Why Developing Coaching Skills Are Vital To Yourself and Business
I listened to a call given by Renegade Professionals by way of Barbara Silva the other day. She titled her talk “The Coaching Mindset – Why Developing Coaching Skills Will Save Time, Money, Effort, and Your Nerves!” I found her title pretty intriguing and I learned quite a bit from her talk.
The first thing she talked about was “What Does a Coach Do?” Simply put, a coach uses their skills to help their clients, a sort of guidance system. But its important for the client to choose his or her own course. Being sort of like a consultant, teaching the client how to sail their own ship. Coaches identify the underlying problems. They identify the elephant in the room, the thing that needs to be said but isn’t. Coaches listen on a much deeper level. Which is something that will take some practice, but once mastered can save you a bunch of time because lots of times its what’s not being said that’s most significant.
Next Silva speaks on “Why Coaching Skills Are Important to Your Business?” Coaching skills help cut down on the time it takes to get things done. Coaching skills help inspire trust in you immediately. Coaching Skills reduce the pressure and stress that comes with being a business owner. And most importantly, coaching skills help make sure that the message you send out, is the same as the message that the client is receiving. You want to fine tune your clarity. Things can become misconstrued, and misunderstood very quickly, but with the proper skills as a coach, you can avoid all confusion.
As a coach, you want to learn to see what is and isn’t there. You want to be able to tune into what your customers do and say in a way that you may not be able to do currently. Most people don’t do this, but you want to stand out amongst the bunch and show the clients how you are different from the rest of the “coaches.” This is simply listening to people, and understanding their concerns. Listen to what is said, and what isn’t said. Ask questions, and listen to the answers. Listen, listen, listen, with your whole heart as if no one, no thing matter at that particular moment in time. Listen with no judgements, don’t rush to any solutions, just giving them the space to be who they are. It will make a difference.Put yourself in the other person’s place, listen to where they’ve been, what they’ve been doing, who they were with, what part of the world they are from, anything to give you a context on how they might receive your message.
Coaching is delegation in its supreme form. You learn how to give another person the space they need to let their own process of discovery flourish. When they do this, when they feel safe, they start to find solutions on their own. And that’s when you truly cut down on the time it takes to get things done in your own business as well as within that person’s you are helping grow.
One might ask, “What Can I Start Doing Right Now?” And the answer is begin practicing true listening skills. Whether you are speaking with a client or a family member, practice being completely “in the moment with them.” Out of everything Silva spoke on, the most important idea I came away with was how critical listening is and can be to you connecting with your clients and how vital to your business. Put that listening skill into practice right now!
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Jasmin,
This is a great post! Coaching & learning are so incredibly similar that I tell all of marketers that I help to make sure that when they are learning a new skill to study it as if they will be teaching it because in time they will.
When you allow yourself to manifest the mindset of a coach you no longer are dependent upon others to make it happen for you. You realize that there is only one person you should be dependent upon for the success of your enterprise and that sole individual is yourself.
We have so much information and knowledge quite literally at the tips of our fingertips these days that I think alot of folks take this for granted.
If you were to commit yourself to mastering just one skill per month or until you were proficient at it until you moved onto the next skill set I guarantee that within a year you would rank within the top 5% of your business.
I love your blog here Jasmin and will continue to keep up with you on it.
To Our Massive Success,
John
John,
Thank you for commenting. I felt as though this was great information to share, and you are 100 percent correct. We do have so much information and knowledge literally at our fingertips these days, and no doubt in my mind states otherwise that alot of folks take that for granted. I can recall in my undergraduate days studying, a Professor of mine named Dr. Maung, I will never forget him to this day for sharing this with me, he used to say that if you can do something, then you should be able to teach it. And I used to argue with him all the time, saying that’s not always the case. Then he would say that “If you can’t teach it, then you haven’t truly mastered it.” Although Dr. Maung was specifically speaking about Math and Physics problems (I was a physics major) the same does go for anything in life. If you can’t explain what you have just done, and help another then you truly haven’t mastered that “thing.” And we must always be looking to help and teach another, so we must master and craft new skills. Coaching is rewarding as well as being vital to your growth as a person, as well as in your business.
Be safe…and as always…
See ya at the Top!