Coaching, Its a two way street

Eli Lopian    Management for Geeks    

In a previous post, I was asked some questions about coaching. The post was about expanding my existence. I think that this is the first and most important rule of management. Leadership Starts with Self-Discovery!

I have always been an autodidact. I did see people being coached, and it always interested me, but I never found anyone who I felt could coach me. With Moti, my current coach, It works really well. Moti introduced me to living with personal integrity and that just made me discover a lot about myself.

The strongest way to make yourself do what you want to do, in order to get results, is to tell someone else that you are going to do it, and live up to your word. This is something that I do with Moti, and it works really well. The management team of Typemock are trained with Moti too.

Jurgen Appelo wrote a blog post about Managing != Coaching. I don’t agree.

Managing >= Coaching

As a manager you must coach you team! You can have a personal coach to help with your own self discovery, but as it is your job as a manager to help with your teams growth and self discovery, you have to coach your team, make them succeed. This should be your most important task! Empowering the team!

If you do delegate the coaching to a team leader – you have to coach the team leader!

I know that managing by integrity, makes the coaching very easy to do. The rules are very simple, and it confronts the team, enables them to grow, empowers them and doesn’t allow us to hide our problems or make excuses. It doesn’t focus on how or what to do, but on doing it.

Now lets answer Yarons’ questions

Q: How do you chose a coach?
A: I have no idea, I just asked some friends and heard from them what the coach did, interviewed a few. I was at a stage in my life that I had a problem deciding without enough information. I knew that I had this problem, so I just went with gut feelings

Q: How much does it cost?
A: Depends on your negotiating power, I got offers from $100-$250 per session.

Q: What can you expect in return?
A: Self Discovery and meeting you personal goals

Q: When will you start seeing result?
A: I am not sure, I am still seeing results, but I think that after 5 meetings things where already changing at a lightening speed

If you enjoyed this article please consider sharing it!