HOW TO GET THE BEST OUT OF YOUR COACHING.

I like to say that, Coaching is a very personal relationship where the coachee and the coach partner in order to help the coachee become more of their authentic self with skill, achieve personal growth, renewal, lasting change and perform and live optimally, thorough self-leadership and self-mastery. Coaching can bring radical shift, transitory or incremental change, based on where you are at in your life’s journey. This is seen in how you experience and shape your life’s performance and your goal towards self-actualization.

A coachee determines a lot what they get out of their coaching session and the following few pointers will enable a coachee to get the best out of their coaching session.

Choose the right coach.

Of course you should choose a coach with whom you resonate and can build rapport and trust. Trust is like a lubricant it helps the cogs of coaching run more smoothly. Your coach should have the skills to coach, connect, clarify and challenge you towards your journey of BECOMING more of you with skills. Her values, qualifications and experience in coaching matters. They need professional qualifications and disciplines. its good to find out who and how long they have coached and at what level. its also good to know a little bit more about their values, their life journey and experience. the process of life makes a man or a woman. And as much a coaching is not prescriptive, the coach journey and experiences influence how they approach coaching. The unconscious biases affect the way the coach questions and leads the process. The coachee holds the agenda, the coach holds the process. The process is influence both by professional expertise and value, beliefs and bias systems of the coach. its good to understand who the coach is and how they coach. Usually you will sense intutitively when you connect with the right fit for a coach.

Goal setting and Positive anticipation

1.    Set your coaching goals. Be clear on what you want to achieve out of your coaching session. Your goals shape the coaching conversations. I like to say that the coachee holds the agenda while the coach holds the structure and process of coaching. coaching goals evolve with time as you gain clarity in your coaching sessions. some goals that looked initially as goals may be symptoms not the root causes you want to explore but all the same they form a general guide that starts of the journey. I always advise that its good to start from beta and iterate to alpha than to never start at all.

Preparing for your session

2.    Always come to the coaching sessions with a positive anticipation, positive energy and an open mind. Isolate and reframe your mind from negative feelings, biases and prejudgments. Biases and negative feelings whose source may be other issues that occurred during the day e.g. a driver who cut you in on traffic, will take away value from a session. On the other hand you can draw positive energy from a good occurrence during the day and bring those positive feelings into your coaching. Psychologically isolate the bad and always globalize the good by leveraging the positive feelings and energy from one activity or spaces into other activities and spaces. Remember humans are very emotional beings and whether we like it or not emotions rules most of our decisions. We make more than 90% of all our decisions from our subconscious mind and the subconscious mind operate fully with emotion whether from stored experiences or from those happening in the now.

Manage distractions.

3.    Do not be distracted or let your mind wander during the coaching. Calm and quite your mind before the coaching. If an issue keeps distracting or surfacing on your thoughts you may want to flag it during the coaching. You can arrive 15 minutes before coaching or sit in your car and reflect on your last coaching session, focus on what you expect from the coming session, isolate other distractions out and clearly articulate to yourself what you want to discuss, explore and talk about. Do not get distracted by writing too much during coaching until you forget to tune into your inner self.  Too much writing during the session turns the coaching to a training session. Yes, a lot of learning happens during the session but coaching is not training or teaching where a coachee just receives information from the teacher. Coaching is a learning session where a coachee discovers information as they question, reflect, observe and sense. The self discoveries during coaching are exciting and form the basis of co creating your solutions, so stay focused.( In any case after your session wacekethecoach will send you, the coaching briefs and highlights with details on each from your session and you can use this to reflect later on the session and explore more. I like to call this the self-coaching session after the coaching)

Be honest, do not be defensive or try to impress.

4.    Answer the questions coming to you during the coaching as honestly as possible and do not be defensive. Coaching is a safe and a non judgmental environment. The questions are not meant to judge how smart you are but challenge you out of your comfort zones in order to stretch you to your potential. Coaching questioning is about exploring root causes as opposed to just symptoms. I always tell my coachees that coaching is about honest answers not smart or correct text book answers or default answers. You should not try to impress your coach with smart answers which may be correct academically but not truthful and ‘as is’ in your life.  You should not answer on auto pilot without reflecting. The answers are the raw materials that create the right solutions, identify areas of challenge, blind spots, biases and comfort zones and that finally lead to a self-discovery and to a place of self-choice. Of course based on your level of self knowledge and confidence this can influence how articulate you are in your answers but the scale of honesty must remain the same.  If you do not understand the question reframe it back to the coach or ask them to clarify the question. We become more effective in our answering and more open to share based on our level of self awareness and self confidence since at a particular level we do not fear being judged and neither do we judge ourselves, this is maturity. As you mature you cease from being defensive and you are more willing to share and be vulnerable because you desire growth and self-knowledge the foundation of true wisdom.

