Coaching is:

"Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them learn rather than teaching them" -- J. Whitmore

Coaching is "a process that enables learning and development to occur and thus performance to improve. To be successful, a coach requires a knowledge and understanding of process as well as the variety of styles, skills and techniques that are appropriate to the context in which coaching takes place" -- Eric Parsloe

Coaching is a method of directing, instructing and training a person or group of people, with the aim to achieve some goal or develop specific skills. There are many ways to coach, types of coaching and methods to coaching. -- Wikipedia

Some describe coaches as servant leaders:

Aspects of being a servant leader: In order to be a servant leader, one needs the following qualities: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, growth and building community. -- wikipedia

Or like being whisked along in a coach or a whatever ->

Do you want coaching?

Are you ready?

1. I can arrange my time to invest in myself.

2. I can make and keep appointments with myself .

3. I sense a gap between where I am and where I want to go.

4. I can and will do what I need to do to get me where I want to go.

5. I can and will work on attitudes and behaviors that limit my success.

6. I can try, experiment with, new ways, looking for better ways.

7. Coaching is the right way to go for where I want to go.

8. I have the guts, determination, and patience to work on my goals.

9. I have the support I need to change things in my life.

10. I can do it. We can do it together.

This is a good rough measure, if you got “No” for two or three of these questions, then you may have problems with coaching. More and you'll drive many coaches crazy.

“They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” - old adage

This is a reason why many good coaches start with a Discovery session.

Your Pro Coaching Checker

Ask yourself about these:

• I need an independent view, an objective outsider.

• We're going off in all directions. We need teamwork.

• I want to go to the next level.

• Work is eating up my life. I need help bringing family back into the picture.

• I may be over my head with these new responsibilities.

• I’m bored stiff. I want to look around for new challenges.

• Change is hitting me in barrages, when I need to adjust to go with the flow.

• I'm doing new things, entering new ways and new territory, and feeling lost.

• We're making changes and we don't need things to get out of hand.

• We need to change, to catch-up, and get ahead.

• They say I’m too abrupt and to the point. What should I do about it?

• I need to start talking, doing presentations, to larger groups and important groups, of people.

• I need more visibility and don’t know how to get it.

• I get ignored in meetings. Or they listen but nothing happens later on.

• I avoid social situations. I don’t do so well with small talk.

• People say they want me to speak up and share my thoughts. When I do, they often don't listen.

• My last feedback had things that raised my eyebrows.

• Some things are not working well. We need help making the changes.

• We're stuck on the track when others are going from success to success off-road.

If any of this rang the bell for you, think about it, then do, make the contact.

Here next are some coaching models. Not all coaches use such models. I normally use an adjust to fit blend of ways. Ask me if you want to explore using a model so we can practise the model. A good goal for coaching is for you to in turn coach others, so feel free to ask, so we learn by doing.

GROW coaching

GROW is built on four English words - Goals   Reality   Options   Wrap-Up.

Coaching extends these words with attentive aware questioning. It's a good linear model that just G.R.O.W.s.

Here are some sample GROW questions that you might use in each coaching session:

Goals

What do you want out of this coaching session and relationship?

Set your goals, write them down, tell others, envision them. Make them real.

Set them out as SMART goals, then look at stretching them.

Bring in Kipling's Six Serving Men.

“I keep six honest serving men,

they taught me all I knew.

Their names were What and Where and When,

And How and Why and Who.” -- Rudyard Kipling

If you explain your goals to others you are Much more likely to make them real.

Who are you going to tell tell? Who will be effected? Who can help you?

How will you explore it with them? How will you do it?

Why are you going after this goal?

When?

What are the expectations of others?

Reality

Tell, write down, mindmap your story, what's happening, the situation.

Explore the here and now reality to someone, perhaps a pet, and in your journal.

What are the current barriers? Are there hidden barriers? Are there triggers that might release the barriers?

Can you come up with a role model – hero – scenario you can mimic for success?

Sketch out your success map.

Options

Brainstorm some options, mindmap, ask others, awaken to natural role models.

Develop your choices. Just like your commuting choices on a street map.

What are some first steps? Is there a best one? Should you try two alternates?

“Ready, aim, fire” or “fire, aim, ready?” What is the best timing? Now, later – when?, or just wait?

Wrap-up

Create the stairway or ladder, the steps into success for your action plan for this session.

Note the obstacles and some alternate ways around them. This becomes a tree shape. A living ladder with options. Perhaps small steps in your life tree.

Does this plan feel right?

