Too many coaches. How to identify a good one?

Coaching – a definition

Coaching is the dialogue that focuses on the point where observed behaviours meet thinking, values and beliefs with an intent to change a future outcome.

Coaching takes place when there is a commitment by the individual being coached to a better future and the coach exhibits, selflessness and expertise.

Coaching progress occurs when change in the cognitive and behavioural patterns of the individual are established, developed and embedded, with enhanced self awareness enabling the individual to better influence outcomes in life, relationships and business.

So in choosing a good coach you look for someone with the bravery to look for the values and beliefs that really matter, a person who can set aside self interest and pride yet who is knowledgeable in techniques that uncover the truth and possibilities about and for you that you could not see for yourself.

If this resonates for you please rate it at http://coachingvalley.com/definitions/list_by_highest_rate

More http://www.pcacoach.com/whatcoaching.aspx

Ethically Challenged

 Each day we make judgements based on a set of ethical values.  Our friends, colleagues, those we elect or support in positions of power and authority do the same.  However, no matter how well we know, like or trust them – their value judgements will differ slightly or considerably from our own. 

Sometimes we can live with the results.  Others may haunt us for the rest of our lives.

In the end these must be personal judgements though influenced by personal values, cultural and religeous beliefs and societal needs.

You would have thought that over the millenia, regardless of the different pace of civilisation and moral sophistication, we humans as a race would have been approaching an ethical norm.  Diversity, free will, creativity and socio/economic/environmental/philosophical influences aside…..

Why is it that we can experience such a range of feelings in reaction to the moral and ethical diversity of fellow humans.

I feel sick about

Leadership should be ethics based

I feel curious about

I feeel angry about

I feel frustrated about

I feel ambivalent about

I feel nothing about

Are we progressing to a higher moral and ethical plane. 

What can we do to exert the moral ascendency that our humanity, ability to think, to imagine, to design and to collectively achieve should demand of us?  

Can we create our future and shared destiny with a sense of common rightness.

The internet and social media may just provide an answer to these questions.  I have just read a blog questioning the ethics of the Thai media to publish the death photo of David Caradine.  It was the comments and philosophical exchanges that caught my attention.  Points of view from people of different cultures, with different beliefs and values putting their case in a non destructive or aggressive way.  A sharing and learning experience that rarely occurs outside of academia.

May be, just may be we can earn the the rights and responsibilities mankind has grasped and that fulfil our highest understanding of what is humanity. 

Dare to be human  play your part in creating a shared ethical ethos that we are proud of.

Burst the Bubbles

Bubbles as barriers

Each of us has a personal communication style in the way we interact with the outside world.  We also filter what we hear ourselves saying and what others say to us.  This push and pull of langauage and meaning, exchange of ideas, desires and demands takes place through a semi permeable membrane where personality, upbringing, beliefs, values and personal preferences create a complex interchange.

The effect of this is that we live in bubbles of communication of different shades.  When we come across someone in a bubble of the same or similar colour we tend to understand not just what they say to us but all the non verbal communication that takes place, the emotional, group and task inferences that make what someone says have meaning aligned to what they want us to understand. 

When we interact with someone in a different shade of bubble the messages contained in our communication exchange get confused, there is mis understanding, distrust, a sense of threat, non appreciation a lack of mutual respect.

I find that the key to a more harmonious and productive exchange is deeper, harder listening, in combination with a more open learning and non judgemental mindset.  This is hard, really hard and even professional listeners those who seek to counsell on change based on true hearing can struggle.  Sitting in a room with people who are talking but not hearing, hearing but not understanding, socialising but on their own smacks at futility that none of us can afford and demeans the highly developed species we claim to be.

Listen to political debate, a sales negotiation, an exchange between life partners, a parent talking with a child.  Try and listen to yourself.

Then look to burst the bubble.  The difference in outcome is amazing.

New You

Re-invention has been a much used call to action in business over the past decade or so.  Applied to strategy, product and service development, to marketing and customer service relationships.

This same period has also seen the dehumanising of people in business.  Referred to now as human capital or, little better, as talent (a sometime derogatory or demeaning epithet), people have been lowered to the level of assets or trained and managed acts in the theatre of workplace.  This suggests people as a tradeable commodity rather than a sentient and emotionful beings.

Time to rehumanise.  Time to re-invent the person, to empower thought, creativity, emotional intelligence.  Time to allow that human intuition can be more powerful than any system or process.  Time to recognise that more will be achieved by people re-inventing relationships, realising values and pooling these great and very human characteristics and abilities. 

The sum of parts, in a social or commercial grouping, of thinking people with such liberated minds and personalities will deliver so very much more than the most optimistic mechanised or computer driven system. 

Time to rebel, relinquish our subservience to being specified, catalogued, appraised and quantified by sub optimal, non humanistic systems.  Systems designed to deliver clone type outputs, to an artifical continuous improvement target, based on logic and observed convergence around a six sigma type of output.  Great in their own way but an approach that will never deliver creativity and invention.

Time to think about how to re-humanise you.  Re-invent you, a creative human being, confident to roll with strong intuitive gut feel, happy to express true feelings and able to move beyond what has been the utmost expectation.