Lessons learned in coaching
Coaching is a practical asset everyone needs in life. It is practiced in workplaces, sports, and other life experiences. Aimed at improving one’s performance and maintain their focus, coaching entails collaborating with clients or concerned audience through a creative process which inspires them and exploits their potentials. However, coaching has always been confused with mentoring to mean the same thing (Vikaraman, Mansor, and Hamzah, 2017). This two have distant meanings in that mentoring will involve having the same person for a more extended period with no keen focus to be put in. In most cases, coaches are always experienced people who also have undergone the same process from fellow qualified people (Media Coaching Benefits Employees and Organization, 2017).
It is beneficial in a way that the client gets assistance on how to achieve a mutually identified set of goals (Breckman, 2006). In addition, personal satisfaction and professional performance are improved. Lastly, with an appropriately aligned client and coach organization, the process should be efficient and helpful.
Coaching is a skill, which improves the leadership part of an individual. For instance, let us take this instance of coaching a class of students. After being able to guide them through different lessons, controlling the entire number would require courage. Thus, being able to command them on what to do and lead them in what is supposed to do instill leadership in them. Secondly, coaching instilled a relationship between the client, the coach, and me. Spending hours with students, players or working mates builds a bond between them (Nanduri, 2017). This bond created with the aim of accomplishing the same goal would not be easily broken. In future, there will be respect between the two parties. In career, whatever is learned from sharing ideas between me and the client helped reinforce relationships. For one to be able to motivate the other through coaching, they need to develop a good relationship between themselves.
Thirdly, everyone is yet to know everything. Thus, every person has something new to learn about from their friends or tutors. For this, no matter the age, or success in life, everyone needs a coach. During sessions, I would find even the aged who are trying to learn something new. This gives a reason why coaching is fundamental (Day, 2013). In addition, as a coach, I was supposed to be available, particularly during scheduled times. It keeps the trust and bond between the two useful and even stronger. This improved the little communication skills I previously had. Lastly, the essential lesson learned about being a coach is expressing oneself as for how they are. In most cases, authentically expressing ourselves has been really an issue. For example, it rarely does work for people who try to put on facades away in order to get approval from others (McDowall and O’Broin, 2013). This harms for a long-term rather than being of good. What humans really need to do is to put their real selves out there expressing their full potentials in the needs, beliefs, feelings, ideas, and dreams.
Practical lessons learned
First, being a good coach requires one to be a good listener. For instance, I had to be ready to listen and understand questions and pleas from my clients. This will improve the coaching process, as there will be a good understanding between me and my clients. With excellent listening skills, I will be able to efficiently communicate too (Kormanik, 2009). A good coaching lesson should end with positive remarks from the client. This means that the client should be satisfied with the entire experiences, from being motivated to have the required skills.
Secondly, a good plan is essential for any coaching session. Proper arrangement of work and lessons required for the entire process will ease the task. It will even motivate the client(s) into following what their coach does. Thus, a positive attitude will be created towards the coach from their student, and the coach will be positively motivated to work with the client. In addition, different clients have different ways in which they understand what they are being taught. This helps a coach to know how they will plan for their work. For instance, some clients adapt and take in stuff quite quickly while others are exactly the opposite. It is just by human nature that it will happen that way. Thus, it is essential to verify the type of client one is dealing with.
Lastly, as a coach, I had to instill patience in myself. This entails patience from the handling of clients, listening to their needs, adapting with their speed of learning among other (Solstad et al., 2018). Generally, it requires a mile for a good coach to understand the team they are dealing with. Some might have personal issues extending them to class while some due to the first impression might have a dislike for the coach. Hence, it is important to be patient with the team being dealt with (Jepson, 2016).
First, which usually happens to the clients who are not keen on grasping ideas quickly is lack of concentration. However, this is not their fault; some clients found it hard to concentrate over an extended period of time. Thus, occasionally, I had to break from the ordinary routine and instead do a distinctive thing. This could include making a joke. It will get back the learning mood of the client, and thus concentration will be regained. Secondly, some clients tend to lack focus up to the end of their learning activities (Wenson, 2010). For instance, one will find that they have shifted their goals instead of concluding what they are intended to work on. Here, I had to warn my clients that they might experience this before the whole process starts. In addition, I aided some of them in making a list of what they want to learn which will help them keep track of what has been accomplished and what is yet to be achieved (Vestal, 2007).
