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C.O.A.C.H.I.N.G.

Posted on October 14, 2019 by Cathy Liska

By Cathy Liska

Whether seeking to understand coaching, getting started as a coach, or further refining advanced coaching skills, acronyms are an easy way to remember important things.  

As a starting point for professional coaches, the ICF’s 11 Core Competencies of a Coach outline the skills and their PCC Markers are the specific behaviors that demonstrate the skills.  Putting this into an acronym makes it easier for coaches to remember and apply the essential elements of coaching sessions.

C.O.A.C.H.I.N.G. uses the obvious word describing the work and then each letter becomes a reminder of the specific behaviors in a natural progression through a coaching session.  When you read it, have the 11 Core Competencies and the PCC Markers handy!

Clearly define session focus, measures, and process.
Offer acknowledgement and space to express.
Act in response to the who, the what, and the insights.
Customize to client’s language, situation, and emotions.
Help expand thinking and exploration.
Invite reflection on learning and application.
Notice progress and support planning.
Give credit and get permission to close.

Each of the above reminders is tied to the behaviors (PCC Markers) for the Competency as noted here:
C = Establishing the Coaching Agreement
O = Establishing Trust and Intimacy with the Client
A = Coaching Presence
C = Active Listening
H = Powerful Questioning
I = Direct Communication
N = Creating Awareness
G = Designing Actions, Planning and Goal Setting, Managing Progress and Accountability

What are your thoughts?

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Book Review of Paving Your Path

Posted on October 10, 2019 by Cathy Liska

by Kim Nugent, Ed.D.   Reviewed by Cathy Liska

Amazon Book Link Here. Paving Your Path

This book is both a practical workbook and a great guide to support high school students as they consider, explore, and choose their path after graduation.

Summary – The chapters of the book include:

  • Praise, Purpose, Dedication, Acknowledgements
  • My Story
  • Manifesting Your Destiny
  • The Pathway: A Checklist of Deliverables
  • Characteristics of Success
  • Creating a Mentoring Relationship and Being Mentored
  • What I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Was In High School
  • The Solution for a New Generation
  • Self-Assessment Inventory: Post Assessment
  • Summary
  • Templates
  • Online Resources
  • References
  • About the Author

The Good:

In the chapter for Manifesting Your Destiny, multiple options are explored for high school students after graduation.  Then in the chapter on The Pathway a checklist is provided for each option.

Following the Mentor information is a self-assessment.  Then, in each section of the Solution for a New Generation chapter, the solution is followed by self-assessment questions and mentor questions.

Throughout the book are worksheets and templates to use means this becomes a great workbook for high school students.

The Bad:

Here comes a personal bias – coaching over mentoring.  While the emphasis is on a mentor, the questions are largely coaching questions.  In this work, a coach easily fits as a fabulous resource for students.  The advantage of a coach over a mentor is that the coach truly empowers the student to discover their own answers and create their own plans.

Conclusion:

Whether you are a student, work in a high school, a parent, a mentor of a student, or a coach, this is a fabulous resource for support high school students in their exploration, decision making, and planning for their own future.

 

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2 More Lessons From Coaching for Remote Workforce Managers

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Cathy Liska

By Ceci Amador, www.AllianceVirtualOffices.com Ceci-Amador

Great leaders and managers empower their teams to be proactive and motivate them to follow-through.  This requires that leaders have excellent communication skills.  Given our increasingly remote working world, excellent communications skills are even more important.  In the previous blog we talked about clear, precise communication and word choice.  Continue to enhance management skills with these additional lessons from coaching certification.

  1. The Rule of Silence

More often than not, when someone makes a statement or question people feel pressured  to respond so if one person is thinking, the other often jumps in to fill the gap.  This interrupts their thinking and prevents them from responding.  A certified coach will teach you that the power of silence can go a long way in improving relationships and opening up communication.  Silence gives people the opportunity to think thoroughly about their comments or responses.  In fact, “coaching training teaches that silence after a question is respecting each person in the conversation.”

For remote teams, having a 15 to 30 second policy of silence before responding to any question will help team members gather their thoughts and put together a valuable and insightful answer. This can help teams reach better, more viable solutions and it can help stave off any confrontations or frustrations.

