The abrupt appearance of this emerging profession?, Along with the wave of coaches who have jumped on this car spreading the excellence of it, have sparked a variety of reactions: many people find it a hoax, some do not succeed in understanding what which is, to others it seems a curious personal help field to explore. With this post I will try to reduce the gap between all of them.
I confess that, at the time of writing this post, I had mixed emotions regarding where I was going to position myself. Should I mention that I too have joined the wave of coaches? Is it something to show muscle or is it something to hide today?
I am not going to explain what a coaching process consists of or the different schools that this current receives, since there is plenty of literature that you can go to or you will have already attended, however, I am going to establish the reflection of this post on 2 concepts basic that I consider necessary to understand the practice of this discipline and that, in turn, summarize the impact that its good use can achieve: coaching accompanies you and brings you closer to both awareness and consequent action
The 2 words underlined in bold (awareness and action) being important, I prefer that you pay attention to the humble nuance of the secondary verbs that precede them (accompany and approach) since they will help you place your expectations on the true scope of coaching.
Nor am I going to be so daring as to “confront” coaching with psychology. I have not studied psychology and, of course, I have not practiced it. Therefore, you would have no arguments to compare, much less equate, both. However, for those interested in broadening their critical gaze, I attach this link, coming from psychology, not especially "friendly" with the practice of coaching. Having said this, I do want to point out that I have had several psychologists accompanying me in my long process of training as a coach who have shown me the learning and added value that training as coaches has brought them and, in some cases, the development process. staff accompanying this.
From here I will try to dilute what coaching is and, therefore, what it means to be a coach, since I believe that coaching is a way of being in life. To do this, I encourage you to remove the degrees or caps that enable or disable some people or others to "accompany" (under this term I am beginning to feel more comfortable) other people. I want to close the distances between that person you always go to for a coffee when something blocks you and the coach approved by the xxx school, at the same time that I want to put the accreditation and training of the latter to its fair value.
Both 2 will need:
- first, to have the devotion or, at least, the restlessness necessary to help, accompany, and put oneself at the service of people. second, to connect with the humility necessary that an accompaniment "from below" and at the service of a person requires. Only from there, placing yourself in the "clear" (as it is usually called in coaching) that means being totally open to the surprise of the discovery of the "other", you will be interacting with that person from respect and ethics, finally, having the skills necessary in the practice of accompaniment. I think that some people innately have many of them, that is: intuition to know how to break down the important from the not so important, to know how to listen to what is not said, to know how to dismantle judgments,knowing how to design a conversation and flow with it to one side or the other depending on the type of person you have in front of you, knowing when and where you can enter and when not… well, those intangibles that sometimes already come in your backpack or have been incorporated throughout life.
However, this is where I want to highlight the training and practice of coaching since, through these, the coach:
- It incorporates a new language and new concepts around the interaction with the person and their reality. It assimilates a methodology and a routine that constitutes the skeleton on which the interaction with the coachee (the person subject to the coaching process) is based. easy-to-use techniques to overcome the various obstacles that arise in the conversation
All this gives the coach slight advantages:
- allows him, relying on the power of new words and concepts, to have a richer and more precise conversation that will allow him and the person in front of him to better understand his "case" (Kierkegaard said that words are saving because they allow communication).has more resources, techniques, etc. You have to turn to overcome certain obstacles, blockages that arise during the conversation, and therefore open up possibilities. It enables you to have a slightly broader perspective in listening to the other person (somehow your field of listening and interpretation becomes broader), as a result, allows you to be more diligent in focusing the range of necessary questions throughout the entire course of the interaction and, therefore, in hitting the critical questions.Let's say that somehow you develop surgical precision so that the coachee clicks. And finally, it allows you to be more lucid when it comes to exploring and hitting on the new possibilities of action or new ways of doing that it offers the coachee.
I do not know if with all this I have managed to iron out consensus regarding the place that should be given to coaching, or answer the question of whether he has come to stay… or if he was already among us. In case I have not been able to do it, and if you still wonder what place coaching should occupy in your life, I will make a last attempt with the following analogy that may be more graphic:
Flee from those corners of coaching where the diffusion of your practice has a halo of "magic" or present "returns" too high, and approach those spaces where you can perceive the aroma of excellent coffee.
