Starting right off?
Hold your horses cowboy!
Take a short pause and reflect on what it is you want to achieve. You will be igniting your mind, energizing yourself and prompting your system to see what is helpful for your achievement. That is why coaching starts with the goal.
There is a reason why the process starts with the Goal. Goal defines the direction of the conversation. Without an agreed goal , the conversation would be “a conversation.” With the goal present, we have a point we can talk toward and beyond. And because of that point we can go deep. This depth allows client to gain awareness about the perceptions they hold and how they contribute to the current state of their being and feeling and how they serve the achievement of the goal. They can then decide to let go, test, or move forward with these perceptions. They can gain awareness on their strengths, values and support systems to make use of and cultivate towards their becoming. They reflect on potential obstacles or stretch points to design action and learning steps.
Professional Coaching Diploma programme‘s first training weekend is called Advanced GROW. GROW is a coaching model and the acronym stands for Goal, Reality, Options, Way forward/ Will. There is a reason why the process starts with the Goal. A goal defines the direction of the conversation. Without an agreed goal, the conversation would be “a conversation.” With the goal present, we have a point we can talk toward and beyond. And because of that point, we can go deep. This depth allows the client to gain awareness about the perceptions they hold and how they contribute to the current state of their being and feeling and how they serve the achievement of the goal. They can then decide to let go, test, or move forward with these perceptions. They can gain awareness of their strengths, values, and support systems to make use of and cultivate towards their becoming. They reflect on potential obstacles or stretch points to design action and learning steps.
In the programme, we talk about all the characteristics of a “good” goal, but beyond all technicalities, goal is the intention: What coachee wants to have/ be able to do or rather who the coachee wants to become. In a day to day life, the coachee might want to resolve something, achieve something, find an idea or a solution for something and this can be the topic of the conversation. The coach curiously inquires what will happen when this goal is achieved, which brings the client to the “beyond” stance, where they can visualize their future selves having achieved what is important to them. This visualization creates the inspiration, the energy to move towards, it also usually reveals what is important to the person (values) in addition to achieving the concrete result. A coaching session has a limited time and the coachee has the power to decide what would make the best use of the time, which would prompt the setting of the goal for the session. They choose in regards to what they want to achieve, what they want to get out of the conversation. That part, we call, is setting a specific session goal. And the coach also prompts the coachee to reflect on how they will know that they achieved what they wanted to achieve at the end of the session, which makes the goal – in technical terms – measurable. Now the coachee already knows what is important to them, what they exactly look for at the end of the session. This pre-reflection acts like a “turn-on switch” for the mind, which energizes the mind of the coachee to think freely and creatively, and also it acts as a special pair of glasses that makes the client see the important parts relevant to their intention. With that energy and direction in place, the coaching session becomes deep, creative, energetic, and transformative. That is why in the definition of coaching you don’t see helping clients but inspiring clients.
Let’s remember the definition of coaching by ICF here: Coaching is partnering with clients in a thought provoking, creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. If you’d also like to learn to co-create a process that inspires, join us in Professional Coaching Diploma programme.