Let’s start with the definition of Coaching. Coaching is a partnership with the coachee in a thought-provoking and creative process that empowers the client to maximize his/her personal and professional potential. To put it in simple words, coaching also helps you see new or better ways of thinking about a certain situation that you couldn’t see before, but what is it that prevents people from seeing things from a different perspective? A big one is what we call limiting belief systems and most people have them. Let me give you an example; let’s say there was a time when you tried a sport but you didn’t do well at all and right after that bad experience you concluded that you were not good at playing sports. We tell ourselves stories all the time, stories about how we are not good enough, or smart enough and in reality what you tell yourself has more power than what anyone else can say to you which means you have the power to either motivate yourself or put yourself down, and unfortunately, a lot of people tend to use this negative technique as a coping mechanism, usually when they feel defeated or discouraged. So the first step to stop this is to recognize what your limiting believe systems are. What are those things you’ve been telling yourself?
A coaching approach can also be very useful when it comes to conflict resolution and this has a lot to do with how we listen. How many times have you been in a situation where you say too much and end up making things worst? The main reason that this happens is because when we are in the middle of a discussion most of the time we don’t really want to listen to what the other person is saying because we are focusing on what we want to hear or what we want to say back, and that’s when we miss what the other person is really trying to convey, but what if we could listen intently instead of occupying our minds with thoughts on how we want to defend ourselves. By doing this you are allowing yourself to make a wiser decision on how to respond back and not only that, but you are not getting yourself in defensive mode by making the wrong assumptions in advance about the situation, and when is your turn to talk or defend yourself, how about trying a different method, instead of bringing past mistakes back, as we tend to do, how about challenging the other person with a question that will make them realize their own mistake? I want to tell you how I have applied this approach myself. A have a close friend with whom I tend to disagree a lot and many times when we try talking about a troubling situation we end up arguing but that’s until I started approaching the person with questions, and this is how it works. When I want to talk to him about the sitaution in hand I don’t go trying to impose myself and my opinions anymore, but instead I challenge him with a question, so instead of; why did you do that, I might say to him, do you think you should have done that differently? Do you see the difference? This way I’m not accusing him but I’m giving him the freedom to think on his own about what he did and the result of this is a productive discussion and not a heated argument.
Those are some examples of how you can incorporate coaching in your daily lives, the ultimate goal of coaching is that you can become your own best coach.
Natalia Jaramillo 