One of the best tools available for organizational learning is coaching.
This new discipline has true transformative power in terms of acquiring the personal leadership necessary to transform companies into true learning organizations. The consequence of this: improvement in results. The great subject that haunts any manager of a company. But in order to correctly apply this method, among other things, we must take into account the time factor. The coaching processes have a perhaps different time, to the speed with which we intend to handle both coaches and coachees, the article aims to stop and reflect on how the learning process works.
If we talk that a coaching process has to do with expanding our learning capacity, and it uses an achievement in the change of observer of the coachee, we also have to take into account the time factor.
In my opinion, a coaching process may not be something especially brief, I mean by this that we may have to consider it in the agreement or contract that we make with the coachee.
According to the theory of Jean Piaget, whose work was of fundamental importance in the knowledge of learning processes, it has a rhythm of assimilation and accommodation. On the other hand (taking into consideration the ideas of this representative of constructivism) people always face a certain learning endowed with previous ideas and conceptions. Minds always have "personal theories", which from Echeverría would be the judgments to be questioned by the coach.
Let's look at the issue of assimilation-accommodation.
The new information that reaches a person is "assimilated" based on what was previously acquired. Then there is an “accommodation” of what has been learned, with which there is transformation of thought patterns in the face of new circumstances.
Let's put it another way: the coach tries by questioning the judgments that the coachee manages to change his observer in a certain situation in which the coachee is not being effective. This questioning is assimilated by the coachee mounted on previous experiences of failures or successes, depending on whether they have done something new or not, in some other life situation. Then there is an accommodation of what has been learned with which there is transformation of the Thought Schemes in the face of new experiential circumstances.
If as coaches we are aware of the mental effort required by the assimilation and accommodation processes in the coachee, we will learn to have the infinite patience that is required to achieve that unique and handmade piece that each coaching process can be.
As an added value for the coach, I consider that its development should be considered a challenge. The achievement of the same results, can not only torment the coachee, but also the coach, in case the coachee does not reach them in the “programmed” time, the coach's breaks may appear “in vivo and in situ”, in full process… which is difficult to trace.
An element then that I consider appropriate may be to submit (perhaps it is not a word that tempts us, but I think it is appropriate) to the time of the coachee.
This is a decisive factor to help you effectively change your observer, as true learning, that is, sustainable over time and therefore with modification of the mental model. I think: will it be on another plane, continuous learning, an also continuous modification of the mental model?
Returning to the subject of time, one of the simultaneous learning that the coachee can do (simultaneity in terms of the subject he is dealing with) is his times… which he occupies in the mental processes described. Which does not imply that he takes all the time in the world to do: nothing.
Knowing our own times, knowing that we have elaboration phenomena to deal with, implies knowing ourselves, having patience and knowing that then the inevitable comes: the decision and commitment to that decision in a time now stipulated by ourselves, with a date. Also knowing that there are consequences after the action and also consequences if the action is not started.
Finally, I would like to clarify that the phenomena of assimilation and accommodation are not volitional, we could say that they are mechanisms, acquired in archaic times, thanks to which we were able to include ourselves in the world and get as far as we got.
Bibliographic references:
Ontology of Language- Rafael Echeverría.
Jean Piaget's studies on the cognitive system. (Various)
