3.12: Two Kinds of Coaching

In this episode of "Two Kinds of Coaching," I explore the essentials of coaching, particularly in an academic context, and distinguish between individual and group coaching. Emphasizing the transformative power of coaching, I explain how both individual and team coaching can help individuals and groups align their work with their values and goals, enhance fulfillment, and navigate high-pressure environments.

The episode begins with an in-depth look at one-on-one coaching, covering the process from the initial discovery call to setting goals and creating action plans. I  underscore the importance of finding a coach accredited by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) to ensure adherence to high standards and ethical practices.

The discussion then shifts to the specifics of group and team coaching, illustrating how these methods can facilitate strategic planning, improve team dynamics, and foster a culture of accountability and emotional agility. 

Through examples and personal anecdotes, I highlight the benefits of coaching in achieving personal and professional growth, and encourage my listeners to consider how coaching might support their own academic and career journeys.

Episode Details

Transcript

Hi there, thank you so much for lending me your ears. Today, I want to talk a little bit with you in today's episode and in a forthcoming episode about what coaching is and how it might serve you, wherever you are in your academic career. So we're gonna talk about individual coaching. It's a one on one coaching and group or team coaching, and sort of public forum coaching, and see if I can answer some questions that I get a lot about what is accessible in coaching, and what isn't, and how coaching can help an individual or a team, who is in this creative academic, maybe high pressure space, feel better at work, feel more fulfilled, align their work with their values and their goals, figure out what their goals are, now that maybe you've checked off all the boxes.

Okay, so today, we're going to start by talking about one on one coaching. And that is probably two thirds of what I spend my time doing is via zoom or on the phone, one on one with a client who has come to me to make some sort of shift in their professional life. And I'll tell you how this works. So if a coach is trained through an international coaching Federation accredited program, what they have likely learned is one on one coaching, and their ethics around this and standards. And we have to take assessments, knowledge exams, to make sure that we are following best practices and being ethical in what we do. Coaching is an unregulated profession. So anybody can call themselves a coach, I find my affiliation with the ICF. And the list of letters and credentials after my name really important, because it indicates to me and my client that I learned a lot in my coach training, and I continue to keep my coach training, active and up to date and full of best practices and inspiration from fellow coaches. So that's the first thing I would suggest is look for somebody who has an international coaching Federation credential, there's level 123, I think they're in the middle of changing what they're called. So maybe their ACC PCC or MCC, maybe their level 123. But anyway, a coach will be accredited through the international coaching Federation in North America and Europe, there's an additional body, but in North America, it's the ICF.

So what we do in a one on one coaching engagement is we start out with a discovery call, who are you? What's what's on your mind? What's, what is the pebble in your shoe that you would like to remove? And sometimes it's very specific, leaving a job need to get out of here, need to figure out how to solve this seemingly intractable intractable problem. And sometimes it's a little bit vaguer, like, well, I have tenure, maybe I'm a full professor. And I kind of feel like this, isn't it? Like if this is the rest of my career? I don't want that. So however specific or vague the agenda is, that's fine. So in a discovery session, we'll talk about what you need, and what the coach offers, and how that offering is going to help you get to where you want to go.

And then there's the coaching engagement. Sometimes it's as few as six sessions. For me, it usually starts out with 12. Not always, but usually. And what we do over the course of that engagement is we set the big picture agenda. So what is important to you? And where do you want to go? What's the big project? Right? Is it family? Is it career? Is it where they meet? Is it one specific career thing, whatever. So we sort of set some parameters at the outset, and get to define as well as you can at the outset? What would success look like over the course of this coaching engagement? What do you want to see shift? In the next three months in the next six months? What do you want to see be different on the other end of this, so that gives us our direction or compass point. And then we meet every other week or so, and work through that big picture agenda.

So in a really sort of simplistic fashion, this may look like coming up with a plan or a series of experiments to try out to see, okay, if I behave this way, or if I shift my mindset around this, or if I practice this, what might be different there. So a lot of what you do in coaching is practice things in the real world and then come back to the coaching container and talk about it like well, how did that work? How did that feel? Is that an authentic thing for me? Do I like it? Do I not like it? And so the coaching conversation then fulfills a couple of purposes. One purpose is accountability. You said you were going to do a thing. Did you do the thing? Let's talk about how that went.

The other purpose is process. So for example, if you recognize that your default mode is to spend too much time doing X and not enough time doing y, you might be able to tell yourself every Monday, I'm gonna spend less time doing that thing that wastes my time. And I'm gonna spend more time on things that have a higher return for me in terms of satisfaction, or job, reward, or whatever. And then you may find on Friday that you still have not done that thing. Or you have not really held the bargain that you made with yourself. So then coaching becomes about what's in your way. And this is where training comes in really handy for me, because I have coaching tools and coach and individual experiments that I can help my clients conduct that are based on what we know today and 2024, about neuroscience and adult brain plasticity. This is where mindfulness comes in, where I help you practice becoming a neutral observer of yourself, so that as you make choices, you can observe yourself making choices, rather than just doing those on default. And realizing after the fact, oh, I made a choice that wasn't aligned with the way I want to be in the world.

