Benefits of Coaching
A Sounding Board. Support and Listening.
Coaching provides you with a rare opportunity where someone is there just for you. There is no judgement and no other agenda other than to listen to you and support just you. Your coach is an objective, non-judgemental pair of eyes outside of your life and is an ideal sounding board to help you try new things and see things from a new perspective.
Get to Where You Want to Be
Coaching will help pull you out of the detail and drama and move you forward into the future. Coaching is about moving forward rather than analysing the past. It is designed to get you from where you are now in your personal and/or professional life to where you want to be. Positive Feedback – Empowerment
Coaching is designed to empower you, motivate you and develop your potential, not to tell you what to do. It is about what can be done to ensure your success by providing positive feedback and reinforcement rather than concentrating on what went wrong. The coach will provide genuine encouragement and support with a view to maximising your confidence and performance.
Solution Focus for Lasting Change
Coaching is solution and results-focused and is action based; it is a process to support you in taking real action in identified areas that are important to you to create lasting change.
Accountability and Challenge
Coaching is also about holding you accountable for your actions. That may involve some ‘tough love’ at times, as your coach is also there to challenge you. Your coach is there to help you find the solutions rather than give them to you, although you can also invite your coach to have a consultant or mentor role within your coaching program, if appropriate.
Developing great habits that serve the individual
Coaching can you identify and change habits. The best end-result is that you have new ways of working in your life that will continue to move you forward after the coaching series is completed.
Emotional Intelligence
You are encouraged to become aware of the role of your emotions with a view to recognising where you are at and to determine how to move ahead effectively, irrespective of what emotions are present.
Improved Performance
Coaching is one of the most effective ways of improving performance and fast tracking any type of learning.
Commitment
Coaching is a professional relationship that requires commitment from both the coach and you. Coaching will only work if you are ready for and looking for change.
What a Coach can do for you:
- Sort out the jumble of thoughts & ideas whirling around in your head into a clear direction of what you want.
- Develop strategies and actions that really focus your time and energy to get you to where you want to be.
- Hold you accountable for your actions so you stop talking about it and actually do it!
- Be a sounding board and confidante with no hidden agenda other than to listen to you and help you to where you want to be.
- Be a fresh pair of eyes to help you step back and ‘see the woods for the trees’, to help you look at things from a different perspective to improve your ‘game’.
What Does a Coach Do?
- “A coach’s job,” says Cheryl Richardson, past-president of the International Coach Federation “is to find what clients most care about then get it to the top of their list.”
- A coach will:
- Facilitate the exploration of needs, motivations, desires, skills and thought processes to assist people in making real, lasting change.
- Use powerful questioning techniques to facilitate the client’s own thought processes in order to identify solutions and actions, rather than taking a wholly directive approach.
- “Use powerful questioning techniques. Support you.”
- Support the client in setting appropriate goals and methods of assessing progress in relation to these goals.
- Observe, actively listen, ask questions and clarify information to understand the client’s situation.
- “Observe, actively listen, ask questions and clarify information”
- Creatively apply tools and techniques that encourage a commitment to action and the development of lasting personal growth & change.
- Maintain unconditional positive regard for the client, which means that the coach is at all times supportive and non-judgemental of the client, their views, lifestyle and aspirations.
- “Maintain unconditional positive regard… at all times supportive and non-judgemental”
- Ensure that clients develop personal competencies and do not develop unhealthy dependencies on the coaching or mentoring relationship.
- “Ensure the process promotes independency”
- Occasionally offer advice, opinions or suggestions from his/her ideas and experience, but generally only with the client’s permission. Both parties understand that the client is free to accept or decline what is offered and takes the ultimate responsibility for action. The client does not relinquish the responsibility for creating and maintaining desired outcomes nor does the coach take full responsibility for them
- Evaluate the outcomes of the process, using objective measures wherever possible to ensure the relationship is successful and the client is achieving their goals.
- “Evaluate the outcomes of the process to ensure the relationship is successful”
- Encourage clients to continually improve competencies and to develop new developmental alliances where necessary to achieve their goals.
- Manage the relationship to ensure the client receives the appropriate level of service and that programs are neither too short, nor too long.
- The International Coaching Federation has outlined Core Competencies it deems are core or critical for any competent coach to demonstrate. Please click on the link http://www.icfaustralasia.com/ICFCoreCompetencies.php for more information.