The following is the fifth installment in a weekly series of reflections from one of our learners in the Coaching Foundation Program. Each week, Silvester will recap his personal experience to give insight into what it’s like to become a life coach. If you’re ready to start your journey in coaching, please get in touch. We’re here to help.
This week I am thinking of not following any order, so bear with me. I will start with what excited me the most.
Got Coached:
I still have goosebumps.
At the end of the session, we had a coaching practice session. I was the client and my friend from our cohort was the coach. Talking about my friend, she will be an amazing coach. Why? Well, she helped me set a clear goal, inquired its importance, reconfirmed, helped me come up with steps to achieve it, and also helped me understand how I’ll know when I have achieved it. That’s SMART! Being coached was a different experience altogether. And now that I have played both roles, I am appreciating the journey even more. Maybe I am not making sense. But the presence of a coach & the awareness of the client are linked & to be a good coach I feel you need to experience both.
Chemistry and Coaching:
Chemistry meeting coaching is the rock we build on. It’s the first interaction you’ll have with the client and their sponsors (in the case of corporate clients). This is an integral part of coaching for both the coach and the client. It helps to set goals, forming agreements, standards to rework agreements, setting boundaries, etc. What stood out to me was that this is where you and & your client learn about your compatibility with each other.
Guidepost of Coaching:
We also discussed ICF core competencies, Specifically core competency 3. We discussed how the ICFs framework acts as a guidepost and how it helps us coaches in transitioning from one phase to another in the decision. Tracy & Smitha also demonstrated how it looks in a coaching scenario with a demo coaching session. The exploration, the beauty, the excitement, the awareness generated was all evident.
Too many Steve Jobs:
I am really lucky to be a part of a very inquisitive cohort and have two amazing & supportive trainers. These guys come up with some serious doubts that really make you think. For example: How to ensure the session goals align with your final goal or how to know the importance of a goal to a client etc. I honestly never think of such things. It’s like they are Steve Jobs “It’s not the customer’s job to know what they want until you show it to them.” I am the customer in this case :P. Hence really blessed to be part of this cohort. And Smita and Tracy do their part in resolving doubts, either by sharing their experiences or sometimes asking questions that help us look at the problem through a different lens. I am pretty sure that’s why all the learning stays with us.
So, overall a week well spent with new insights, learning, and goals to look forward to.
Speak soon!