So coaching becomes that place to process, how successful you are in meeting your goals, where you're getting in your own way, and different modalities to get out of your way. We look for some aha moments and realization, it's basically just you getting to know you in a different way. Because I can hold up and any good coach can hold up a really unique mirror to your experience. And this is the magic of coaching. Because coaching can take your thinking deeper than just the surface level of Well, I have a plan and here are my steps to get to the plan. Because if the only issue is getting to where you want to go in terms of life and career fulfillment, if the only issue was a plan, we'd all be doing amazingly well. And if the perfect planner, were the answer, oh my gosh, right, like how many planners do I have, that are supposed to help me keep me in line. And it wasn't until I realized that it wasn't the thing. It was the process of getting to know me and how I worked and the rhythms of my own accountability, that the planners actually even started to help.

So in those coaching conversations, we do pattern recognition. Have you seen this before? Positively or negatively? We do learning to recognize your emotions, okay. You say you're frustrated? Let's let's uncover what frustrated is, is frustrated, sad, angry, gloomy. Is it a mood? Is it a thing of the moment, right? And so the purpose for doing some exploration around emotions is when you can recognize and name your emotions. And when you can mindfully be the observer of yourself, as you are becoming angry, as you are becoming nervous as you are becoming happy. Right? What you develop is emotional agility. Right, you learn, first of all, what, in what incites certain emotions, and you learn how to use emotions as data and information rather than just reacting to the emotion. Right? If, and so recognizing Oh, okay, what I do when I get frustrated is this. And I need to rewire that, well, the coach is a safe person to create experiments around rewiring those habits, right. And I have a lot of tools rooted in mindfulness in particular, that are really great at that. But whatever the process is, right learning to sit with your emotions and recognize them for what they are, and then come to a point of choice. Right? Coaching is all about your choices. And sometimes we don't even know we have a choice, until we have that unique mirror in the coaching conversation partner to sort of tease out what the choices might be. What are the trade offs? What am I willing to do and what I'm not willing to do?

So the other thing I want to say about true transformational coaching, is that the goal is to move away from shoulds I should be doing this because I'm at this stage in my life to true desire. Oh, this is what I really, really want. And that's that's a slippery slope. I think I have said before on the podcast that when I was initially leaving academia, and looking for a new career, I checked out Giza million books on career transition from my local library. And at one point I said to my family, if I read another story about how a lawyer or a day trader, or a financial planner with tons of money, threw everything in order to open up the old cupcake, he shopee of their dreams, I was going to scream. Because this isn't about like being impractical. And how can reality out the window and pursuing your dreams? It's about really getting in touch with desire, right? What lights you on fire? What are you willing to make trade offs for? What do you need to pay less attention to? Right? So asking those bold and courageous questions is part of what a coaching engagement can help you do. So it doesn't necessarily mean throwing everything up and switching things entirely. But it's getting in touch with what is really going to fulfill you and help you feel satisfied with your career and your life and all of the things.

So that's a long-term coaching engagement. Some of my clients come to me through their employer, and they come with a discrete goal, we want you to coach this person through this one particular thing. That happens a lot. There is often some assessments that go along with that, in order to gather information from colleagues around how the person is doing and how they could be better. And then a debrief of that information with the coach, with the client, and then a series of sessions to help them work through that one thing. That's really common. And another form of coaching is a short term, intensive strategy session. So sometimes people hire me just to look at their materials. I'm applying for jobs. I've been in the same job for 25 years. I don't even know what a CV looks like anymore. Can you help me with that? And so there will be strategy sessions around particular goals that are shorter term.

But regardless of the coach, I think one of the most important things to think about is, are you inspired to trust this person? And are you a good fit in a conversation? Right? Do you like talking to this person? Does this person make you feel comfortable, or at least curious? It's not really important that you like them. But that you are engaged, right? That this is a conversation you would like to have again, it might make you nervous, it might make you feel like a little squirmy or a little prickly. But does it make you think and do you trust this person? I think that's the most important thing. And look for a coach who inspires trust and confidence. And who can explain to you that they follow a code of ethics and that confidentiality is paramount.

Alright, thank you so much for listening to today's episode, I will be back next time talking a little bit about group coaching, and maybe a little bit about public forum coaching as well. And if you have any questions about this episode, please reach out. My email is provided. And I'm happy to set up a discovery call to talk with you about what you need and how I can help. Alright, see you next time.