“If you serve fish to a person, you feed that person for a day. If you help the person to be able to serve his own fish, you feed him for life”. This, for me has been my most favourite phrase for a very long time and in a nut-shell this defines Coaching for me. I use this a lot whenever I’m training or coaching. I’ve realized that people are not unresourceful, they are in unresourceful state. They need to come out of that state to even start looking at possibilities over the horizon. I am a firm believer that we all have the resources within us to achieve our goals. It is just about being able to access those resources and joining the dots to make a change for better. This is where a coach comes in.

So, Coaching is “Bringing out positive change by improving the thinking”. You change your thinking and you change your perspective, you change your results. You are working perfectly at the moment to achieve what you are currently achieving. Do you like what you are currently achieving? If not, change the way you think. Do something different. Afterall,the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result each time.

But you know, there are times when there is an impasse. You probably don’t know what you want. Even if you know what you want, is it ecologically correct to achieve it for all areas of your life? Like for example, settling in another country. If that is your goal, is it doing justice to all areas of your life? Is it hurting relationships? Is it hurting your well-being and health? Let us say it is working well with you in all aspects. Then how do you get there and achieve your compelling outcome? Have you planned a roadmap with milestones? Do you have a plan B? Seems quite simple when you read these questions. Some people have good clarity.But then some don’t. That is where you need a coach, to deal with an impasse at any stage or area of life. So, “Coaching is also helping the Coachee arrive at solution/s by answering powerful questions asked by the Coach and joining the dots together to get an insight”.

If I were to give you a 30000 feet view of the coaching process, you will see that a Coachee approaches the Coach with a challenge/problem/impasse. The Coach helps the Coachee to understand what s/he really wants, and after a series of interventions, powerful questioning and visualizing, the Goal is set. The Goal comes from the Coachee’s model of the world and the Coach is just facilitating to bring about the insight for the Coachee. The goal has to be very compelling for the Coachee which will create a ‘Towards’ state in his mind. Unless that conviction is there, the Coachee won’t be compelled to make changes. Remember, change is always difficult. The Coach then elicits the Coachee’s currently reality in terms of what exists today. Current reality can be in the form of current learnings, (limiting or empowering) beliefs, what exists and what doesn’t (in terms of man and machine resources), conditions which could be limiting the progress etc. Basically, current reality is about status quo which isn’t working. With a lot of powerful questioning and providing insight, the Coachee comes out with strategies and actions to reach from current reality to the Goal that is set. The action plan is decided and agreed upon by the Coachee and commitments are made. Usually, there are 12 coaching sessions spread over 3 months and the Coachee is all set to achieve, which otherwise was thought to be unachievable because of the impasse.

Important thing is that the Coach need not be the subject matter expert of what the Coachee is currently doing. The Coach only needs to follow a structure of coaching, ask relevant questions to the Coachee, help the Coachee to get clarity and get an insight on how s/he can be successful. There are various applications of Coaching in various areas which listed below:

• Business/Executive Coaching
• Life Coaching
• Relationship Coaching
• Career Coaching
• ADHD Coaching
• Sports Coaching
• Health and Wellness Coaching
• Technical Coaching Agile Coaching

If you know the structure of Coaching, you can coach anyone in any domain or area of life. The most common and established structure of Coaching is the GROW model.

G for Goals
R for Reality (current)
O for Options (available to reach from current reality to the Goal along with strategies and actions)
W for What next or Wrap up which talks of a step by step roadmap to achieve the goal and this goes beyond the Goals as well.

This is just an overview of what Coaching really is. Actually, the process is quite detailed and comprehensive and I know that nobody can fail to be a good Coach if you follow the process using an appropriate coaching toolkit. A Coach needs to believe in Albert Einstein’s statement that a problem cannot be solved at the same level at which it was created. You can get a better insight on this concept here. Another most important thing the Coach must remember is that the Goals, the Reality, the Strategies and actions and the Roadmap along with commitments should come from the Coachee. The Coach is not there to insist on a solution which comes from his/her model of the world. Remember the fish story. There are many mistakes which a Coach can make. They are given here. I find Coaching to be a very fulfilling career. Reach out to me if you feel the need to know more on how you can make it big in Coaching.