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Coaching is a way of understanding people in their wholeness, followed by supportive actions and conversations consistent with that understanding; it is an interactive process that deeply involves and benefits both coach and client. The essence of coaching requires the coach to:
Discover how the client interprets, or makes sense of, their world. What do the client's mental models look like?
Help the client to see the purpose and structure of the mental models he or she is employing and indeed recognize that they are only models and not reality.
Assist the client to detach himself or herself from the models for long enough to see that there are possibilities for other choices that could be more effective, fulfilling, and powerful.
In short it is the job of the coach to help the client see new possibilities and provide a space in which the client can consider making different choices based on a wider range of options. By accompanying the client in their exploration of a possible "new way of being" the coach actively participates in the client's discovery and learning process.
Coaching is not about teaching, supervising, instructing or managing. It is a way of working with people that leaves them feeling more competent and more fulfilled so that they are better able to contribute to their families, partners, organizations, and communities and find meaning in what they are doing.
The coaching relationship:
involves mutual commitment, trust, and respect,
encourages full freedom of expression,
is pragmatic in employing useful models,
recognizes differences between coach and client,
is process-oriented and avoids "techniques", and
is reciprocal, with both coach and client learning.
The coach:
designs coaching conversations and structures,
effectively assesses the client's current structure of interpretation,
is caring and non-judgmental,
speaks openly and honestly,
listens positively and actively,
is able to resolve breakdowns in communication,
acts with rigor, modeling the standards of the discipline being coached,
is creative and inventive,
is flexible, experimenting while staying tuned to the client's responses,
is consistent, upholding strict standards of conduct and integrity, and
is patient, persisting and waiting without complaint.
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