Achieving your Desired Outcomes in a Coaching Conversation: Part I

Nov. 16, 2015 - PRLog -- The focus of the coaching conversation is to help the client work towards achieving their desired outcomes. It is in this process of reflection, where coach and client reflect on the client’s experience, that potential for learning and action emerges. Business coaching has been defined in many different ways, but is essentially a one-on-one collaborative partnership to develop the client’s performance and potential, personally and professionally, in alignment with the goals and values of the organisation. Business coaching should be aligned strategically with the overall values and objectives of an organisation.

However, an important question is raised for executives: if goals are to be motivationally achieved, are they also aligned with the individual’s values, beliefs and feelings? Often organisations merely pay lip service to organisational values, and don’t necessarily create them as a synthesis of the core individual values which make up the culture of the organisation. Ethical dilemmas can arise during the coaching process if the executive needs to make difficult choices which are incompatible with their own value system.

Goals and motivation
If you wish to help your clients improve their behaviour and performance, it is useful to understand the psychology behind adult behaviour, goals and motivation. Alfred Adler, who worked with Freud for ten years, reasoned that adult behaviour is purposeful and goal-directed, and that life goals provide individual motivation. He focused on personal values, beliefs, attitudes, goals and interests, and recommended that adults engage in the therapeutic process using goal setting and reinventing their future, using techniques such as “acting as if”, role-playing and goal setting. All these tools are utilised and recognised by well-qualified business coaches worldwide.

Motivational theories primarily focus on the individual’s needs and motivations. I have typically worked with coaching clients to help them understand more fully their intrinsic motivators (internal drivers such as values, beliefs, and feelings), and how to use extrinsic motivators (external drivers such as relationships, bonuses, environment, and titles) to motivate their teams. If an individual’s goals are not in alignment with their own internal, intrinsic drivers, there will be difficulties for them in achieving those goals.

An ICF study (Griffiths and Campbell, 2008) confirms that coaches often assume clients are aware of their values, but within the confines of the study this assumption appeared to be incorrect (ICF, 2008a). The clients interviewed indicated they were not aware of their values, and that acquiring a process of awareness and reflection led them to become more aware of their emotions, their values and of the need to clarify their goals. Whitmore (2002) supports this, and states that the goal of the coach is to build awareness, responsibility and self-belief.

The coach’s intervention and questions help the client to discover their own intrinsic drivers or motivators, and help both coach and client to identify whether the client’s personal, professional and organisational goals are in alignment.