This article continues previous blog publications on the topic “My Friends & Clients asked me (MFCA)”. The question in fact is: do you really practice “pure” coaching or something else?
Must admit they have a ground for such a question. Just because during sessions they may see me in a different roles. At least three ones: business coach, business mentor and/or business advisor. Why business in each case? Just because my professional experience occupies a few fields, business included. More than that – it is the most extensive part of my life (Corporate Finance, Projects Management etc. – please visit relevant page of our internet site: https://graffin.pl/about-us-eng.html). Again, it explains why almost every title of the Business Advisory Services contains words like Business, Finance, Project, Management ... It is just part of my background, source of knowledge and practical experience to be at the service of my clients.
Back to the topic of this article – why it tells about coaching mix, effective coaching mix. Probably you’ve heard about management coaches, executive coaches, marketing coaches, leadership coaches, corporate coaches or even financial coaches. All of the above are just different emphases that a business coach may have in his practice. In a few words, business coach is a skillful professional that invited to the company to help solve a (set of) problem (s) related to its operations. What does he do during coaching sessions? It involves a guided conversational process between two people, and since the coachee needs support in the process of making a sustainable change in their way of thinking (this is the main part of the coaching process), it refers to business owners, executives or corporate management, all the above types of coaching fall under the definition of business coaching.
The next question to ask is how to achieve the ultimate goal of business coaching: growing the company, improving overall performance, finding gaps in understanding why something is not working, what the company actually needs to make a progress, etc. What are the sequential steps along the way?
In many practical cases it turns out that “pure / classic” coaching is not enough to resolve a problem. Just because we work with real people with their “actual” educational background, professional experience “as is” and misunderstanding with either their chiefs or business owners on what is expected and how to perform the task in realistic circumstances.
In this case business coach has to be quite flexible and must have at his disposal several hats to wear – simply act in a different capacity, ask for the client’s permission to step a bit aside from classic coaching process and thus resolve the existing problem in a company. Different team members or leaders within the organization require different approaches and the coaching process is quite individual. The broader educational background, professional experience in different branches business coach has, the more flexible will be approach to the coaching process. Client will see elements of mentoring, specific and focused questions based on actual performance data (if it is required to act as a consultant) in the process of finding a solution in a specific area of a challenge that company may be facing.
More precisely - what kind of ratio of coaching / advisory / mentoring mix might be in the most general case? Mainly it depends on the personality of coachee. The more “adult” or experienced coachee requests the coaching service, the bigger is the portion of classic coaching in the managed conversation. The reflection of coachee in finding his own answers on the specific focused questions of coach - during the session or while performing “home task” between sessions – is the main goal of the coaching process. It is exactly the way of personal transformation on the road to performance excellence, behavioral transformation and personality growth of coachee.
The “younger” coachee in terms of personality, the less educated and experienced coachee is, the often coach must refer to the basics of profession, practice of interpersonal communication and general behavioral rules. Here comes mentoring skills of coach - he just changes the hat for a moment and guides coachee to the right direction. Specifically when the coach sees that there is no chance to reflect on the past life / professional experience of the coachee, then in this case it is advisable to use practical cases from the experience of the coach himself.
So, the tentative mix of components – advisory, coaching & mentoring – is being defined during the process of initial meeting between coach and a potential coachee. Then it is the subject of change during next sessions. Since the number of coaching sessions usually set at the start of the journey, coach offers to create a customized individual package that may resolve the problem coachee faces. Corrections may be realized as soon as the progress in coaching is detected and compared to the projected pace of coaching. That would be appropriate the moment, when “effective” mix of components is determined for each particular case.
