qualities required for good coaching

Coaching is unlike training, consultancy, advising, or providing a professional service in which work is completed on behalf of a client. The qualities required for good coaching are different to those found in these other other disciplines too:

listening
In coaching, listening is more important than talking. By listening, people can be helped to overcome their fears, be offered complete objectivity and given undivided attention and unparalleled support. This leads to the intuitive questioning that allows the client to explore what is going on for themselves.

communication skills
Coaching is a two-way process. While listening is crucial, so is being able to interpret and reflect back, in ways that remove barriers, pre-conceptions, bias, and negativity. Communicating well enables trust and meaningful understanding on both sides.

Coaches are able to communicate feeling and meaning, as well as content - there is a huge difference. Communicating with no personal agenda, and without judging or influencing, are essential aspects of the communicating process, especially when dealing with people's personal anxieties, hopes and dreams.

Good coaching uses communication not to give the client the answers, but to help the clients find their answers for themselves.

rapport-building
A coach's ability to build rapport with people is vital. Normally such an ability stems from a desire to help people, which all coaches tend to possess. Rapport-building is made far easier in coaching compared to other services because the coach's only focus is the client. When a coach supports a person in this way it quite naturally accelerates the rapport-building process.
motivating and inspiring

Coaches motivate and inspire people. This ability to do this lies within us all. It is borne of a desire to help and support. People who feel ready to help others are normally able to motivate and inspire. When someone receives attention and personal investment from a coach towards their well-being and development, such as happens in the coaching relationship, this is in itself very motivational and inspirational.

curiosity, flexibility and courage
Coaching patterns vary; people's needs are different, circumstances and timings are unpredictable, so coaching relationships do not follow a single set formula. Remembering that everyone is different and has different needs is an essential part of being a coach. Ultimately, everyone is human - so coaches take human emotions and feelings into account.

And coaching is client-led - which means that these emotions have to be tapped into from the very beginning of the coaching process. So, having the flexibility to react to people's differences, along with the curiosity and interest to understand fundamental issues in people's lives, are also crucial in coaching.

The coach's curiosity enables the client's journey to be full and far-reaching; both coach and client are often surprised at how expectations are exceeded, and how much people grow.

All this does take some courage - coaches generally have a strong belief in themselves, a strong determination to do the best they can for their clients, and a belief, or faith that inherently people are capable of reaching goals themselves.

coaching maxims and principles
Typically good coaches will use and follow these principles:

1. Listening is more important than talking


2. What motivates people must be understood


3. Everyone is capable of achieving more


4. A person's past is no indication of their future


5. People's beliefs about what is possible for themselves are their only limits


6. A coach must always provide full support


7. Coaches don't provide the answers


8. Coaching does not include criticising people


9. All coaching is completely confidential


10. Some people's needs cannot be met by coaching , and coaches recognise clients with these needs

life coaching and personal coaching profession attractions

Being self-employed has its advantages in any area of business. Having the luxury to choose the hours you work, where you work and how much to charge for your service is a huge motivation for anyone considering joining the profession.

Coaches can choose how many clients they want - one client, or twenty.

And there are no overheads involved - working from home is a big incentive for people who want to enter the coaching profession.

The flexibility of the coaching role, along with the rewarding aspects of the job, is likely to ensure that coaching and the number of practising coaches grows considerably in coming years.

Coaching, as well as being hugely satisfying, a means of personal development and very flexible, is also financially rewarding. Clients value and benefit from the support and are therefore happy to pay for it.

Coaches are attracted into the profession because it gives them:

1. accelerated personal growth and understanding of self


2. a lifelong journey of personal excellence and knowledge


3. the ability to enhance any job-role in any organization and industry - coaching brings out the best in people and motivates them to be the very best in whatever they do - in all manner of jobs and careers


4. more options in life - important and rare choices of when to work and with whom
   a right and good purpose and meaning in life, measured in real value terms of effort and reward, not lost in a corporate fog
   

Little can compare to really making a difference in another person's life.

The ability to help people make lasting, positive changes in their lives is very special. Good coaches have this very special ability, and it is therefore no wonder that people are attracted to the coaching role.

Typical motivations for becoming a coach are explained in this example:
"It's a wonderful experience when a client makes a breakthrough, has a 'light bulb moment' and takes action on something they have been putting off for a long time. It's a fantastic feeling for both me and them." (Pam Lidford, a UK-based qualified coach and trainer)

how life coaching and personal coaching typically operates

Interestingly, most life coaching and personal coaching is conducted on the telephone. Many coaches never actually meet their clients. For several reasons coaching is just as effective over the telephone as it is face-to-face. In fact, many clients prefer to speak over the telephone. This makes the process very convenient for both coach and client, and it offers greater flexibility for people with a busy lifestyle. Coaching using the telephone offers other obvious advantages:

coaching can be conducted wherever coach and client happen to be - anywhere in the world
there's no travelling time or cost involved

since little preparation needs to be done, telephone coaching sessions can be arranged with minimum prior notice

coaches do not need offices, meeting rooms, staff or other expensive overheads

A coaching session is typically thirty minutes and rarely longer than an hour.

reasons why people become a coaches

Whatever the reasons for people deciding to work with coaches; whatever the type of coaching given, and whatever results clients seek from coaching, a common feature in all coaching relationship is that coaching is a two-way process.

