Special Article
Coaching Skills:
What does it take to become
a
great or even perfect coach?
By Nigel MacLennan
The No 1 best-selling author of ‘Coaching and Mentoring’
The good news is:
Everyone wants you IF you can bring out the best in others. You’ll also be extremely well paid
The bad news is:
Not everyone has what it takes.
The great news is:
MOST people can become brilliant or even perfect coaches, if, and only if they develop the right skills.
What does it take to become a great or even perfect coach?
Before you embark on any expensive and time-consuming coaching courses, it will help you to know the realities of coaching.
Some people are naturals; they can coach with no training.
Life circumstance has equipped them with the raw ingredients, and life experience has turned the ingredients in to the finished article.
If you are one of those extremely rare people, this article will serve as a reminder of your natural gifts.
If you are like most people and you want to become a supremely effective coach, either in your work place, at home, or as a career, then this article will tell you the basics of what you need to know.
You may be a supervisor, manager, parent, teacher, or someone contemplating a career as a professional coach in the field in which you have already become expert.
Whatever you reason for wanting learn the skills of coaching, you will find multiple benefits in several areas of your life.
So, scene set; what does it take to become a great or even
perfect coach?
What is your primary responsibility if you are in a position to influence the performance of others?
To secure the best possible performance from the people around you in the pursuit of your shared objectives.
What is the difference between great performance enhancers and the rest?
Great performance enhancers get great performances from most of their colleagues most of the time. Poor performance ‘enhancers’ get adequate or poor performance from most of their colleagues most of the time.
What is the primary skill that separates great performance enhancers, directors and leaders from the rest?
The ability to bring out the best in others.
Management and leadership (whether at work, at home, in leisure or in private practise) are about getting others to want to improve, to perform, to develop.
Those who have developed and use that ability rise to the top.
Which of the many skills involved plays the largest part in bringing out the best in others?
Coaching.
The primary skill to honour every manager’s, leader’s, people developer’s main responsibility is coaching.
And as we said at the beginning, most people can become a great coach IF they develop the right skills.
To develop the right skills, you need the right tools. ‘The Perfect Coach’ could be the right tool to get you started.
*Available ONLY to leadership
coaching clients*
“It shows how powerful coaching can be. It has helped me to understand that with the right skills anyone can be a coach.”
Geoff Hughes, Group HR Manager - Development and Change, Costain Group Plc
What does it take to become a great or even perfect coach?
Listening skills
Listening skills above and beyond the norm.
Perfect coaches really listen. They understand the words that they hear AND the body language that they read. They hear what is said and what is NOT said, verbally and non-verbally.
People who have learned how to REALLY listen can make great coaches.
Rapport formation skills
Perfect coaches are incredibly effective at forming strong rapport. They get on with most people quickly and (apparently, but not in reality) without much effort. They earn trust and keep it.
Yes, it is possible to coach without any rapport, but it is much, much more difficult.
If you form rapport easily and REALLY connect with people you can make a
great coach.
High ethical standards
Great coaches know that to really help someone they need to earn and keep their trust. They also know that just one breach of trust will mark the end of that coaching relationship, and probably many others too. For professional coaches, one breach of trust can end their career.
If you have high ethical standards coaching could be for you.
Emotional intelligence
Another difference between an average coach and a perfect coach is this:
An average coach will make you feel his or her greatness.
A perfect coach will make you feel yours!
Which one would you rather coached you?
If you are more concerned with making others great, you could be destined to be a great coach.
Patience and flexibility
Perfect coaches keep at it until they figure out how to help the person they are coaching.
Human beings are so unique that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach is destined to be…less than successful.
If you have the combination of persistence AND flexibility, coaching could be a lucrative career for you.
Self-awareness
Great coaches have to be exceptionally self-aware. They know what effect every nuance of their behaviour has on others.
Self-awareness is different from self-consciousness.
If you are self-aware but not self-conscious you could make a great coach.
Self-control
Outstanding coaches have outstanding levels of self-control. This goes beyond flexibility. Perfect coaches are able to behave in the way that will work best for the person they are serving, even if that behaviour is not their normal
way of coaching.
If you have the self-control to bring to the party whatever is required to help the people you are coaching, you could have a high-impact, high earning career as a coach.
Great coaches (managers) see more of their
staff promoted
Why? They bring out the best in their staff. Superior performance from their staff makes them very promote-able.
Why? They are simply brilliant at drawing out great performances from others.
Every top leader wants to promote those who are most skilled at getting the best results through others.
When a vacancy comes up, whom would you put in place: someone who was simply brilliant at getting the best results from others, or, someone who
was average?
If you have a track-record of getting people promoted, or making leaps in their performance, or would like to develop such a track-record, coaching could be a career for you.
*Available ONLY to leadership
coaching clients*
“The Perfect Coach' provides a good insight into coaching…an increasingly necessary skill for managers.”
