First, we must understand what is a Coaching: Some definitions point to a process from an agreement between an experienced professional (coach) and a client (coachee) to reach a goal set by the client. Another definition shows that Coaching is an English word that indicates an activity of personal training, private tutoring. This concept emerged in American universities where a tutor used to prepare students for the exams of a given matter.
Various forms of coaching have been created in recent years, standing out among them:
- The Executive Coaching or Business Coaching is sponsored by companies to enhance the performance of its professionals. Other purposes for this kind of coaching are: Develop leaders and their skills for management, improve interpersonal relationships, teach team working, and align employees to the organizational culture;
- The Professional Coaching or Mentoring is led by a qualified professional who uses methodologies, techniques and tools from his professional experience in the work field of the person being helped, in order to improve performance of the coachee in that segment;
- In turn, the Personal Coaching aims to improve the personal relationships of an individual, to change habits or unwanted behaviors, and to prevent limiting emotional states. It is a very broad area, because it deals with various kinds of customer interaction with his environment;
- The Financial Coaching is a special training that aims to train a professional in some financial issues, so that he can achieve financial results in the business area of expertise.
But what if all these needs are common to the same professional? Enhance client’s performance, develop his leadership skills to improve his relationship with his peers and managers, in addition to increase financial results of his activities. This is where enters the Integrated Coaching. It is a uniform procedure that uses advanced models of mental and emotional development to leverage the performance of entrepreneurs, managers and senior professionals in companies. There are several ways to apply an integrated coaching. One of them will be shown below by the different kinds of coaching that must be intertwined for better integration of the results:
Within the Professional and Business Coaching
- Material research for reading and learning from discussion of a topic with the client, based on his own experiences and improvement desires;
- After reading the material, a discussion with the tutor must be hold on how to use the learned concepts to promote improvements in the work, the team and the organization where he works;
- Preparation of a brief action plan to be used in a pilot project for improvement. Once deployed, a new argument between coach and coachee must be done in order to understand what was the level of improvement achieved in the results.
All these steps can be taken from virtual environments such as videoconference rooms via internet, websites and discussion tools such as social networks, but in private system to tutor and tutored. Several rounds involving these three items can be done during the development of an improvement.
As for the Coaching Staff
- Recommendation of trainings and professional qualifications to help the coachee to know his weaknesses and personal skills, aiming to overcome his limits, such as NLP for Professional Excellence, Self Knowledge, Expressive Creativity Dynamics, Emotional Excellence, among others;
- Preparation of tools for the use of knowledge gained in the coachee’s day-to-day so that the developed skills can be practiced in the conducted trainings.
In Financial Coaching Area
- Material research for reading and development in corporate finance, budgeting and financial control, from practical situations and coachee needs, followed by discussion with the tutor on the practical use of this material and concepts;
- Recommendation of short trainings in finance, preferably online, in order to increase the coachee’s knowledge on the subject;
- Preparation of tools for the use of knowledge obtained in the coachee’s day-to-day and to practice the knowledge captured in conducted trainings and in read material.
According to the Ford Institute for Transformational Training (2014), three questions must be made to the client (coachee) before applying any kind of Coaching: Do you believe that an investment in yourself is the most profitable you can do? Do you feel at ease in being helped by highly trained, experienced and recognized professionals in their actuation field? Are you the kind of person who is not content with less than excellence? If the answer is yes to these three questions, the Integrated Coaching will be the best way for the development of this individual.
References
Ford Institute for Transformational Training. Specialized Integrative Coaching. Available in http://www.thefordinstitute.com/category_s/289.htm. Accessed on 2014/07/14.
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