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What is the difference between coaching, mentoring etc.?
There are many types of external support available to companies including training, coaching, mentoring etc., and it may not be clear what each of these services is for or what they can achieve for the client; below is an overview based on the analogy of driving a car:
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A Therapist: will explore what is stopping you from driving the car
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A Counsellor: will listen to your anxieties about driving the car
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A Mentor: will share tips and hints from their experience to help you drive the car
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A Coach: will encourage and support you to achieve your maximum performance when driving the car
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A Consultant: will advise you on the potential opportunities driving the car will bring you
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A Trainer: will teach you the details of exactly how to drive the car
What exactly is coaching?
In simple terms, coaching is focussed on looking forward and about the future, setting realistic and achievable goals, making better decisions, improving your relationships, and making you more effective and fulfilled. Have you ever considered why top sports people and teams ALL have coaches constantly available to them?
In today's high pressure environments, it is all too easy for management leaders to lack time, mainly due to the pressing concerns running a business puts them under. Ask yourself these questions:
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Who can I ask for advice, and get honest and direct feedback?
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What are my most important needs right now?
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What are my goals?
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What stops me achieving my goals?
Coaching can not only help you answer these questions but also implement change, allowing you to achieve your goals. And because coaching can be provided in different contexts and environments, you might not even have to leave the office! Coaching is the most rapid and cost effective way for you to develop your own abilities, and the benefits your success brings cascades down through the company.
Where can coaching help?
Coaching can help in may areas, but is primarily focussed on the following:
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Clarification of personal direction
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Creating plans of action
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Mastering your own psyschology and over-coming inhibiting factors eg fears, doubts, limiting beliefs etc.
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Optimising your environment for achievement
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Checking skills & abilities match current/future requirements
See if any of the following has relevance to the job you do: stress, overwork, boredom, managing staff, the boss, lack of career development, under paid, poor performance, public speaking, presentations; the list goes on and on... Work is something that, for most of us, represents 40% of our waking lives and is therefore a key element in our life, and yet a recent survey of managers concluded that over 60% didn't like significant aspects of their job; if this is you, wouldn't you want to change this, and change rapidly?
How will I recognise change in my performance?
This is a key question Open Insight addresses right at the start of any program. Every cleint is requested to identify what will need to happen for them to be absolutely certain change has occurred, and this criteria is then applied as the measurement of success.
What Code of Practice Do You Work To?
Open Insight is bound by a strict code of ethics and good practice as laid down by the Association for Coaching; please go to Links for details of their website.
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