Coaching 101 — Importance and Benefits
Coaching isn’t therapy.
It’s product development, with you as the product.
What is Coaching?
Coaching is when an individual works with a trained professional in a process of self-discovery and self-awareness. Working together, the coach helps the individual identify strengths and develop goals. Together, the coach and coachee practice and build the skills and behaviors required to make progress toward their goals.
In simple words, coaching is a process that aims to improve performance and focuses on the ‘here and now’ rather than on the distant past or future.
Who is coaching for?
Coaching is for everyone. It’s an individualized process that can nurture rapid growth and help catalyze sustainable change. But it’s hard work — for both the coach and the individual. And it starts with investing in key impact areas that help to unlock your full potential.
An example is a person who turns in work late puts a project behind schedule, but a coach can help develop time management skills and improve productivity.
Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.
Importance of coaching
Whether it regards your career or personal life, coaching helps empower you to fulfill your goals. The type of support coaching provide is important because it helps people reach valuable yet often challenging goals.
By offering specialized attention, support, and feedback, we help our clients take scary steps toward self-improvement. We can also leverage our expertise to provide our clients with the tools and strategies necessary to reach their goals.
Coaches can help you:
- Increase your self-awareness.
- Set goals and prioritize
- Enhance your communication skills
- Improve self confidence
- Increase your teamwork and leadership skills
- Increase productivity
- Learn from your mistakes
Reasons people might need a coach
If you’re starting to wonder, “Do I need a life coach?” there’s no right answer. While we think anyone can benefit from having a mentor, here are some common scenarios that cause people to seek out a coach:
- Navigating important life changes. A significant change like a new job or divorce can make you feel overwhelmed and out of your element. Coaches can help you get back on track. They’ll offer creative resources, strategies, and tools, as well as emotional support and accountability.
- Feeling stuck. If you feel like you’re stuck in a rut, a coach can help. They’ll learn about your usual motivation techniques, teach you new ones, and help you dive deeper to figure out what caused the rut in the first place.
- Not knowing what’s next. The feeling of hitting a milestone or completing a long-term goal is exhilarating, but what comes next? A coach can help you celebrate this win while also exploring your ambitions to create a concrete action plan for your next goal.
- Needing motivation. No matter what your goal is, if you’re finding it difficult to achieve, a coach can help. Perhaps a nutritionist has set out a dietary plan for you. A health coach will help you set up an accountability tracker and motivate you to stick to your goals. Or maybe you want to ask for a raise before the new year. A career coach will help you improve your communication skills and ensure your motivation sticks around until that important conversation comes.
Benefits of coaching
Coaching is an investment that keeps on giving. It delivers value in the moment and continues to return benefits over a career and lifetime. And for organizations, it can be the tool that helps your employees go from flailing to thriving. After all, individuals face unique stressors and challenges day-to-day. This requires personalized support for our professional development and well-being. And coaching can be a powerful and flexible solution.
The evidence on the impact of coaching is overwhelming. For those who fall in the bottom 25% of any given parameter at the beginning of their professional coaching journey, individuals see these benefits.
[Reference: betterup]
How does coaching work?
This bit is for aspiring or experienced coaches. Start with the basics -
Assess the situation.
Decide what kind of coaching is necessary. Full situational coaching — balancing directive and nondirective coaching moment by moment — isn’t always the answer. There will always be scenarios in which people simply need to be told what to do. At other times — if, say, they’re struggling with deeply important career decisions — it might be appropriate to offer nondirective coaching but nothing more. It’s also possible that your people don’t need any coaching right now but would really value an ear later. Ask them.
Listen.
Here’s a good rule of thumb for most situations: Shut up and listen. Absorb what people tell you, and be alert to what their tone of voice and body language convey. Don’t respond as you usually might; instead, listen just to understand. Occasionally repeat back what you hear, to make sure you have it right, but avoid jumping in. Leave room for silence, especially at the end of your conversation. The most important things often emerge from that silence.
Ask open-ended questions.
Yes/no questions shut down thinking. Open-ended ones expand it. The coaching thought leader Nancy Kline uses a provocative one that goes roughly like this: “What do you already know, without being aware of it, that you will find out in a year?” But the questions don’t have to be complex or clever. Sometimes the simplest — such as “What else?” — are the best. What’s vital is that they demonstrate your authentic interest and belief in the person you are coaching. That’s something to work hard on, even if the person’s performance to date has you doubtful. If you can sincerely suspend judgment, you may be surprised!
Practice nondirective coaching.
Practice makes perfect. Try nondirective coaching outside of work — perhaps in some pro bono or other extracurricular role. Practice it in a disciplined, sustained way until you have confidence, you’re doing it well. You’ll know you’re getting good when the people you’re talking with start to have “Aha!” moments or thank you profusely even though you feel you didn’t tell them anything.
-Karishma
