Leanpitch Story Writing Contest: Coaching -WHY, HOW and WHAT?

In Jan 2018, Leanpitch has organized a story writing contest. Asked participants to write a story for at least a page covering the below points

• How coaching has helped you or someone you know?
• What do you understand by Coaching?
• Why do you want to become a coach?

I took a chance to share my story and has become one of the three winners. It gave me a chance to attend ICP-ACC workshop facilitated by Vivek Jayaraman. Thank you Leanpitch for the opportunity. Sharing the same here. 

How coaching has helped you or someone you know?

I would say, coaching has changed the way I think and helped me to be what I am today. As a client, I have benefited immensely by the coaching.. from being stuck in a simple task at work to some of the most emotional moments.

In 2006, have completed my masters and working in a corporate. There was always a confusion in my mind whether to work in corporate or go for Ph.D. This confusion has led me to sleepless nights as I was working on both – was managing my work and applying for Ph.D. positions in the evening. Wasn’t able to decide which one to choose and proceed. Had a discussion with one of my seniors and explained to him…he heard it patiently and asked me a question: What do you want to achieve in your life? What is your purpose in life?

In 2012, was looking for new opportunities and giving interviews. With one of the MNCs, I had an interesting discussion. The question which made the discussion interesting is “Who are you as an individual?” Even after many years of the interview, I have been thinking about this question

These questions have made me to delve into myself and think a lot about my aspirations, interests, improvements and introspect.  I have been helped by coaches around me to seek answers, to know and trust in oneself and to become a better human being day by day. I have transformed myself from a self-doubting, cynical, midlife crisis person to a more confident, more assertive and a person looking at the endless possibility of options life has to offer me.

What do you understand by Coaching?

For a long time, I understood coaching is to teach someone a special skill. A one to one/one to many relationships where knowledge transfer happens, for example, a teacher and pupil. Much of such knowledge about coaching was learned by studying our great epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata and the mentions like Rama, Arjuna, and their teachers like Vashistha and Dronacharya respectively.

My understanding of the word “Coaching” has changed drastically as I have explored more into coaching. My current understanding of Coaching is - it’s a conversation, where coach actively listens to what client says and asks thought-provoking questions, which would help the client to explore the current state, target state and the path to be taken to reach the target state. There are different types of coaching I have come across, to quote some. i.e. Life coaching, career coaching, performance coaching, sports coaching, business coaching, executive coaching, group coaching, behavioral coaching, and Agile coaching. Though there are different types of coaching, objective of any coach is to help the client. It’s all about your coachee/client and their goals.

Coaches never provide solutions to client’s challenges or problems even if they have resolved in their experience as context, belief system and thought process is different from individual to other individual. Coach is someone who sheds light on the person’s own latent answers to the questions he encounters. These questions can be related to career, life, or even a small task at hand. Coach is someone, by seeking information, helps elicit the answers to the client.

Why do you want to become a coach?

To help myself and others. We, human beings have quest for answers, a quest for truth in our own little worlds. Without the right answers, our lives are at best consumed than lived fully. I want to help people to realize their true potential. Help them to untangle themselves in the unproductive thought patterns.

It is continuous and awesome learning journey so far, interacting with different individuals have added some learnings to me. Smile on my client’s face, gratitude in my client’s eyes have given me immense satisfaction, confidence and motivation to get ready for next coaching conversation.

I understand it’s a big responsibility to be a coach and being in coach’s stance and I enjoy giving myself completely to work towards my client’s objectives. Happy coaching!

The intent behind sharing this journey is to spark some thoughts around coaching. Thank you and have a good day. Please feel free to share your feedback to sathrambalaji@gmail.com

Asking Feedback: Valuable Questions

To be an effective team player, Facilitator, or as a trainer - It is very crucial to know what others think about your way of working. It helps the person to inspect the past and adapt for the better future.

Have you ever shared all the feedback in your mind?

Would you be able to share the feedback if some training is useless to you?

I understand there are a lot of factors influencing the way you provide your feedback. Was thinking for quite a lot of time about possibilities of getting the honest feedback from my participants, team members and from my coachees. Thought-provoking questions would help explore different aspects of the context or situation in which we are in.

We had a new joiner in our team. After one of our team meeting, I asked him How was the meeting? New joiner hesitantly told me that meeting was good and started listing all so-called good things happened in the meeting and not uttered a single word about negatives. I am sure New joiner has some suggestions for improving our team.

It might be because of being new, lack of psychological safety, need more time to observe or many more human factors. I was keen to get his feedback that we can improve. Now the question is HOW?

In our next conversation, I asked him

Thank you for sharing your feedback about our last team meeting. 

What are the observations you don’t want to share about the meeting?

This question has surprised both of us. I am writing this blog to share the question which created fun and a different thought process in the conversation.

Purpose of asking this question might be different from a person to person. Here is my purpose why I asked this question.

·      Setting the context that it’s not only about what went well and to know about another side too

·      Showing the readiness to accept feedback even if it is worse

·      Sharing the intention for improvement

·      To make your participants think, explore

The question might not get you answers if you don’t have a rapport with the person you are asking. So, spend some time building rapport before asking this question.

Adding different personas and context to the question.

What are the observations you would sharing with your close friends?

What are the observations you would sharing with your family members?

If you are the facilitator for the next meeting, what would you change?

The above questions will place them to think from different perspectives about the same meeting, training, coaching or facilitation. Thank you for reading. If you have any feedback (want to share & don’t want to share), please add it in comments or send it to sathrambalaji@gmail.com