Coaches come with all sorts of training and backgrounds. As a result, they can provide varying types of services to you. Most coaches should:
— Support and challenge you.
— Help you better understand your strengths and areas for improvement.
— Talk with you (and possibly assess) your values and purpose.
— Help you create a developmental plan.
— Maintain confidentiality.
— Serve as a sounding board.
— Broaden your perspectives by providing an additional viewpoint and serving as a devil’s advocate.
Perhaps the most important benefit to developing a relationship with a coach is to help you build self-awareness. A coach that uses experiential and reflective processes that will enable you to increase your awareness, learn your internal obstacles so you can lead from the inside out. To be aware of your blind spots, and know how and why you reacted to a certain situation the way you did; to not have doubt, to lead with confidence not with arrogance and to know the difference.
Lead- From the inside out
The only thing we fully control is ourselves: our mindset, our behavior, and our response to things as they happen. The more we investigate inside ourselves, the more impact that has on people and events around us. It only makes sense to take a really long look at ourselves. What’s working, and what’s not, what is good things we could continue or what we would like to change or be different.
Your coach should be responsible for teaching you the fundamentals of the game. This might include how to field a groundball, make a tackle or shoot a free throw. He or she should also teach you the rules of the game and how the game is played. Finally, your coach owes it to you to be objective and fair. This is really all you can expect from a coach, but that should give you a foundation to build on. Expect the basics, no more, no less.
Given that some executives will have mental health problems, firms should require that coaches have some training in mental health issues—for example, an understanding of when to refer clients to professional therapists for help. Indeed, businesses that do not demand such training in the coaches they hire are failing to meet their ethical obligations to care for their executives.