What is Coaching?
There is a gap between your current reality and desired future. Coaching is all about executing a well-devised plan to bridge this gap. There are three parts to it – know the gap, make a plan, work the plan.
Let us look at the gaps. You are not making it big in your field. You are having a strained relationship. You are not happy with the way you communicate. You are struggling with work-life balance. There is a gap.
You get coached. You know what you are dealing with and what you need to do. The coach asks you questions. The coach listens, and asks more – to clarify, to challenge you if required, and to support you throughout. Finally, a breakthrough! A shift happens. A new insight enters you.
You make a plan. The coach helps fine-tune your plan. The plan is such that you anticipate what will derail it. It is a clear plan with specific steps, a way to measure progress, and a deadline. This makes the plan work. No, what makes the plan work is that you and the coach do a follow-up.
What is different about Coaching?
Coaching honours you as the best source for all the answers you have been waiting for. We believe the coachee has all the resources within – to succeed. To know the answers, you have to ask the right questions. The coach asks. The coachee answers.
Counselling and therapy spend more time on the past. They are meant for restoring normal levels of well-being. Coaching is future-focussed. Coaching goes into the past, asks what can be learned, and takes that learning into planning for the future. We coach a person with normal well-being who wants to achieve a personal best. In any aspect of life.
Is Coaching for you?
It is difficult to convey what coaching as an experience is. You have got to experience it! Coaching respects you as a unique individual. It is a powerful means of self-discovery; you get to know yourself. How magical is that! If you love the opportunity to discover yourself, you will love coaching. Coaching then moves you from self-discovery to self-development. You get to know yourself in a way that triggers something deep inside you. You simply want to channel the full knowledge of who you are into a life that brings out the best in you. Who wouldn’t love that!
Coaching is for everybody who believes knowing oneself is the key to long-lasting success and meaningful happiness. Most, if not all of us, would agree with that.
Example of a Coaching Conversation
Coaching agenda: Client aims for fast-track career success.
Client: I don’t know what to do about getting a promotion
Coach: What are you not sure about?
Client: I have to arrange a meeting with the boss and I never seem to find the time to do it.
Coach: What is getting in the way?
Client: Oh, I don’t know. I am busy or he is busy. I don’t seem to be able to stop long enough to work out how to do it.
Coach: Is there anything else that’s stopping you?
Client: Actually, I keep putting it off because I hate asking.
Coach: And what do you hate about asking?
Client: I am afraid he will say no.
Coach: What makes you think so?
Client: I don’t know. I so much dread a no. It is like the end of the road. I am willing to not ask the question because of the fear of no. But then, how will I get anything without asking! I realize I am standing in my own way.
(Excerpted from Book: Excellence in Coaching)