Learning to coach, is a worthy journey for any leader to take.
Many leaders mistakenly think they already know how to coach, even without having any formal coach training. They think that by simply asking questions as a communication style, they are coaching.
Using professional coaching skills, learned from formal training, is far different. It enables you to tap into far reaching benefits across leadership, personal development, and mental health.
Leaders I have trained in coaching report back to me many benefits including; improvements in their marriage, their relationships with their kids (adult and younger), spiritual growth (specifically only from the coach training from Destiny Coaching), faster success at work, clarity and confidence in executing their vision, strategically beneficially shifts in the way they view their company and those that work with them, positive shifts in the culture of their company, and positive engagement of those they coach along with so much more!
Some leaders say that the coach training was the best thing they have ever done! Some say that it superseded other leadership development that they have invested substantially more money in.
Learning the coaching process shifts thinking in an empowering way and improving mental health. It helps people deal with struggles that come their way in a different, more positive, creative, broader reaching way.
Here are some examples of shifts the training brings about:
Learning Self-Management
This is a huge part of becoming a coach! When stepping into the role of a coach, you take a different approach entirely to situations. First and foremost, you learn to step out of being a fixer to an empower of people to find answers within themselves. You learn how to help people take responsibility to fix their own problems. You learn to do this for absolutely any topic or agenda. You learn how to help them think in a more empowering way. You learn how to coach people into greater vision to step into more of their potential. You learn how to set people up to be do this, for themselves, again and again without you.
Learning the first step to ‘self-manage, is the hardest step in coach training for most people!
You learn to switch off your ‘fixer’ and replace this mindset with powerful skills that shine light in the areas that someone has not been able to see previously.
As coach you don’t tell them an answer but allow them to see it themselves. The problem is most leaders are natural born fixers. Most of what we have all been taught is to become an expert, and then share our expertise. The hardest thing of all is to park all of this and listen. Then to step into the art of facilitation, not teaching, not telling, not problem solving, but facilitating. This is effective and empowering leadership. This style of leading carries great influence.
Guess what, learning to let go of having to be the fixer and always have an answer relieves a ton of stress and helps enormously with overall mental health.
Building Greater Self-Awareness
A leader can’t self-manage unless they develop a much deeper level of awareness of themselves and their own internal world. In the process of learning to coach they ask themselves; ‘Am I fully present to this person?’, ‘Am I more present to my opinions, my solutions, my agenda?’ ‘What is it that I am present to in this moment?’ ‘What is my internal self-talk?’
Learning the process of becoming aware of this and how to park it to be fully present with the person you are coaching, is difficult but an invaluable lesson to learn.
It’s a process that leads to better mental health!
Once a leader can be present to what their internal talk is and how to switch it off, they can manage their own stress better. The skills of awareness and recovery are learned, to understand what is going on internally and park it for the good of what is before me.
A lot of problems in mental health arise because we have avoided being aware of our own internal world. We avoid thinking about and feeling what we are stressed about. Learning the art of becoming aware of this helps mental health in all kinds of ways and many areas of life.
Avoiding Unhelpful Self-Talk
Part of coach training is to learn to not waste time in self condemnation when you are coaching. This is part of self-management and for the benefit of the person being coached, so you can focus on their needs. Guess what, learning to stop self-condemnation helps you too. It’s negative self-talk that is not good for your mental health!
Rethinking Responsibility
As you can see a huge part of coach training is to learn to help someone, to empower them, to bring light into their situation, but also to coach them to have responsibility of their situation.
Leaders have a lot of responsibility. But they also tend to take on a lot of responsibility that isn’t theirs and doesn’t need to be theirs.
Leading people doesn’t mean that the responsibility of their lives becomes yours.
A coaching approach is a lot easier than taking on unnecessary responsibilities. When you are coaching you lead people to come up with and follow their own ideas not yours, being responsible for their own outcomes. As soon as you step out of coach mode and advise people to follow your advice, then you become responsible for the results whether they fail or succeed, as the plan they are following is yours not theirs.
Learning a coach approach has helped countless leaders to lead their team differently because of the switch to self-managing and passing responsibility onto the person they lead who is seeking help, empowering that person to feel confident in their own plan.
I have seen leaders benefit from the results of taking a coach approach. Their teams have become more productive and happier, (because they feel empowered, valuable, listened to and effective). They feel they have something worth contributing. One manager I once interviewed said that the results of her learning this approach was that she left work on time, her work / life balance improved significantly, her team were more confident and autonomous of her, and she felt more fulfilled and satisfied with her work. Burnout was averted!
Gaining Fresh Perspectives on Change, Challenges, and The Future.
Leaders who learn to coach, learn to expand their thinking of what is possible. This must happen because if you are switching into believing the person in front of you has their own answers, and doesn’t need yours, you must expand your thinking to believe that is possible. Then, secondly, to be ready for ideas and ways that are very different to your own.
The person’s ideas may be something you have never thought of yourself. It could be something that gets that person where you want them to be, faster than anything you could have thought of. We are all different and the best way for me may be a different way to you. Coaching enables you to help people to find their own best way.
There is a certain humility and openness you must adopt as a leader to see this happen. This is what is taught in coach training. I train leaders to reach deeper inside themselves and find a new level of intuition and courage in the way they coach, to truly stretch and empower others to go to places where they never would have gone without this type of coaching.
This switches outcomes. As a leader you learn fresh perspectives. You become able to cope with change better as you have the tools to coach people through it without having to have all the answers yourself.
As a leader you can ask yourself the same powerful questions you are taught to ask those you coach. This helps keep you sharp, fresh, and creative in your approach to things. It helps you adapt quickly. It helps you embrace changes. It helps you realise there is no end to what could be possible, as when you know how to ask big powerful questions you get different answers, different ideas compared to when you solely rely on your expertise and experience to guide you forward.
The result is expansion of your thinking, you will no longer see your life, your work, or your business the same. You will see into the future more clearly and excitedly. You will learn to imagine and co-create with others.
To find out more about our online coach training school, contact us or book a call to discuss