Coaching and mentoring

 Often employee coaching is confused with employee mentoring.

While they both are career development programs and both are needed for your employees at different stages, the differences are very important to understand.

In coaching, the Coaching relationships are typically shorter and coaching is used to achieve very specific goals that revolve around employee productivity and performance.
Preferably the coaches are hired from an outside source and it is considered as coach's responsibility to drive and sustain the relationship by setting tasks for the coachee to complete.

Mentoring is an ongoing relationship that is developed between a senior and junior employee.

Mentoring provides guidance and clear understanding to the junior employees, how the organization is going to achieve its vision and mission.
Informally, the immediate manager can be a mentor.

Approach and avoidance theory

 Approach and avoidance theory:::

Individuals tend to delay their decision making process, mainly because they are caught in worrying about the consequences they might have to face, over which they have no control.

Approach- avoidance theory is more prominent in individual's goal setting, wherein an individual think about either a gain or a benefit from achieving the goals or they might keep worrying about the consequences or failure they might face towards their goal achieving journey.

In approach theory an individual looks possibilities and try to see beyond obvious.
In avoidance theory an individual looks at difficulties and get stuck at obvious.

In approach theory an individual can stretch himself to achieve beyond their normal goals.
In avoidance theory an individual can barely reach to his normal goals.

Parents have to learn to manage themselves

 I was talking to parents in mid-fifties, having only daughter in 30s, who is career minded, and is still single.

Parents wants her to get married to a boy of their choice, and should live nearby, to look after them and remain always one call away kind of.
Naturally, daughter would be unhappy with this preference, however she would not like to hurt them by outright refusing their preference.
Both, parents and daughter are fighting their own battles, no one wants other party to lose.
The case would have been quite different if they would have a son and a daughter.
Indian parents look upon Son as support in old age, they believe Daughter will go to her husband's house after marriage.
In foreign countries, the children become independent from their adulthood, start independent family, and parents also learn to manage themselves.
For them, having son or daughter makes no difference.
Nowadays, many Indian parents like to live independently, especially in big cities and having a son or daughter will make no difference to parents in our country too, except in small cities or small towns.
Every one of us should be prepared to live by ourselves. Even between husband and wife, who knows who stays behind alone! We have to learn to live under all circumstances by adopting to the situation.

What Next?

 I was reading an interview of the founder of 'What Next, Coach?'- Stephanie Onwunali, who is a Business Coach & Strategist.

I was very impressed by her coaching niche and the thought process she has put behind this.

Her core focus in ‘What Next’ is on helping young professionals to figure out “What Next?” in their personal life and their upcoming career.

It seems simple, however, if we dive deep inside this, there is an immense potential in this niche, because if you look back on our earlier years, not only we but our friends, colleagues would have face ‘What next?’ at various stages of our life.

Had there been someone like her, our career and resulting life would have been different than today's.

If as a coach, you have a flair to care for and like people and if you believe in them and be willing to help them move forward in the best direction for their chosen endeavors, this ‘Coaching Niche’ would be very rewarding in terms of satisfaction and fulfilment.

Strategic misinterpretations

 Recently I have come across with an interesting term ‘strategic misrepresentation’.

Something very interesting.
Let me explain:
If you have applied for a dream job. Your initial round of personal interview, everything goes well. Last Interview with Senior Manager is scheduled and a question is being asked, “If you could boost up the sales by 30% by cutting the cost by 30%?” Although you are not sure, you still say whatever is necessary to get that job.

Suppose you are G. M – Marketing, negotiating a prestigious order with a corporate company for a product which has a delivery period of at least 8 months. The Client has decided to place order on your company but he need to know your timeline before he pay you advance amount.

The SCM head, a shrewd guy, remove his golden glass, wiping with his handkerchief, shoots a question “When can I expect a delivery? Can I expect the equipment to reach my factory in six months?” You gulp. You don’t want to lie, but at the same time don’t wish to lose order and the advance on delivery ground. You reply “Yes, Sir, just consider it is done”.
When more things are at stake, more exaggerated your answer become.

Strategic misrepresentation is objectively is deceit, but the deceit is professionally acceptable.

This will not be termed as fraud!!

Coaches and emotional influence.

 If we look at coaching, it is a fast growing area, and people from varied area of work and specialties are attracted to work in this field. It is recommended that people who are willing to work in this filed should earn proper certifications from the accredited institutes through prescribed course, however there is no official restriction claiming to be a coach, not having this.

Despite prominent accreditation bodies like ICF or EMCC, requiring coaches to demonstrate fair amount of competency in working with emotions, many coaches believes that working with emotions shifts coaching towards therapy.

It is said and believed that emotions conveys the important information about the coachee and the situation, which help coaches to make their decisions. Still, it is a subject of debate whether coach should notice about the emotions but don’t have to speak about them or getting engaged with emotions and allowing coachee to experience their emotions fully to express themselves more freely.

Some coaches prefer to disengage themselves from the emotions and avoid any kind of emotional situation as they believe emotion shifts coaching towards therapy, and coaching is not a therapy.

I still of the opinion that coaches need education and training on how emotions influence an individual.

Our identity shifts..

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.