Becoming a coach is not easy, but you can start by training some characteristics of your character: this is what a good coach looks like. Coaching is an ever-changing profession, never equal to itself. It changes every time you follow a new client. People are very different from each other, as are the goals they want to achieve and the situations they face. Moreover, everyone also starts with a diverse attitudinal, cultural and social background: the coach’s work begins from this, and the professional must always consider all this personal information to design a tailored path ad hoc for each client. The coach must have some particular personal skills and attitudes to face all these challenges. If he is not entirely in possession of them, he can train them daily until he reaches the desired level.
The skills required also vary according to the coach’s field. For example, talking to a college student struggling to choose their specialty is different from having a conversation with an executive who wants to change their career or needs to learn how to manage their team better. Despite the diversity of cases, some competencies and skills are required regardless of the type of coaching in which one specializes. In addition to knowing the profession’s methods, a good coach also resorts to a series of personal characteristics, which can be naturally possessed or increased with practice.
The Characteristics Of The Coach: Curiosity And Creativity
The coach’s work always starts with passive listening to the client’s situation and what he wants to change with the help of the professional. In this phase, the coach listens to his client, but not only. He must be able to make the individual feel at ease, transmitting the feeling of being in a protected space and being in dialogue with someone who understands him. Empathy is essential at this stage. In fact, without empathy, it becomes tough to put yourself in the customer’s shoes, understand what he wants and why and propose a path that suits him.
It is unnecessary to embrace his thinking but to understand precisely what he wants and what tools he already has to get it. Showing curiosity about what the client says is a great way to gain his trust and put him at ease. If you listen and demonstrate a high degree of inattention and impatience, the customer will notice, which will hinder the dialogue. Being able to stay focused, ask questions, and participate in the dialogue but not monopolize it are skills of fundamental importance to being a good coach.
The Coach: Managing Emotions And Passion
It may seem more difficult to say than to do: among the coach’s skills, the ability to manage one’s emotions and, at the same time, demonstrate a great passion cannot be lacking. Much of the coaching work consists of pure dialogue. Just think of the first phase of knowledge in which the client explains what he wants and why he decided to contact a coach, the explanation by the latter of the personalized path tailored to the client up to the various adjustments that will have to be made in progress of Opera.
Opening a dialogue door and maintaining it is essential for the work’s success. To do this, the coach must be able to work and separately relate to the client without getting involved, maintaining detachment and always looking at the situation objectively. On the one hand, the coach must encourage his clients. On the other hand, he must give constructive, honest feedback that is not affected by personal opinions. On the other hand, the coach is not soft with his clients. The aim is to get individuals out of their comfort zone, encouraging them to go further, even at the cost of taking additional risks.
The Coach: One Of The Creative Professions Of The Future
The coach is entirely part of the future professions and is among the most creative. Those who undertake this career must know how to find alternative solutions to allow their customers to circumvent the obstacles that separate them from the finish line. Succeeding in this undertaking requires a great awareness of one’s abilities and the clients. The more you get to know each other, the easier it will be to relate to people who need guidance. If the coach feels comfortable with himself, he can project this feeling also towards the client, who will immediately feel more calm, confident, and able to face his challenges. When studying or training to start a career as a coach, one must also consider the multitude of individuals seeking coaching services.
A good coach must know how to adapt to different clients without confusing his mental map, his way of seeing and perceiving the world, with the territory, that is, the reality of the facts. If, on the one hand, he must be able to look at the situation objectively, on the other hand, he does not necessarily have to follow an exact and already standardized technique but to shape the path based on the characteristics of his customers. To help himself in this challenge, the professional can train and develop his intuition, allowing him to discover upstream problems that not even the client has thought of or find creative solutions to overcome an insurmountable obstacle. A handy gift at this juncture is having a tremendous mental openness, which allows the coach not to focus on a single problem but to face the work with the client as a single path from different points of view.