What is coaching?
Coaching is a structured conversation that helps someone find their own answers, rather than being given someone else's.
Most professional development works the other way round - someone with knowledge and expertise asks questions to get to the bottom of the issue, diagnoses the problem and recommends a course of action.
Coaching is different because here, the client holds the responsibility for how to make progress.
What is coaching?
A professionally guided process that inspires clients to maximise their personal and professional potential. It is a structured, purposeful and transformational process, helping clients to see and test alternative ways for improvement of competence, decision making and enhancement of quality of life. (EMCC)
That means, centred around the client, where they are the expert and hold the map for what comes next
An open, collaborative confidential space that belongs entirely to the client - their thinking, challenges and goals. I hold that space; they fill it.
Built on the belief that the client already possesses everything they need to find the answers to the challenges they face, they just might not know it yet. My job is to help them find them.
A chance to think uninterrupted, say things out loud for the first time and discover what they actually want - often a rare thing in our busy lives.
Empowering, as the client is at the heart of the session, the progress and what comes next in order to achieve it.
Future-focused. We acknowledge what has brought them here, but our work is about where they’re going and how they’re going to get there.
Action orientated. After the reflection comes the identification of actions to effect the change that they want to make.
Real change rarely happens at the surface. The Opal Lens coaching goes deeper; it goes to the roots. We explore the belief systems, stories and mindsets that shape how someone thinks, feels and acts - where those beliefs come from, how true they are and what they protect them from.
Once those underlying factors are identified and understood, they can be challenged, adapted or optimised. We work together to transform or create new beliefs, stories and mindsets that can result in long term changed behaviours and outcomes, moving the client closer to the life they want to live.
A transformative approach
What coaching is not
Centred around someone else who holds a map the client is going to follow
Line management - where someone who knows the role guides someone toward a goal the organisation has informed
Training - where someone with expertise imparts their knowledge, tools and instruction on how to use them
Mentoring - where someone shares their experience of what worked for them in similar situations
Consultancy - where an expert with a top level view assesses the situation and prescribes a solution
It's also not "PR coaching" as the term is often used – a freelancer teaching a business how to do its own PR. The Opal Lens develops the people who work in PR, marketing and creative agencies; it doesn't teach PR.
The benefits of coaching
Increased confidence and resilience
Empowerment to take control and effect change
Improved performance and productivity
Identification of personal drivers and barriers
Greater life and job satisfaction
Enhanced awareness and understanding of self and view of surroundings and environment
Be open minded and ready to think out loud, share openly and honestly, and go on a journey of self exploration. It’s only once someone understands what’s really going on that they can think about how to change it.
How to get the most out of coaching
01
Be receptive to questions, observations and sometimes challenges that expand thinking beyond what initially comes to mind.
02
03
Be ready and motivated to change the things that are holding someone back.
Be willing and committed to continue the work outside of the session.