Coaching is all about helping people reach their full potential and maximize their performance. It's about developing leadership, creating self-discipline, building self-confidence, motivating, and increasing self-awareness. Our beliefs about the capacity of others have a direct impact on their performance, and coaching is designed to unlock that potential. It's not about teaching or telling people what to do; it's about helping them learn.
Take walking as an example: Most people don't learn to walk by following instructions. We all have a built-in natural learning capacity that is much more surprising than we think and that is actually interrupted by instruction. Coaching validates, supports, and empowers people within an organization, giving them a neutral side with which to address professional development concerns, as well as a safe space to practice difficult conversations. The main purpose of coaching is to achieve goals.
The coach helps the employee establish meaningful behaviors and identify specific behaviors or steps to accomplish them. The coach helps clarify milestones or measures of success and holds the employee accountable for them. Coaching provides the individual with the opportunity to define their professional goals in a realistic way and actively work towards achieving them. Goals often focus on two aspects of an individual's career: developing skill sets and professional behavior.
The coach is often a third-party participant, and their ability to remain uninvolved but provide guidance allows the coachee to gain perspective without being intimidated by someone within their own organization. By adopting a coaching state of mind, leaders can release abundant reserves of talent and motivation and a strong sense of purpose in their people. The underlying and ever-present purpose of training is to develop the self-confidence of others, regardless of the content of the task or topic.
