Are you curious about what it would be like to work with a coach? Wondering what tools and techniques coaches use to get to know you and boost your success?
Consider your specific goal. For example, you might hire a coach to develop more effective communication skills, to increase leadership impact, or to achieve a milestone in your career. Whatever your goal for coaching, hire a coach who can provide you with specific strategies to help you.
More important than a description of the role of a coach is the way in which a coach serves you and, often, specific tools that can assist the coach in learning about you and your skills. As a coach, my role is to support my clients’ goals, build their competencies, and empower their choice, which can lead to change.
Here are a few examples of times my clients benefited from specific assessments or processes.
Consider that the International Coach Federation (ICF) reports that most clients who hire a coach experience improved work performance, increased team effectiveness and more.
Developing Leadership Skills
There is no shortage of research about leadership and the skills that are required to be effective. Most studies describe effective leaders as being able to clarify responsibilities, expectations and tasks for their team. More is required in today’s complex business world. Studies show that the most creative and effective leaders are grounded in "self-leadership." Bob Anderson and Bill Adams of The Leadership Circle define self-leadership as “creating outcomes that matter most to us.”
In order for a leader to be highly effective, they need an understanding of both their strengths and liabilities.
A leader might be highly organized and clear when goal-setting but they might not have a positive attitude. A coach would work with this leader to build on their technical organizational skills but to be more positive to achieve the outcomes they desire. To build this leader’s awareness of how their attitude impacts their environment, it would be useful to gather input from their team, peers and bosses. A 360-degree assessment can help build this awareness, such as The Leadership Circle or Benchmarks 360 Assessment Suite from the Center for Creative Leadership
A client of mine went from being a solo musician to teaching at an international music college. But he was no longer a solo act, and his work environment required teamwork and leadership. Once my client understood his reactive tendencies (he was typically complying with the expectations of others) he was able to change the way he interacted with team members by practicing decisiveness. Now, our framework when coaching is balancing his gift of heart with sharing his strategies and ideas at work. He is achieving more success and experiencing less stress.
Identifying Your Strengths
Gallup research finds that "people who use their strengths every day are three times more likely to report having an excellent quality of life," and "six times more likely to be engaged at work."
When I begin a new client engagement, I use a strengths assessment. This allows for a common language between coach and coachee and lets us express our understanding of specific qualities in a straightforward way.
Strength assessments like the VIA Strengths Assessment or Gallup's CliftonStrengths uncover your strengths by assessing your personal profile and your unique way of using those strengths. If you have a top strength such as kindness, how do you use it? Does your kindness get used at work to support teamwork and how have you demonstrated this through your actions?
A young woman who wanted more fulfillment and financial security said she hired me because she felt she needed an extra boost to get going in the direction that she wanted and needed to be held accountable in doing so. I could tell that she needed to rebuild her confidence and suggested identifying her strengths.
After discovering her top strengths of kindness, honesty and social intelligence, she began to apply kindness to herself and felt less stressed about unrealistic timeframes which were self-imposed. She also began to see how her strength of social intelligence provided a framework for her personal relationships and her ability to be effective at work and when interviewing.
Defining Your Goals And Creating Change
Researchers agree: Change is hard. A CFO of a large nonprofit stated her goal was to change staff mentality at work -- she hoped they would shift their 9-to-5 mindset to a professional, growth-oriented approach. She wasn’t sure exactly how to go about achieving her goal and felt stuck and worried that the environment she was working in was impeding financial progress too.
Adult development theorists reason there are always things we don’t see, but that drive our behavior. I wondered about the "lens" that this executive used to establish her goal.
For this client, I selected a process where she could explore habits, patterns and assumptions. Tools like Immunity to Change or Gabrielle Oettingen’s WOOP (wish, outcome, obstacle, plan) can help determine the perceptions, thinking and behaviors that you are not conscious of. By using an assessment that examined this client's own habits, she was able to redefine her goal and asked her team for their input. She began to examine what hidden commitments were getting in the way and how her assumption that workers would have a hard time changing their 9-to-5 mentality was getting in her way. The work of changing this culture continues.
Most clients who hire a coach experience improved work performance, increased team effectiveness and more. If you are curious about working with a coach, interview a few or ask your colleagues whether they would refer a coach to you or not, and why. When you interview coaches who you’d consider working with, ask about the tools and techniques that they are trained in and using and which ones they might try with you. You’ll be making a choice to focus on improving your future.
