Coaching is premised on the belief that you (and I) are already whole, resourceful, capable and creative

Monday 22 August 2016

Feel Good is Crucially the Reason we Coach


Met an Executive Coach the other day who expressed a different perspective on Life Coaching from how I saw it till then.

{A disclaimer at the very outset: I have a stake in both life and executive coaching and my win will surely be if both grow bigger in the individual and organizational consideration-set as immensely valuable, effective and result oriented interventions that can lead to measurable growth and improvement}

This senior internal Executive Coach of a leading technology services organization described Life Coaching as ‘feel good’ coaching. Her views on Executive coaching, (as compared to Life coaching) was that it is more structured, quantifiable and hence measurable.

While the Coaching industry in India goes through its adolescence and tries to rid itself of the image of its intangibility, let’s try understand this better through this very example. Let’s imagine a scenario in the case of this technology services behemoth – How will it be if Executive Coaching measurably prolongs an 18-month employee attrition cycle to 19 months and eventually to an ideal 22-24 month cycle! Can you imagine the impact of the coaching initiative? I just did and visualized the rush to hire coaches to address all level of employees in this organization. Let us next imagine a more contained impact – a coached employee’s ratings going up from 2 to 4. Whoop! That is a momentous impact and if a sponsor initiated Executive Coaching intervention can convincingly take credit for that – the future of Executive Coaching has arrived decisively!

At this point, we must take note that in Executive Coaching what is critical is the buy-in from the Coachee after he has answered the ‘what’s in it for me?’  & ‘why me?’ questions for himself. Other areas of sensitivity: the reality that a Coaching intervention commences via a nomination (sponsor-led) and is very often (seen as) led by HR. All of this inherently frames the first line of mistrust that the organization has to deal with and assuage. To me, the rest of the process is similar to any other niche of Coaching (that has been duly named). Of course, the tools applied will be specific to each intervention.

At this point, let us look at Life Coaching and what it can impact. A Life Coach, in all cases, is directly hired and paid a fee (directly) by the Client (an exception is an adolescent where the Coach is hired by the parents). The fee is at an average 3K-5K an hour/ per session, for a minimum number of sessions. Safe to assume that there is Client buy-in. The Client has decided to invest money to impact, streamline, perhaps kick-start a part of life from a limbo, directionless or energy sapping position. The trigger could be in a simple belief that life has the potential to be much better, that there is scope for enhanced clarity and purpose for life ahead.

In Coaching circles it is said that every type of Coaching engagement becomes about Life Coaching from the 3rd – 4th session onward. It makes sense, as work too is an integral part of life and cannot be simplified and explored in isolation. Any effective Coaching intervention is able to view life as holistically as the Client is able to share of them with the Coach.

What does the Life Coach typically get hired for? Here I share an extract from my website (LifeAlignCoaching.com)
Do you often wonder about your strengths, values and life-purpose?
Are you feeling at a crossroad; that a deeper and more meaningful success may be possible in your life, career or venture?
Are you raring to maximize your abilities, leverage your strengths, know and manage your weaknesses, have more satisfying relationships or become an authentic, effective individual?
Is there a longing for greater clarity, confidence, calm, balance or sense of purpose?
Are you often yearning for focus, looking to create a plan and move past your doubts into action, to make a genuine and sustainable transformation?
Is there a best version of you awaiting expression?
Do you want to manage your time more effectively? And commit and keep to deadlines?
These are only some reasons that a Client signs me on for.

All such reasons and the outcome of interventions thereon become measurable when the basic tenet of the Coaching intervention is set crystal clear right at the beginning. ‘Establishing the Coaching Agreement’—no. 2 out of the 11 Competencies laid down by ICF International Coach Federation—is absolutely paramount to begin the process. This naturally ensures result orientation, measurement and assessment at the end of the process. Objective setting is empowering as it sets a clear goal and framework for the coaching conversation to move within and ahead. And it is empowering as much for the Client.

And if the desired objective is feel good about a specific issue in life – that too can be broken down into ‘what does feel good mean for you?’/ ‘how will you know you have succeeded?’/ ‘how will success look like for you at the end of this session?’

For the uninitiated, in Executive Coaching setting up the coaching agreement and goal setting is primarily done with the sponsor. More specific session goals and progress thereon are agreed upon with the Coachee from session to session.

As an intervention model, Coaching, in all its niches, is singularly result-oriented.
 
In my experience the real distinction that Coaching brings (from other interventions like Therapy) is accountability. As a Coach, I work with Clients to be responsible for their thoughts, feelings and habits and take action that will challenge their comfort zones, create new habits and augur transformation. I collude less with the emotional self and more with the desire for growth that is overshadowed by the emotional self. I focus on the past only in terms of how the attitudes developed then are impacting the present and their future.


In Coaching - taking action; holding a vision of what is possible for the client beyond the story; being open to challenging the Client to discover, create and choose new ways of doing and guiding the Client towards accountability is the big difference that we Coaches can make. And it becomes tangible only when the Unit of Success has been laid out at the time of establishing the agreement.  That is imperative.

Success, you would agree, is directly about the ‘feel good’ for the Client and that ultimately is the essence of Coaching. Feel good is about oneself, about knowing one’s strengths and learning to value and utilise them, about one’s worth at home and workplace and engineering self to build value; feel good is about growing in self awareness, confidence, conviction and clarity about one’s inner resource and capability to work things out; feel good is about knowing and preparing to construct a future capably and intentionally; feel good is about becoming accountable to self and setting and delivering deadlines set and received. This list is ongoing but we can see ourselves in the middle of at least a couple of these. This is a Coach’s delivery, the rest is only nomenclature to help market ourselves in a niche we feel comfortable to deliver and find Clients in – Life Coach, Executive Coach, Accountability Coach, Wellness Coach and so on.

Of course, there is specialised Training, Tools and Techniques that a Coach will do well to learn, reskill in and acquire mastery in, to better their skills in listening, questioning and holding the space.

And in the final assessment, if the result is ‘feel good’ for the client, the sponsor, the employee as well as for the larger organization as measured against the objective set up at the beginning, it is an absolute win in every way. Simply put, the measurability of Coaching lies in the softness or tangibility of the objective set and that steers the delivery of the critical ‘Feel Good’ at the closure of the intervention.

Nivedita Das Narayan, CPC, PCC
Executive & Life Coach
LifeAlign Coaching
Skype: niveditadn
Mobile: +91 7738143477

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