Can coaching work for you?
Have you ever thought about coaching? If you look at our top sportspeople and teams then all of them have coaches – it is almost always a key component of high performance. What works in sport can also work in business.
Coaching is a two way process. If you want to be coached then you need to be highly motivated to change in all sorts of areas, and really want to learn and grow on business and personal levels. I need to emphasis here that YOU must want to be coached and helped, it is no good if it is actually your manager that is pushing you towards this. Without your buy-in coaching won’t work for you.
Coaching will help you improve your skills, clarify and reach your goals. Your coach will not be teaching you how to do these things but will use open ended questioning to guide you into finding the solutions for yourself, and will provide assistance and encouragement to make sure that you take the necessary action to achieve the desired outcome. The coach will help you define the current situation and help you raise options for moving forward so you can focus on both short and long term strategies.
I find coaching a very rewarding experience but I am always very firm about my expectations – these are my rules for coaching and when followed they make for really successful sessions.
- I don’t know all the answers – in fact, as my wife often tells me, I know very few of them!
- You will not be successful just because I coach you. Your success will only come from your own actions. You are responsible for both your successes and your failures!
- You have to be the one that wants your success, not me!
- I will speak my mind and not sugercoat my suggestions – this will save a lot of time. In return you need to do the same to me.
- Don’t agree to anything you don’t feel comfortable with – I am your coach, not your guru so if something doesn’t feel right say so immediately so we can come up with alternatives.
- My comments are just my comments, not ‘the truth’ or ‘the only way’. They are made to help you along the path to your own method of achieving success.
- When we discuss a course of action please give your time input some deep consideration as this will be the most important element of ensuring the action succeeds.
- I can differentiate between a reason and an excuse and only one of these will be accepted!
These rules eliminate any ‘fluff’ that gets in the way during a coaching session and will speed you along your path to success!
If you are interested in coaching then email or call me and let’s discuss how we can work together to achieve your goals and more – john@johnshack.com or 021 366 669.