  1. The Power of a Forward Focus

Great coaching teaches individuals to create and encourage positive forward focus.  In order to successfully manage a team of remote workers, you want to understand their goals, motivations, wants, and interests.  This will empower you to effectively connect your employees’ personal and career goals with the project at hand or their overall responsibilities.

Consider: How will being a part of your team or project help remote employees get to where they want to be?

Encouraging forward focus among members of a remote team can be effectively done through the right choice of words, clear and precise communication, and good questioning. Follow the lead of a certified coach who typically encourages clients to think in terms of “want to” or “choose to” and use this type of wording with your team.

Ask questions to create a positive, forward focus.  For example: What do you want to do?  What does success look like to you?  What steps will you to take to be where you want to be?  What results do you expect?  What will you think or feel once you reach a milestone?

Whether working with your own coach who models these skills or attending coach training, the lessons from coaching applied when managing remote workers are an amazing tool for getting the desired results.

 

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2 Lessons Coaching Teaches Remote Workforce Managers

Posted on October 3, 2019 by Cathy Liska

By Ceci Amador, www.AllianceVirtualOffices.com

Coach training or a certified coach can help professionals improve their performance in different aspects of life: health, career, relationships, etc., by empowering individuals to be intentional about their choices. In the realm of work, a certified coach can help remote managers improve their management, communication, and leadership skills.  Following are two of the great lessons from coaching for remote managers. 2 LESSONS COACHING TEACHES REMOTE WORKFORCE MANAGERS

  1. Clear and Precise Communication

Certified coaches use clear direct language to effectively communicate with people. A certified coach also uses effective questioning to ensure role clarity.  For a remote manager, this means clear, direct language and powerful questions to define responsibilities and the requirements of the work.  Powerful questioning requires that a coach recognize other people’s considerations and motivations to then ask them how a certain responsibility or tasks fits in with their skill set or goals.  For a remote manager this becomes a tool to motivate remote workers to own their work and their outcomes.

Coaching certification provides a tool to recognize and adjust to different personal styles by understanding which strategies or approaches work best for each person.  Coaching or coach training is particularly beneficial for remote team managers because coaching empowers professionals to guide others into finding and implementing their own solutions.

This is particularly valuable in remote work environments because people work from different locations and in different time zones, which means that a good leader will empower remote workers to make decisions and find solutions on their own, rather than waiting hours for the rest of the team to be online.  Good communication simultaneously helps build a sense of belonging, culture, and camaraderie among those collaborating on a project.

  1. Word Choice

Word choice goes hand in hand with clear and precise communication.  A professional coach models how word choice makes a difference and it does, in fact, set a charismatic leader apart from a toxic one.

For example, a certified coach will often use want or will instead of using need; he or she will avoid using limiting words like try or could as these are associated with a lack of confidence, conviction, or motivation.

The right choice of words can help make remote work more efficient and agreeable for all involved.  Being intentional about how you communicate can help motivate remote workers, as well as help them prioritize tasks and stay focused.  Using positive, empowering verbiage will send a clear message to your team.

Come back for more great lessons from coach training for remote managers!

 

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Coaching Skills for Remote Workforce Managers

Posted on September 29, 2019 by Cathy Liska

By Ceci Amador, www.AllianceVirtualOffices.com

Remote work is on the rise.  Managing a remote team effectively calls for highly developed skills because it can be challenging in a faceless, digital work environment. In order to make remote teams work, being a great communicator, leader, and motivator is essential. Lessons from coach training or through working with a certified coach are valuable for professionals interested in improving their remote team management skills. When done right, remote work offers various benefits to companies and employees alike. Remote workers enjoy better work-life balance, are more productive, and with great management they are more engaged with their company.  Companies who employ remote workers have employees who perform better, and they also save a significant amount of money on office space, utilities, and benefits packages. Coaching Skills for Remote Workforce Managers

There are 4 powerful coaching skills that serve remote workforce managers to learn:

  1. Clear and Precise Communication
  2. Word Choice
  3. The Rule of Silence
  4. The Power of a Forward Focus

In the next two blogs, these are covered in detail so come back for more!

