and principles—A variety of concepts, models and principles drawn from the behavioral sciences, management literature, spiritual traditions and/or the arts and humanities, may be incorporated into the coaching conversation in order to increase the individual’s self-awareness and awareness of others, foster shifts in perspective, promote fresh insights, provide new frameworks for looking at opportunities and challenges, and energize and inspire the individual’s forward actions.
Appreciative approach—Coaching incorporates an appreciative approach. The appreciative approach is grounded in what’s right, what’s working, what’s wanted, and what’s needed to get there. Using an appreciative approach, the coach models constructive communication skills and methods the individual or team can utilize to enhance personal communication effectiveness. The appreciative approach incorporates discovery-based inquiry, proactive (as opposed to reactive) ways of managing personal opportunities and challenges, constructive framing of observations and feedback in order to elicit the most positive responses from others, and envisioning success as contrasted with focusing on problems. The appreciative approach is simple to understand and employ, but its effects in harnessing possibility thinking and goal-oriented action can be profound.
How long does a coach work with an individual? The length of a coaching partnership varies depending on the individual's or team’s needs and preferences. For certain types of focused coaching, 3 to 6 months of working with a coach may work. For other types of coaching, people may find it beneficial to work with a coach for a longer period. Factors that may impact the length of time include: the types of goals, the ways individuals or teams like to work, the frequency of coaching meetings, and financial resources available to support coaching.
How can I get the best results from coaching? Overall, be prepared to design the coaching partnership with your coach. For example, think of a strong partnership that you currently have in your work or life. Look at how you built that relationship and what is important to you about partnership. You will want to build those same things into a coaching relationship. Here are a few other tips:
1) Have a personal interview with one or more coaches to determine “what feels right” in terms of the chemistry.
2) Look for stylistic similarities and differences between your coach and you and how these might support your growth.
3) Talk with your coach about what to do if you ever feel things are not going well; make some agreements up front.
4) Remember that coaching is a partnership; be assertive about discussing anything that is of concern at any time.
