Coaching Skills Training: Working with coaching principles

Before we can work with the various models and frameworks that provide structure to our coaching we must pay due regard to the three main principles coaches apply in the sessions they conduct.

Firstly they concentrate wholly on the people they coach in order to raise their levels of awareness. Secondly they use encouragement and support to make sure that the people they coach take responsibility for moving their own issues forward. Thirdly they are open and honest and genuinely want to see others succeed and in this way they quickly build strong relationships of trust. Taking each of these in turn.

Raising awareness

By looking in our bathroom mirror we can raise our awareness of how we look and use this information to improve our performance in 'looking good'. Just being aware of what's going on when we experience certain things is often all it takes to make improvements - it's a natural process.

Maybe you've had that feeling of driving along the road and suddenly being unsure of whether you have passed your turning or not. When this happens it's because we're performing on 'auto- pilot', in other words, we are not consciously aware of what we are doing. This situation can be remedied simply by raising awareness again. The next time your in the car pay attention to how often this kind of daydreaming happens. Paradoxically, because of your awareness and concentration it won't happen at all.

Generating responsibility

Coaches also want people to take responsibility for tackling their own problems and developing their own abilities. Insecure managers often get a sense of satisfaction from always rescuing other the people. They believe the other person will feel good because they have unloaded a problem and they will feel good themselves because they've helped someone out. But these same managers have massive pending trays groaning under the weight of other people's problems. If we solve a problem on one occasion, the chances are it's us they'll come looking for when new problems occur. When we take responsibility for someone else's situation we have failed to develop that person and have simply reinforced their sense of dependence. Over the long term this can lead to feelings of frustration and resentment.

Building trust

Finally, effective coaches see the virtuous circle of establishing trust. They realism that by raising awareness and generating responsibility they are providing people with a platform to perform at higher levels. As this happens they will develop a great sense of trust in the coaching process and in turn answer their coach's questions with deeper levels of honesty and candidness.

In this way our coaching will help them to become more aware and responsible and so it goes on.

Raising awareness, generating responsibility and building trust are the key principles of effective coaching.

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