In my practice session these days, I witness how coaching inspire people to unleash their potential, cultivates believe on self, helps them in breaking their own assumptions, supports in knowing and accepting the reality, coming out of their shell, getting self motivated to make an important decision independently and helping them in making a movement as per their desires and choices. More I move ahead on this journey, more I am able to witness how coaching and its competencies are making me grow, as a coach.

Let us walk together through these competencies today, one by one. While a session begins, a coach is able to make the foundation with the help of Ethics and Standards and Coaching Agreement. While working on ethical mode, one can ensures the confidence between both the parties and is meant to support the client to understand his or her own situation with the help of a deep conversation only. During the further course of session, the client is encouraged to come up with his or her own solution to the situation. This empowers the client in reflection and thereby supports a client to have a movement from within. The coaching agreement gives a meaningful base to this conversation. It is meant to understand the specific requirement of the session between the coach and the coachee. The agreement has a process which helps the client to set a self goal and the process also tends to encourage the coachee to be committed towards that self goal.

During sessions, I felt there are many personal issues which a client is little hesitant to share initially. The key to unlock this area is working sensitively on Trust and Intimacy.  It is essential for a coach to develop such an environment during the session that the client feels safe and motivated enough to share and discusses any topic of concern.  Coaching is trust based relationship where in the coach and the coachee partners to work together on a common goal for the coachee and while working intensely on this competency I found it to be the most important competencies among all, for coaching to happen.

While the session moves ahead, the coachee starts sharing the journey with the coach, here the Coaching Presence makes the coachee feels that the coach is fully present to his or her thought process without any prejudice, assumptions and judgment. The coach here tries to understand the situation and the meaning of the situation from the coachee viewpoint only.  Coaching is extremely fruitful when the coach is present fully to whole of the client and carefully listens not only to the coachee words but also gives an ear and observation to coachee’s change of energies, expressions and body movement during the session. This makes Active Listening an important aspect of a successful coaching.

During the session, I was able to observe how even the tone in which a question is being asked from a coachee, makes a vast difference on how and what he or she answer. Questioning by the coach is an extremely sensitive area of work. Powerful questioning needs to be done in a way that the client is inspired for a reflection and understand the meaning of his or her own believes of thoughts.  I also found, more the questions are clear and precise more it support the coachee to have a Direct Communication with his or her thought process. One should avoid too much of paraphrasing and articulation during the complete session.

Once the session moves on, I witnessed how  a coachee is been able to evoke self awareness , weather its reflection, talking that out, experiencing it with silence, all this leads to Creating Awareness on self and the situation for them. Once the coachee is aware, it tempts them to think for some self movement. At this stage Designing Actions comes into picture. The coachee while thinking about an action is being encouraged to do a concrete Planning and Goal Setting in order to achieve those designed actions for self. And finally at the end of the session Managing Process and Accountability by the coachee makes them realize how important it is to be committed, focused and responsible towards those set goals in order to achieve the desired action or movement.

Developing these competencies is certainly not a one day task but practicing it daily during the session definitely makes coaching worth a journey, full of learning, exploration and wisdom.

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