Business & Transformation
Coaching
Coaching
Coaching is a partnership and a creative process between a coach and a client that aims to improve person’s effectiveness and maximize potential through raising self-awareness and practicing new skills and behaviors. The coaching process facilitates learning, obtaining new ideas and skills, and expanding perspective through support, challenge, championing, and feedback in the organizational and/or life context.
Coaching process creates an environment that is free from judgment, expectations, and criticism. In this kind environment, people are free to ask questions, experiment, observe, learn, change, and appear vulnerable without fear.
In many cases people can benefit from coaching, but in some cases, there is no engagement despite the best efforts of coaches. There are personal or contextual issues that may keep people from forming efficiently working alliances with a coach. Sometimes coaching is not the best option and should be replaced with some other type of intervention, such as, counseling, consulting, or training.
Looking for a coach who specializes in your area of need, perhaps the most important thing is to find someone you feel absolutely comfortable with. Remember that you are going to work closely with your coach, have a deep conversation, so right match is a key success factor in coaching process. It is recommendable to meet potential coach prior to starting a coaching engagement and having a trial session for free to check whether you have “good chemistry” with the coach.
Additionally, to “good chemistry”, what are other criteria you can be informed about?
Clarity of the coaching process, coaching engagement’s structure, and price. Your coach should be clear and transparent about the process and terms. Don’t hesitate to ask your prospective coach as many questions about coaching and the coach as you want to.
Competencies. Check a prospective coach’s education, background, experience, a certification in coaching from a recognized institution.
Ability to challenge. Look for a coach who is ready to stretch you, encourage and evoke transformation providing you with a safe environment to experiment with new ways of thinking, try out new behaviors and approaches, as well as practice new skills.
Honesty. Look for a coach who is not afraid to be honest with you, even when this is “the hard truth”. Your coach should ask insightful, provocative questions supporting and challenging you.
Leveraging diversity. Your coach should be able to tailor their approach, goal setting, plans and experiments to you, based on your thinking, learning styles, personality traits and values, as well as cultural factors.
Adherence to high standards of ethical conduct. Feel free to ask what kind of ethical standards a coach adheres to.
In coaching, we assume that a client is an expert in their field or functional area. We never suggest business solutions or specific advice on the client’s work or interests because this is the client’s job. The coach provides feedback, ask the right questions, help you gain fresh perspective, and develop new ways to tackle old problems. Your trustworthy collaborative relationship with your coach works much better than the coach’s industry knowledge.
I meet with clients at least twice a month, up to 4 times per month. This frequency offers time for reflection and application of skills and knowledge between sessions, while maintaining the momentum of our work together. Also, I encourage my clients to adjust the frequency to their unique situation.
In order to make coaching as convenient as possible for you, I offer several options. Coaching services can be conducted in person at my office in Belgrade, on-site for corporate engagements, or via the video-conference and the phone for remote clients and busy people.
Most of my coaching engagements are six months long. Some clients prefer to keep partnership with the coach for years to work through a variety of tasks or to complete a large-scale initiative. Factors that may impact the length of time include: the types of goals, the scale of change, the client’s commitment, and openness to change, the frequency of coaching sessions and financial resources available to support coaching, and other unique factors.
You may end work at any time you want to. I kindly ask you to notify me about your decision two weeks before the termination to provide me with time to prepare a final session that focuses on review and closure. Other terms and conditions may be included into the coaching agreement.
To benefit from coaching, the clients should:
- Be ready for change (a change in effectiveness, a behavioral change, a change in quality of life, and so on)
- Be ready to accept full responsibility for their actions, the impact of change they desire
- Be open to feedback, an honest conversation, failures, and setbacks as a part of learning process
- Be willing to commit to coaching and take things seriously and responsibly.