An coaching process is a service that is contracted in order to obtain professional accompaniment from a coach and extraordinary results. Like a tennis player has a coach or a native teacher to learn a language. But what is done in a session, what is it for, how does the coach work, how long does a coaching process last, and most importantly, what is coaching?
Introduction: What is the purpose of a coaching process?
We have all felt stuck, trapped or longing to achieve something that seems too difficult to achieve on our own, on our own. To move forward, in our professional career or to develop ourselves personally in an exponential way we can all choose to hire a coach and start a process of individual coaching.
The coaching process allows us to incorporate the vision of someone external (the coach) by sharing our points of view, our beliefs and our fears or resistances. The idea is to try to refocus our thinking, find new possibilities for action and achieve better results.
1. Brief definition of coaching
The Coaching is a discipline, a philosophy and a methodology. that unlocks people's potential through communication and leadership skills. It is a way of being in the world that leads us to become more aware of what we think, feel and say.
Coaching can help improving self-awareness: to get to know our strengths, weaknesses, moods and emotions and allows us to choose how we respond to certain situations in our daily lives.
Coaching also helps us to improving relations with others and be happier, because the quality of our relationships has to do with our capacity to building trust, and trust is usually worked on in any coaching process, directly or indirectly.
Finally, coaching encourages us to become more agile by connecting us with an openness that increases our creativity and our adaptive capacity to uncertainty.
Executive coaching is a vital attitude that executive coaches embody at its best when they are in session.
2. Definition of coaching process
An The coaching process is the framework within which the relationship between coach and client takes place.. In other words, a coaching process is a sequence of agreed meetings, is the number of sessions or private conversations between the coach and the client (also known as coachee).
It is a relationship that is limited in time, it does not continue indefinitely but has start and end date marked. This is a substantial difference to psychological or therapy processes, which can last for several years. In this sense, in the coaching process the focus is on the person's future and that is where the work is done. The coach sees the person in their current situation and accompanies them to their ideal situation, but does not look into what happened in the past to get them to where they are today, but focuses on a very specific aspect that is in their future.
Thus, the aim of the coaching process is for the client to achieve a very concrete challenge that you announce at the beginning, something specific that you clearly want to achieve and that is in your future. And the process is always done with that goal in mind and will end when it is achieved.
In this relationship or coaching process, the coach will not provide solutionsHe is not going to interpret, he is not going to judge, he is not going to give magic recipes. The coach walks hand in hand with work: customer to discover new ways and new actions to achieve his or her goal. in a context of security and confidentiality.
2.1. Characteristics of the coaching process.
The processes are divided into sessions and progress through certain stages. The sessions are private and confidential. However, in some organisations there may be tripartite sessions to which the client's manager or HR manager is invited.
In all cases, the conversations and everything expressed in the sessions of a coaching process stays in that meeting and is not shared, and this is something that EEC coaches defend at all costs, as indicated in the ICF Code of Ethics.
2.2. Roles within a coaching process.
Coach and Coachee. The coach. The coach accompanies the client to achieve his or her goal and, to do so, puts the coaching tools at his or her service: he or she listens to the client, asks questions and makes him or her reflect. First, to understand what is happening to the client and how they are interpreting what is happening to them. And then, to generate the change they need to achieve the defined challenge.
The coach makes an effort to enter the client's world.
The certified professional in executive coaching masters the coaching tools and with them leads the session, but does not direct it. The coach acts as a taxi driver and takes the client where he/she tells him/her to go, at the speed he/she decides. His job is to stop where there are bottlenecks and to untangle doubts along the way. His commitment is to challenge the client.
The client or coachee. He is the absolute protagonist of the process. He/she is the one who marks what he/she lacks or what he/she has too much of and who decides where to go. The client, throughout the process, designs his future in relation to a very specific aspect of his life and turns to the coach to make use of all his talents.
2.3. Duration of a coaching process.
On a regular basis, a coaching process can last between 6 and 10 coaching sessions.. As mentioned above, the duration is directly linked to the achievement of a specific challenge. The sessions of the process are usually convened more often at the beginning, once a week, and more frequently thereafter, every 15 days or once a month. In this way, a 6-session process can last four to five months.
In terms of format, the process can take place in person, online or even over the phone, as it is a conversation. However, in this case, as the coach is not able to observe the body, he or she will have to be even more empathic in listening to capture the client's emotions.
2.4. Phases of the coaching process
- ContextAll coaching processes start with a fundamental first session. A "marriage" must be created between the coach and the client, the coach must try to transmit to the client a sense of security and trust that will be key to the success of the process. Without trust there will be no coaching. The contract and budget are part of this session. After the first meeting, the client decides whether or not to continue with the coach.
- DevelopmentIn the central sessions of the process, the coach will help the client to deepen their self-knowledge, to visualise the future they want for themselves by providing tools so that they can clear their path and find how to reach their destiny. In each session, the client can share the learning or doubts that have arisen during the time that has passed between sessions.
- Out of sessionWe could say that everything that happens outside the session is, in fact, the most important part of the process. This is when the client reflects on a powerful question, sees himself in a previously invisible behaviour, and tries to make a change...
