Coaching
What is coaching?
Coaching is the most effective form of working with individuals and groups. As opposed to other methods of working with people (such as training, mentoring, consultancy etc.), coaching aims directly at changing the thinking and attitudes of people. It is an aid in personality development and as such ensures deep and lasting change in performance and overall professionalism. It helps in situations where merely filling the gaps in knowledge and skills is not enough, but where it is necessary to find new perspectives and attitudes, to overcome internal barriers such as fear or low self-esteem, develop creativity, come up with new ideas and methods for achieving better results.
You can always tell when a company is regularly using a coach – not only by the performance, but in the change in company culture, usually in the direction of greater responsibility, entrepreneurship and independence of its people.
What does a coach’s work entail?
Very simply, it is a dialogue wherein the coach mainly asks questions and helps their partners to think in new and different ways, gain insight into their own needs and assumptions, and in so doing, gain new energy and change their behaviours.
A coach knows how to speak with a partner in such a way as to reach mutual understanding. They can find what their partner hears and doesn’t hear, how they think, what is touchy and what is motivating. They know how to discover what drives the person. All this allows the coach to help each individual client to map out the necessary changes unique to them.
Coaching is therefore especially appropriate in situations when a coachee is not able to attain the desired results by themselves or with the help of their manager.
For this reason, coaching is suitable for the fulfilment of highly ambitious goals or for resolving the most difficult issues and chronic problems.
While a coach is able to get to the bottom of problems and comprehend their wider context, their main job is to help clients to find effective solutions—usually solutions previously unimagined.
A coach’s work is based on a close trusting relationship with coaches. This allows the coachee to speak openly and to work without fear on underlying aspects of their personality, thus enabling them to draw the maximum from their inner potential.
A coach is not a finder of solutions. Instead, the coach is an expert on relationships and communication. The coach acts as a catalyst. As such, theirs is supporting role, eliciting self-reflection and thus helping the partners to work on themselves – however, change is the partner’s job and theirs is the responsibility for attaining coaching goals.
Coaching in business
A coach helps to harmonise the employer´s and employees´needs – he/she negotiates the goals for coaching with a coachee´s manager in such a way that the coachee understands these goals and finds them motivating. Then the coach discusses the coachee´s needs and wishes in the framework of these goals. Thus he/she helps them to find the motivation, desire and resources for better performance.
Coaching goals can include anything concerning the coachee´s professionalism and performance. For example, a goal for a salesperson can be: to extend the client portfolio by at least five companies and to increase turnover of XY product by … CZK by the end of 2010.
Who is a candidate for coaching?
Generally speaking, everyone who is interested in working on themselves and developing as professionals and as persons.
We coach all types and levels of employees, from owners, managing directors, board members and senior managers to specialists and line employees.
Coaching goals
Coaching is a universal means of working with people. Thus it can be used for reaching any type of objective. For that matter, the proper setting of objectives is one of the greatest arts of the coach.
To illustrate possible objectives, consider the following:
— To considerably increase competencies, independence and performance
— To actively overcome problems
— To build strong and trusting relationships
— To develop the ability to effectively direct oneself and others
— To think more strategically, conceptually and creatively and to eliminate day-to-day thinking
— To enhance teamwork and to use its synergistic effect
— To be prepared for change, be willing to accept it and to use it for one´s own growth
— To be able to think and behave positively and pro-actively
— To be more open and resilient in personal relations
— To enhance one´s self-esteem