Does it mesh into your personal priorities?

How does it mesh into other priorities in your life?

Do you feel committed to getting it done? What are the barriers?

How are you going to ensure success?

Mindmap it. Write it down in short form to make it more real, and for later.

SF and OSKAR

The most popular Solutions-Focused (SF) coaching model is OSKAR. OSKAR is widely accepted as an easy-to-use way to harness the positive power of SF. It's also pushing other models aside. OSKAR stands for:

Outcome – Scale – Know-how - Affirm & Action – Review

Outcome: This is the changes that one wants to see as a result of the process. A goal might be higher income, an outcome showing the right signs, indicators that things are going in the right direction, might be increased connections and sales. The coaching is just a catalyst to changed behaviours, so we look for the behaviours and trends towards the goal.

Scale: We set up a scale, solutions-focused coaching uses 0-10, where the Outcome is 10 and 0 is nothing. Where are you now? Maybe 4? So we get an idea where you are. We particularly want to look at places where you are already doing well, following your existing (and natural?) performance pattern, then grow and extend the 'doing well' pattern.

Know-how: This is a searching and mapping exercise. Exploring your environment – things, people, teams, ideas - for what helps you and your process. If you like you might look at it as similar to the mapping in negotiations or conflict management. We look for the bridging-to-success items/areas and grow them. If you have worked with your high performance pattern, you'll realize that you're in the same playground. I say that people often know more than they realise they know, so if and when access that knowledge more often, then we do better.

Affirm and Action: With Affirm the coach affirms the benefits, gains, goodness of you the coachee, as s/he has observed them in your coaching conversation.

Action finding and growing the small steps into what works. A first step and another and onward, each based on what works and is working for you, growing success with each step. The key is the finding and growing your right steps. Your steps, your shoes, fit you well so you are most likely happily motivated to step ahead. It's good to have more than one kind of shoes, so you can step through more kinds of situations.

Review: We review in followup sessions to seek and grow your things that are working, the “what's better.” 'Success' is in the what is working and what's better. Not in asking what was 'done' or didn't happen. We need to keep you doing, and the real success is in growing your success patterns.

The Review leads into repeating the cycle, especially into the Affirm and Action steps, and looking for more small steps and more kinds of steps.

OSCAR was invented by Solutions-Focus people, Mark McKergow and Paul Z Jackson, for a project in 2000.

Five Phase Coaching

Now let's extend and step into the five phase model. Continue, read the following and mindmap the ideas, extend the context into your own larger model.

Some coaching is fix-it oriented, it aims at a problem to fix the problem.

Other coaching is more let’s-keep-things-on-track oriented, maintaining focus.

And some coaching is growth oriented. Solutions beyond problems.

We can fix everything on a ship and still have it headed the wrong direction.

We prefer growth-oriented coaching, a growing tree of life, while keeping your ship afloat. As part of that we normally use a dialogue approach, sharing beyond a discussion or debate. That dialogue needs to include people and things and ideas.

This next diagram is particularly oriented to two people meeting and agreeing on coaching and why. If you're teaching somebody to ride a bike or to use some software, or whatever, getting the agreement on coaching and the why are important. If they don't want to be coached and disagree on why, they aren't committed, and you have problems. This goes back to the readiness questions toward the top of this page.

I Agree on why you're in this coaching session. Issues, targets, goals.

II Discover the item or area(s) for improvement. Try to look past surface irritants into deeper causes. Avoid repeatedly fixing something that's being broken by the deeper matter. Try solutions-Focus.

III Develop options for where you want to go. Good solutions often ignore 'fixes'.

IV Play with then select Choices and agree on Actions. Try to have a branching tree of choices, a mythic map-story for the way ahead. A bit vague because it's the future.

V Introduce the changes into your larger world. Tell people what you're up to as you grow. Grow support and success. And look, review success, for the next cycle around.

Some coaching guidelines:

1. Enter dialogue, open up for play-learning – perhaps mindmapping. Listen openly.

2. Review mistakes and play with the learning potential in the situation.

3. Keep things simple.

4. Frequent, short, and specific are good for coaching sessions.

5. Use a sandwich evaluation for how things are going. Eg Retain - Reduce – Increase.

6. Be supportive.

7. Aim to empower, develop, and to generate enthusiasm.

You don't see it here but the five phases reflect natural cycles and growing. Consider that you have five 'fingers' and five senses, and try to include those fingers and senses in your learning.

Natural cycles?

Try   604-657-9595    or    Vic@windwaterwine.com