How to get the most out of a coach you appoint

1. Goal-Setting.

The foundation of good coaching is goal-setting. The coach works with you, the client, to set and reach goals that are important to you. It is important then that you be aware of some of the essential features of goal-setting and achievement:

Guiding principles for setting goals and acting on them could include

• you are the expert in your life;

• if what you’re doing is working, keep doing it; (If what you’re doing is not working; do anything other than continue.)

• the way to eat an elephant is a little bit at a time, and

• from little things, big things grow.

One of the most useful and effective tools incorporating goal-setting, planned actions, and a solution-or-results-focused operations has been developed by Dan Sullivan in Strategic Coach. The steps are as follows.

There are, of course, many other approaches to goal-setting. Zig Zigler, for example, proposed seven steps that he claims will help to move you from a ‘wish list’ stage to an ‘accomplishing’ stage. Zigler’s seven steps are

Acronyms are often used as memory-joggers in relation to goals and goal-setting. Two of those acronyms are:

2. Fixing faulty behavior—Get started without your co

We can learn from the faults of others when it

comes to coaching needs. In What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

(Hyperion, 2007, pp.40-41), one of the world’s leading coaches, Marshall Goldsmith, identified twenty habits that hold many of us back from reaching the top.

You can wait and rely on the coach you appoint to help you to rid yourself of any of these habits, or you can take responsibility for your own self-improvement and get started right-away. Goldsmith described the habits as flaws, which were usually performed by one person against another. They are:

Winning too much—the need to win at all costs and in all situations.

Adding too much value—the overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion.

Passing judgment—the need to rate others and impose our standards on them.

Making destructive comments—the needless sarcasms and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty.

Starting with ‘No’, ‘But’, or ‘However’—the overuse of these negative qualifiers.

Telling the world how smart you are—the need to show people we’re smarter than they think we are.

Speaking when angry—using emotional volatility as a management tool.

Negativity or ‘Let’s explain why that won’t work’—the need to share our negative thoughts.

Withholding information—the refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.

Failing to give proper recognition—the inability to praise and reward.

Claiming credit that we don’t deserve—the most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success.

Making excuses—the need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.

Clinging to the past—the need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our past.

Playing favorites—filing to see that we are treating someone unfairly.

Refusing to express regret—the inability to take responsibility fro our actions, admit we’re wrong, or recognize how our actions affect others.

Not listening—the most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.

Failing to express gratitude—the most basic form of bad manners.

Punishing the messenger—the misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually only trying to help us.

Passing the buck—the need to blame everyone but ourselves.

An excessive need to be ‘me’—exalting our faults as virtues simply they’re because they’re who we are.

Goal obsession—getting so wrapped up in achieving our goal that we do it at the expense of a larger mission.

3. Shakespeare knew about coaching.

‘Happy are they that can hear their detractions and put them to mending.’

– Shakespeare in

Much Ado About Nothing …