- TasksThe coach can propose to the client to carry out certain tasks or exercises to increase his awareness and self-knowledge: this can be the reading of some material or the invitation to write down certain reflections.
- Closingwhen the client has reached the challenge set at the beginning of the process, or a different one, if a new one has been identified during the process, the coach will one last session in which the customer can to review all the lessons learntIt will also invite you to explore new environments and new relationships in which to apply what you have learned. It will also invite you to explore new environments and new relationships in which to apply what you have learned.
2.5. The challenge in the coaching session and process.
The indicator of success of a coaching process is the achievement of the challenge set by the client. In 99% of the cases this success depends on how the chosen challenge was set at the beginning of the process. That is, not all challenges are workable in a coaching process. For example, it is not a coaching challenge when a client announces that he/she wants to "stop feeling angry or worried". The challenge has to be formulated in a positive way, i.e. it has to be something that you do want. For example, to have more peace, more calm... etc.
As a coach, therefore, it is important to take all the time necessary (it may even cover the entire first session) to attend to the client with all the listening and questioning necessary to define an addressable challenge in a coaching conversation.
In addition, the coach has to hold two balls: the challenge of the session and the challenge of the process, as they will not necessarily be the same in all sessions but there may be a generic one and then, in each conversation, related issues.
3. The Coaching Session
A coaching session is each of the meetings (online or face-to-face or even by telephone) between the client and the coach. They usually have a duration of approximately 90 minutes each. During this time, the coach deploys the tools with which to increase the client's awareness. For the sessions, it is recommended that the coach proposes a very quiet place where the client can express him/herself freely and confidentially, and arrive at the place of the session with time to be able to focus the mind.
3.1. Phases of the coaching session
In order to ensure transformational learning for the client, also called change of observer, which can bring him/her closer to that broadening of awareness that widens the view and facilitates new possibilities for action, the client can go through different stages throughout the sessions and the process. .
These phases are:
- Contextfor confidence-building.
- Current situationThe client states what he/she wants to change in the present.
- Ideal situationwhat future he imagines for himself.
- FeedbackThe coach mirrors and completes the client's vision of himself/herself.
- Action planThe coach accompanies the client in making changes in his or her daily life.
- Follow-upThe coach reviews the learning with the client.
3.2. Coach's keys to a good coaching session.
In each session, the coach has to turn off his radio (his automatic thoughts and ego) to be emotionally available for what his client needs at that moment; he has to let the client vent and cut when needed to put the focus on engagement, which is always the client's challenge.
The coach conducts an exercise to empathise, listen and accompany to his client so that he can find a way to unleash his talents.
The coach has to be able to support the client in difficult moments, if he/she connects with a complex emotion, and, at the same time, not to take the reins, not to advise and not to indicate to the client what he/she would do in his/her place or what his/her opinion on the matter is.
The coach acts as a mirror, literally. One of the coach's tools is to reflect back to the client what he/she says and how he/she says it so that he/she can see him/herself in a perspective that he/she usually does not have and, with this new information, decide and choose what to do next.
3.3. Common questions in a coaching session
The coach asks questions to accompany the client towards his or her goal. As far as possible, the coach will ask open, clean and future-oriented questions.
A professional coach will always start by asking three essential questions:
What do you want to achieve?
What are you missing to achieve it?
What resources do you have?
I'm sorry, I can't translate an empty input. Please provide some text for me to translate.From there, the coach will inquire into the client's way of thinking and his or her way of interpreting reality and ask why he or she does what he or she does and what would be the point of changing a thought, a belief or a behaviour. As for the challenge, what he wants to achieve, he will try to find indicators of success by asking, for example, how he will know that he has achieved his challenge.
There are no standard questions. Professional coaches do not have a battery of learned questions. The question does not arise from memory, the question arises from what is happening in the session at a precise moment.. The question arises, or not, according to the customer's needs. The coach only intervenes, because silence is as effective as a powerful question, based on the client's story and empathic listening with the challenge as the North.
3.4. How to work on closure in a coaching session?
Coach and client will feel and know at the same time when they have reached the end of each session and also when they have reached the end of the process. Since in coaching we always, always, always work towards the achievement of a very specific challenge, it is relatively easy to identify whether or not this has been achieved.
4. What training does a coach have?
The aim of coaching is to foster self-knowledge in the individual through learning, exploration and discovery of new beliefs, new ways of acting and seeing the world around us, resulting in the achievement of our goals.
Professional coaches undergo specific training and coaching. At EEC, this training is eminently practical, so that after acquiring a series of practical skills and knowledge, the basic knowledge and essential concepts such as the distinctions (in Cycle I Initiation), participants have the opportunity to practice each of the tools and techniques over the course of the course. real coaching conversations (in Cycle II Certification).
At EEC we adhere to the quality and rigour of coaching as defined by the International Coaching Federation, ICF, the American body that regulates the discipline worldwide. To become a coach, one must start with a genuine interest in people and be trained in the Executive Coaching Certification Programme at EEC.