The digital, faceless communication for remote workers can make it hard to understand and perceive the right tone or message.  Clear, concise language and word choice are key to collaboration.  These are all skills that certified coaches have been modeling for years.  Using silence as a respectful tool for thinking opens up the line of communication. Focusing on the future instead of the past is essential.  Implementing some of the strategies and lessons taught during coaching certification or modeled while working with a trained coach will go a long way in improving the performance of remote teams, enhancing the employee experience, and maximizing your company culture.

 

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Finding Your Niche

Posted on September 26, 2019 by Cathy Liska

by Vonetta Wade, Certified Professional Coach – https://www.linkedin.com/in/vonetta-wade-pmp-cpc-cisa-csm-47051526/  Vonetta Wade

Are you looking for your coaching specialty or purpose?  Or how to coach your client for finding their purpose?  There is something very special and rewarding about coaching and finding purpose in areas where you’ve overcome your most difficult challenges.  Below are questions and as an example my answers to inspire you to explore.

  • What is the biggest challenge you’ve overcome?
    • I became a mom at a very young age.  Prior to that, I had left home at the age of 14, so everything I learned about effective parenting was through pain, trial and error.  Where I came from, there was a lot of anger and ineffective communication. This was the same environment my child was being raised in and when she became a teenager, I realized our conflicts weren’t being handled and resolved effectively.
  • What steps did you take to overcome?
    • I felt like I was failing as a parent and I needed help, so I decided to use my resources and reached out to my new community where my daughter was just starting high school.  There was a pastor who provided counseling services.  The girls’ basketball coach allowed my daughter to join the team to keep her busy after school.  The school principal approved bus service so my daughter could take the bus to my son’s daycare and volunteer to decrease her availability to do unproductive things.  The principal also allowed me to start a program at the school that provided support to teens and parents raising teens.
  • How can you use your success in this area to coach others?
    • My experience both provided the resources I sought to learn to be a better communicator and effective parent and allowed me to find my purpose and help other families during the often-challenging teenage years.  My relationship with my daughter (who is now 30 and a new mom) grew stronger and we have an amazing bond.  We’re able to help other parent/child relationships by being living examples. People who know me understand that effective parenting has become my specialty.  I post about it often and have made videos about it. I’m helping my clients explore the possibilities and be successful at effective parenting too.

Coaching is broad, and although we may have knowledge in many areas, think about a niche that makes you the happiest.  Focus on the one that empowers and motivates you to easily help your client explore the infinite possibilities because you have been down that road and successfully explored it yourself.

Since completing my initial coach training, I apply what I learn both in my job and when helping others move past challenges I also experienced.

 

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Six Keys to Building a Successful Coaching Relationship

Posted on September 23, 2019 by Cathy Liska

By Joy Miller https://www.linkedin.com/in/onlineschools/

There’s no doubt about it: a positive coaching relationship is essential for successful outcomes.

What key ingredients create a high-quality coaching relationship?  Is it common interests or likeability?  Or something more tangible?

Coaches who understand what’s involved in positive coach-coachee relationships are best-equipped to help guide others on a path towards growth and success. Six Keys to Building a Successful Coaching Relationship

The Six Keys for Coaching Relationships

Let’s explore six essential components that make up a strong relationship skill set for coaches:

  1. Trustworthiness: Good coaches build trust with their coachees. They respect them as people, maintain confidentiality, and communicate clearly. This creates a safe space for growth and change.
  2. Empathy: The best coaches are interested in their coachees and care about their feelings. They show this through both words and body language.
  3. Honesty: When coaches earn trust, they can share observations; successful coaches confidently engage in difficult conversations.
  4. Guidance: Through listening and asking questions, the best coaches guide their coachees toward making their own successful decisions.
  5. Respectability: Exemplary conduct goes a long way. Great coaches are professional and reliable. They’re confident, and humble.
  6. Integrity: Good coaches can help others improve because they’ve experienced growth in their own lives. They remain willing to change and develop.

Although there is no substitute for coach training,coaching certification, or advancing your education, building stronger relationships is critical to your coaching success.

Putting These Six Skills to Work

Leveraging these skills creates a safe and trusting space that gives the coachee the confidence to do new things and operate outside of their normal comfort zone.

Because rapport is the number one indicator of success in a coaching relationship, positive results are highly correlated with a coach’s level of proficiency in these six relationship management competencies.