The two-way partnership is a main attraction for people to coaching. Both coach and client benefit. Personal development for the coach is a huge aspect of learning coaching and all coaches find that they themselves grow yourself, before starting to help others to do the same.

An excellent coach finds out new things about themselves and is on a continuous learning journey. Indeed, becoming a coach means a lifelong quest for personal excellence. For many this quest is the motivation to become a coach in the first place.

Helping clients discover where they want to go and helping them to get there is now a proven methodology, which is fuelling the increasing popularity of professional coaching.

Significantly, good coaches are never motivated entirely by money. The very nature of coaching means that it's a profession that is centered around 'making a difference' and helping people. Focusing mainly on making money generally leads to a lack of concern for the client, with the result that the client exits the relationship, not surprisingly. Happily, coaches who enter the profession chiefly for financial gain leave coaching quickly - which helps to maintain the integrity of the coaching professional reputation.

Common factors and reasons for coaches entering the profession:

1. they like people and want to bring out the best in them


2. they want to do something more fulfilling in their lives


3. they want personal and financial freedom


4. their family, friends and colleagues previously turned to them for advice and help - they have natural 'people' skills.
   
   Coaching entails helping yourself grow and become more self aware, at the same time, helping others to overcome problems in their lives.

personal coaching, life coaching - new and different to anything else

Coaching is about getting the very best out of someone and enabling them to make decisions that will improve their life. Coaches are hired for very many different and diverse reasons, for example: to climb the career ladder faster; to feel more fulfilled at work; to improve relationships with family and partners; to learn parenting skills that benefit both the child and parent; to gain a spiritual meaning to life, or a desire to 'get sorted'.

The profession is growing and coaching is becoming widely acknowledged also because people realise just how effective coaching is. Coaching is a relatively new and different profession - different to psychology, counselling or therapy. The big difference between coaching and these professions is that coaching doesn't claim to have the answers. A coach's job is not to go over old ground, be past-orientated or to force-feed information, but to work with clients to help them find the answers themselves.

Also, when a person experiences being coached, their motivation comes from working with a coach who is him/herself an upbeat, positive role model. In this way coaching is a unique way of developing people. Coaches agree that helping clients to reach their full potential through this approach produces great satisfaction.

motivational ideas for sales managers for sales teams

(These principles are applicable to all job roles subject to the notes at the end of this item.)

Motivation of sales people commonly focuses on sales results, but nobody can actually 'do' a result. What matters in achieving results is people's attitude and activity and the areas of opportunity on which the attitude and activity is directed.

What sales people can do is to adopt a positive and creative attitude, and carry out more productive and efficient activity, directed on higher-yield strategic opportunities. By doing these things sales people and sales teams will improve their results.

However the tendency remains for sales managers, sales supervisors and team leaders (typically under pressure from above from executives who should know better) to simply direct people to 'meet the target', or to 'increase sales', or worse still, to pressurise customers into accelerating decision-making, which might work in the short-term but is extremely unhelpful in the medium-term (when business brought forward leaves gaps in the next months' forecasts), and damages the long-term (when as a result of supplier-driven sales pressure, the customer relationship is undermined or ruined).

Instead think about what really motivates and excites people, and focus on offering these opportunities to sales people and sales teams, on an ongoing basis. Don't wait until you find yourself 25% behind target with only half of the year remaining, and with targets set to increase as well in the final quarter.

People will not generally and sustainably improve their performance, or attitude when they are shouted at or given a kick up the backside. People will on the other hand generally improve their performance if empowered to develop their own strategic capability and responsibility within the organisation. Herzberg, Adams, Handy, Maslow, McGregor, and every other management and motivation expert confirmed all this long ago.

Sales teams generally comprise people who seek greater responsibility. They also seek recognition, achievement, self-development and advancement.

So if we know these things does it not make good sense to offer these opportunities to them, because we know that doing so will have a motivational effect on them, and also encourage them to work on opportunities that are likely to produce increasing returns on their efforts? Of course. So do it.

If you are managing a sales team try (gently and progressively) exploring with the team how they'd like to develop their experience, responsibilities, roles, status, value, contribution, within the business. Include yourself in this. Usually far more ideas and activity come from focusing on how the people would like to develop their roles and value (in terms of the scale and sophistication of the business that they are responsible for), rather than confining sales people to a role that is imposed on them and which is unlikely to offer sustainable interest and stimulation.

All businesses have many opportunities for new strategic growth available. Yours will be no different.

Most employees are capable of working at a far higher strategic level, developing ever greater returns on their own efforts.

Performance improvement is generally found through enabling people and teams to discover and refine more productive and strategic opportunities, which will lead to more productive and motivating activities.

