By Randy Kesterson, www.RandyKesterson.com
During the twenty years I have worked at the Vice President level, my role has included the call to coach members of my team and other extended teams.
My wife Susan and I walk together quite often, and we use the time to catch up on things. One day Susan, a Certified Professional Coach, asked me how my week had gone. I told her, with much pride, how I had coached a team member who had come to me with a work related problem he was struggling to solve. I explained how I had told him one of my best stories which included an explanation of how I had faced a similar problem and had dealt with it.
She stopped in her tracks, looked at me with an incredulous expression on her face, chuckled a little, and said … “you’re not coaching, you’re just telling stories.”
Starting at that moment, I was determined to become a better executive coach. I am proud to said that I have completed the Certified Professional Coach program at the Center for Coaching Certification and, now armed with a proven executive coaching methodology, I am on the way to becoming a much better coach.
Some of the greatest take-aways I had from the coach training include:
- Coaching is defined by the International Coach Federation (ICF) as “… a strategic partnership in which the coach empowers the client to clarify goals, create action plans, move past obstacles, and achieve what the client chooses.”
- A coach is NOT a: counselor, therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker, advisor, mentor, consultant, or friend.
- Coaching is client-focused, i.e., it’s all about the client and it’s critical to the coach-client relationship that we adhere to the coaching Code of Ethics.
- People think, feel, and prioritize differently and we, as coaches, adjust our process to the client’s personality.
What is next for me in my coaching journey? I plan to work as an executive coach upon retirement from industry.
What I know now that I wish I had known before I started is that being a good coach hinges on being a REALLY good listener. I guess we were given two ears and only one mouth for a reason!
