Coaching

I’ve been tied up with some vacation and other stuff and have not been able to make an entry recently. That is frustrating to me. This will be a short one, but I wanted to share something that may be of use.

Coaching is an extremely powerful tool to be used as you strive to institute effective leadership with those you influence. Do you know how to apply the coaching approach to your day-to-day life? At its core, coaching is a practice you can institute to assist you in unlocking the capabilities of others. People are usually more capable and adept than they give themselves credit for. My personal mission statement is to “inspire greatness in others” and that is one reason why coaching is so important to me. Many of the same processes used in coaching can be used to foster healthy conversations and improve relationships in your everyday life as well. Effective coaching begins with understanding the values and identity of others. The values people hold in esteem will allow you to understand what is most important to them and how to better motivate and influence them. Achieving this level of relational understanding opens up opportunities for coaching. It allows you to use active listening skills, inquiries and feedback during your conversations. Productive conversations open up opportunities for the best level of thinking and allow us to co-create solutions. Coaching requires both parties to create a vision for what they want to accomplish, set goals for how to get there and then being accountable for the results. These same conversation tools and elements are equally valuable in working with people in family relationships, friendships and business relationships. A few tips for taking the coach approach in your conversations and relationships:

• Pay attention to your language
• What words foster collaboration?
• What words limit co-creative thinking?
• Let go of expertise
• A coach's job is not to be the expert or have all the answers
• Stay curious and withhold judgment
• Have patience
• Listen deeply
• Listening, and the silence that is a byproduct of not taking, can create empowering experiences
• Learn to hear what the other person is saying, listen to your own responses, and process nonverbal cues that include the environment, body language and your intuition
• Ask powerful questions
• Open-ended or evocative questions draw out unspoken wisdom
• We gain deeper understanding, consider different perspectives and explore new possibilities
• Provide both accountability and support
• Set and share goals so that others understand the commitments
• Support them in achieving
• Identify when we are not on target