Coaching - one size does not fit all!
If you want to improve your mindset, enhance your management and/or communication skills, develop your career, handle conflict better, or achieve a better work life balance, who would you call upon to help?
Different things to different people
When you hear the word coaching, what image comes to mind? Do you picture a football team with a man/woman shouting out directions from the sidelines? Or a manager learning how to develop life-long leadership skills? Is it family members being supported as they look to rebuild relationship and find solutions to various problems, or an individual being helped to increase their confidence?
The answer is that all of these scenarios are situations where coaching can be used. Essentially, it’s a vast area, which focuses on personal development and awareness raising, and offers you the ability to improve everything from performance and skills, to life in general, and even your relationships.
So many types!
Whilst we’ve probably all heard of team, business, executive, leadership, career, skills and performance coaching, what about coaching outside the workplace? This can include family, relationships, finance, wellness, and of course sports coaching. Basically, every element of your life can be analysed, worked on and improved with the right support, time and commitment to making a change. And quite recently online, I saw a few that I’d never heard of - cuddle coaching, smile coaching, happiness coaching, genius coaching and authenticity coaching!
What is coaching?
Coaching is a very useful way of developing your skills and abilities and supporting you to make a change, learn something new, or achieve goals. It can also help you to deal with issues and challenges before they become major problems. Recently, someone asked me how best to explain what I do. I responded by saying that I quite literally take you from where you are now, to where you want to be.
Coaching can be quite formal and structured in approach, but it doesn’t have to be. I undertook 18 months of training to be an accredited coach, but we can all bring coaching skills into our everyday life by listening, being curious and asking open questions. You can slot coaching into conversations or interactions, without any awareness of it happening at all.
For example how many times do you hear parents talking to their children, using phrases like, “What’s upset you?” “Let’s pause for a minute and think about what’s just happened,” and “What can we learn from this?”.
To sum up, there are some basic coaching skills that we can all use in our daily lives. These include:
Being present and making time to talk
Active listening
Asking open-ended questions
Effective goal setting
Giving constructive feedback
How I can help
Coaching is a fantastic tool for helping people to achieve goals or do things differently. If you think coaching can help you remove barriers and push forwards, then please get in touch.