Coaching
What is Coaching?
Coaching empowers you to become more effective in your life, work, and learning. With your coach, you explore life’s challenges, successes, shocks, issues and opportunities, formulating actions and goals along the way.
It’s confidential, non-judgmental and the topics are determined by you, either explicitly at the start of a session, or as they emerge during the course of the coaching conversation.
An effective coach listens for understanding; asks questions to help you reflect and offers challenge so that you can reach a deeper knowledge of where you are and where you want to go next.
Coaching and Mentoring
Coaching shares an intent with mentoring, counselling, therapy and other approaches but is distinct from them. Within clear boundaries the coach asks, reflects and tests your thinking with you. Whereas a good mentor will offer direction from a position of greater experience, a coach helps you to find solutions for yourself. In mentoring you are shown the way; in coaching you discover it for yourself.
Realistically, a coaching session will include aspects of mentoring. However, the coach only offers, never tells, encouraging you first to evaluate any suggestions before committing to them.
Impact
The impact of coaching can be defined in several ways. Individuals may be content to see and feel improvements for themselves. However an organisation, understandably, will wish to see a return on investment (ROI). A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods can be used for this purpose.
Thinking Classroom Coaching and Mentoring
Mike is an experienced coach and mentor across many domains – executive, instructional, video, group and organisational. He combines his teaching and leadership experience, ILM Level 7 training in executive coaching and mentoring and accredited workplace mediation skills into a unique coaching service.
Consider coaching if your goal is autonomy, independence and agency; if the aim for an individual, team or whole organisation is to become more effective, more efficient, and if you want to develop an authentic integration of well-being and productivity.
Find Out More
Have a conversation with Mike about coaching for you and your team.
Book an online meeting or make an enquiry here.
Sessions can be face-to-face or online and can be commissioned by individuals or organisations.