RESOURCES

All coaching depends upon the desire of an individual to change something in their life. This requires that they have adequate emotional energy to see their goals through. If they do not, then a level of emotional support, possibly counselling or psychotherapy is often needed first.

Whatever the goals are, the outcome of coaching must be that the individual is always successful since this ensures that they become more self-assured, self-confident and active. For that reason, it is vital that each goal is achievable and broken down into steps that are realistic and time-framed. Even when steps go wrong, it is essential that they learn positive things from those experiences and feel motivated to continue with fresh steps to their goals.

Whatever their coach-training, the coach will invariably be using three principle methods, these are: questioning skills, challenge and silence.

Questions are broadly designed to increase choice, gain wider understanding and to help focus. Challenges help them to re-think the beliefs and assumptions that hold them back and effective use of silence is essential to allow such re-thinking to become fruitful. Sometimes the individual will remain silent but in a busy state of mind for over three minutes or more. Invariably though, if asked how long the time was, they will rarely know that it was over twenty seconds. This is because the silence is where they went deeply into their learning process to the extent that all external events became unnoticed. The coach has to be expert in order to recognise such periods of great mental (and or emotional) process. These breakthroughs are called cathartic events and good coaches observe these (and the huge motivational impact of them) on a regular basis.

Life coaching is enormously helpful in life-change, dealing with today’s issues and tomorrow’s goals. The added benefits include learning life-skills that they will continue to use effectively afterwards and the self-confidence that comes from repeated successes.

Angus McLeod

April 2005