Don't try to 'Over Coach'.

 Who OVER coaches?

Yes, overcoaching happens, it's not unusual.

Let us check who would have a tendency to overcoach. It's a general overview (and not a conclusion after a number or researches.)

Overcoaching can happen with:

1. Young, inexperienced coaches who are trying too hard.

2. Coaches who lack real belief in themselves.These coaches will often want to be liked – and they would have a feeling the more coaching they do, the more clients will like them.

3. A Coach who lack belief in his coachee and feel the need to control every element of preparation and performance of his coachee.

4. This is more about the Coaches who work with corporate s and invloved in group coaching.

Coaches who are being evaluated or assessed by a client company' s CEO or by CHRO, and that's why they aim to impress by being SEEN to control every element of the training session.

It's said that when you are coaching, if you just step back, your coaching improves.

Your coaching improve s when you are not coaching.

Everything starts feeling like 'once upon a time'.

 Mid-life is a common time for the cracks to appear. That’s when people are often torn apart between raising kids, caring for elderly parents and trying to rise up in the ladder at work. 

Some major decisions, related to family and personal are waiting outside the door, whom to let in?

It’s also the time when we come face to face with the life choices we have made, and the consequences arising out of it, and slowly we begin to feel that life is finite. Time is running out.

People in their mid life will often say they feel they are failing on all fronts. 

Everything seems like "once upon a time" kind of. Lot of things are slipping out of hands.

A feeling of futility creeps in when they realise they don’t have the time or mental space to think about what they’re doing all this for and what their next step might be.

The relentless demands and worries coming from all sides along with the routine and monotony of their days gets to mid-lifers. Everything is there, but  everything is felt missing. You are there but not there.

It's important to keep eye on yourself, as years stack up. If we make a conscious efforts to be and let be...we can tide over this phase effectively.

Take time to grieve.

 Take time to grieve.

It’s so important to take time to understand the breadth and depth of the losses you’re experiencing.

It is perfectly okay to grieve on the things you’ve lost. Say out loud how unfair it is for you that you lost something so dear to you.

Scream into a pillow if you don’t have words. Give yourself the chance to process what you feel in that moment.

May be you’ll be more ready to handle the next painful experience, whenever it hits you.

Processing your emotions means letting them get bigger, wider, and make you overwhelm.

The importance of mindful acceptance of what you are, is to identify your thoughts, feelings, and experiences without trying to change or alter them. 

Instead, fortify your psychological strengths so if hard things come your way, you have resources available within you to handle them.

Have you failed as a coach?

 It was Sunday morning, around 9 .15 am and I was having my morning tea, reading Sunday Times and there was a call on my cell phone.

Normal Greetings and brief introduction was exchanged. I realised it was a call from a HR Head of a Pharma company, inquiring about coaching session for their senior Executives on the topic 'Employee engagement and Organisation growth.'

After, getting few details of either side, HR manager put forth a question

"Allow me to be little impolite to ask you, how many times you failed  as a coach?

Pl. Be frank although your answer will not affect your assignment with us." 

The question brought a big smile on my face and I replied "seven out of ten times I got an opportunity to fail and that has helped me to make my coaching fundamental more strong and practical."

It's a different story, I didn't receive further call and assignment from that Pharma company.

It’s not about the number of success or failures that one has gone through. Coaching is more of the attitude of giving, directing, and taking responsibility to bring the transformation in others.

Coach with right experience, knowledge and attitude will be able to guide and get things done from you.

Coach need not be evaluated on the parameters of success and failures.

Identify what keeps him going, and  moving ahead.

Coaching is between two equals - the coach and the coachee, where one is accountable and other is responsible for success and failure.

Coaching men and women are different

 In coaching process, I have come across with both men and women clients. In my initial stages of coaching, unknowingly, I didn't have idea that men and women require different approaches to bring about a change and transformation.

My coaching approach for both was same and as I continue with my coaching  I have realised that women are noticeably different from men in terms of their career and professional success, what is their work satisfaction and what they appreciate as reward.

If I have to describe specifically, they are different in:

- How they view life, work-life balance, family priorities, ultimate life goals.

- What they consider important and essential for their career and how much to sacrifice.

- What they consider as challenges and how they internally process these challenges.

- The way they perceive their internal and external value and worth

- The way they plan and envision growth, personal and professional level.

- The confidence they feel and express.

…and there would be many more than what listed here.

Coach with the same background as client.

