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Coaching Concept
The term coaching is another buzzword
recently created in the management /
leadership area and represents the
leaders’ performances aimed to help his subordinates to tread their own
auto development path. This way, it´s not competence of the leader to
discover what is better for the subordinates – each one of them will
have to discover their own path. To the leader is only responsibility
the facilitator element, monitoring and helping each subordinate to
discover the way to better express his/hers talents as a way to obtain
the personal and collective goals.
Having the referred into account, coaching
can be taken as a process that aims to instigate in the subordinate the
self knowledge and help to nurture in him/her the wish to improve
throughout the time. This is so, a leadership philosophy that is based
on the assumption that the acquirement and development of competences
are continuous processes and everyone’s responsibility, and not only
isolated and limited episodes in time and driven by
leaderships.
In practice, the coach helps his
cooperator to learn, to discover areas of bigger potential and
development, to develop the emotional intelligence, to make options, to
define own goals, to analyze self mistakes, as well as its causes and
the ways to correct, provides information and clues that allow to take
options and make decisions: briefly, the coach is at the service of his
subordinate – does not control him/her.
How to operate a coaching process with the
support of a professional coach?
. The first step is to take conscience of
the need and the benefits provided by the entry of a coaching process.
The obligation of a process of this nature hardly will bring positive
results, therefore the need of this first step.
. The second step is the selection of the
coach, whom must have a deep knowledge of the professional context of
the coached, being also indispensable the existence or creation of
empathy between coach and coached.
. The third step of the process is the
definition of the agreement that includes the mutual commitment rules
such as calendar, the length and place of sessions, session follow up,
etc.
. The fourth step consists on the analyses
process of the coached personal and professional profile, being
important to understand the coached personal and professional maturity
level as a way to avoid the negative consequences of the non previous
knowledge.
. The fifth step corresponds to the self
conscience promotion by placing the questions that encourage reflection
and that allow the coached identification of attitudes, beliefs, values,
stereotypes, capacities and competences. In this phase the coach should
help the coached to identify barriers that may complicate the
development which can be fear, indifference, the cost/benefit relation
or even the incompetence or lack of knowledge.
. A sixth step corresponds to the support
of the coach to the coached in the meaning to mobilize him to the
necessary change. This is also the goals establishment phase and the
commitment of the coached with the same.
. The seventh and last step of the process
is the phase of monitoring and feedback, which is fundamental so that
the responsibility of the coached in the pursuit of the established
goals is kept even if they have to be readjusted.
Translated from Portuguese
by Susana Saraiva, Portuguese-English and English-Portuguese translation
specialist. Contact: spams@sapo.pt.
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