Conclusion

Whether you’re seeking ways to improve your coaching style or provide more value to your clients, focusing on these six competencies will help position you for greater success.

 

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Moving Forward to Success

Posted on September 19, 2019 by Cathy Liska

On the surface, the success of a coaching relationship is decided based on a client achieving specific goals.  Because the client is responsible for taking the action to achieve what they choose it is important to define their ownership in their success.  The role of the coach is to provide the process and be a partner as taught during coaching certification.  It is also important to dig deeper than the surface measurement of client goal achievement because sometimes goals change, and there are additional benefits to a coaching relationship. Moving Forward to Success

Success includes small successes along the way toward a larger goal as well as achieving the larger goal or desired outcomes. Learning a new skill, creating positive habits, and developing processes for creating future successes are additional benefits to a coaching relationship and part of measuring success.

When a client is firmly on track toward achieving their goals, they may choose to continue without regular coaching sessions.  In that case, was the coaching successful? Yes!

During coaching certification, practice coaching includes exploring what the client wants and how they will measure the success of the coaching.  This means before starting, a coach and client have a conversation to choose how the success of the coaching relationship is ultimately identified and measured.  This is revisited periodically.

The client determines what they do want from the coaching relationship.  If there is a sponsor, a process for measuring ROI is determined. In outlining how success is measured, consider the various possibilities and benefits.  Provide for both quantitative and qualitative evaluation.

Remember to appreciate the opportunity to celebrate successes.

 

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Success

Posted on September 16, 2019 by Cathy Liska

The definition of coaching includes “the coach empowers the client” and this applies to defining success too.  Success for a coaching client may be how they are feeling, thinking, or what they are achieving.  During coaching certification, inviting the coaching client to choose what they want and define what it means to them is practiced. Success

About Success:

  • The coach empowers the client to define success and their measures.
  • The coach supports the client in their evaluation of progress and success.
  • The coach and client collaborate on how to manage the client’s accountability to empower success.
  • The coach and client collaborate on how to celebrate the client’s successes.

Success is Important Because:

  • The client hires a coach because they want results.
  • The client is learning new skills and creating new habits that support future successes.
  • For many clients, the benefit of the coach as an accountability partner creates success more easily.

Considerations for Success:

  • Recognize progress and improvement as successes on the journey toward larger goals.
  • Review and adjust to support continued progress.
  • Review results and strategize what is next.

Application:

  • Before starting the coaching relationship, define how the
    client will know they have achieved their desired goals and outcome.
  • During the coaching sessions, revisit the measurement of success and add to it for additional outcomes.
  • Celebrate!
  • Create the opportunity for the client to “pay it forward.”

By gaining clarity on what success is and how it will be measured before starting a coaching engagement, the purpose of the coaching is clear and staying on track is easier.  The coaching client is empowered with choice and supported with moving toward their objectives.  As taught in coach training, this is part of the agreement at the beginning of the coaching engagement and supports the purpose of coaching.

 

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Strategy for Moving Forward

Posted on September 12, 2019 by Cathy Liska

If someone is given a strategy to implement in their work or life, chances are the usefulness is limited.  Coaching is a process so that the client develops their own strategy. In the process of creating a strategy, the coach asks the client about their actual and anticipated barriers, and how to move past each.  The coach takes the time to ask for and note the action steps so that the client is prepared to continue moving forward. Strategy for Moving Forward

The coach asks about resources to move forward. Resources include skills, tools, people, and logistics.  By listing the resources available and desired, the client is empowered to tap the resources and feels confident about the possibilities.  By exploring the resources desired, the strategy includes acquiring what it takes to make outcome goals happen effectively.

The coach partners with the client to create a strategy by asking for specific, measurable action steps to achieve their goals. The coach asks the client when they will complete each action step.

After an initial, broad exploration, a coaching session generally focuses on two to six goals, depending on the complexity of the goals.  The action steps are primarily planned for the time between coaching sessions.  The coach will ask the client how they are doing, what is working, what is not working, and to create the next list of action steps.  This process is taught and practiced during coaching certification.

With the coach as a strategy partner, the client is developing a skill for exploring, choosing top priorities, planning specific action steps, evaluating progress, and continuing the forward focus.

 

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