Coaching at its best – for you and for me

Coaching at its best – for you and for me

Coaching has been a hot topic lately.?Many articles and posts have been written about the benefits and purposes of coaching for organizations, individuals and teams.?Furthermore, there’s been an exponential increase of certified and accredited coaches all over the world, supporting the advantages of coaching and being coached.?

As a coach myself, here’s my take on coaching:

(a)???Coaching is a language.?Coaching has taught me a “new way” of communication.?Simply put – intentional and meaningful conversations.?

As a coach, I love how I've to purposefully listen to my clients and unpack the “hidden meanings” behind what were said.?I love how I've to carefully observe my clients’ gestures, their facial expressions, tone and pace of their voices.?

Coaching has also helped me summarize intactly, pick out “key words”, as well as creatively package it back to my clients so that it accurately echoes what they’ve said.?

On the flip side, as a coachee, coaching has helped me articulate and express my deepest thoughts.?It has also helped me think of metaphors and analogies so that I can express myself better, and in doing so, helped me gain clarity in my mind when words were often difficult to express.?

On top of that, clever questionings have helped me form my own conclusions and ideas.?At the end of the day, as a coachee, I’ve realized that I’m my own expert and that nobody else can advise me better than myself.

(b)???Coaching is a tool.?As an educator and trainer, being able to coach has helped me make lessons/workshops/facilitations more meaningful and engaging.?

Rather than feeding information to my audience, I’m able to draw out participation and hear their inputs as well, allowing participants to have a voice, hear their views, ideas and suggestions, and build on them. This has made my training/facilitating more interesting and fun.?There’s also better sharing of experiences/topics from everyone, making time spent together win-win-win.

(c)????Coaching is a skill.?For me, I’ve used a lot of coaching in my mentoring sessions.?It has helped me better understand my mentees, build rapport, and also bring about meaningful encounters with them.?

Coaching allows us to turn-take fairly when conversing, giving each other a chance to comment and talk.?More importantly, coaching has helped me amplify useful and accurate information from my mentees to help me, help them.

In short, coaching at its best is a powerful language, tool and skill. Probably one essential ability to have for every professional in this new normal era.?Its versatility is so potent that it helps individuals, teams and groups as well.

In closing, I’ll like to say that coaching benefits us in the following 3 ways:

(1)???Nourishes our minds and souls, and helps bring out the best through connecting us back to our inner core – our dreams, beliefs and values.

(2)???Flourishes our lives as we gain clarity in our purposes, decisions and ideas, in that we can function well and perform at our peak by making better choices and taking clearer actions.

(3)???Cherishes what is important and meaningful to us, particularly relationships that we build along the way, and celebrating our successes with them.

So, here’s my take on coaching at its best – for you and for me.?Why not consider experiencing it for yourself, have a conversation from the heart, and form your own conclusions? All the best!??