Coaching is a unique way to improve any aspect of an individual’s life. Most popularly confused with counseling, consulting, and even therapy, it’s far different from these three disciplines. For starters, coaching focuses on the future rather than dwelling on the past. The coach tends to encourage the coachee to introspect by asking powerful questions that could give him an insight into the problems that the individual faces.
The coach doesn’t give advice when it comes to coaching, rather he makes the experience solution-oriented whereby the solution comes from the individual’s own self-guided by the coach’s experience and skill. In the case of solution-focused coaching, the coach doesn’t set any rules or tasks or goals to be followed, rather the task is undertaken by the individual himself as he is again encouraged to take charge of his life by making good decisions.
This type of coaching is based on proven and statistically tested tools and techniques that are executed to bring about some very positively transformational changes in an individual’s life. It is designed in a manner that focuses on both the design and implementation of the meaningful changes that are to be initiated in the individual. Once the coach has enough insight into the life of the individual he can then proceed to guide the individual into making better decisions and go through quality introspection.
Let’s dive now into the core concepts of the solution-focused coaching model.
The first is that the individual should keep moving ahead towards a positively framed desired future outcome. It does not dwell on past experiences and rather focuses on the new future and what the client’s perspective to this new future should be. The techniques are designed to understand the client completely with a series of questions before pacing ahead to start the process of coaching. The task ahead is to determine the changes to be introduced and how they shall shape in regards to the individual and what shall be the bigger picture.
The coach shall then help the individual explore within to take help of the resources they have within themselves to find meaning and purpose in their life. The primary goal here is to have the client build their trust in themselves and their own internal resources that they already have within. These inner resources are all the individuals shall need to create a desirable future for themselves. Coaches understand and respect the client’s values and help them accordingly with their guidance. The coach then shall help the client create changes through specific meaningful and inspiring action steps that may lead to fundamental shifts in attitude, behavior, and habits. Finally, the coach also uses positive reinforcement by celebrating the victories of the coachee whenever a successful step has been taken or an initiative for change has been made. This celebratory partnership between the coach and the coachee helps enhance the coaching experience through the use of positive reinforcements.
Perhaps the most important part of the whole coaching process is the introduction. The part where the Coach subjects the individual to open-ended questions that are designed to obtain powerful insights from the person. Such open-ended questions, also encourage the individual to think and reflect back on his/her own fundamental feelings, skills, strengths, and confidence.
The questions are a fundamental part of this exercise because they help the coachee reflect back on themselves and help the coaches collect information for further coaching. Further coaching experience shall enhance the coachee’s ability to understand his own self, exercise control over his decisions, and be able to make powerful decisions, analyze the outcomes, and bring about the systematic changes that they want in themselves.
At the heart of it, coaching is all about providing a safe and supportive environment that promotes mutual trust and respect and thus encourages the individual to talk about his own self and understand the relation between the world and himself more clearly. Coaching goes way beyond ordinary scopes of training and guidance. Coaching also focuses on the coachee’s listening skills, personality development, and syntactical manners.
The coach in his communication with the coach tries to instill in him good listening and speaking conduct through their communication. When the coach learns to view the world through the coach’s perspective, he can then understand his problems and then helps in sorting them out through various coaching tools and techniques. At the end of the day, the basic goal of the coaching is to make the individual self-reliant. It is to instill confidence in them about their own abilities and promote their mental and emotional growth through a combination of support and guidance.