WHAT IS PROFESSIONAL COACHING?
International Coach Federation defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential, which is particularly important in today’s uncertain and complex environment. Coaches honor the client as the expert in his or her life and work and believe every client is creative, resourceful and whole. 1) Discover, clarify, and align with what the client wants to achieve, 2) Encourage client self-discovery, 3) Elicit client-generated solutions and strategies, and 4) Hold the client responsible and accountable. This process helps clients dramatically improve their outlook on work and life, while improving their leadership skills and unlocking their potential.
IS COACHING RIGHT FOR ME?
To determine whether you or your company could benefit from coaching, start by summarizing what you would expect to accomplish in coaching. When an individual or business has a fairly clear idea of the desired outcome, a coaching partnership can be a useful tool for developing a strategy for how to achieve that outcome with greater ease.
Since coaching is a partnership, ask yourself whether collaboration, other viewpoints, and new perspectives are valued. Also, ask yourself whether you or your business is ready to devote the time and the energy to making real changes. If the answer is yes, then coaching may be a beneficial way to grow and develop.
HOW IS COACHING DIFFERENT FROM OTHER SERVICES?
Professional coaching focuses on setting goals, creating outcomes and managing personal change. Sometimes it’s helpful to understand coaching by distinguishing it from other personal or organizational support professions.
Therapy:
Therapy deals with healing pain, dysfunction and conflict within an individual or in relationships. The focus is often on resolving difficulties arising from the past that hamper an individual's emotional functioning in the present, improving overall psychological functioning, and dealing with the present in more emotionally healthy ways. Coaching, on the other hand, supports personal and professional growth based on self-initiated change in pursuit of specific actionable outcomes. These outcomes are linked to personal or professional success. Coaching is future focused. While positive feelings/emotions may be a natural outcome of coaching, the primary focus is on creating actionable strategies for achieving specific goals in one's work or personal life. The emphases in a coaching relationship are on action, accountability, and follow through.
Consulting:
Individuals or organizations retain consultants for their expertise. While consulting approaches vary widely, the assumption is the consultant will diagnose problems and prescribe and, sometimes, implement solutions. With coaching, the assumption is that individuals or teams are capable of generating their own solutions, with the coach supplying supportive, discovery-based approaches and frameworks.
Mentoring:
A mentor is an expert who provides wisdom and guidance based on his or her own experience. Mentoring may include advising, counseling and coaching. The coaching process does not include advising or counseling, and focuses instead on individuals or groups setting and reaching their own objectives.
Training:
Training programs are based on objectives set out by the trainer or instructor. Though objectives are clarified in the coaching process, they are set by the individual or team being coached, with guidance provided by the coach. Training also assumes a linear learning path that coincides with an established curriculum. Coaching is less linear without a set curriculum.
Athletic Development:
Though sports metaphors are often used, professional coaching is different from sports coaching. The athletic coach is often seen as an expert who guides and directs the behavior of individuals or teams based on his or her greater experience and knowledge. Professional coaches possess these qualities, but their experience and knowledge of the individual or team determines the direction. Additionally, professional coaching, unlike athletic development, does not focus on behaviors that are being executed poorly or incorrectly. Instead, the focus is on identifying opportunity for development based on individual strengths and capabilities.
WHAT ARE SOME TYPICAL REASONS FOR NEEDING A COACH?
An individual or team might choose to work with a coach for many reasons, including but not limited to the following:
1. Something urgent, compelling or exciting is at stake
(a challenge, stretch goal or opportunity)
2. A gap exists in knowledge, skills, confidence or resources
3. A desire to accelerate results
4. A lack of clarity with choices to be made
5. Success has started to become problematic
6. Work and life are out of balance,
creating unwanted consequences
7. Core strengths need to be identified, along with
how best to leverage them
How is coaching delivered?
WHAT DOES
THE PROCESS
LOOK LIKE?
Coaching typically begins with a personal interview (either face-to-face or by teleconference call) to assess the individual's or business’ current opportunities and challenges, define the scope of the relationship, identify priorities for action and establish specific desired outcomes. Subsequent coaching sessions may be conducted in person or over the telephone, with each session lasting a previously established length of time. Between scheduled coaching sessions, the individual may be asked to complete specific actions that support the achievement of one's personally prioritized goals. The coach may provide additional resources in the form of relevant articles, checklists, assessments or models to support the individual's or business’ thinking and actions. The duration of the coaching relationship varies depending on needs and preferences.