 Most of the time when I meet companies and clients especially engineering based companies who would like to go for coaching process for their Executives, often ask a question,  “How is engineering management different from our normal management?

I don't know the actual answer for this. I even don't know if there is really any difference exist.

But, if I think in line with the question, may be I can pin point certain things which has a distinct advantages.

In reality there might not be any big  difference, but people find value in having a coach who has a similar background and who can speak and understand the common engineering vocabulary and situational knowledge. 

In other words, who can understand the common dynamics and don't need any explanation how things work.

A coach from a same background understand the cross-functional team dynamics as well as intricacies of processes, etc. 

He can help company executives to  knock out some low-hanging fruit that can help them and in turn a company with some short-term tactical wins.

This is my understanding about having an advantage to have a coach with similar background as client company.

What is Paradigm?

 Quite often we hear the Term 'Paradigm'.

Let us understand what is Paradigm?

Paradigms are mental programs that has control over your habitual behavior.

In more technical term if we describe then we can say - they are the “operating system” on which our mental processes are running.

Our paradigms create a kind of prism through which we view and feel the world around us.

When information is fed to our mind, it runs through the details it already knows about that information. 

It figures out the details where it fits in with drawing a bigger picture, and process the usefulness of the information.

Paradigms by itself are neutral. It is how we use in what context.

If our paradigms are positive, we will have a happy and satisfied, growth-oriented life. We will have a healthy self-image, and will have the ability to adapt successfully to change situation, upsetting events or a kind of adversity.

On the othe hand, negative paradigms can make us feel stuck in old ways of thinking and try to confine us to limitations.

They almost keep us imprisoned.

 In short, a paradigm is a mental setting. It is the context inside your mind from which you think, feel and live.

Why coaching doesn't work.

Sometime coaching just doesn’t work. Either it doesn’t work with someone or sometimes the coaching process doesn’t produce desired outcome.

In either case, the coaching just doesn’t work.

I have also experienced, at least 40% of my coaching efforts, just don’t produce the required results. It’s disheartening no doubt, but in my free time I try to recap those coaching sessions and coaching assignment and try to figure out is there anything common in all or am I making same mistakes again and again or my coaching approach is not tailor made for my clients.

Multiple recap I did, I realized that in my case I would attribute 3 reasons if coaching doesn’t work.

The first reason could be both-client and coach expecting a big change. In other words both coach and client expects a big transformation, which actually does not happen, or perhaps you don’t need a big transformation to happen. Instead find little change and sustain the change to the next little change.

The second reason could be not able to work on in-depth data. Sometimes, we get in to coaching with either very less assessment data or no assessment. If the things are going well, you may not realise the need for it but when during coaching if your client is stuck or you feel pushed to the wall, in-depth data or 360 degree view can help.

The third reason I could sense is client has a belief that he/she is so strong-willed that he/she cannot be changed. In such situation, a client enter in to coaching relationship thinking I am hard to sway. In such situation, as a coach you need to use your experience to the extent that although client believe he/she is hard to convert, you can enable your client to receive the input you are feeding.

This are my take on how coaching doesn’t work.

We are amalgamation of multi faceted identity

Each of us is an amalgamation of multiple facets of our identity. Our involvement with a particular identity described its existence at any given moment.

A noticeable dimension of one’s identity is one’s daily occupation.

It is required to shedd off layers of identity that normally cover or hide our deepest inner self, and we have to necessarily eliminate the noise of life.

Which otherwise, if not done would justifies our inability to introspect which  we have long avoided. 

A direct encounter with our naked,  unwarnished self will be naturally exhilarating, confusing, liberating or turbulent.

There are set of people who may embrace the opportunity, while others deliberately look away and avoid to get in terms with it.

we all are enforced retreat in current times.

 

Most of us are on a kind of enforced retreat, in present situation.

We wouldn’t have chosen this. We wouldn’t have desire this. But, we have been given time to think about what really matters and what is important to us, and who we’d like to be once this is all gets over. Because it has to end, eventually.

For me, the next few months are about kindness, connection, compassion, creativity, communication, collaboration and contribution. These are values that are quite important to me, these are the ones I want to use to guide me during this difficult time.

It made me think, something that is giving me the direction and purpose I lacked few weeks ago which I feel I would not, from this moment onwards.

We have to remember that although we don’t have the option to avoid the current crisis, we do have a choice in how we respond to it, in every moment.

What we are not what we were.

