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What Makes Coaching Work
- Coaching is intended not only to identify and smooth over rough performance behaviors, but also to strengthen a person’s talents and competencies.
- Coaching is different from mentoring and therapy. Coaches don’t give advice (as they do in mentoring) or assume that a client is in need of healing (as they do in therapy). Coaches help people bring out the best in themselves so they can successfully take responsibility for their own lives. They do that by helping people honestly face their strengths and weaknesses. Then, they present strategies for building on the strengths and handling the weaknesses.
- Coaches rely on a variety of tools to help their clients, including their own rigorous training, their extensive experience in the profession, and a variety of field-tested diagnostic instruments. They sometimes use information from bosses, colleagues and family, as well.
- Coaching requires a time commitment, because it is a process. It requires planned, scheduled, periodic sessions. Most of all, it requires that all participants honor their time commitments and bring energy and focus to these encounters.
- Coaching can be conducted very effectively from a distance. Our own experience supports that, as does recent research. That makes it an effective operative technique for people who work for NGOs, especially those overseas in remote locations.
- Some situations require a blend of on-the-ground presence along with long distance coaching. That happens when circumstances are very intense (where both coach and client need to make very quick responses and choices). There are also times when executives feel they can benefit from a coach observing their interaction with a team so that the coach can provide immediate feedback.
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