Problems Faced During Coaching
Thirdly, some clients set goals so high or too low for them to work on. Too high goals will make the client lose their faith and rather blame the coach. On the other hand, lowgoals might end up being quickly finished hence the client might feel no need of working with the coach. Thus, a realistic goal should be set with the help of the coach. Here, I had to continually remind the client of some goals, low, which might end up getting finished quickly but with their aid, the whole process might take the stipulated time. Lastly, some clients took my tme during coaching time in vain (Yang, 2016). Thismeant that I had to constantly remind clients that goals can only be accomplished when true actions are involved.
With coaching, generally, I learned a lot from my clients and even from the process. One, emotional intelligence is a way that I easily understood and this I could tell from most of my clients whom I coached. Secondly, building good relationships enabled me to show empathy to my clients. An important skill learned is communication. In most cases, coaches are usually the best communicators with a good command of both the verbal and non-verbal cues. This goes in hand with listening skills (Yang, 2016). As they are able to gather both vital and insignificant information, they develop good listening skills, which help them through their career. I was able to gain and improve in the two skills as time passed by. Lastly, with the questioning skills I acquired, I had thoughts that I could counsel, advice, and individual.
Key areas of improvement entail the communicating and listening sectors. Despite clients being able to understand what I taught them through the process, they all had a common plea of them not being able to communicate effectively. This I could tell with the feedback they gave out. This could be due to lack of confidence, as it was my first coaching experience away from class work. With time, am sure of improvement as I meet different characteristics. Definitely, I will eventually adapt, and the communication and listening will be perfect.
Conclusion
Coaching is one of the exciting careers one can adapt with. This is because it does not entail much energy but rather having a good understanding of the team one is dealing with. In addition, it helps in building relationships, which can be long term. Additionally, as one gets more experience in coaching, the more they get used to it while also acquiring vast skills in life and general knowledge. In a personal experience, I enjoyed the whole process.
References
Breckman, B. (2006). Human Relationship Skills: Coaching and Self-Coaching – Fourth Edition Human Relationship Skills: Coaching and Self-Coaching – Fourth Edition. Nursing Standard, 21(14), pp.30-30.
Day, D. (2013). Victorian coaching communities: exemplars of traditional coaching practice. Sports Coaching Review, 2(2), pp.151-162.
Jepson, Z. (2016). An investigation and analysis of the continuous professional development and coaching supervision needs of newly qualified and experienced coaches: a small-scale practitioner-based study. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research,and Practice, 9(2), pp.129-142.
Kormanik, M. (2009). Coaching Skills: A Handbook, 2nd ed.20091Jenny Rogers. Coaching Skills: A Handbook, 2nd ed. Maidenhead: Open University Press/McGraw?Hill 2008. 291 pp. £21.99 ($43.95), ISBN: 139780335225521 Paperback. Journal of European Industrial Training, 33(3), pp.297-298.
McDowall, A. and O’Broin, A. (2013). Coaching: what is new in 2013. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research,and Practice, 6(1), pp.1-4.
Media Coaching Benefits Employees and Organization. (2017). Nonprofit Communications Report, 15(8), pp.7-7.
Nanduri, V. (2017). How the participants experienced a coaching intervention conducted during company restructure and retrenchment: a qualitative research study using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research,and Practice, pp.1-11.
Solstad, B., Ivarsson, A., Haug, E. and Ommundsen, Y. (2018). Youth Sport Coaches’ Well-Being Across the Season: The Psychological Costs and Benefits of Giving Empowering and Disempowering Sports Coaching to Athletes. International Sport Coaching Journal, pp.1-12.
Vestal, K. (2007). Coaching for interpersonal skills. Nurse Leader, 5(4), pp.6-8.
Vikaraman, S., Mansor, A. and Hamzah, M. (2017). Mentoring and Coaching Practices for Beginner Teachers—A Need for Mentor Coaching Skills Training and Principal’s Support. Creative Education, 08(01), pp.156-169.
Wenson, J. (2010). After-coaching leadership skills and their impact on direct reports: recommendations for organizations. Human Resource Development International, 13(5), pp.607-616.
Yang, Y. (2016). Lessons learnt from contextualizing a UK teaching thinking program in a conventional Chinese classroom. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 19, pp.198-209.
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