Coaching

Coaching 

Helping individuals help themselves

On 26^th January 2011, Jeddah had unprecedented rain that led to flooding on the roads. This led to extraordinary personal or business loss in terms of cars getting totaled to people spending umpteenth hours walking on the flooded streets to the shop mechanizes wasted. Following the social media, in such a situation, made me realize that there are “generally” two groups of people  (a) Who are sharing sad pictures of the city and blaming the issue to somebody and (b) People who have moved forward and are now helping in rehabilitation. What I have come to conclude is that it all boils down to the “Mind-Set” that lead us to react differently to the same situation. It all boils down to how we “lead our brain” in a specific situation as discussed http://hunt-for-motivation.blogspot.com/2011/01/lead-brain.html

A few days back, we talked about how can we PUSH people towards a positive mindset. http://hunt-for-motivation.blogspot.com/2011/01/pushing-people-to-give-in-their-best.html . Unluckily, not all the individuals are willing to take “dictation” so today we will talk about how can we COACH people towards helping themselves.

Coaching is a process that enables the individual achieve their full potential.

 It helps the individual find their “blind spot”, purposefully moving them out of their comfort zone and stretching oneself to new heights.


It is different from teaching or facilitating. In teaching/facilitating the instructor tells what is the right way of doing thing. However, in coaching, the coach only asks the questions to the coachee to help him find the direction themselves. In the end, coaching bears better results, because, people have more ownership to their ideas rather than somebody else’s ideas.


Now the question appears, how to go on about doing coaching.  Lets follow the GROW model (Goal, Reality, Options and Will) of coaching http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_89.htm

§         Goal (Establishing a Goal) i.e.

o        Agree on the topic of discussion with the coachee

o        Agree on specific, measurable, realistic and time bound objectives that the coachee wants to achieve post this engagement.

§         Reality (Examining the current reality) i.e. asking the coachee to describe the current reality, this will help in knowing where they are. Coach should not assume the current situation, neither put words in coachee’s mouth, but should only be listening and asking questions so as the coachee can personally understand the reality. The question one can ask are

o        What is happening now?

o        How often does this happen?

o        How does it impact your life?

o        Is it a logical problem, emotional problem or a feeling issue?

o        What have you tried to overcome this?

o        What has worked?

o        What has not worked?

§         Options (Exploring the Options) i.e. asking the coachee how does he/she moves forward, its time to explore what is possible, meaning all the possible options should be put on the table by the coachee (not the coach). As a coach your responsibility is to help your team member generate as many options as possible via probing on

o        What can we do to change the situation?

o        Are their any alternatives to this, any other alternative?

o        Lets change your perspective, and consider yourself as a third person looking at this situation, what is he seeing, what options will he recommend you?

o        How would your life change, once this problem is overcome?

o        Have you seen anybody else with this issue, what did they do, can you do the same?

o        What constraints are there?

o        How can you weigh different options?

As a coach, one should not suggest options, but ask questions in leading the team member towards different options.

§         Will (Establishing the Will to improve) i.e. Most probable, by now, your coachee will have a good ideas on how to achieve their Goal. This is a major step forward, however, you need to establish a will (as a coach) to ensure that their plans materialize and they are motivated to change / improve / stretch. The questions that you can ask your team to generate that motivation are

o        Which option will take you towards your goal the quickest?

o        So what will you do now and when?

o        What can stop you from moving forward?

o        How will you overcome these obstacles?

Coaching is all about making sure that the coachee knows that they are working with you, not for you

Best quality of the coach is to ask alot of challenging questions and let the coachee come back with solutions.

Your comments will be appreciated, Please feel free to add...... and visit the full blog at http://hunt-for-motivation.blogspot.com/

Coach will let the people see what they can, rather than what they cant.