Kenan Kolday
Nov 7 · 5 min read

What is COACHING?

“A life without questioning is not in the hands of a man. His control comes from outside- Socrates

“The unexamined life is not worth living” – Socrates

“I think, therefore I am.” – Descartes

There is a coaching definition we see in movies that show us successfull baseball coaches, basketball coaches, football coaches. A leader who leads his team to success, holds up an example, knows when to award and when to punish, someone whose success and failures become his reputation.

But when we mention “Business Life Coaching” and “Life Coaching”, the definition changes. Because a team coach needs to actively influence the team members to get the result he wants. In other words, the team leader is in charge of getting the successfull results. Both the praise and the curse go to him. He both suffers and benefits from the results. He suffers and prospers together. This is the building block in management of the modern business world.

The coaching definition of this article is about someone who encourages the other people to reach where they want to go, helps them explore their strengths, and helps them to take the step to bridge the gap. Aside from a sports team coach, here the coach doesn’t actively take place in the process. The one who takes place is the advisee. Advisee is responsible for the results, not the coach, because the problem belongs to the advisee and the coach is just a mediator. Just like the catalyzator in chemical science, a coach enters into his/her advisee’s journey process change and transformation, effects the process in a positive way and then leaves without getting effected. In other words, s/he doesn’t undertake the problem or situation, he becomes a mediator to the advisee to go further.

Primarily, it is necessary to clearify this; education creates awareness but lacks development, only coaching creates change/transformation. Coaching doesn’t mean counselling, mentoring. The difference of coaching is that the coach doesn’t interfere. This way the advisee comes up with his/her own solutions. WHY? Because coaching agrees that everyone has an unique, amazing potential. This inner potential is so big that, like the “Get yourself out of the way to bring out the Creator in to the way” saying, he can reach to his inner potential and activate it by eliminating the resisting elements and by looking at things from different aspects. AND SO, one can produce results through one’s own means.

A coach has the ability to express well-gorunded objectives and to plan actions that will lead to meaningful results. Active coaching is a series of characteristic behaviour. It is asking, more than saying. It is listening, more than talking. It is encouraging and empowering, more than ruling. It is not just a simple skill, it is an attitude of mind. In a coaching model, it holds the basic principles for increasing awareness and taking more responsibility for advisee.

Basic Principles of Coaching is…

  • Everyone is creative and they create themselves.
  • • Everyone is searching and making meaning by nature.
  • • Everyone has unique power and strengths helping them to create a meaningful life.
  • • During our business and daily life, the key point of thinking and questioning to search for more meaning is necessary for awareness.
  • • Man is an inseparable whole formed in many different ways: mind, body and spirit; sense, feelings and imagination, etc. Effective and meaningful work and life requires having harmony and synergy between these different elements.
  • • As people we always have the freedom and responsibility of choosing.
  • • Our subjective perspective on reality, beliefs, assumptions, mental models, ‘our stories’ about ourselves, others and the world that we live in – affect our actions.
  • • As people, we are a whole of a life of many parts and we form a part of the many different relationship system.
  • • Basic principle of coaching is to form a basis to choose an act that will lead to significant results.
  • In some way these principles come from the total and insignificant amount of will resulting from people’s big potential. As people, we always have the freedom and responsibility of choosing.
  • How does a coach do that? What is the basic of coaching skills?
  • Coaching provides the desired change to advisee by effective listening, asking strong open-ended questions, creating responsibility, encouraging, giving feed back and self-control skills.
  • Coach’s basic skill is to ask questions like a curious child and make advisee think. Because transformation and change start sprouting inside one’s self. This is a process beyond simply asking questions. Because asking correct and strong questions is different from asking normal questions. Way of asking questions is important for advisee to create his own answers. While doing all these, using tools boosting creative thinking creates big difference. And coaching has a systematic disiplin within that provides the road towards solution and action. In this way coaching creates a difference, however advisee is always the who makes the change, not the coach.
  • Where can we use coaching?
  • Coaching has become one of the most important tools in providing leadership development, improving individual and team performance, improving efficiency, developing skills in needed areas, increasing employee loyalty, providing motivation and embracement. As well as the use in business life, coaching is also used in our daily lives. Life coaching provides advisee to have a happier, distinct and peaceful life, and also provides one to figure out how to live with the higher aims he targeted for his life goal. Parents use this efficiently while raising their children; because our children are unique and free individuals, it doesn’t matter how much we try to interfere with their life, they will determine their own destiny. So the best thing we can do for our children is coaching them.
  • As a person who has taken coaching training and carrying it out in my life, I believe that coaching can be done with everyone in every situation, circumstance and in every moment we breathe. It isn’t always necessary for two people to sit face to face with a 90 degree order, at a set time, in a assigned place. You can have coaching in every moment in life.
  • However the most important thing is a person coaching himself. Coaching shows and teaches a coach various of tools, but firstly helps him to use this tools for his self and to increase his awareness.
  • As Macchiavelli mentioned in his book “The Prince”, when an opportunity presents itself to you, you should have the virtue to recognize it. Than if that person doesn’t make an effort for development and isn’t prepared for it, he will sit back and watch the opportunity train go by. He won’t even realize it. Due to this we say “future is not just a place to go, it is a place we create”. Everything starts with right questions. And everyone can coach. Therefore it may sound better for this conference by playing a little bit with Descartes’ quote as; “I ask, therefore I am”.
  • Cheers,
  • Kenan Kolday

Kenan Kolday

Written by

Corporate Leader in a Fortune 500 company, Coach, Author, Motivational Speaker, Philosopher. Join me if you are brave enough to leave your comfort zone.

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