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.