What is coaching?
When I mention I am an ICF coach (but more generally a coach), people ask me: and what does that mean???
I admit that for years, before I got to the point of taking a specific course on the subject, even I had unclear ideas.
I thought coaching was motivating: wrong.
That coaching was mentoring: wrong.
That it was a subspecies of psychology: totally wrong.
Thus, coaching isn't about giving trainings (although in some areas a coach may have specializations and thus be more specifically supportive). A coach is a partner in his or her own right.
He/she is a partner because it bases the entire relationship on equality, maximum mutual trust, total respect for privacy and, above all, in suspension of judgment.
In fact, a coach does not deal with phobias, traumas, or focus on the coachee's (client's) past.
A coach "ferries" the coachee by navigating toward rediscovering his or her potential by starting in the present and working toward a future goal.
The coach, first of all, establishes an equal relationship with the coachee and develops a real creative process with him/her.
moreover:
A coach helps to bring out one's resources in order to use them to the fullest and in particular:
- It helps to open up to new perspectives
- Improves ability to process and explore
- Increases interpersonal effectiveness
- Instills greater trust in relationships
- It pushes for action toward its goal.
- Makes solutions and strategies emerge from the customer himself
- allows full autonomy and responsibility
- Recognizes and celebrates the coachee's progress
- Helps bring clarity
- Asks the right questions to find out one's motivations
Why might a person or team decide to undertake coaching?
- Facing a new work challenge or new opportunity
- improve self-awarness
- Discovering one's own resources for dealing with certain situations
- manage failure in the work environment
- Improving relationships with others
- establish a work-life balance
- Managing success (this can also become a problem)
- Identify one's potential
Why won't a coach give advice?
Very simple...
Dare consigli può
- create dependence while coaching means, first of all, giving the coachee the tools to be independent
- deresponsibilizing the coachee
- make people lose their self-esteem
- Generate insecurity and distrust in one's own means.
A coach therefore assumes that all people already have the resources to change things. What is needed is, precisely, to become aware of it and mark the right direction toward one's personal or business success.
How many types of coaching are there?
There are a variety of types of paths that can be taken. Some "individuals" (in the private life but not only) and some (in business and sports) that can be done in groups or teams.
Depending on the course, a coach may focus on various topics such as: self-esteem, time management, managing common goals, productivity, sports, conflict management, improving decision making, stress management...
Surely I must have forgotten 15 others at least...
What is certain is that there are studies that have shown that although coaching has personal development as its ultimate goal, it has brought tangible results within companies on so many fronts.
Indeed, some studies have shown how coaching can lead to a high return on investment and that the only obstacle to implementing a coaching policy lies precisely in cultural reticence and/or "fear" of training managers. This would result in setting in motion a no-win process where coaching, for purely "corporate health" reasons must be extended to any hierarchical level.
And I hope that even the most skeptical can dissolve their last reticence to embark on a path full of pleasant surprises.
At this point I think I have accomplished the task I set myself.
But I will never get tired of thinking about the joy I feel in seeing people's faces light up with awareness; hearing words like "thank you for asking the right questions"; or sensing the emotion in the words of those who finally had the courage to pull out their fears and pains and make them a strength.
It is not the coach who works miracles, it is us as people who recover our strength, our principles, our values, those principles and values that make us immovable, that make us authentic and make us live life as we really want to, finding happiness within ourselves and not outside.
