GenerationWhy

The end of the beginning

I am in the final stages of writing my assessed document for my Henley coaching certificate.

This requires me to not only reflect on my development as a coach and demonstrate my cognitive and behavioral coaching ability and knowledge, but also think about my ongoing plans to improve and develop as a coach.

I haven't blogged these last months during my "external" coaching relationships - it hasn't quite felt right or appropriate to. I think this is due, in part, to the fact that the focus has been on the individuals, and that the opportunity will come to summarise my learnings and reflections in the document I am now writing. In cruder terms, perhaps I am saving up my reflections!

I do realise, and have done for some time, that this is only the start though. I need to give some conscious thought to how I am going to proceed. For me this splits into three

• Maintain my "kit bag" - through learning and refining techniques and expertise through maintaining engagement with coaching literature and practice

• Supervision - a vital ingredient to, as I see it, keeping me calibrated

• Maintain Momentum - I am yet to decide, but I am considering trying to ensure I have a number of continuous active coaching relationship at any one time - (that number may only be one!)

It really is only the end of the beginning.

It's been a while...

...since I last posted.

I've been doing a lot of offline reading, as well as having my first coaching session which will form part of my assessment.

I won't go into all the things I've learned here. But I will summarise three things that I've started to understand over the last 3 months.

1) Coaching is effective.

I won't lie; I've had my doubts, but it does work. One of my cohort had a 10 minute piece of coaching on our second module, over whether to do a surprise birthday for her husband. She sent round an email this week to say had just done the party, and she was obviously delighted. She said she couldn't have done it without the coaching, and I believe her.

2) Coaching is simple

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying coaching is easy. It's incredibly difficult. But when it's done well it feels very simple. It's not simple learning how to be a great coach, but I honestly think that good coaching should be simple coaching.

3) Coaching is rewarding

Motivations for getting in to coaching vary. I'm not sure that mine was initially as altruisitc as it could or should have been. However, the reward from helping people helping themselves is real and powerful.

Inner games

I've recently finished the teaching part of my coaching certificate; I feel like it's the end of the beginning.

After only 6 contact days of teaching I have learned an enormous amount about coaching and myself. One of the best books I had the opportunity to glance through on this module was The Inner Game of Tennis, a classic I  hadn't come across before.

I love the idea of the two selves it sets out in the book, and it naturally appeals to the sporting interest I have in coaching.

The two selves has a link to the social media side of this coaching journey I'm on. I'm paraphrasing the book, but it says that when playing sport the closer Self 1 and self 2 (the thinker and the doer in each of us) become the more natural our actions feel.

My thinking self in coaching is concentrated on the theory side of coaching: the psychology, philosophy and sociology angle. My doer self is focused on the action of coaching: the interactions I have with my coachees (or victims!).

Through this blog I feel I am bringing the two together, DOing while THINKing. A testament to the power of coaching, and of social media.

Christmas shopping already...

My coaching studying has taken a bit of a back seat over the past week,with day job work taking up most of the time, but I've got a couple of days off, so going to catch up on a bit of reading.

I came across this book, by Tamara Erickson which looks a bit dry. It will be one of my brother's Christmas presents, as he was pretty interested in the Gen Y concept when I sent him a couple of links. (Even I'm not that cruel as to make it his only present though.)

I had a flick through and it's got some interesting coaching implications, although from what I saw briefly doesn't mention it explicitly.

It is interesting that  my university friends and contacts from other companies who are my age have little initial knowledge of coaching, but all are interested and positive about it when they probe a bit further. Not a generation gap as such perhaps, but certainly some trends emerging, I think.

Wonder if he'll notice that it's already a bit broken in when I give it to him...

Marshall Goldsmith

I meant to post this a while ago, but have been so snowed under with work I didn't get a chance.

I came across this website of an American coach. There are quite a few of these guys out there, but Marshall writes for the Harvard Business Review Blog, through which I found him.

He has an interesting document on the site on Peer coaching, which includes a technique (the current module focuses on tools and techniques) about checking daily progress.

C. 20 questions you have created you ask your peer daily, with yes or no answers, in order to track your progress against your agreed goals.

Simple and effective - I like.

Mod 2

I'm in the middle of Module 2 of the certificate at the moment. I earlier had my first "real" coaching session. (Real as it was someone who was not from the cohort, who I had not met before.)

It was unbelievably rewarding.

I was very nervous before I started, but once we got going it was almost natural. I was far from perfect - it was the first time - but I feel like I get what all the fuss is about now.

Not long left until Module two and learning from Sports coaching

I've been really busy with the day job, with a big deadline approaching, and so by my own admission haven't spent as much time as I would have liked on the intra-module work. I've broken the back of the reflective writing piece, but need to polish it this weekend, and have read most of the books. But there is still a lot to do.

The practical piece of the intra-module work is to gather a few tools and techniques which we want to practise. It feels like it's getting more serious now - I am starting to build the toolkit to becoming a "proper" coach.

It is still a bit tough though, given the theoretical interest I have in most of the content - the practical experience I have in using coaching techniques is limited in the workplace but more abundant on the sports field, so I'm going to see if I can find tools and techniques which cross over. Not sure how it will fair...

Reflective Writing

I've completed the two coaching sessions I needed to in order to write my reflective piece, and wrote a few thoughts down last night, in a bit of a mind map.

It struck me how hard reflective writing is. I followed the

• What I observed
• How that made me feel
• What that says about me

format we used on on Module 1 which worked ok.

I find it interesting how little reflective writing we actually do, day to day; I can't think of the last time I wrote a reflective piece. It seems our reserved Anglo-Saxon cultural preference makes it even less likely that we structurally articulate our feelings about events or challenges regularly in any medium, but especially in business.

I get the sense that this empowerment to articulatee feelings is at the heart of the power of coaching, especially within the European business context. But I wonder if the Americans or Japanese would approach reflective writing, as in indicator of the coaching process, with the same trepidation.

Another Nascent coaching blog

Interesting to get forwarded another nascent coaching blog by a colleague, although this one is from a coach far further down the road than I am! I've added her to my "blogroll" - (the links at the right hand side of the page.)

I think the blogging and coaching thing works well together; both involve reflection, introspection and conversation; perhaps a bit of "coaching 2.0" momentum is gathering. Not much on Google, but by putting in to the search box I found this interesting presentation.

I'd be surprised if this didn't gather more momentum - the tech exists, and in the current climate I'm sure the demand will be there - the subject for another post a little further down the line, I think.

First Session tomorrow

As part of our work between modules we have to coach and be coached for an hour, and then write a short reflective essay. Having been coached last week, I face the far more daunting task of coaching someone for an hour tomorrow.

It is quite an odd exercise in some ways. Coaching has to be something you commit to fully, yet we are doing an isolated one hour session. I think striking the balance between committing to the relationship while containing the session to the hour will be challenging.

I have spoken to some colleagues, and they have admitted similar concerns, so at least I'm not alone on this one. I'm reading up a bit on phone coaching as well, as we are doing this session without the benefit of face to face interaction - demonstrating the "active listening" without that could be quite hard.

I am really looking forward to it though; I just hope I don't make any catastrophic errors!