Determining coachability is critical. Using these skills in places that are not ready or healthy enough is likely to generate even more frustration.
So what makes a person, group or system coachable?
- Open to change.
- Ready to move forward.
- Healthy enough to act responsibly and learn.
- Driven by dreams and not by fears
- Commitment to the journey.
- Understanding and open to help for others.
- Willing to explore rather than avoid needed shifts.
Perceptive persons must determine the nature of change facing their organization and the coachability factor that is or is not present.
Coaching provides practical means to make that call. Effective persons of 21st century groups must become familiar with the five coaching skills shown in the acrostic LEARN.
Listen. Focus on what people in their organization are saying, paying careful attention to not only what they say but the way it is said. Be aware of what is not being said.
Encourage. Those at the head of a group must offer support that leads to action. Making mistakes is OK. It is part of the process.
Ask questions. Determine who wants to know what’s happening ask powerful questions.
Respond. Coaches are in the business of truth-telling. Leaders must offer appropriate feedback that moves the you forward.
Negotiate action. Every coaching conversation ends with the person being coached having clarity on what he or she is supposed to do and when it is supposed to be accomplished. Groups, families, businesses or churches that do not act will likely be swept away by the changing environment.
Coaching conversations may be informal and brief. Coaching relationships are usually formal and involve a contract that is co-created with the person or group being coached.
What then are the benefits of using the coach approach to introducing and managing change as opposed to a leader imposing or declaring change on an organization?
Benefits of Coaching
Coaching can help families, or businesses reinvent themselves to weather the storms of change. Persons who coach can help their organizations:
- Experience community not cliques.
Explore truth together and unlock passion. - Move from indoctrination to inquiry.
Build community through storytelling, personal expression and faith formation. - Create a multi-sensory experience that becomes a sacred place and space for persons to explore deep questions, community and faith formation.
- Foster stewardship that nurtures life, personal mission and fulfillment of God’s mission in the world.
- Understand and embrace why change is needed.
- Encourage people to tell their stories and connect with the story of others.
- Draw out experiences of the heart rather than exercises of the head.
- Learning to weave relational, restorative and redemptive threads that become the fabric out of which authentic experiences emerge.
What are you hearing here that energizes you? What’s your next step forward now?
Edward Hammett, Author of Making Shifts in Waves of Change. Order by clicking here and/or scheduling a session with him at his professional profile.
