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The Role of the Life-Coach
Andrew Poole
The coach's role is to utilise the skills, techniques and
toolkits at their disposal to take the client on a journey
of self-discovery by these means:
Establishing a high level of rapport
Rapport has been described as the ability to enter each client's
model of the world so that you can give them the feeling of
being totally understood. This is achieved by a combination
of physiology, tone of voice and the choice of words.
Working in a climate of trust, honesty and openness
A relationship between coach and client is a partnership and
like all partnerships, it needs a climate of trust, honesty
and openness in which to operate. If a client does not feel
comfortable around these issues, they are not likely to engage
fully in the process
Offering constructive feedback
Feedback from the coach is important for the client to know
that what they are doing is achieving the desired results.
This does need to be constructive though as criticism or obvious
flattery will be counter-productive.
Encouraging clients to explore options
This is the part of the session where the client starts to
come up with ideas to move towards the goal. Here the coach
has to create the mood where the client can feel totally able
to let their mind run free and think the unthinkable. It's
important the client is aware that these are still only options,
not commitments.
Praising clients' achievements
We all respond to praise just as we do to criticism and praise
in coaching for what a client has achieved is a very useful
tool. Many clients will be operating out of their comfort
zone to complete actions and for that alone they deserve praise.
Challenging and taking their clients out of their comfort
zone
The comfort zone is so called because it's a comfortable place
to be and our coping mechanisms naturally want us to be in
a place of comfort. A coaching client will quite naturally
want to stay in this zone too as we don't go out of it for
no reason. The point of coaching is to enable the client to
develop and grow and for this they need to be stretched to
meet new challenges. The coach must take the client into the
stretch zone where appropriate in spite of the resistance
they might face.
Acting as a sounding board
Elsewhere in this paper I've emphasized the importance of
the skill of listening to effective coaching. It's unusual
in today's world for people to be given the chance to just
talk without interruptions and when given that chance people
often take advantage and talk. Often, the fact that they are
free to talk and voice out load their concerns proves to be
a very powerful tool and without advice or guidance from the
coach, the client can resolve an issue themselves just by
being able to talk about it.
Raising awareness
Raising awareness can apply to both the client and the coach.
The coach needs to have a heightened state of awareness to
be sensitive to what they're seeing and hearing in the client.
Awareness or more particularly self-awareness in the client
will give them a better perception of their motivation and
actions.
Helping clients to explore values and beliefs
It's important that at some point the client appreciates that
the journey is equally as important as the goal. Failure to
realise can lead to the state that "The end justifies the
means". The client's actions must be congruent with their
values and beliefs to avoid this.
Keeping clients on track
Each coaching session will be bound by the amount of time
fixed upon. It is the role of the coach to pace the session
and keep the conversation on track to maximise the benefit
of each session.
Andrew Poole was CEO of a Financial Services Company
in the UK and is now a qualified Life-Coach. To find out more
about Life-Coaching and take the FREE Fine-Tune Your Life
test, visit: www.andrewpoole.net
Article Source: http://www.upublish.info
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