“I know you are a coach, but what do you actually do?”

When I started coaching some ten years ago, my sons politely suggested to me that, if I ever got it in my skull to change careers again, would I kindly do something that they could explain to their friends. It gets worse!

Last year at the thirty year reunion of our law class at Stellenbosch, our then Dean (who happens to have the biggest intellect I have ever experienced) said something like, “I know you are a coach, but what do you actually do?” In front of the next cleverest person I have ever come across, a current Appeal Court Judge, and without whose assistance I probably would never have graduated, I stumbled with some inane comment that made them, excuse the pun, none the wiser! No, wait it gets even worse!

If you go on to some of the LinkedIn Groups for coaches, one of the most asked questions raised, by some novice – and not so novice – coaches, goes something like: “What do you tell clients that you do as a coach?”

I know what you are thinking – but it’s not that we don’t know what we do! I promise! It’s that it is really difficult to script a short so-called elevator speech that tells people what we do, in 2 minutes.  It has taken me ten years to find my elevator speech but before I give it to you, I am going to use a synopsis of what coaching is from some Australian coaches and authors, Zeus (yep! I said Australian – you see how confusing it gets!) and Skiffington. To summarise:
 Coaching is a conversation within a productive, results-oriented context.
 The coach assists the client to access knowledge he or she already has or is capable of finding.
 Coaching is about unlocking the potential of people to maximise performance.
 Coaching is about change and transformation.

Okay, I know, I know. Whilst this certainly does outline what coaching does, it does not clarify what people who might be considering coaching are letting themselves in for. “I know it’s not therapy, but what actually happens in a coaching session?” “Is it like sports coaching?”

The first thing to remember is that coaching is a process. Whilst improvement might be felt from the first one on one session and might be noticed by others pretty soon thereafter, these improvements are unlikely to be sustainable. My sense is that sustainable improvement and change is only likely to take place after at least eight or nine sessions. My view is that the goal of all coaching is to guide people in a way that ultimately helps them to be able to self-coach. Notwithstanding the fact that it might be good for our business if our clients all became eternally dependent on us, this kind of result would mean that we had failed in the primary objective – that our clients learn to self-coach. Coaching is more about asking the right questions than providing answers.

Coaching is also about learning. Coaches use various techniques such as listening, reflecting, asking questions and providing information, and in the process they help the individual to become self-correcting and self-generating in that the subjects learn how to correct their behaviour themselves and generate their own questions and answers. In this way, the coach unlocks the potential of individual thereby helping them to maximise their performance. It is about helping them to learn rather than teaching them.

Coaching should always raise a person’s awareness – they should begin to notice more about the way they and others around them do things.

So, imagine if I had started trying to tell my professor all that.

Oh, my elevator speech? I help leaders and managers get the best out of their team members and themselves by helping them to focus in the right places and to have the same conversations they might normally have, but more effectively.

Hey, you can’t get out here – isn’t your office on the top floor!

I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts – select this link to start or join the conversation

Wishing you all a marvellous start to the year – may 2012 bring you all the success and happiness you wish for.