 If you wake up and forget who you used to be what will happen? (I am not talking about loss of memory.)

What I mean, is it a sign of growth and rejuvenation? Or you realise you lost a piece of yourself, now you remain as a shell of who you once were.

We often introduce ourselves to new friends and colleagues what we used to be at one point of time....! What we used to be ... indirectly define our life and our identity.

We tend to take support of 'what we used to be' even when we are not we were.

We need to realise that at point of time in our life our identity shifts. We have  undergone a change and our world views are different.Passions and hobbies that once seemed so important is no more seems important.

We change, and the environment around us changes. 

We have to honor the memories of our former life and face who we are now, and what that means.

What we used to be will always remain as a part of us, but it does not define us right now. 

Our 'now' is our identity and it defines us what we are and not what we were.

How you deal with paradox.

 Today's leaders are facing complex challenges and that is why the essential leadership competencies in complex global marketplace is to possess the ability to effectively deal with paradox. 

We always come across with leaders who tend to think in Black and white. They see the world in two dimensions: 'either/or.'

The world is too complex to get fitted in to two dimensions.

The either/or approach will never answer any question because they are in no way offer a black and white choices.

Instead, the either/or approach need to have a trade off to 'both/and' approach.

What it means, posing a question to ourselves, how we can perform both X and Z?

Few meaningful lines

 Recently came across with few meaningful lines, when I read them, I feel it relate to me in many ways.

I am sure many of LinkedIn member, if they stop by this post, would feel the same.

"Forever we remain oblivious to the future,

lost to the past and enduring our torture.

Forever we take chances to settle our scores,

losing some battles and winning some wars.

Forever praying loud hoping someone will hear,

forever crying softly but never shedding a tear.

Forever exists behind a disguise,

but the belief in forever keeps our hearts alive."

by Terri Nicole Tharrington

How to develop coaching philosophy.

 How you develop your coaching philosophy?

The development of your coaching philosophy should start with the core values you believe in. Your philosophy will reflect your moral standards and also your integrity towards them. 

As a coach, you would certainly show your best self to your clients, and hence, you must develop a deep understanding regarding why you have chosen coaching as your profession? You must ask some ‘why and what’ kind of questions to yourself.

What kind of coach I admire and I want to be?

Why I feel coaching is perfect fit for me?

Why client should choose me what they might feel I will help them to achieve?

What makes me feel constantly motivated towards coaching?

Why I feel I will be able to help my clients to achieve what they want to?

What will I achieve for myself through coaching?

Each coach must tell himself or herself stories that may enforce the commitments towards coaching and bring the effectiveness. 

By asking above questions you create a self-awareness, and self-awareness in coaching is vital in delivering effective service to your clients.

Drop all censoring if yourself.

 For at least half an hour in a day, may be not every day, at least twice in a week, give your mind a chance to express itself as what it is. 

Close yourself in a room, like a king, and accord a total freedom to your mind to zoom out. Just allow it speak - Whatever you want to think, to contemplate, let it happen.

Drop all the censoring of yourself that has prevented things from surfacing—drop all inhibition, restrictions and taboos. 

Give your mind the absolute freedom to allow whatever arises to arise; allow whatever appears to appear. 

Don't stop, hold back or suppress anything. You are on the verge of knowing what is inside. Don't be scared to come face to face!

The one who doesn't gather this courage is in trouble.

What is our identity and inner self

 Each of us is an amalgamation of multiple facets of our identity. Our involvement with a particular identity described its existence at any given moment.

A noticeable dimension of one’s identity is one’s daily occupation.

It is required to shedd off layers of identity that normally cover or hide our deepest inner self, and we have to necessarily eliminate the noise of life.

Which otherwise, if not done would justifies our inability to introspect which  we have long avoided. 

A direct encounter with our naked,  unwarnished self will be naturally exhilarating, confusing, liberating or turbulent.

There are set of people who may embrace the opportunity, while others deliberately look away and avoid to get in terms with it.

I am a Coach- what you make out of it?

To the average person, when you say “I’m a Coach” what do you think it means to him?

Whenever you use the word “Coach," you will not be on the same page with the person on the other side of the conversation.

The situation gets more worse when a new coach try to explain about coaching by saying “Coaches don’t give advice” and “You have the answers within you,” and "You are responsible and accountable for the outcome you receive" which would cause most people to wonder “Really? If all the things are with me, then why would I hire you!!??”

Instead of explaining 'what is coaching' better focus on communicating the benefits and results you provide to them, and not how you provide them.

