What is coaching?
I love Ted Lasso. Ted exemplifies a coaches ability to transform people by creating an environment for people to be their best. As we observe Ted and Coach Beard, it doesn’t take long before we see that working through personal challenges isn’t easy. As much as the characters surround an English football team, the challenges of each individual is only minimally related to their skills. This has been my experience as a coach as well. What limits our performance is dealing with our shit.
The greatest message of Ted Lasso to me is that it does not matter what a coaches past work experience is. Enhancing performance is about supporting people to move through whatever barriers they are experiencing. Coaches do not need to be experts in the areas they are coaching. Good coaches create experiences for people to realize and apply actions. I am not an expert in your life or in your organization, you don’t need me to be. You already are that expert. Wouldn’t it be great if someone could pull the best ideas, decisions and paths forward out of you? That is coaching.
We are so used to the idea of school and used to being taught something, most underestimate the importance of support people to do something with what they already know. Most people think a coach is going to teach or train them in something, because of this, one of the first questions I get asked is: What kind of coach are you?
It is a fair question, however, it is not a simple answer. The best way to understand what type of a coach someone is, is to have a coaching session with them. It might be the only way. When someone says they are a leadership coach, life coach, executive coach, that describes their clients they work with, not necessarily how they work or what their style is. Coaching is a process focused on generating positive outcomes. However, for someone who is curious about what fluid coaching is, below is what I send people as an introduction.
Coaching is a process of partnering and taking an individual, group or organization through a process designed to achieve their desired outcome.
Coaching is:
Engaging
Process specifically for you, focusing on your priorities
Co-Creation: You are the expert in you, we support you to explore and understand you even better.
Objective
Impact Areas:
Focus
Clarity
Improved Communication
Trust Building
Leaders support and development
Culture Creation
Strategic Planning
Personal Development
Improved Safety, Quality, Efficiency and Reliability
Realistically anything you want
Why individuals seek coaching:
Achieve their next level success
Finding purpose
Support through a challenge, change or big life transition
Create new possibilities.
Exploring what is next
Enhance self accountability
Outside perspective to recognize and support removing barriers
Enhancing leadership
Why Organizations Call:
Step Change: Achieve next level performance
To have a qualified person with the skill and experience to be objective, recognize and support removing barriers, streamlining and create new possibilities.
Enhance Vision
Strengthen Capabilities
Benefits of Coaching for Leaders:
Having a coach means having someone on your side to bring out the best version of you.
Expand current strengths and styles
Effective communication
Increase value
Enhance your ability you to support and develop others
Outside objectivity
The higher a leaders position, the fewer people they have to confide in. A coach is there to listen and shift a leaders perspectives to support confident decision making.
What coaching is not:
The word coaching is used to describe a multitude of methodologies and services. Fluid coaching is sometimes best defined by what it is not:
Telling: Coaches do not aim to fix you, your organization or your business. We don’t tell you what to do. We use questions to expand the way you look at yourself and perceive your relationships, organization or business.
Experts: Coaches are not experts in your field or your life. We aren’t going to teach or tell you how to be better. We are experts at pulling your expertise out of you and supporting your decisions.
Training: Coaches do not need their clients to take a course, learn or read anything prior to coaching. Training and teaching is a different way of developing people. Coaching isn’t about providing information. However, the best teachers and trainers use coaching tools to convey information.
Advice: If you are looking for someone to teach you how to live better, tell you how to be happier, how to be a better, leader, partner or provide advice on how to run your business or organization that is not coaching. If you are looking for someone to listen, watch and shift your perspectives so you gain the insight to enhance your efforts, move forward or solve your own problems. That is our expertise.
Blending Coaching with other methodologies
Often coaching is combined with other methods of enhancing people. Training programs combined with coaching are very effective. Instead of just conveying information, coach techniques increase the uptake of knowledge from any training program.
Consider what telling or teaching something actually is. It is conveying knowledge from past experiences. It is providing knowledge and research. This is great when competence is low or someone needs a piece of information to get going.
Coaches are different, coaches ask questions so their clients can create their own path forward. Clients are challenged to think through a situation, anticipate issues and gaps in information and generate their own path forward. They will ask more questions and build understanding in themselves. This doesn’t replace knowledge, however, when you combine training programs with a good coach, a person realizes what to do with information making it more relevant.
The AERO program is a great example of combining training and coaching. AERO is not common sense, the information in the program will enhance team and individual performance. Having a coach support understanding makes implementation of the knowledge more impactful faster. When people do not understand how information fits in their lives or job, there is a good chance they will disregard in a short time. Training and teaching leaves it to the student to figure out how to put the information to use. Coaches make the information relevant and useful and brings knowledge to life.
Ted is our Hero
Ted has the benefit of being a TV show. Writers can try different things before the camera rolls. Coaching is more like improv. It is alive and in real time. The changes in the show happens over seasons, not instantly. Real coaching is like that too. Ted is my hero because everything he does works out. Even when something looks like it isn’t going right, it always leads to something good. As Ted says, doing the right thing is never the wrong thing.
What are you looking for?
The nuts and bolts of Fluid: Fluid coaches are trained and certified coaches. We adhere to a professional code of conduct. As much as we provide AERO, facilitation, strategic planning and other training programs coaching is at the heart of what we do. It is more important to us that you find a meaningful path forward and are able to generate the results you are looking for rather than gain information that has little relevance.
What is the positive outcome you wish to achieve through coaching?
