What is Coaching?

I’ve had lots of training and read lots of books on the topic of coaching. It’s a good thing because I am a coach! As a coach, I help people see life differently and live life differently. I help them see things that they can’t see themselves. I help them get to the heart of their issues so they can solve their issues. All of this is what a coach does. Boiling it all down to its essence, I define coaching simply as helping people become their best. When we train people, it helps them get started and learn how to do the task. Coaching is helping people become their very best at that task or in their role. Coaching really starts to stretch their understanding of what they were trained on. It’s where we can really fire up the thinking part of the brain!

If training is the science, then coaching is the art! Training should cover the basics and the foundations and should be able to be repeated in an effortless way. (You should be able to refer back to it: “Go watch the videos,” or “here’s the manual.”) Coaching, on the other hand, explores the exceptions, the deeper thinking and the application of current principles to new ideas and unique circumstances. It helps people become their best and improve upon the basics. 

Coaching can be done by anyone and for anyone. You don’t need an official management or leadership role. In fact, sometimes coaching is more effective when there is not an authoritative relationship. In his second book, Death of the Org Chart, Walt Brown argues that our thinking and learning relationships, “those that center around Reporting, Mentoring and Coaching, must be overt, in the open, clearly spelled out, communicated and adjusted for individuals to grow inside their organization.” Ideally, everyone in the company would have a manager and a coach. Heck, every human should have a coach! How beneficial would it be to our world if everyone had someone who added energy to them, encouraging them to be their best?

We now experience access to more communication, more ideas, more choices, more opinions, more data, and more inaccuracies in that data. When we have complexity in our lives, our brains have a hard time sorting through the data and separating the signals from the noise. Coaching simplifies this. 

Think about a time when you experienced coaching. This could be during participation on a sports team, debate team, while meeting with your financial planner, life coaching or anytime that you went to someone you trusted to work through a problem you were having. If you are running on EOS, you’ve experienced coaching during your sessions with your Implementer!

What did you experience? What I’ve experienced as I’ve been coached (YES! Coaches need coaches!), and what many others report experiencing is:

• An “a-ha” moment: This is when you feel that lightbulb turn on and you suddenly see things in a new way, or you have a new idea.
• Getting unstuck: Before the coaching, you were stuck, you couldn’t see a path forward. After the coaching, you see a path forward that didn’t exist prior to the coaching.
• Clarity: This is the feeling of having a muddy water brain become clear: before, lots of variables, scenarios and what-ifs are floating around in your mind. When you experience coaching around these topics, things become clear. Coaching helps the mud settle so you are left with clear water. 
• Creativity: When two or more people are engaged in coaching, the Mastermind Effect is present. We feel the power of “two heads are better than one” many times, resulting in greater amounts of or higher-quality creativity.
• Confidence: The experience of coaching brings confidence to both the coach and the person being coached. Sometimes all we need to move forward and be our best is simply the confidence to act. 

How much more effective could your company be if everyone in the company was having more of these experiences on a daily basis?