My definition of a coach

Professional coaching can be very helpful to a lot of companies that have problems at many levels. As the professor mentioned on the previous session, coaching has many benefits; it can develop your learning skills, your people skills but most importantly it will help you to generate new knowledge about yourself at a professional and a personal level.

I personally consider a  coach as a missionary who has the hard duty of bringing the best out of people. In fact, a coach will not only help you see who you really are but he will also make you feel comfortable with who you are. But this cannot happen without a mutual agreement between the coach and coachee. 

Moreover, in order to be effective a coach needs to have some skills like the ability to create a coaching environment in which the people who are involved will be able to openly share their thoughts, also the coach must be aware that his role does not consist of giving advice but the majority of his actions will be based on listening (active listening) and mirroring. Also, as I learned during our first session, a coach needs to summarize or paraphrase (coming back to what have been said), to ask questions that are effective and to catalyze (show some interest toward the coachee).

An organization can use the help of an internal or external coach. I personally prefer using the help of an external coach because I think that he will see things as an outsider. In other words, an external coach will help me see things from a different angle and open my eyes to some aspects that I probably might have neglected. He will also give me a more honest evaluation of what I should work on and on my strengths and weaknesses.

The paper on leadership coaching and organizational transformation also mentions some great points about coaching. The authors mention that: “Leadership coaches do not necessarily provide answers to problems. They are not career advisors, consultants, mentors or trainers, but leadership coaching through inquiry does help individuals understand their own strengths, weaknesses, desires, and fears”. So, a coach will be the person handing you the necessary tools so you can achieve your goals and he will back you up whenever you feel that you’re not on the right path. The coach will bring that “fresh look” to the organization and help the employees to enhance their managerial skills, creativity, etc. However, a coach should know that in order to succeed in his mission, he must first of all install or create an atmosphere of trust because people will find it difficult to open up if they are not secure (are not comfortable with each other) or they don’t trust each other. Trust can also be established when the coach encourages a more open and transparent communication and uses feedback so that he can measure if his methods are working effectively or not.

In sum, a coach has different ways to get you where you want to be but we should not forget that you should be willing to go through this process because sometimes it can take a lot of time to finally see who you really are and what you need to improve about your managerial skills.