Coaching ChroniCals

The past year has been an exciting year of learning and discovery. It was a tough journey, but an exciting one, nonetheless. I’ve learned so much and made many new discoveries about coaching and myself. It’s going to be tough to summarise everything in this blog, but I want to highlight 5 key focus points that stood out for me. 1. Focus on the coachee– “Coach the person, not the problem”, is a phrase I remember very clearly from the first practicum, and it’s one that I remind myself at the start of all my sessions. Different people may face the same or similar problems, issues or challenges, but how we each respond to them will vary. Hence, it’s crucial to stay focused on the coachee, help them expand their perspective and explore possibilities.  2. Focus on staying focused – Staying focused throughout the session, being present with the coachee and also ensuring the session stays focused by keeping the conversation centred around what the coachee wants to achieve. Having said ...

This last webtorial got me thinking of why I started the Catalyst Coach Certification programme, and that reason is, I wanted to help people achieve their full potential. To do that, I needed to learn how to do that through coaching, acquire the necessary skills and perhaps even help myself achieve my full potential. Seems like yesterday that we started Cohort 10 and now the time has come to start practising all that I’ve learnt, to start doing what I had set out to do… time to “Hustle”. It's “easy” to think about wanting to start doing something, or maybe even to begin “planning” the steps, but the actual start may not be as simple. Coach Mel shared some possible reasons why we could sometimes get “stuck” at the start; 1. Self-sabotage – things we say, think or do that prevent us from starting 2. Tomorrow – putting things off till the never-ending “tomorrow” 3. Not good enough – self-doubt, doubting own capability 4. Uncertainty – the fear of the unknown 5. Scapegoat – b...

What does it mean to honour someone? I thought about this for a while and to me, honour means to show recognition, respect, and to hold the person in high regard. It is to demonstrate to the other person, that you value them. To celebrate them. Why is this important in coaching? Coaching is a journey and it could potentially be a difficult one for the coachee. The fact that they have chosen to take this step and possibly expose their vulnerabilities is something not to be taken lightly. I feel we as coaches need to honour our coachees for who they are, where they are at in the current moment, what they are going through, and how they are feeling. I was reminded during the webtorial, a mindset we need to have as coaches to help honour our coachees, and that mindset we need to have is the belief that our coachees are whole, resourceful and creative. Our coachees lack nothing, they have all that is necessary to overcome and are able to bring into existence a solution to their own challeng...

The first thing I did was to look up, what is creativity? I found a few definitions and my favourite is, “the ability to make or otherwise bring into existence something new, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic object or form”. But why do we need creativity in coaching? As coaches, creativity helps us explore new ideas and creative methods to help coachees uncover different perspectives and gain fresh insights. As the coach we need to remember that coachees are creative, resourceful and whole… as the coach, our role is to facilitate the process to allow creativity to flow… Ok, now that we know what it is, and why we need it… what do we need to do to be creative? How to we hone the ability to make or bring into existence something new, or a new solution to a problem? While looking into this, I found a study conducted by NASA. In the study, of 1,600 school children, 98 per cent were considered ‘geniuses’ at divergent thinking at age five. At 10 ...

Our lives are very much controlled by our thoughts, emotions and actions (or behaviours). It isn’t obvious, but these three elements are integral to who we are. What’s less obvious is how these elements interact. What we think affects how we feel, how we feel affects what we do. There are conflicting thoughts on which of these come first, I guess it depends on which we notice first. To me, what’s more important is, how aware we are of our thoughts, emotions and actions. I believe our behaviours or actions and decisions are the outward “expressions” of our thoughts and feelings. It is the most obvious of the three elements, it is what others see and experience. What’s less obvious are our thoughts and emotions. In coaching, this knowledge should help us coaches to guide coachees in exploring and bringing to awareness the thoughts and feelings that are driving them. As coaches, we need to look beyond the surface and dig deeper. We’re often unaware of the impact our thoughts, emotions and...