Being a coach comes with challenges of its own. You are continuously asked to make choices that affect not only yourself, but your clients as well. You need to find a balance between customer growth and winning when fulfilling the customers’ needs. Doing these successfully allows you to be transparent about your coaching philosophy in a consistent manner.
It is imperative to learn how to build a winning strategy to ensure the success of your coaching career. When formulating your own coaching philosophy, below are some of the 10 most critical considerations:
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1. Configure your beliefs
You’re under a lot of pressure to excel when you start coaching. You could end up playing a role that works well in the process, but one that does not align with your values. Many coaches are comfortable saying and doing what their clients want, but they lose vision of the reason they are in this profession in the process. First, you need to understand yourself, set your beliefs and norms, and then work with them. A philosophy of coaching represents who you are, and you should practice it. While at it, make sure that in your profession you have a personal value system to guide you.
2. Defining your goals/purpose
As a coach, what do you want to accomplish? Developing a winning coaching philosophy includes determining the coaching intent and then focusing on the goal (s). What does it mean for you to be a coach? Who comes first, your clients or the money you make? To develop your plan, it takes concerted work and to do this, you need to know what is driving you.
3. Develop a Statement of Mission
This is a declaration that incorporates your principles and values to drive you to accomplish what you have set as your goals. Your clients are crucial in all this and the attention should be more on them. Together with your principles, your personal beliefs will provide a strong path for participants in your coaching program from where you want to go.
4. Choose your approach to leadership
This is a critical part of the philosophy of coaching. Early in your career, it is important to set out a leadership style and make sure you improve it as your visibility increases. You need a participatory style of leadership in the world of business where participants in your initiatives have an opportunity to actively engage. It provides more space for creation and makes things simpler for you.
5. Enhance your self-awareness
The process of knowing your strengths, your weaknesses, what is important to you, and how you react to various circumstances, is self-awareness. You must focus on your coaching and on yourself to improve your self-awareness . When faced with tough questions, asking yourself whether you are getting the right answers. And considering your coaching and your surroundings these are helpful ways to explore where you should go next. Such questions may include:
- What’s my goal?
- How should I respond?
- How can I respond?
- What is this asking me / what am I going to change?
6. Convey the philosophy
Sharing your ideology means you have proclaimed your goals freely and publicly and, thus, you have taken responsibility and accountability for your potential actions as a by-product. If you’re not doing what you said you would do, prepare to be questioned.
7. Establishing expectations
How do you set expectations that reflect the desired level of results, now that you understand what needs to be achieved? You must set standards as a coach that you want to accomplish. To you as well as your customers, these requirements must adhere. You must lead as an example and set standards that all participants in your program need to meet. In the curriculum, there must be a way to measure progress. If you work with entrepreneurs, for example, you can require your clients to upgrade their ideas into a viable business model by the end of the coaching program.
8. Write down your philosophy and live it each day.
Getting a real written philosophy is useful – something concrete to refer to and focus on. However, if it only ever exists as a written text and is irrelevant to the actual acts and activities, a theory may lack legitimacy. The best approach is to live it and ‘walk the walk’ to present the philosophy.
9. Continue to amend your philosophy
Researchers also found that “expert” coaches understand the influence that operational and organizational context has on a theory and then change their conceptual structure in order to suit that context. Do you completely understand the context and surroundings in which you work?
10. Add lessons from experiences in life
Recognize the influence of life experiences and how it can help to shape your philosophy by focusing on those experiences, making it a shifting, ever-evolving structure that drives your attitudes and acts.
The values, methods, and preparation you have learned up to this point will help you to shape a coaching philosophy. Always keep in mind that it’s not set in stone and should be revisited in the future to strengthen it. Regardless of the type of coaching you choose, make sure to have a well-defined philosophy in place, as it affects the result of your overall program.
