Creating your blueprint

Many of us see our profile or CV as a representation of who we are now. We update our profile with the latest information each year or as needed. As I shared in the last article, we can have a Future Profile. This profile is what we desire to have at a certain point in the future. However, few people use their profile in this manner.

A profile need not be the architect’s drawings ONLY after the building has been completed. This is historical data. Most profiles describe a person's current abilities and past achievements. A profile can also be a BLUEPRINT for the building that you want to build from ground up. Or a building that you want to re-invent and re-purposed.??

A lot was spoken about the profile in my last article. This article focuses on fulfilling your profile. There will be gaps between your future profile and who / what you are presently. These gaps can also be known as your “growth areas”. Your goal is to attain these growth areas with an action plan. The planning stage is relatively easy. We can have our plans. The harder part is to have the discipline to implement our plans with enthusiasm, focus and perseverance. ?

The growth areas could be in the form of:

Knowledge — This is probably the easiest to attain. I gave my example in an earlier article about my need to have knowledge on “International Management”. That drove me to look for a MBA with specific emphasis on international management. If your future profile require you to know about Agile project management, then take up a course on it. Better still, go for a certificated program so that you know you have undergone a structured learning. Most courses will have hands-on experience as well. This will make you even more familiar and conversant with the topic.

Skills? — You want to be your own boss and you have identified your growth area is in selling and negotiation. Or relationship building and networking skills. Whatever skills you have identified, you need to learn these skills and then to put them into practice. Learn from the right masters or teachers. A good example is the chef. If you want to be a top chef, you should learn from a top chef himself or herself. It is a more difficult route to become top of your game if you learn from an average performing chef. You will find that you would have picked up skills and habits that need to be unlearned and relearned later on.?

My experience learning to be a coach is a good example. I learned the GROW model and thought it was an effective framework. It was after I learned the ICF coaching competencies and the Leadership In Motion’s 4C Coaching Model that I discovered there are far richer coaching frameworks than GROW.?Certainly, I am not saying the GROW model is not effective. In fact the GROW model has helped me and many other leaders and coaches in their coaching. It was the first coaching framework that I learned in 2005 in my ex-company. It was a global initiative and I, as the HR Leader, was also trained to conduct GROW workshops for the managers. This model stuck in me for several years. To make the change from GROW to the 4C Model & ICF competencies did took me time and efforts. It was not un-doable. My learning is that I could have been more effective in my coaching if I had learned the more effective framework right from the start.

Relationships & Network — by its nature, it takes time to build and develop relationships. Identifying the relationships that you need to have in your future profile helps you to take the initiative to start establishing these relationships. Relationships take time to develop. Hence it is good to work on building your relationships early in your preparation. More will be said on this topic when we look at networking in greater details.

Inner Work —?One of the critical areas for self-development is your inner self. For this reason, it's important to understand what drives your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. What are your values, beliefs, assumptions and biases??Edna Murdoch, a Coach Supervisor, said it well:?“Who you are is how you coach”. A good awareness of your own “operating” software will enable you to better understand and accept yourself, and to work on areas to improve yourself as a person first, then as a coach. If you are interested to do inner work, in my view, the most accurate body of knowledge that I had come across and learned is the Enneagram. This is a system to help us understand what drives our thinking, feeling and behaviors. I had benefited from it as it has given so much self-awareness and insights about myself, including clarifying my fears and motivation. More importantly, I was able to work on areas that were hindering me from becoming my best.

“Why is achieving your growth areas important?”?There are 3 strong reasons:

1. Progressing closer to your goal. When you make progress on your growth areas, you are closer to achieving your goal to become a professional coach. It is no longer a dream or just a desire. Your future profile is turning into reality with each progress that you made.

2. Developing a life-time habit of self-improvement. You become better and better, as a person and as a coach. You will become a coach who is always looking for improvement. You become a role model of what “a growth mindset” is.?

3. Showing the way for other. As you have gone through the trials and challenges of self-development yourself you are in a better position to empathize, coach and partner your client on their self-development journey. It is difficult to ask a client to do something that you yourself cannot do. On the other hand, you can be inspirational when you yourself had climbed and overcome your “Mount Everest”.?The psychology is different when your client is speaking to someone who had done it before. Confidence in your coaching goes up.?

Having a future profile helps you to be very clear what gaps need to be worked on in order to be closer to your aim to becoming a competent professional coach.?You will achieve what you conceive. The key word is ‘proactive’.

If you have 2 years before becoming a professional coach, and you only take action 6 months later, effectively you have 1.5 years left. You have given away 6 months.?Continue the inertia for another 6 months, and you are left with one year. Before long, another 6 months would have passed and you are only left with 6 months before launching your professional coaching career. At that stage, you would have cold feet and could have an unfulfilled dream. You gave up your quest to be a professional coach and resigned yourself to doing something else. This is a familiar pattern. If the goal to be a professional coach is very important to you, then taking actions to realize your dream is an important step.?

In the next article, we will learn how to accelerate your learning.??

Best

Tan Swee Heng

Coach Supervisor & Mentor Coach, MCC, ICF Advanced Certification In Team Coaching (ACTC),?Head of Shared Leadership Team Coaching Academy

PS: The Shared Leadership Team Coaching Academy offers the following help:

1. Help you to be a competent and confident certified Shared Leadership Team Coach with more than 40 tools in your tool kit (Enrollment for the global Team Coach Certification Program is in March and Sep each year)?https://www.limglobal.net/learning

2) Help you to attain your ICF Level 1 certificate for your ACC credentialing

3) Help you to attain the ICF's Advanced Certification in Team Coaching (ACTC)

4) Help you to become a more effective coach through monthly Group Supervision for Coaches https://www.limglobal.net/coach-supervision-program

5) Help you with your Coach Mentoring for your ICF credentials https://www.limglobal.net/coach-mentoring-program

You can email me for more information ([email protected]) or check out the website: https://www.limglobal.net/learning