Graham Jackson, Managing Director, National Rail Services
Great coaches are more productive
Why? They can self-coach to get the best results from their time and effort.
Here is a link to credibility: If you can practise what you preach, and be seen to practise what you preach, your credibility with clients (in a company or in private practise) will be high.
It will also mean you stand more of a chance of being successful as a coach; because you’ll get done what needs to be done.
If you are serious about self-coaching, the coaching world will be serious
about you!
“‘The Perfect Coach’ offers the most practical and simple guide for understanding what coaching is as well as how powerful it can be when used effectively. Nothing was missed. Any company should keep a few copies on hand…effective for any person who holds a management post.”
Rob Brown, Head of Management Development, Iceland Foods Plc
Great coaches are less stressed
If you are alive you have problems to solve or manage.
Great coaches are less stressed by their problems, partly because everyone around them has been coached to higher levels of performance, and partly because they have an approach that works to solve the majority of their
own problems.
If you want to use your coaching skills to solve your own problems and create a better life for yourself, then coaching as a career, or a powerful extra tool as part of existing career, could be for you.
*Available ONLY to leadership
coaching clients*
“...holds you interest whilst teaching effective methods to change lifelong bad habits and substitute them for powerful tools that can transform careers... Highly recommended!”
Bob Scott, Managing Director, Change Your Life Ltd.
Great coaches have better relationships
Why? Again, because they don’t impose on others, instead they draw the best out of others.
If you like the idea of bringing out the best in others, coaching could have a positive impact on all aspects of your life. But if you are a JFDI (“Just Beeping Do It”) kind of person, coaching is NOT for you.
Great coaches reach the top in the best organisations, or coach the highest achievers in society.
Why? What does it take, for example, to become a top CEO? The ability to bring out the best out in others. How do you secure the best performance from others? By being the best coach on the block.
The best leaders always find their way to the top of the best organisations.
The best coaches always find their way to coach the highest levels in society.
Even as parents, the people with the best coaching skills raise the best children. Everyone wants the best for their children, and being a highly effective coach to your offspring is one of the best, and longest lasting things you could ever do for them! But before you go investing in any expensive courses, just check that you can master
the skills.
*Available ONLY to leadership
coaching clients*
“Here are the simple truths of how to develop people, children... The skills are what every manager and parent should have as the absolute basics. I’ve applied these skills at home and in business and they work.”
Eugene Brazil, Managing Director, Reality
How much expert knowledge is required to be an effective coach?
Surprisingly, expert knowledge is NOT essential to be an effective coach.
Yes, knowledge of coaching techniques and methods is of course essential. But the only reason expert knowledge in the field is useful, is to build credibility with the person potentially being coached. Examples of novices in a field having coached experts to superior performances are so frequent as to be unremarkably common.
For the purposes of securing clients, if you have credibility in an area of expertise you could make it as a successful coach in private practice.
If you have limited credibility with your chosen client group, you would be well advised to find a client group with whom you are credible.
Whether you want to coach in a situation where high credibility is needed to attract clients, or you want to use coaching as a more general tool, to develop yourself and others, you absolutely MUST understand the basics tools and techniques of coaching.
*Available ONLY to leadershipcoaching clients*
“Essential for anyone seeking success…”
Alex Krywald, Managing Director, Celebrity Speakers.
“To improve yourself and those around you, you must use ‘The Perfect Coach.’”
Resham Gill, Learning and Skills Council
How can you learn the basics of coaching easily
and effectively?
If you wanted to learn about medicine would you go to a road-sweeper? If you wanted to learn about racing driving would expect to be taught by sailing a yacht? To learn anything well, you go to an expert who is also an experienced people developer.
If you want to learn about coaching, properly, the obvious and smart way to learn, is from a current top-level practitioner, who has also published extensively in the field.
Much more importantly: The best way to learn about coaching is where coaching is used as the vehicle to convey an effective understanding of coaching and the
tools involved.
*Available ONLY to leadership
coaching clients*
“I thought ‘The Perfect Coach’ was fantastic, on each of the 3 times I read it.”
Cymon Giles, Senior Sales Manager, St Gobain Group
“I took it home with me and prepared myself for the experience of ploughing through the typical management instructional ‘tome’. However, I found myself being drawn into the story, with its two characters as they explore what coaching means. The narrative is deceptively simple and there’s just enough of a storyline for you get to like the characters and to be hooked. On my way back to work the next morning, I was surprised how the main principles of coaching came easily to mind, thanks to MacLennan’s ability to bring managerial skills to life in such a easily-digestible way.”
Richard Neale, General Manager. National Trust
What kinds of organisations buy MacLennan coaching products?
Here is an abbreviated list.
AA College |
Compass Healthcare |
NHS Executive Development Team |
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