Article One of a five part series
Had an interesting call from a local client last week, they could hardly speak for laughing. Very excited at the progress they had made in a first coaching session (client is a very energetic property agent here in Singapore), they went out and told friends down at the coffee shop they were getting a coach. “Wah! Going Genting so early in the year. Hey you better make sure you keep enough money for Ang Pow, you know. New Year very soon you know!”
OK, I just made that story up. And my overseas readers won’t even get the joke (explanations later) But I do find a lot of people are still unclear about what we are talking about in the world of business and personal coaching. So I thought it would be worth putting my views forward. Then at least you all know where I am coming from. Keeping it short and sweet, there will be 5 parts to this, so watch out or the next bits over the coming weeks.
Coaching Defined (My way)
It is worth some clarification of our definition of what we mean by coaching. In the 1980s everybody became a “consultant”. It became a fashionable term and therefore adopted by all as a positioning. This led to much disillusionment in the marketplace and frustration for companies who thought they were buying a level of expertise and process knowledge that just wasn’t there. A similar trend is emerging with the term “Coaching”.
There are different types of coaching. The original term comes from sports, where it refers to an expert with a body of knowledge who TELLS people what to do to improve their performance. This is fine. Sports had the term first, our industry has simply borrowed it. But in business, that is consulting, not coaching. However even in sports there did emerge some differences. Starting in the world of tennis, Tim Gallwey developed a non-directive approach to sports coaching. By the eighties was being utilised as an approach to teaching business leaders to coach their teams for performance. In the business and personal coaching arenas, the various professional bodies around the world such as the International Coach Federation define coaching very clearly as a true non-directive process.
The unfortunate development has been the adoption of the term “coaching” by a growing number of consultants, mentors, and advisors. This has led to much confusion in the minds of the “buying public” corporate or private.
So when we are talking about coaching or a coach-centric approach, we means we are leveraging non-directive coaching, the single most powerful communication process available to human beings.
Coaching is an interactive process that helps individuals and organisations to develop more rapidly and produce more satisfying results. Coaches work with clients in all areas including business, career, finances, health and relationships. As a result of coaching clients set better goals, take more action, make better decisions and more fully use their natural strengths.
Professional coaches are trained to listen and observe, to customise their approach to the client's needs and to elicit solutions and strategies from the client. They believe that the client is naturally creative and resourceful and the coach's job is to provide support to enhance the skills and potential the client already has. While the coach provides feedback and an objective perspective, the client is responsible for taking the steps to produce the results he or she desires.
My simple definition of non-directive coaching is: Help people get clarity on where they are, get clarity on where they want to be, then work with them to develop and execute a plan of how to get from here to there.
When managers in an organisation add the skill of non-directive coaching to their management tool-kit, the entire organisation can leverage the power of this process for immense communication and performance improvement.
Tony Latimer
Asia’s Sales Coach
The Really Big Impact Company
3 Raffles Place #07-01, Singapore 048617
+65 6329 9688
info@reallybigimpact.com
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