Coaching has become popular over the last decade, so I thought I would start my blog with a brief synopsis of some of the perspectives on coaching and my take on it.
It's important to be clear what you are looking for when interviewing a potential coach. I will describe what it means to me as a coach, and the benefits you can expect.
When we think about coaching, our first thoughts often lean towards sports. The coach is evaluated on the success and performance of the team. People assumed coaches had the ability to help athletes improve and became better at an activity. So what exactly was their job and what did they do?
My approach to coach aligns very much with International Coaching Federation (ICF) and the Institute for Executive Coaching and Leadership (IECL). As a coach my role is to facilitate a structured conversation during which the counterpart is challenged to reflect on themselves, their abilities, their values and the people and structure he/she operates in. This is done in such a way that it will lead them to discover and unlock new insights, clarity or motivation to improve their performance. It is about making the counterpart discover how they can unlock more of their potential.
What is an executive coach?
Australian Standards define it as coaching services provided to executives and line managers for the purpose of improving skills, performance or work-related professional and personal development.
I would say and executive coach helps professionals in their careers and want to be even more successful and happier, and those who want to reach top-level positions and want to enjoy their success and make a difference to stakeholders and the world. Coaches work to support and extend your executive's skills and insights, and help them to use their strengths and make changes.
What is mentoring?
The role of a mentor is to encourage and assist another in their personal and professional development, usually over a long period of time. Mentoring also refers to a role in which the mentor is an expert at something and the mentee is not, and the mentor explains and tells the mentee about their experiences and how they dealt with certain situations. The idea is that the mentee reflect on the mentor's experience and tries to find similarities to their situation and use this experience as reference for their journey.
What is the difference between coaching and consulting? The first important difference between coaching and consulting is about the organisational context in which the work takes place. Coaching is a service focused on individuals. By contrast, consulting is a service focused on the organisation.
Secondly, equally profound difference in my approach to coaching is that the counterpart has the potential to figure it all out using their skills and knowledge. It requires trust and believe by the coach that the counterpart is able to get to whether they need to go through a structured process of reflective learning. This therefore also requires the professionalism on the coach's part not to engage in coaching when they do not believe this condition is met. Another form of support or service might be more appropriate for the client/counterpart to achieve their desired goals. A consulting role for instance, a service in which the consultant is hired for its expertise, knowledge and skills to help increase performance or achieve a .
In other words, a consultant is expect to have or obtain the answer and how to move forwards, whereas the coach helps the counterpart move forward by unlocking the potential from within the counterpart.
What can a coach do for you?
Coaches can help you along the process by listening to you and helping you figure out what's next for you. They can also be a good sounding board for the discoveries you make along the way. There are a number of things a coach probably won't do for you, but their role is to break down barriers so you can find your own solutions, as well as keep you accountable as you move through the process.
How do I know if I can benefit from working with a coach?
To high performance teams and organisations, coaching is one of the most effective and most cost-effective ways to help the team beat the odds and stay ahead of the competition. Coaching helps employees and organisations to realise more of their potential by reflecting on their landscape and to explore ways to become more productive, effective, efficient and feel more fulfilled in their work. It can also be used as an intervention for employees who are struggling and as a retention strategy.
There is an endless list of topics and issues in which coaching can assist. It is after all a way for you to reflect and help you make sense of your values, beliefs, skills, behaviours, culture and that of your environment and how to best apply that collective mix to the situation. To give you an idea, I have listed a number of typical topics that tend come up in my coaching sessions:
Making decisions easier;
Career management and transitions and
Organisational development and change;
Better managing relationships and teams;
Goal setting and/or clarity;
Engagement;
Conflict management;
Business generation challenges;
Dealing with moral and ethical business challenge;
Better time management;
Maximising Performance;
As a coach, I am here to help you reach your fullest potential by having you clarify your values so you can boost your performance and achieve your goals. Once you know what values are important to you, you can start to make better decisions increase your performance and be clear to environment of what they can expect from you.
In conclusion, coaching can really enrich a person’s life and unlock immense potential. It enables you to tap into the source of creativity within yourself and helps you to hone your skills in ways that might never have previously occurred to you. By creating the space for those things that you have kept reserved for so long, you are creating a new and richer experience for yourself and for others who will become beneficiaries of your coaching sessions.
I hope you have enjoyed my first blog, If you have any questions or comments please leave a comment or contact me directly mw@willenborg.com.au.
Otherwise, see you next week!
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