Coaching for best results

By Margo Herman

What is coaching? The variety of contexts and definitions people have for it is surprising. Coaching has surfaced in a surprising number of conversations in the past few weeks:

A colleague shared how she sees coaching as guiding employees on performance plans for poor performance.

I recently coached colleagues toward high-quality youth programming by using the Discovery Process, following a YPQA observation at a 4-H youth camp.

This week, at a county fair judging event, I coached a staff member on the Youth Program Quality Assessment "YPQA on a Stick" tool.

We are planning a professional development session for the Collaborative Leadership Fellows cohort next month in Rochester for fellows to learn how to coach and be coached for personal growth and goal setting.

A program conference planning team that I am on is considering including a coaching workshop under the theme "balancing professional and personal life."

The following definitions of coaching from the International Coach Federation provide a sense of how and why coaching can be a helpful practice for ourselves and with youth, colleagues and employees.

• "Coaching is a highly personalized learning process designed to bring about effective action, performance improvement and/or personal growth for the individual"
• "Coaching builds the client's awareness and responsibility and provides the client with structure, support and feedback"

John Whitmore unfolds some essential skills in his book Coaching For Performance, including: active listening, asking effective questions, and reflecting back to the client. He also proposes a model called GROW. This model suggests developing a sequence of questions focused on the following four stages:

• Goal setting for the session as well as short and long term
• Reality checking to explore the current situation
• Options and alternative strategies or courses of action
• What is to be done, When, by Whom, and the Will to do it

When it comes to coaching, what works? To me, whether formal or informal, with colleagues, youth or employees, the essence lies in clients building awareness, taking responsibility for learning, and nurturing self belief. Coaching requires a refinement of skills to achieve good results.

What do you think? Which of these skills or perspectives do you most successful in your environment? Can you share any favorite resources for effective coaching?

Margo Herman, Extension educator, educational design & development

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