by Bill Peace – www.linkedin.com/pub/bill-peace/3/713/64a
Training for my Certified Professional Coach designation through the Center for Coaching Certification was the difference between storing much knowledge and theory behind practical, effective coaching and coaching application to its full extent.
A Kinesthetic-Celebrator learner, I embraced my coaching learning and found real work opportunities to apply my new skills, celebrating my coaching successes one conversation at a time.
Theory has its useful place in classroom and virtual environments, and is needed for fundamentals. Training for certification gave me the chance to continually learn and apply, learn and apply, learn and apply, as I went through the certification process.
As soon as a new concept, learning tool was introduced, my daily work environment became my coaching laboratory ~ skillfully experimenting and experiencing real-life coaching application.
As an internal corporate coach for the past decade, my clear advantage was watching my own professional coaching development as well as the professional and personal development of the managers I coached on a regular basis.
But the hands-on coaching practicums are where coaching came to life for me. I was able to easily make the connections between understanding personality styles, realizing how everyday language either holds us back or propels us forward and conducting regular coaching sessions with my coaching peers.
One integral part of the coaching practicums was the peer feedback we received. The benefit was twofold for me: To build upon my instilled coaching strengths and to become more aware of areas for improvement. No growth is truly possible without either.
Peer feedback gave me a powerful outer-perspective of my inner coaching process and dialogue. I re-adjusted and re-focused my coaching skills to enhance my interactions. After a while, I could hear the difference in my coaching approach and it made the experience richer.