For example: reactive sales people are generally able to be proactive account mangers; account managers are generally able to be major accounts developers; major accounts developers are generally able to be national accounts managers; national accounts mangers are generally able to be strategic partner and channel developers; strategic partner and channel managers are generally able to be new business sector/service developers, and so on...

Again include yourself in this.

If necessary (depending on your organisational culture and policies seek approval from your own management/executives for you to embark on this sort of exploration of strategic growth. (If you are unable to gain approval there are many other organisations out there who need people to manage sales teams in this way....)

Obviously part of the approach (and your agreement with your people - the 'psychological contract') necessarily includes maintaining and meeting existing basic business performance target levels. This is especially so since strategic growth takes time, and your business still needs the normal day-to-day business handled properly. But people can generally do this, ie., maintain and grow day-to-day performance while additionally developing new higher-level strategic areas, because genuinely motivated people are capable of dramatic achievements. The motivation and capacity to do will come quite naturally from the new responsibility and empowerment to operate at a higher level.

N.B. The principles described above generally apply to most other job roles. People are motivated by growth and extra responsibility, while at the same time the organisation benefits from having its people focus on higher strategic aims and activities. Be aware however that people in different roles will be motivated by different things, and particularly will require different types of support and guidelines when being encouraged to work at a higher strategic level. For example, engineers require more detail and clarification of expectations and process than sales people typically do; administrators are likely to require more reassurance and support in approaching change than sales people typically do.

For sure your should encourage and enable people to develop their roles, but make sure you give appropriate explanation, management and support for the types of people concerned.

motivational quotes

"We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them." (Albert Einstein)

"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." (President Harry S Truman)

"In the midst of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." (Albert Camus, 1913 - 1960, French author & philosopher)

"If you're not part of the solution you must be part of the problem." (the commonly paraphrased version of the original quote: "What we're saying today is that you're either part of the solution, or you're part of the problem" by Eldridge Cleaver 1935-98, founder member and information minister of the Black Panthers, American political activist group, in a speech in 1968 - thanks RVP)

"A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline." (Harvey Mackay - thanks Brad Hanson)

"I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles overcome while trying to succeed." (Booker T Washington, 1856-1915, American Educator and African-American spokesman, thanks for quote M Kincaid, and for biography correction M Yates and A Chatterjee)

"Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second. Give your dreams all you've got and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you." (William James, American Philosopher, 1842-1910 - thanks Jean Stevens)

"Whatever you can do - or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer, 1749-1832 - thanks Yvonne Bent)

"A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than the giant himself." (Didacus Stella, circa AD60 - and, as a matter of interest, abridged on the edge of an English £2 coin)

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." (Sir Isaac Newton, 1676.)

"The most important thing in life is not to capitalise on your successes - any fool can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your mistakes." (William Bolitho, from 'Twelve against the Gods')

"Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be, For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud: Under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody but unbowed . . . . . It matters not how strait the gait, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul." (WE Henley, 1849-1903, from 'Invictus')

"Management means helping people to get the best out of themselves, not organising things." (Lauren Appley)

"It's not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred with the sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause and who, at best knows the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." (Theodore Roosevelt, 23 April 1923.)

"The world is divided into people who do things, and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There's far less competition." (Dwight Morrow, 1935.)

"What does not kill us makes us stronger." (attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche, probably based on his words: "Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger." from The Twilight of the Idols, 1899)

"A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honourable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." (George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950.)

"I praise loudly. I blame softly." (Catherine the Great, 1729-1796.)

More are on the inspirational quotes page, and a more varied selection including funny sayings are on the sayings and maxims page.

six sigma according to general electric

"...Six Sigma is a highly disciplined process that helps us focus on developing and delivering near-perfect products and services. Why 'Sigma'? The word is a statistical term that measures how far a given process deviates from perfection. The central idea behind Six Sigma is that if you can measure how many 'defects' you have in a process, you can systematically figure out how to eliminate them and get as close to 'zero defects' as possible. To achieve Six Sigma Quality, a process must produce no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities. An 'opportunity' is defined as a chance for nonconformance, or not meeting the required specifications. This means we need to be nearly flawless in executing our key processes."

"...At its core, Six Sigma revolves around a few key concepts.

1. Critical to Quality: Attributes most important to the customer
2. Defect: Failing to deliver what the customer wants
3. Process Capability: What your process can deliver
4. Variation: What the customer sees and feels
5. Stable Operations: Ensuring consistent, predictable processes to improve what the customer sees and feels
6. Design for Six Sigma: Designing to meet customer needs and process capability..."

© Copyright General Electric Company 1997-2005

In Search of Excellence - the eight themes

1. A bias for action, active decision making - 'getting on with it'.
2. Close to the customer - learning from the people served by the business.
3. Autonomy and entrepreneurship - fostering innovation and nurturing 'champions'.
4. Productivity through people - treating rank and file employees as a source of quality.
5. Hands-on, value-driven - management philosophy that guides everyday practice - management showing its commitment.
6. Stick to the knitting - stay with the business that you know.
7. Simple form, lean staff - some of the best companies have minimal HQ staff.
8. Simultaneous loose-tight properties - autonomy in shop-floor activities plus centralised values.