Assessments:
A variety of assessments are available to support the coaching process, depending upon the needs and circumstances of the individual or business. Assessments provide objective information that can enhance self-awareness, as well as awareness of others and their circumstances; provide a benchmark for creating coaching goals and actionable strategies; and offer a method for evaluating progress.
Concepts, models and principles:
A variety of concepts, models and principles drawn from the behavioral sciences, management literature, spiritual traditions and/or the arts and humanities may be incorporated into the coaching conversation to increase self-awareness and awareness of others, foster shifts in perspective, promote fresh insights, provide new frameworks for looking at opportunities and challenges, and energize and inspire forward actions.
Appreciative approach:
Coaching incorporates an appreciative approach, grounded in what's right, what's working, what's wanted and what's needed to get there. Using an appreciative approach, the coach models constructive communication skills and methods to enhance personal communication effectiveness. He or she incorporates discovery-based inquiry, proactive (as opposed to reactive) ways of managing personal opportunities and challenges, constructive framing of observations and feedback to elicit the most positive responses from others, and visions of success as contrasted with focusing on problems. The appreciative approach is simple to understand and employ, and its reach can be profound, opening up new possibilities and spurring action.
HOW LONG DOES A COACH WORK WITH AN INDIVIDUAL?
The length of a coaching partnership varies depending on the individual's or team's needs and preferences. For certain types of focused coaching, three to six months of working may work. For other types of coaching, people may find it beneficial to work with a coach for a longer period. Factors that may impact the length of time include: the types of goals, the ways individuals or teams prefer to work, the frequency of coaching meetings and financial resources available to support coaching.
WORKING AS PARTNERS:
ROLES OF THE COACH
AND INDIVIDUAL
The Coach:
Provides objective assessment and observations that foster the individual's or team’s self-awareness and awareness of others
Listens closely to fully understand the individual's or team's circumstances
Acts as a sounding board in exploring possibilities and implementing thoughtful planning and decision making
Champions opportunities and potential, encouraging stretch and challenge commensurate with personal strengths and aspirations
Fosters shifts in thinking that reveal fresh perspectives
Challenges blind spots to illuminate new possibilities and support the creation of alternative scenarios
Maintains professional boundaries in the coaching relationship, including confidentiality, and adheres to the coaching profession's code of ethics.
The Individual:
Creates the coaching agenda based on personally meaningful coaching goals
Uses assessments and observations to enhance self-awareness and awareness of others
Envisions personal and/or organizational success
Assumes full responsibility for personal decisions and actions
Utilizes the coaching process to promote possibility thinking and fresh perspectives
Takes courageous action in alignment with personal goals and aspirations
Engages big-picture thinking and problem-solving skills
Takes the tools, concepts, models and principles provided by the coach and engages in effective forward actions
WHAT DOES COACHING
ASK OF AN INDIVIDUAL?
To be successful, coaching asks certain things, all of which begin with intention. Additionally, clients should:
1. Focus on one's self, the tough questions, the hard
truths and one's success.
2. Observe the behaviors and communications of others.
3. Listen to one's intuition, assumptions, judgments,
and to the way one sounds when one speaks.
4. Challenge existing attitudes, beliefs and behaviors
and develop new ones that serve one's goals in a superior way.
5. Leverage personal strengths and overcome limitations
to develop a winning style.
6. Take decisive actions, however uncomfortable and in spite
of personal insecurities, to reach for the extraordinary.
7. Show compassion for one's self while learning new
behaviors and experiencing setbacks, and to show that
compassion for others as they do the same.
8. Commit to not take one's self so seriously, using
humor to lighten and brighten any situation.
9. Maintain composure in the face of disappointment and
unmet expectations, avoiding emotional reactivity.
10. Have the courage to reach for more than before
while engaging in continual self examination without fear.
WHAT DOES EXECUTIVE COACHING
COST AND
HOW DOES ONE GET STARTED?
Please call David Galowich at 312-952-5020 for a complimentary consultation about your goals and to discuss what you would like to get out of coaching. During that discussion we will make recommendations for a coaching program and determine the appropriate fee structure for the engagement.