We know that coaches have a healthy attitude towards other
people and this is demonstrated by the three main things
they do in their coaching sessions.
Firstly they concentrate wholly on the people they coach in
order to raise their levels of awareness. Secondly they use
encouragement and support to make sure that the people they
coach take responsibility for moving their own issues
forward. Thirdly they are open and honest and genuinely
want to see others succeed and in this way they quickly
build strong relationships of trust. Let's now look at each
of these in turn.
Raising awareness
By looking in our bathroom mirror we can raise our
awareness of how we look and use this information to
improve our performance in 'looking good'. Just being aware
of what's going on when we experience certain things is
often all it takes to make improvements - it's a natural
process.
Perhaps you've experienced the sensation of daydreaming
whilst driving to the extent that you can't recall if
you've passed your turning or not. When this happens it's
because we're performing on 'auto- pilot', in other words,
we are not consciously aware of what we are doing. This
situation can be remedied simply by raising awareness
again. The next time you're driving concentrate on how
often this daydreaming happens. Paradoxically, because of
your awareness and concentration it won't happen at all.
Generating responsibility
Coaches also want people to take responsibility for
tackling their own problems and developing their own
abilities. Insecure managers often get a sense of
satisfaction from always rescuing other the people. It
makes them feel good because they've helped someone out and
they believe that the other person will feel good because
they've passed their situation to somebody else. But
these same managers have massive pending trays groaning
under the weight of other people's problems. If we solve a
problem for somebody once, the chances are they'll come
knocking on our door each time they have another one. When
we take responsibility for someone else's situation we have
failed to develop that person and have simply reinforced
their sense of dependence. Over the long term this can lead
to feelings of frustration and resentment.
Building trust
Finally, effective coaches see the virtuous circle of
establishing trust. They realism that by raising awareness
and generating responsibility they are providing people
with a platform to perform at higher levels. As this
happens they will develop a great sense of trust in the
coaching process and in turn answer their coach's questions
with deeper levels of honesty and candidness.
In this way our coaching will help them to become more
aware and responsible and so it goes on.
Raising awareness, generating responsibility and building
trust are the key principles of effective coaching.
----------------------------------------------------
Matt Somers is a coaching practitioner of many years'
experience. He works with a host of clients in North East
England where his firm is based and throughout the UK and
Europe. Matt understands that people are working with their
true potential locked away. He shows how coaching provides
a simple yet elegant key to this lock. His popular
mini-guide "Coaching for an Easier Life" is available FREE
at http://www.mattsomers.com
No comments:
Post a Comment