Thursday Nov 28, 2024
Thursday Nov 28, 2024
Friday, 12 December 2014 06:05 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
with you deeply; which means that I’m able to get into your heart and understand your emotions, your inner motivations, your feelings, your moods and concerns. A partnership that is not deep would be like for instance teaching and mentoring because all these are head level subjects, based on knowledge.
Now when we tap into the inner part of a person or why a coach would get into the inner part of a person is because that is the generator, it’s the one that steers a person forward, propels behaviour. Everything’s based on feeling. You don’t act based on knowledge, you always act based on an emotion. That’s why in coaching we always try to assess the deeper level of a person because we know that that’s the one that would drive the right action.
Get a person in a right state you get the right action, the wrong state you get the wrong action. That’s the state where people make self-discoveries, take accountability of themselves and reach a goal that they’ve always wanted to, in the happiest way.
Q. You mentioned that teaching and mentoring are different to coaching. Can the coaching principals be applied to them in order to do better as a teacher or mentor?
A. A teacher can become a coach teacher or a trainer can become a coach trainer by putting in the coaching element to it. By itself a teacher is a directive, not a support person. They tell you what to do, they share knowledge. A teacher is a person higher up than the other person, the person with the knowledge. A teacher or a therapist or a councillor by itself, they are very directive in the way they manage. So in that sense you would need to change or replace the word teacher with coach teacher if you want things to be done in a non-directive way. Then this person will know how to balance the two, when to be directive and when not to be, when to tell and when to listen.
Q. An important part of coaching is asking powerful questions. How do you know what questions to ask?
A. When you listen. When you listen to people at the deepest level you will acquire the intuition to ask the right questions. There are three parts to listening. The first level is called self-centred listening. I listen based on what I think is the meaning of what you’re trying to say. I come to a quick conclusion based on the few words that you say. The level two of listening is called apathetic listening. It’s all about your meaning, that I want to understand, rather than I attach a meaning to what you’re saying. Level three is called intuitive listening. It’s where you feel the person through the unspoken words as well as the spoken words and from there you draw that intuition in you, picking up certain messages the coachee may not even have told you. So the coach and coachee develop a sixth sense on the coachee who is also listening at the same level.
Q. Why did you decide to become a coach?
A. Because it’s powerful. Because the telling method is something everybody knows. Everybody knows how to tell. Everybody knows how to talk. But you’ve got to train to listen and you have to train to ask questions. Because you can see better results and you’ll be the happiest person because you see things happening, you see changes you have made. And sometimes you apply those principles of coaching to yourself and you make your own life better. I know enough of training. Telling people is easy. You don’t need to be a good trainer.
Q. What has your experience as a coach been like?
A. It has been a very beautiful journey or I would have quit this. The biggest value that I see in coaching is because you see life change, you make a difference to people and it’s the greatest form of giving and the greatest sense of charity that you can do for someone.
Q. Have there been many failures?
A. Of course there have been faliures. But faliures usually come when you’re coaching someone in a commercial world. When you’re paying for the coaching you will give your whole heart and soul to the coach because you want to. But if someone is paying for you there can be a lot of resistance in that person who has been forced into it. So coaching only works when that person wants to but do not know how; then coaching works very well. It won’t work if that person already thinks ‘I don’t need a coach’.
But of course having said that, if the coach has a very powerful connecting skill, then I can earn your trust and the coachee’s resistance goes down, they become more engaged because they trust the coach. Then suddenly all the other factors don’t come into play anymore.
Q. Can anybody be a coach?
A. Of course we want everybody to be a coach because a coach, at the end of the day, is a better person who wants to help people, who is very generous and who cares for people. But in the professional sense it might not be possible. Not everybody can be a salesman or a teacher. You require certain qualities. A good coach is a people person. They should have warmth, care, good communication skills and a strong sense of empathy. If they have these things it’ll be easier for them to become good coaches.
Q. When learning to become a coach is it important to gain experience?
A. They must! Everything in coaching is about behaviour. It’s actually a leadership program. You’ll know about coaching but you will not do it. So this program is creating occasions for you to coach with a coach watching you and every time you make a mistake they will correct you and if you do good work the coach will praise you. Coaching is learnt through coaching hours; the more hours the better.
Q. You do a lot of corporate coaching. How does it help a business?
A. An organisation wants a coach for their leaders because they want their leaders to operate like coaches who ask questions rather than telling people what to do. Organisations get their people to be coached because they’ve got interpersonal issues or they have got serious life issues or they’re not producing for some reason. So coaching comes in to help them to uncover what they really need to work on to resolve their issues. A businessman is the same thing. They seek a coach because they’ve run out of ideas or they don’t know what to do. Sometimes it’s not just the ideas about how to run the business, they may have plenty, but it may be something more internal in that person that needs to be unearthed and addressed before the business can be well.
Q. Is there a marked change in the performance of the employees once they go through a coaching?
A. Absolutely! If they’re really involved in the coaching and they really want to see themselves growing then of course they would see a lot of changes because once a person gets that self-awareness, things will become a lot easier. If they don’t have that self-awareness, it’s like, ‘I have nothing to change’, ‘My family is good, my life is good’. These are the people who can’t change because they don’t see cracks in their own lives. People who can acknowledge that there are cracks in their lives are the ones who will grow because they’re prepared to face them. So if you live in a state of denial and you think everything is good then these are the people who don’t grow and after a while they just stagnate.
Q. How do you track the progress of your coachees?
A. That’s another difference between coaching and training. In coaching we meet every two weeks. Coaching is normally like a three month or a six month session where I work with coachees over a period of time. It’s not a one off quick fix thing where in one session you complete the entire process. It doesn’t work that way. After you say what you will do you’ll be asked “Till we meet again what will you be doing” and the coach takes it down. Two weeks later when I see you, “So how did you go? Are you happy with the results? What did you learn?” And tracking doesn’t have to be just the coach. The coach will ask questions like “Who can also help you?” And they’re enlisted into the whole process. We are the ones who will support you and push you towards your goal.
But that’s where you do coaching as a process. I always advocate this; I want coaching to be a conversation you have with people. It’s not really about tracking them. You know someone who needs some help and you just get into a conversation and you’re doing it in a coaching way. It’s more powerful than the coaching that needs tables and chairs and a private room. So there are two types of coaching. One you do professionally and the other you do naturally. You can even be a self-coach by applying the coaching principles to yourself.
Q. How would someone get in touch with a professional coach?
A. Go have a look into google for a professional coach in Sri Lanka. And of course there’s a body known as the International Coach Federation (ICF), you log into ICF and they’ll give you all the information about the ICF trained coaches in this part of the world.