You are not a complete Life coach from the Beginning.

It's not very far, just matter of 5-7 years before, when I didn’t know how to make my own website, or how to write a blog, or how to approach clients, or how to overcome fear of public speaking, or how to to work through my fear of being visible on social media… !

But, I did whatever it was required to be done to move forward because I was so passionate about what I was doing.

In doing so, I’ve learned more than I have ever imagined before about various topics, acquired a wide range of skills, and most importantly have truly discovered my capabilities which I was not aware of, when I strongly believed in myself.

I hope everyone who is reading this and facing the challenges of being a life coach remembers this too.

I believe, we are not complete Life coaches from the beginning. We became life coaches in part by part because as we support people in finding their inner resourcefulness to move forward, toward their ultimate life goals, we are doing the same for ourselves too.

It's my own experience! 

Coaching help in employee engagement.

Take a scenario of an office, the staff and the boss interact with each other throughout the day. The sales team and the clients interact with each other multiple times in a week. In a shop floor of a manufacturing unit, the employee and their leaders must be interacting, every hour in a shift.

It can be plain interaction or can be directive, or can be informative. It can be a   monologue, a dialogue or a discussion, or an argument.

In fact, it’s very important that both parties essentially required to identify the emotions of those they are interacting with. These emotions affect employee and the leader’s engagement level and the overall performance of the organization.

In modern times, it is necessary to teach both, the leader as well as the employee, a proper way to read the non-verbal signs of communication.

May be right way of Coaching would help an organization.

Coaching will not only teach to read a non-verbal communication but it also teaches how to ask the right questions and how to respond rightly to the question being asked, It ensures that they understand the situation, and are able to empathize how it impacts the other person.

By improving emotional intelligence, individuals can realize how the person they are interacting with is receiving and responding to the instruction.

Stop trying to over deliver!

“Do you expect too much from your coaching clients?” A question asked by a CEO of a Pharma company at the end of coaching assignment, during a coffee break.

 

I just smiled in a reply to his question.

 

He continued, “Never expect too much from your clients, more than they actually want for themselves.”

 

My smile just went away and a serious look came on my face, starring at CEO and was trying to understand every word he spoke.

 

Yes, it is true, sometimes we just want too much from our clients. And unfortunately we don’t sense it.

 

Just like me, there will be many coaches, who would be experiencing similar feelings one or the other times, when they try hard to effect the change on their clients.

Coach should let go their desire to bring the change in their clients and develop an understanding that what is best for the client is what the client is ready to commit to bring the change within themselves.

The client may get overwhelmed by your desire to help them beyond their current level of commitment to help themselves.

Stop trying to over deliver! 

To be a great leader!

 

As a newly appointed manager, you are likely to feel some kind of pressure to be a “great leader.”

Most managers are aware of the basic principles of good leadership which they have learnt earlier or read in leadership books, but only few are able to organize their learnings over the years into an actionable framework.

As a great leaders you must know and need to practice that there are two major areas of management focus - ‘tasks’ and ‘relationships.’

If you excel in both of these areas, you will be able to receive a superior performance from your team. However, it is important to know that balance between these two focus areas is absolutely essential.

Managers who are only focusing on task eventually face the burn out of his teammates.

Managers who are relationship focused, are not able to set sufficiently high performance standards and fail to challenge their teams to achieve set goals.

As a manager you need to learn to focus on task and relationship excellence to become a great leader.

What is your 'coaching package'?

 I received a text message from someone whom I don’t know before- ‘I am looking for coaching, pl. send me your coaching package.’

After a deep thinking I have derived my understanding of coaching package, what the client is asking for ( I might be altogether wrong).

Many life coaches offer 1-off / complimentary coaching sessions. Someone may sign up for 1 coaching session, even if it goes well, it may end there itself if they fail to ever book another session. With my last 3 years of complimentary coaching session, I have realized that one off coaching session model doesn’t work. You end up chasing clients.

That is why many coaches would be offering a coaching PACKAGE, which means clients are committing for 3 or 5 coaching sessions at once.

By making clients to commit to a certain package of sessions, it ensures they realize their investment for coaching process. Single session of coaching do not accomplish anything, for coach as well as for client.

It’s just not 3 or 5 sessions for client, but actually they look for specific result.

Hence, what I understand ‘coaching package’ as fixed number of sessions with Coaching fees to deliver a specific result to client.

