Coaching Concept
The term coaching is another buzzword recently created in the management / leadership area and represents the leaders’ performances aimed to help his subordinates to tread their own auto development path. This way, it´s not competence of the leader to discover what is better for the subordinates – each one of them will have to discover their own path. To the leader is only responsibility the facilitator element, monitoring and helping each subordinate to discover the way to better express his/hers talents as a way to obtain the personal and collective goals.
Having the referred into account, coaching can be taken as a process that aims to instigate in the subordinate the self knowledge and help to nurture in him/her the wish to improve throughout the time. This is so, a leadership philosophy that is based on the assumption that the acquirement and development of competences are continuous processes and everyone’s responsibility, and not only isolated and limited episodes in time and driven by leaderships.
In practice, the coach helps his cooperator to learn, to discover areas of bigger potential and development, to develop the emotional intelligence, to make options, to define own goals, to analyze self mistakes, as well as its causes and the ways to correct, provides information and clues that allow to take options and make decisions: briefly, the coach is at the service of his subordinate – does not control him/her.
How to operate a coaching process with the support of a professional coach?
- The first step is to take conscience of the need and the benefits provided by the entry of a coaching process. The obligation of a process of this nature hardly will bring positive results, therefore the need of this first step.
- The second step is the selection of the coach, whom must have a deep knowledge of the professional context of the coached, being also indispensable the existence or creation of empathy between coach and coached.
- The third step of the process is the definition of the agreement that includes the mutual commitment rules such as calendar, the length and place of sessions, session follow up, etc.
- The fourth step consists on the analyses process of the coached personal and professional profile, being important to understand the coached personal and professional maturity level as a way to avoid the negative consequences of the non previous knowledge.
- The fifth step corresponds to the self conscience promotion by placing the questions that encourage reflection and that allow the coached identification of attitudes, beliefs, values, stereotypes, capacities and competences. In this phase the coach should help the coached to identify barriers that may complicate the development which can be fear, indifference, the cost/benefit relation or even the incompetence or lack of knowledge.
- A sixth step corresponds to the support of the coach to the coached in the meaning to mobilize him to the necessary change. This is also the goals establishment phase and the commitment of the coached with the same.
- The seventh and last step of the process is the phase of monitoring and feedback, which is fundamental so that the responsibility of the coached in the pursuit of the established goals is kept even if they have to be readjusted.
