Coaching: Personal inspiration for transformation (2)

Over the years, and especially in the last decade, a lot of questions have been asked on the practical benefits of coaching in supporting the achievement of goals. The most basic answer is that coaching offers this benefit essentially by focusing attention on the personal beliefs, mind frames, awareness, energy and abilities of the person setting goals. In this regard, a practical coaching process provides the client with the intangible, yet most important tools and resources to access the powers within the mind to achieve.

It all boils down to the belief systems and the level of personal inspiration or self motivation that the individual possesses. These serve as the substrate for every practical and successful coaching engagement. Personally, I believe that what has made coaching almost indispensable in the world of corporate business today is the fact that coaching seeks to bring out the best in a client.

When done professionally, coaching has the potentials to empower people to best manage their thinking processes, as well as beliefs and actions. This in turn ensures that they are self-driven and self empowered to make the best decisions on a sustainable basis. This is especially important for people in leadership positions, as well as others that have to take decisions that could have far reaching consequences.

A good and successful coaching process ensures that the client is exposed to the most adaptable, practical and result-oriented cutting edge personal thinking models. The aim is always to assist the client to generate massive life-transforming results. As a result, coaching has more recently been used to assist people with complex jobs to deal with their challenges. Sometimes, these jobs are personally taxing, emotionally draining and time-consuming. Yet, the client expects to still perform excellently at work.

My personal approach in such situations is usually to use a set of questions as the basis for the coaching process. Examples of the kind of questions that I use in getting a sound basis for a successful coaching process are as follows:

1. What do you consider your greatest personal and/or business challenges presently? Attempt to describe the challenges by sketching them on a piece of paper. (When people make graphic representation of their challenges, they are usually more personally aware of the effects and the compelling need to deal with such issues).

2. What are your feelings when you think about these challenges? Describe the feelings. (Getting people to express the feelings is a practical way of taking them on a personal journey through the processes over and over again, thus making them feel what needs to be felt, in other to take the correct decisions based on personal needs).

3. Do you feel more depressed or positively challenges most of the time? (This is an invitation for role plays and mind movies, which are key mind frame processes used in coaching).

4. Do you feel like letting go or you’re excited about the prospects? (The objective here is to track the energy of the client, which can be easily seen when he or she speaks, as well as through the body language).

5. Can you become more focused and determined to achieve the goal? (This provides the opening to challenge, motivate and support the client, as the client gives himself or herself the permission to make a move in the desired direction).

6. Would it be easier if you had someone with some understanding and passion to work through the challenges with you? Why? (The client is at this stage usually energised and personally aware enough to act as desired or needed).

7. In overcoming these challenges with someone working alongside you, which of these three would appear most suitable and needful: Principal; Partner; Protégé? Why? (This is an advanced personal awareness and feedback inducement to enable the client to freely navigate within the areas of need, as well as the call and urge for the best support).

What the coaching process seeks to achieve herein is to amplify the level of knowledge and personal awareness of the client with regard to the past, present and future situations, issues and environment. It is also important to know and determine what these mean to the client in terms of the possibilities and opportunities for desired change.

From personal experience, it is desirable to examine, evaluate and isolate the personal values of the client. This is because a lot of us are driven by our personal values. As a result, it is important to determine what is most important to the client in terms of the desired outcomes and motivations. These inevitably influence the client’s behaviour, emotions, energy levels and passion in going forward. You can read more about the transformational power of coaching at www.ceedcoaching.com

 

Emmanuel Imevbore