Water-cooler Coaching

“Water Cooler Coaching.'

These are essentially informal chats between manager and employee where no direct instruction is given to the employee on any of the issue which might halt the discussion.


There could be conversation in the form of open-ended questions, such as.
“What would happen if…”
“Why do you think that is…”
“What are the options…”

This might take a while for employee to open up, but the very fact that as a manager, if you are doing, it is a sufficient proof that your subordinate is “capable" enough.

As a manager if you are able to point that out to them, may be that’s all is needed to give them the boost required to 'push' them more to perform more.

Take a pause and reflect.

 In a society that we live in, it values speed over reflection, as a result patience doesn’t get the credit it deserves.

We are so habituated to react quickly that sometimes the event is forgotten, only reaction is remembered.

It's time now, that we learn to create a space between events and our reactions.

You can choose to take pause and reflect, or you can react without thinking.

we must learn to step back and look at things from a distance.

Discernment is the ability to judge well.

Culture making process is like a dealing with a Black-box.

Many companies are hiring consultants and take their help to build a desired company culture. CEOs and Consultants are spending time to figure out the 'Why' and 'How' of the resultant outcome.

It would not be too much to say that Culture-making is like a dealing with black box.

Black box is a process or system of which we only know its inputs and outputs.

We really don’t know anything about its internal processing, what it does internally with input and how it manipulate it to provide the black box’s output.

I guess, this is exactly how culture making works. Although, culture making is a process but we as organizational leaders can not easily control it.

We can only feed the inputs and monitor the resulting outputs.

The inputs we would process are the people we hire, the direction we give, and the values we impart to them as leaders.

And the outputs we can experience include behavior, performance, and willingness to stay longer with organization.

Howsoever, smart, able and effective leader we may be, we cannot control what is happening inside that black box.

We can’t change how our team interacts and responds to our inputs.

Hence, all of our efforts for growing and changing culture must be necessarily to be focused on the inputs that are in our control. 

As a leader you allow space to your team

 As leaders when you are so much deep into, you tend to become a dictator, you start prescribing how the response should be to every situation. You end up writing prescription which your team has to follow.

In doing so, you end up creating a group of rule-followers who cannot function effectively on their own.

When your company is on a higher growth curve, you need the least of this kind of response from your team.

On the other hand, you should be in position to trust your team and you need to have an immense faith in them that your team understands what’s important and are capable to take the right decisions in the right situation s, on their own.

This is possible if you allow space within the structures you create for your team so that they have the right interpretation on the instructions you give.

This will inspire the team to own their own part of the company’s culture.

To change behaviour, change the environment

 I have heard a story where a guy had a puppy who used to chew shoes. He has left no shoes without chewing. The guy was very much perturbed. He decided to train the puppy not to chew on shoes.

Every time his puppy goes over shoes and returns without chewing them, the puppy would get a treat.

The things went well for sometime.

As the time passes, puppy become smart, he will not chew on shoes when he knows his master got a treat in his hand—and puppy go back to usual business as usual, when he knows his master is not holding a treat in hands.

Result: Your puppy ends up training you, rather you training him.

There is an easier remedy, but you prefer to take awkward route to approach a problem.

Instead of trying to teach your puppy not to chew on shoes, you can simply move your shoes out of reach of puppy.

In fact, what looks like a behavior problem is actually an environment problem.

The same concept applies to human behavior too.

The principle is same, whether the behavior is of your puppy or your own.

To change the behavior, change the environment.

It's important to unwind from the work.

 Assume, you’ve got an important project due at work, you are required to put in few extra hours in the evenings- answering emails and chalking out ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the project.

You have spent the whole weekend behind that project work. You don’t remember the last time when you sat on dining table without a phone or laptop. You had all eyes of your family members drilling you while you are busy with your laptop.

Your department is short-staffed; you have decide to take a lead, sacrificing your much-needed day off and pulling up till late night to help out your team and the project.

You’re exhausted, stress has built-up, you need a good sleep to regain your stamina.

But you’re being a team leader! It’s meant to be like this, that’s what you think and others too.

Four out of ten of us struggle to unwind from the work in the evenings and/or at weekends. This is an obvious sign that our work-life balance is out of sync.

Nearly half of working parents claim that work restricts their ability to spend their time reading books or playing with their kids.

Almost 40% of my professional friends feeling overwhelmed by demands of the modern workplace, affecting their relationship with their partner. Because boundaries between work and home have become blurred thanks to technology.