Unconditional positive regards and psychologically safe space were the two important messages that Coach Haris started the session with, and that gave a strong foundation to a rich subject like “coaching”.
There would not have been any better start for me for a program than what it started with- influencing or shifting the psychology of the participants in the room and shift the energy of the room, precisely of the people in it with positivity and tolerance towards each other.
This created lot of excitement and curiosity at the same time as what will come next touching another important trait of coaching – “be curious”. The initial pitch of the facilitator worked like magic, and it sent an instant waive among participants to be tolerant towards each other.
The training met with the excitement of having an opportunity to do something that I always love and do in my profession. I am fond of meeting new people, and this being a group that I would be working with for the next 10 days, I had questions in my mind as I headed for my first day of learning.
How will it be joining this course?
Will my contribution be good enough for the learning group?
Will it be engaging and thought-provoking?
However, the questions and anxiety were not to last long because of the warmth received from CTA & its team and the lovely group of participants. From the smiles, warm greetings, the journey began with an exciting way of introducing each other in the form of an engaging activity, keeping the end goal of asking questions and becoming better at that intact:
What kind of person are you?
What kind of person would you like to be?
This was the beauty of the activities. It helped me explore myself, and so to say, it acted as an alarm to remind myself about what kind of person I am and what kind of person do I want to be?
Everybody is unique and has a unique character and personality – are the messages that I derived from the extension of the same activity when the coach advised the group to talk to as many people I could and find out some common points and unique points between us.
Then came the belief of excellence, and it had some amazing thought-provoking and inspiring messages. The ICF definition and its clarity brought a lot of awareness in me to describe coaching, as the coach explained each important string of the definition in detail and to the highest satisfaction. A lot of doubts in my mind got clarified by understanding the definition of coaching and some other professions commonly misunderstood or associated with coaching.
Training and feedback helped me clear some of those doubts. So, by understanding the definition of coaching and other professions, it brought some amazing clarity about coaching as a different skill and profession. Some clarity I gained about:
What is counseling?
What is therapy?
What is training?
What is mentoring?
What is consulting?
A lot was discussed about the definition of coaching, and the whole thing was put beautifully when I got to know about the coaching process, and getting the awareness of coaching is to explore the unconscious programming of an individual and make him more aware of what he is unconscious of. Questions popping in between kept the curiosity at its peak when the coach asked questions:
What is value?
What is belief?
What is the difference between value and belief?
What is attitude?
What is behavior?
What is the difference between all of them gave a very clear understanding of exploring and generating awareness of the value and belief system of a client. Understanding the client’s language and pick up on their learning style or understanding their representation was another great learning, as it would be a key skill to successful coaching sessions in the future. Basic understanding of what coaching and what coaching is not was settling in well, and it was time for me to understand types of coaching. I learned:
Personal coaching helps individuals gain awareness and clarity about their personal goals in life and develop a better understanding of their emotions, thoughts, and feelings. Take actions to change their current state / or situation and accomplish their goals and experience a better life.
Executive coaching is about working with individuals from organizations to support executives to develop a new skill or to improve performance.
Career coaching, Business coaching, Team coaching, Performance coaching, Relationship coaching – a lot was there to explore for me.
Then, I learned about the goal setting and the importance of SMART goals; how establishing a goal is crucial for a successful and impactful coaching session. I also learned about ICF competencies, EMCC competencies, and BCC competencies, and had a basic overview of the same, and this was to come in the upcoming modules.
Overall, it was a great learning experience and the beginning of a journey to go a long way. The learning journey was made exciting, full of curiosity, engaging, and informative at the same time. And all was directed towards building on the core skill of coaching as to how to engage the client keeping the end result, or the client’s goal at the center. Though I had enough fun in the session, however, the learning was at the center stage throughout the session.
The first day of learning was really crucial in terms of building trust and rapport with the school, and the people of the learning group, and it all happened so well and more than expected.
To conclude, I completed the training with a basic, yet fair understanding of coaching and similar professions mistakenly mixed with coaching. ICF definition of coaching which brought great clarity, types of coaching which could help define and describe my niche at a later stage, the CTA belief of excellence which was mind-blowing and it set the foundation right and generated a lot of curiosity, understanding the unconscious or exploring the unconscious of the client, the conscious competence ladder, process of coaching, importance of goal setting and establishing the goal in the coaching session, goals need to be S M A R T goals, understanding about the discovery session and the usage of the wheel of life.
It was an exhaustive, yet, amazingly productive day full of joy and learning.
