15 Creds - Leadership

There are some questions that seem like we don’t have an answer to. These questions keep lingering in the dark, creeping out at us. I don’t like these types of questions. Which is why, today, I’m walking the dangerous territory to answer a question everybody is scared to ask. Too overdramatized? Hi, this is Ajit Nawalkha and today I’m answering the question what is coaching? The question is so often asked, Harvard Business Review did a survey on it. Which brought me to this point. As the co-founder of one of the leading platforms for coach training, I wanted to clear the air. Coaching is a new profession which is why there is a slight confusion about what it really is, what are the rules, what is right, what is wrong. Firstly, if you ever have to explain coaching to a friend, a family member or a random person on the street, here is how you can explain it. A coach is someone who helps you imagine a greater possibility for yourself and then supports you in achieving it. In summary, that is what coaches do. That is what coaching does. As coaches, our job is to help our clients dream a greater possibility for themselves and then help them in whatever way possible to achieve it. Coaching often gets mixed up with the more established professions like therapy or consulting. So to make coaching really clear, let’s understand what consulting is and what therapy is. Consulting for one is the art of looking at analytical data and being able to make recommendations to your clients to be able to get to a particular result or to solve a particular problem. Or as Don Cheadle explains it… Consulting is like dissing a really pretty girl so that she’ll want you more. We need them to think they’re almost perfect so we can put that after work. It’s not that bad. Consulting is a multi-billion dollar industry and has helped companies for decades now. Therapists, on the other hand, deal with past life trauma. They aim to create behavioral change by working with the past life events of their clients. Let’s just say it can get a little intense. That guy is a total loon. I cannot talk about my clients, cannot talk about my clients. Therapy has been long recommended to deal with phobias or any dysfunctional behaviors, addictions and such. So that’s consulting and therapy. Coaching is neither of them but borrows from both of them. Coaching doesn’t require you to be a therapist or a psychological expert. It also doesn’t require you to be some analytical genius or outrageously successful. Coaching focuses on the future. Individual’s future. It opens a conversation about the possibilities that lie in the future. It works with the client in being able to see this possibility, it then uses the talent of the client to create a path to get to this possibility, further helping the client to make this possibility a reality. This is done through various techniques that are borrowed from therapeutic practices, consulting practices, training practices, and philosophy. A coach is sometimes a teacher who would share philosophical insight through metaphors, stories, and case studies to inspire insight in the clients’ mind. A coach sometimes is a consultant who would ask questions and ask the clients to go deeper to be able to find that path that will take them from their current reality to the possibility that lies ahead of them. A coach sometimes the therapist who inspires behavioural change, so the client can keep making progress to create a better future for themselves. To explain this further, I want to show you a short clip from a movie that explains coaching a little bit more. It’s a mess. You must feel horrible. You’ve lost everything. Your father, your tribe, your best friend. Thank you for summing that up. Why couldn’t I have killed that dragon when I found him in the woods? Would have been better for everyone. Yep, the rest of us would have done it, so why didn’t you? Why didn’t you? I don’t know I couldn’t That’s not an answer. Why is this so important to you all of a sudden? Because I want to remember what you say right now. Oh, for the love of… I was a coward. I was weak. I wouldn’t kill a dragon. You said wouldn’t that time. Okay, whatever, I wouldn’t! 300 years and I’m the first Viking who wouldn’t kill a dragon First to ride one though. So… I wouldn’t kill him because he looked as frightened as I was. I looked at him and I saw myself. I bet he’s really frightened now. What are you gonna do about it? Probably something stupid. Good but you’ve already done that. Then something crazy! That’s more like it. In this clip you might have noticed that the protagonist comes to a conclusion by answering a few questions. It’s a simplistic view, but it explains the idea of coaching. That is what we do as coaches. That’s what coaching is. We show up for our clients, we open up the space to create possibilities or show them the possibilities that lie ahead of them, Then we support them in approaching those possibilities and creating those possibilities, and live a life that they always desired. Did you enjoy this lighthearted video? Share your thoughts in the comment section below. Smash that subscribe button so we can keep you posted on these videos that we create weekly for you. Share this video with a friend or tag them in this video, so they can also learn what is coaching. Thank you for watching and have phenomenal day.

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