Switch into your inner self.

5.    Learn to switch or plug into your inner person. While coaching is going on certain questions or topics may cause you to experience different emotions and affect your natural rhythm. If you are plugged in, you will notice the shift at the level of emotions and your natural rhythm, you may want to alert your coach (and probably she will have noticed the same and reflected it to you). If a topic makes you excited it’s a signal you enjoy it, like it and you may have discovered an areas of natural gifting, passion or strength. If a topic makes you withdraw, tense or uncomfortable it may be an area of vulnerability and challenge. Our emotions are signals and indicators. They are very helpful in diagnosis while coaching. When you plug into your inner self you may sense conflict, peace, feel blocked mentally or open, you may even feel discomfort on your physical body which can also be reflected on your body language.

After the session.

Self reflection and work

1.    Continue your reflection even after the coaching, you may choose to reflect on what went on during coaching and dwell on what you discovered, what you felt and experienced during coaching and this can lead to further self discovery and connecting the missing dots on an issue. Do the work you are required to, test new ways of doing things, or may be its change of behavior or response in a certain context, learning, re learning or un learning old habits and acting differently. Reflect and assess what works and what does not work for you and discuss with your coach in your next session. Coaching is practical and action oriented, it’s about self action to bring about desired positive change and improved personal performance.  When you go to the gym your trainer will not run on the treadmill for you or lift the weight, then your role is to watch and step on the scale, you must sweat then step on the scale to celebrate the results. The action part is yours, so like Nike says ‘just do it’! .( NB: after your session go over your coaching notes and highlights with details and reflect and explore more. I like to call this the self-coaching session after the coaching. You extend the value of each session when you practice some form of self reflection and exploration guided by what happened or emerged from the coaching sessions and you can build on it some more.

Journaling

2.    Journaling is a very useful practice for self reflection, as you write down what you feel, think and see in your inner eye you are able to clarify your thoughts and feelings and to self discover more. You are able to confirm and affirm your initial feelings or thoughts or discount them and hence explore alternatives. This leads to a lot of learning about you and enriches your coaching experience even more. It prepares you for the next coaching sessions and even allows you to practically develop some possible solutions that come to your during yourself reflection and journaling time. Even later you are able to come back to your journal and follow up on a thought or an issues. Journaling also helps you document your successes and milestone on your journey of personal change and self mastery. You can also celebrate areas which were once a challenge but now are no longer and this helps you grow in your confidence as you see your growth and how far you have come. I love journaling it improves myself awareness and allows me to get in touch with my feelings and not be embarrassed about how I feel about an issue, a situation or me, after I acknowledge how I feel then am ready to consciously act on it either to change it if its defeatist or reinforce it, if it supports my goal and journey of change. The journey of self-knowledge is a your journey to self-master. How can you master what you do not know or understand?

Review your coaching goals

3.    The other way to get the best out of your coaching is looking at your initial objective or reasons why you sought out coaching and what other additional coaching goals you have added on as you go through your coaching. This keeps you on track so that you do not wander from the road. As a coach I keep taking back my coachee to their coaching goals or reasons and we tie through each session without being too rigid because new areas of need may emerge as you coach.  Clarity on why one wanted coaching in the first place becomes better as a coachee undergoes coaching and grows in their self knowledge. I prefer to call coaching goals as freedom within a framework, agree on specific broad goals with your coach, review and sharpen the details as you gain better clarity and progress in your coaching. I believe in beginning from beta and iterating to alpha.

Affirmations

4.     Keep making affirmation in your areas of challenges in order to stretch yourself and keep you excited on achieving your goals and overcoming the challenges.  Affirmations are positive declarations of your goals as though they are already achieved. Affirmation work together with visualization where you see yourself, today, in your new world with your goals achieved. Affirmations personally excite, motivate and keep me engaged to my goals. To read more on affirmation read my article on affirmation, also subscribe watch and share my you tube channel: wacekethecoach. visit my website: www.wacekethecoach.com

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