I will be a great coach

Today I am writing my second reflection paper; it feels quite different now for me than the first one. I now know what coaching is, I understand the concept, and I am learning at my own pace being able to connect the dots and relate to the knowledge.

What I have learned can be summarized by the word communication. I can’t always claim to know how to effectively communicate yet, but who does. However, I am more aware of what I should be taking into consideration when communicating with people. The use of five senses as a mode of communication was enlightening because I have always used them unconsciously but never realized that I should also be observing and feeling others as they use their senses when communicating with me.

I have learned that in every communication, people are trying to influence others’others’ behavior and thus manage their actions as an ultimate goal. That goal can only be reached when a person is aware of his/her own behavior and is able to excel at self-management and self-awareness. I was amazed by the idea of creating a safe place for others and how that can play a magical role in helping us say the unsaid and maintain relationships.

I have always believed that I am a person who doesn’t open up easily by nature, but learning that beliefs can change by training ourselves to accept and reflect made it possible for me to accept a new me. A new me who is more open, sharing, and communicates effectively yet maintaining relationships by not fearing to hurt others, but by looking to create safe zones for them and help them and myself. I learned that to get people to give you answers, you should ask.

And how you ask is equally important to what you ask. Frames could be a tool used in coaching, but it has a lot of impact on our day to day communication. Blame questions are something I see myself and others sometimes ask, I can now identify them and know where it leads. I am learning to evaluate my presence and am working on making it a positive presence. I was guilty of judging people I can potentially connect with by the way they presented themselves.

Be it by the way they spoke, looked, or behaved. But in reality, after practicing building rapport with my fellow students, I learned that we shouldn’t wait to connect with others, we should make it happen. There is a lot of potential lost when we claim that we don’t connect well with a person before knowing them. All goes back to our emotional intelligence, and as I did that test, it just confirmed what I already knew, that I was self-aware, aware of others, but my emotions struggled to appear to others. I learned to forgive myself for not being the person I aspire to be and remind myself that I am already there as long as I work on the better version of me. I realized that I like to discover things myself, and coaching is about letting others get that privilege too because otherwise, it is keeping knowledge away from them by telling them what to do.

How I will apply my knowledge will start by me accepting my flaws and that I can only build on it if I know them. I will be more open to criticism and take that as a chance to grow. I am already seeing that my friends and family can spot the change in me. I want to share that knowledge with them and help them figure out the joy of communicating effectively.

I will apply that with my potential clients, I want them to feel that I am a supportive friend and not a coach they’ve hired to reach a goal. I feel that if I could provide that for my clients, a big part of the coaching session will be achieved, and the rest is for them to discover. I have started to measure my impact on the people around me, and I realize that I am now always trying to keep a positive impact even if what I am saying is not very positive. That I feel is very important when becoming a coach, because when a client reaches their AHA moment, it is not always positive, but I want to help them see the hope and that these moments are blessings. Every day in this training program, I am stepping up a level in humanity.

I have committed to myself to share feedback every day to at least one of my fellow students, and I was able to maintain that over that last few days. I could see the impact of that on them, especially when done in a less formal setting because they could sense how I was genuine. I will be a great coach because I am not only learning but applying it and accepting it.

I want to become a coach, I want to be successful at what I do, I want to learn and want to create a loving environment for my loved ones. This training is helping in every way to achieve that. I want to have an exciting journey where I look back and thank myself not for making the right decisions but also for being strong and open to challenges. I want to give that to my clients; I want my coaching to be impactful.

I am positive I am on the right path, writing this reflection paper, which makes me realize how far I have already gone and how excited I am to go much further. Because at some point in my life, I felt that I am doing well, but that was never enough because if I don’t feed that state, it will not be maintained.